getonthebus09.com

“There’s no business here yet,” he said. “These are all experiments.”

Microsoft was not quick to seize on selling directly over the Web, Capossela said.

Capossela put Works SE in the same category as several other new approaches, including the Albany subscription service that Microsoft detailed this week. Also in that camp would be the prepaid Office cards that Microsoft has been selling in some countries for more than a year now.

Capossela said the early response to the free product has been positive. “People have liked the price,” he said with a laugh, adding that it has also not been perceived as that intrusive, something Microsoft had worried about.

None of these areas are significant new channels as yet.

“We haven’t seen them yet,” he said. “We’ve seen a love affair in the press. We haven’t seen customers embracing Google Apps.”

After years of exploring the matter, Microsoft has finally started offering an ad-funded version of Microsoft Works in some countries.

Capossela also stressed that Microsoft is focusing its efforts on new ways of selling Office and creating online products that complement Office, not replicating the suite on the Web. He said that Microsoft still doesn’t see much competition from Google Apps.

“This is a trial,” he said. “This is a pilot. This is a ‘Can we build software that will do this?’ ”

Users who run the software see a small ad as they are writing their document or editing their spreadsheet. Although the program has the ability to update its set of ads online, today it runs mostly ads for Microsoft and a few partners, all of which ship with the product itself.

Updated 4:15 p.m. with details on the countries in which Works SE is being offered.

Works SE (which stands for Sponsored Edition) is free to PC makers, though they don’t get a cut of the ad revenue. Large computer makers typically only pay a buck or two for the low-end version of Works, though.

As for Albany, Capossela said the main idea is to try and have a product that can be pitched by the Geek Squads of the world when people buy a new PC at retail. Tech benches, as these services are known generically, have become an important avenue for consumer software sales.

Have you seen the ad-based Works on a PC? If so, drop me a note at ina dot fried at CNET dot com and let me know which model.

“This is designed for a certain sales motion and if that sales motion didn’t exist, this product probably wouldn’t exist,” he said.

Last August, Microsoft said that it would start piloting Works SE, but the company gave few details on where or how the product would be offered.

Microsoft remains cagey on the details of where you can find Works SE. The company has been testing Works SE in 5 countries: The United States, France, Canada, Poland and the United Kingdom. It is available only through select computer makers and Microsoft won’t say which computer makers those are.

The ad-funded Works falls into a category of several products the company is exploring, rather than a significant new source of revenue, said Microsoft Vice President Chris Capossela.

“We’re late,” he said. “If you look at Symantec and Intuit, they have huge businesses here.”

That said, Microsoft has yet to sell the product to those retailers or determine how much it will charge for the subscription product, which combines Office 2007 Home and Student Edition, Windows Live OneCare security, and other free Windows Live services.

The one area where Capossela said Microsoft has seen significant sales is the download and purchase of Office over the Web. Customers either download a trial version of Office directly from Microsoft or get it with a new PC. After 60 days of use, they are prompted to buy a full version from Microsoft or a partner (partners typically sell the product cheaper than Microsoft).

According to its Web site, Packard Bell offers the software on some of its models in the United Kingdom. Using the same sleuthing technique (a search engine), it appears Sony is one of those offering it in the U.S.

Microsoft has been considering such a product for some time, with many inside the company arguing that Microsoft could make significantly more money for Works by selling advertising than it gets in revenue from computer makers for the product.

Response to that last product, which sells Office in six-month increments for around $20, has been mixed. The cards were a hit in South Africa, but bombed in Mexico.

But while these new updates might make LinkedIn a bit more social, it isn’t getting any less businesslike. As with many other LinkedIn features, there are restrictions in place. You can only set your status to “(Your name) is working on…,” “will be traveling to,” “is looking for advice on,” “is looking for a job,” or “is reading.” Privacy controls can be tweaked to set status messages to public, visible only to contacts, or visible only to second- and third-degree contacts of contacts.

The newly revamped home page, with its focus on a left sidebar and tabs along the top of the window, certainly echoes of the wildly popular but far less business-centric Facebook.

LinkedIn intends these status messages to be productive, not whimsical. “The status feature will provide another effective way to engage and tap into the knowledge of your network,” Adam Nash, LinkedIn’s senior director of product, said in a statement. “For example, you might let your network know when you’re looking for advice or needing to hire someone, or when you’re planning a business trip or attending a conference.”

Business social-networking site LinkedIn unveiled a redesigned homepage with a number of updates on Wednesday night. It’s the latest step in an ongoing initiative to prove that LinkedIn is more than a glorified address book by encouraging more professional interaction among users.

(Credit:
LinkedIn)

New updates to the site include “status” messages to indicate current activity, similar to Facebook’s, and a number of new personalized “modules” on the home page to present a user with information gathered from their networks of contacts. There’s an “Answers” module to show what questions have been asked recently by your contacts, a “People” module to offer potential new contacts (your contacts’ contacts, basically), and a “Jobs” module to show what opportunities are available in your network.

Additionally, LinkedIn will continue rolling out its “LinkedIn News” feature, which displays headlines from around the Web that pertain directly to a user’s company and industry, and the company continues to move forward with its developer platform.

LinkedIn has a chic poster boy to go along with its latest updates: outgoing Microsoft Chairman and philanthropic icon Bill Gates, who publicly said he was no longer using Facebook because of the number of friend requests that flood his inbox (remember, Microsoft has a $240 million investment in Facebook) and then made a high-profile debut on LinkedIn earlier this week.

All of it takes a cue from Facebook, which popularized the notion that a social network’s homepage ought to provide personalized updates about one’s network of friends or colleagues. Once considered intrusive, the notion of “news feeds” has now become a staple of the social Web.

LinkedIn's status messages are like Facebook's, but with a dose of professionalism.

(Credit:
LinkedIn)

A look at the new LinkedIn.

So much for telling all your LinkedIn contacts that you can’t wait to see the next episode of Lost.

"One man. One revolutionary cause. 30 days."

Of course, if endurance artist David Blaine were performing the same stunt, he’d probably never leave the window, but it should be pointed out that Farrow will get plenty of breaks–and not just of the potty variety. Apparently, Sony is allowing anybody to get in the window and read for a bit, so Farrow will get some time to leave the rather small space he is inhabiting.

As we reported Thursday, the sit-in–or read-in–is timed to commemorate National Book Month and promote literacy in schools. According to Sony, for every one of Farrow’s page turns, Sony will provide a set of 100 eBook classics to a school or education institution.

I don’t know if there’s a Guinness Book of Records world record at stake here, but as part of its effort to promote its digital book readers, including the just-announced PRS-700, Sony has “memory expert” Dave Farrow sitting in a window display in New York reading books all day for the month of October.

(Credit:
Sony)

Sony has a live Webcam that’s pretty amusing with both an interior view inside the window (with sound) and a street-view perspective. Check it out.

Yahoo is hoping to benefit from serving up advertisements on its search results pages where there are few advertising links that appear on the right-side column with relevant ads. For example, conduct a search for Fresno and spa and eight advertisements show up on Yahoo, but only two are actually for spas in Fresno. Yahoo gets its advertising dollars only if a user clicks on an actual ad, so the more relevant ads it can post on its search results page, the better its revenues.

Yahoo, meanwhile, also addressed privacy concerns raised by the legislators.

Kohl has previously expressed concerns that the deal between two technology search rivals could affect competition and have ramifications for advertisers and consumers. He noted the antitrust subcommittee plans to investigate the competitive and privacy implications of the deal.

Whereas Yahoo is looking to bolster its advertising inventory by allowing Google to post its ads on its search page, Google is going in the opposite direction by scaling back on the number of irrelevant ads it has on its search results page–adopting the view that less is more. The search giant on Wednesday also said it is rewarding advertisers with fast-loading advertisements.

Yahoo is giving the U.S. Department of Justice three-and-half months to review its Google partnership, before it implements the search advertising partnership. Regulators, however, may find it more useful to evaluate the partnership after it’s been implemented when they can assess the before and after effect.

Google’s slice of the U.S. search market reached 68.29 percent in May, according to Hitwise. Yahoo’s share of the market declined to 19.95 percent from 20.28 percent in the at same time.

During his one-day visit, Yang met with Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wisc., who chairs the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee.

Yahoo is hoping to use Google’s ads to populate those search results where it tends to have fewer ads. Should Yahoo have a competing ad or ads on the same search page, may the most relevant ad that can entice a user to click on it win.

While Barton was not available to meet with Yang on this trip, the senator indicated he would be available next week. And also on the meet-and-greet trip was Rep. Edward Markey, chair of the Telecommunications and the Internet subcommittee for the House Committee on Energy & Commerce.

Yahoo, however, has previously said its arrangement is non-exclusive and does not require Yahoo to use any certain number of Google ads on Yahoo’s search results page, nor does it require to give Google’s ads preferential treatment on where they appear on the right-side column of Yahoo’s search results page, where the sponsored links appear.

Sen. Joe Barton of the U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee also weighed in on the issue Wednesday, issuing a statement (PDF) that expressed concern about the deal’s effect on competition in search advertising.

Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang made the rounds on Capital Hill on Wednesday, in an effort to dispel antitrust concerns surrounding its search advertising deal with Google.

“Yahoo is deeply committed to building on our established trust with users by continuing to provide clear, comprehensive privacy policies. We structured the agreement with Google so that Yahoo will not transfer any personally identifiable information to Google without user consent,” Yahoo said in a statement. “We have also designed this agreement so that both companies have stayed within each of their existing privacy and data policies, such as Yahoo’s policy regarding logs anonymization after 13 months.”

Resident Evil 5

We’ve seen several examples this week of the cooperative gameplay mechanic added to games that don’t seem to need it, except as a bullet point on a marketing plan. Resident Evil 5 is adding an online cooperative mode, where players can assist each other in surviving an onslaught of zombie-like creatures. It seems oddly out of place in a game series that has traditionally been a single-player experience designed around building a tense atmosphere through fear and isolation.

We also saw co-op features added to Fable II, the ambitious sword-and-sorcery role-playing game from designer Peter Molyneux. While playing through the game, which is a traditional single-player RPG, players will run across glowing orbs. Those orbs represent gamers on your Xbox Live “friends list,” who are also playing Fable II at the same time. You can then invite them to jump into your game, where they can lend a helping hand for as long as they want. At first glance, it seems gimmicky and out-of-place, but Molyneux (Populous, Black & White, The Movies) is known for pushing genre boundaries, if not always successfully.

Each year, the selection of games on display at E3 reveals what the hottest current trend in the video game industry is at the time–usually manifesting itself as an overused gameplay mechanic that every developer suddenly feels the need to shoehorn into their games.

Fable II

This year’s big buzzword is cooperative gameplay–meaning gamers play together, but are collaborating, rather than competing, to complete the game’s goals. This often happens online, where gamers connect via
Xbox Live or the
PlayStation Network from remote locations.

You can expect to see a greater emphasis on cooperative gameplay in new games this holiday season and beyond. In some cases, it’s a natural fit (Gears of War 2, Little Big Planet), in others, we’ll have to take a more wait-and-see attitude.

The first Gears of War game had a two-person cooperative mode, where you and a friend could play through the entire plot together, and hopes were high for an expanded four-player co-op mode in the sequel (similar to the four-player co-op mode in Halo 3). Unfortunately, the main game is still restricted to two players, but as a consolation prize, there is a new five-person online cooperative mode that’s essentially a simple shooting gallery pitting humans against endless waves of monsters.

A much more traditional co-op experience will be found in Gears of War 2, the sequel to the 2006 Xbox 360 hit. From our brief hands-on time with the game, it seems to not stray much from the original’s successful formula, with tough-as-nails soldier-types fighting weird insect creatures.

Co-operative gameplay will also play a big part in Sony’s upcoming Little Big Planet (which we talked about in our show preview). There, four players can link up online and guide their tiny sock-puppet-style avatars through a series of puzzles built out of giant versions of everyday household objects.

A better deal would be for Yahoo and AOL to merge, but for AOL to retain its lucrative Google search deal. And the value of such an arrangement? A merger deal that could ultimately yield $31 a share, Di Bona estimates.

As for a third option of AOL and Yahoo both relinquishing their search to Google, Di Bona casts doubt that such as scenario will come to fruition.

A price in that range would bring Yahoo investors back to the level of Microsoft’s initial cash-and-stock offer, which has fallen to a value $29.34, as Microsoft’s shares have declined since the bid was announced February 1.

An AOL-Yahoo deal, with AOL retaining its Google search relationship, could rival Microsoft’s initial $31-a-share buyout bid for Yahoo, according to Charles Di Bona, a research analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.

If Yahoo and AOL were to merge, Di Bona estimates that it could yield investors $28 a share. But that depends on AOL parent Time Warner kicking in $2 billion for its Yahoo stake and the combined entity generating a minimum of $500 million in synergies.

Meanwhile, the software giant’s chief operating officer, Kevin Turner, reiterated Microsoft’s stance that its initial offer was “fair,” according to a Reuters report Friday on a presentation the chief operating officer gave in India. Turner was there to unveil Microsoft’s strategic initiatives with the region’s HCL Infosystems.

That was one of three scenarios Di Bona laid out in a research note on Friday, and his favorite.

While the we-can-live-with-them-or-without-them comment sounds apathetic, Microsoft’s ultimatum letter on Saturday does not.

“The rest is now up to (Yahoo’s) board…With or without the acquisition, we are committed to becoming a world-class digital-advertising company,” Turner said in the Reuters report.

“We believe we’ve made a very fair offer to Yahoo’s board of directors,” Turner said, noting that a Yahoo acquisition would fit with the software giant’s strategy to increase its market share with consumers via search.

However, PreCentral.net seems to think the timing appears about right since it falls within the timeline of a viral video Palm may be working on for the Pre. The video will supposedly show a man refusing to leave his apartment until Palm releases the Pre, and in the casting ad for the video, the shoot dates are April 29 to June 5.

If the June 7 release date turns out to be true, the
Palm Pre would make its debut just one day before the start of WWDC 2009 and presumably the introduction of a new iPhone. Is the tech world ready for this? Am I ready for this? *Gulp.*

What’s a day without a Palm Pre story, right? Uhh, right. The latest rumor making its way across the Internet tubes comes via SprintGurus, which says the Pre will launch on June 7 and not May 17 as originally thought.

This is based on an internal document posted by the owner of SprintGurus, who goes by “Coal,” that shows all the devices that are in alpha/beta testing with Sprint. In the forum, Coal states, “For those asking about the Pre, there are 2 release windows, one is around 6/7/09 - the other I cannot say much on.” We’re not entirely sure where the June 7 date came from as it’s not listed on the document.

(Credit:
Bonnie Cha/CNET)

Google is evaluating its next move.

The companies had agreed to the terms of the $140 million acquisition in July, but Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service said “nyet.” According to Svetlana Gladkova’s translation of a Russian news report, the reason is that Google hadn’t submitted complete information on employees in Russia, so the FAS couldn’t evaluate the deal’s consequences.

Russian antitrust regulators have blocked Google’s acquisition of ZAO Begun, an online advertising unit of Rambler Media.

(Via Google BLogoscoped.)

“We are very disappointed to hear that FAS has come to this decision. We strongly believe that this acquisition will enable us to significantly improve opportunities for Russian users, advertisers and publishers as well as the entire industry. At this time we are reviewing FAS’s decision. Once this process is complete, we will decide on our next steps,” the company said in a statement.

Google already is tangling with antitrust authorities in the United States, Canada, and Europe over a search-ad deal with Yahoo.

Try out the new Captcha method at Captchathedog.com and leave your thoughts in the comments.

Captcha, or Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, is a method used by many Web sites to fight against computer-generated input. As computers get smarter, Captchas hves become more of a nuisance because most of them are now tough for us humans to pass.

This method of Captcha costs $25 per year with customized images. Beyond that, you can get its codes for free. The new method is said to be compatible with any browser (including that of the
iPhone) and can be implemented within 15 minutes without the use of cookies.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)

As it is currently impossible for a computer to distinguish between these photos, it’s virtually impossible for a machine to randomly select the right image multiple times in a row.

With Captcha the Dog you are required to do this multiple times in a row. Each time, the position of the dog is changed and if you click on the wrong picture once, the process starts over from the beginning.

It’s called Captcha the Dog from a Web site of the same name. Like the 3D-based Captcha, this method uses images instead of text for the challenge. However, the challenge is always the same: clock on the one different object on the screen, i. e., click on the photo of a dog among eight photos of cats.

Once you have clicked on the right one enough times, all the photos will be those of cats. This is when you know you have passed the Captcha.

This seems a simple yet effective alternative to the text-based Captcha that’s so popular and so frustrating to use. However, like other image-based Captcha methods, Captcha the Dog doesn’t currently offer a way to support people with disabilities. However, the site states that its new version will offer an audio component for vision-impaired people.

I recently blogged about a new and more humane way to create a Captcha by using 3D images and the implementation of that method at Yuniti.com. I’ve just run into a different approach, similar to the Asirra tool revealed by Microsoft in 2007, that seems even easier for humans to pass while remaining impossible for machines to figure out.

Supporters of the robotics industry have said that using robots controlled by U.S. workers to cut costs could provide a viable alternative to outsourcing jobs from the U.S. The Zappos decision may be an example of that predicted trend.

(Credit:
Kiva Systems)

Retail items are kept in crates or moveable shelves, which Kiva calls pods, instead of on conventional warehouse shelves. Once you place your order, a robot is notified by a Kiva server over a Wi-Fi network. It then autonomously drives around the warehouse, picking up the pods containing your items and stacking them as part of its load. The robot then brings those pods to a warehouse worker at an assembly station who fishes out your items from each pod and places them in a box. The person then places your box on another robot that automatically knows where to go to have the box shipped from the warehouse. Another robot with other pods is already then waiting in line for the worker to pack the next order.

Kiva’s claim to fame is that its software is expert at calculating which robots should pick up which pods, in what order it should pick them up based on their location at the time, which worker it should deliver them to, and which paths it should take to do all of that in order to maximize time and efficiency.

Zappos is now using Kiva robots to helps its workers fill orders.

Actually, the company, which now sells more than just shoes, has just finished outfitting it’s Kentucky warehouse with a robotic army to help fill orders, the company supplying the system announced Tuesday.

The Kiva Mobile Fulfillment System from Massachusetts-based Kiva Systems, is basically a team of autonomous, stout, orange robots that sort, store, and move inventory in warehouses. The robots essentially bring the assembly line to the warehouse worker to fill orders more quickly.

Instead of having people walking around a warehouse with a cart and looking for ordered items to put into boxes, the robots automatically bring the items to them.

Zappos.com, the online retailer with free shipping both ways, has hired little orange robots to carry your shoes.