Briefs: October 17, 2005

GATES CHATS UP COLLEGE STUDENTS
computer

Gates told University of Michigan students, for example, that the global market has greatly expanded the appetite for technology and innovations and needs young people to create them. Although many computer science jobs are being created overseas, there still are plenty of opportunities in the United States, he said.

As part of his talk, Gates demonstrated new kinds of technology, including Microsoft's Xbox 360 videogame console, which also can play music and store photos. "It's really about listening as much as it is about us talking," said Kevin Schofield, general manager of strategy and communications for Microsoft Research, in an interview on the Microsoft Web site discussing the tour. Aside from Michigan, Gates stopped last week at the University of Wisconsin, Princeton University, Columbia University, Howard University and University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.

ADOBE-MACROMEDIA UNION MOVES CLOSER TO COMPLETION
The U.S. Department of Justice has cleared Adobe Systems' proposed buyout of Macromedia, both companies said late last week.

Pending approval in a few European jurisdictions, the $3.4 billion deal is expected to close this fall. Adobe and Macromedia announced their merger plan in April and shareholders approved it in August.

Both companies field strong entries in content creation and display. Adobe's Acrobat is the de facto document reader, Photoshop is the perennial leader in professional photo editing, Illustrator is big in graphics and InDesign is making strides in professional publishing/page layout. Macromedia's Flash player is on more than 90 percent of Web-connected computer devices and a growing number of handhelds, its Dreamweaver is a leader in Web site development and Flex is a power in rich application development.

The combined company, dubbed Macrodobe by some observers, could form a significant counterweight to Microsoft in the graphics and development tools arena, a fact that is apparently clear to the software giant.

Microsoft is building competitive offerings in virtually all of the categories where Macromedia and Adobe play. But it also has caved to pressure and said that the forthcoming Office 12 will support Adobe's popular Portable Document Format (PDF), something the company had not addressed before.

SAMSUNG REACHES SETTLEMENT, AGREES TO FINE
Samsung last week agreed to plead guilty to price fixing and pay a $300 million fine.

The penaltythe second-largest criminal antitrust fine evercaps a three-year investigation into the largest makers of DRAM, a $7.7 billion market in the United States. The Justice Department already has secured similar guilty pleas from two other companies and collected more than $345 million in fines.

Samsung and two other companies were accused of conspiring in e-mails, telephone calls and face-to-face meetings to fix prices of memory chips between April 1999 and June 2002. The chips are used in digital recorders, personal computers, printers, video recorders, mobile phones and many other electronic devices.

The government said the victims of the alleged price-fixing were Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Apple Computer, IBM and Gateway.

NEW SMC WIRELESS OFFERING DOUBLES AS STORAGE DEVICE
SMC Networks this week plans to unveil a new 802.11g wireless access point that also serves as a storage server.

Despite its slim design, the SMCWAPS-G, part of the vendor's EZ Connect line of wireless networking products, comes with two USB 2.0 ports and space for an internal hard drive. It can serve as the sole access point for a WLAN or be added to any 802.11b or 802.11g network.

Designed for travelers and mobile workers who need a quick and secure way to retrieve and back up their files, the new access point also includes integrated Samba Server functionality for cross-platform file-sharing and is outfitted with 64-128-bit encryption as well as Wi-Fi Protected Access version 2.0.

The SMCWAPS-G access point is expected to hit the market this December at a suggested price point of $99.99.

MCI EXTENDS NETWORK SERVICES PORTFOLIO
MCI has started offering engineering assessments and network upgrades for customers adding next-generation services like VoIP, putting it into potential competition with its value-added solution providers.

Under MCI Site Services, customers now have the option of hiring MCI engineers to arrive on site prior to the deployment of VoIP, Internet or data services to perform practically any necessary network upgrade, said Cliff Cibelli, senior product manager for managed network services at MCI.

The new Site Services offering is meant to give MCI a leg up on competitors that either don't have onsite network skills or have to subcontract them out to solution providers, Cibelli said.

Aimed at enterprise customers, Site Services will be available for MCI partners to resell. But the effort will primarily be driven by MCI's direct sales force as MCI looks to use the 1,500 or so field engineers it has in the United States to fulfill the jobs, Cibelli said.

RECALL ENACTED FOR SOME HP-COMPAQ BATTERY PACKS
Hewlett Packard is recalling about 135,000 battery packs for some HP and Compaq laptop computers because of reports they overheated and melted.

The lithium ion rechargeable battery packs are used with Pavilion, Presario and Evo laptop computers. The recalled packs bear a barcode label starting with GC, IA, L0 or L1.

RESEARCH POINTS TO MODEST RISE NEXT YEAR FOR IT BUDGETS
U.S. businesses in 2006 are expected to boost spending by 5.5 percent, with a renewed focus on application development and integration, according to a projection last week by Gartner.

That forecast, however, was less than one by rival Forrester Research, which reported last week that it expects IT spending in the United States to reach 7 percent next year.

Gartner said spending on security and storage will level off in 2006 as businesses place a heightened emphasis on buying software development tools and middleware. Mobile devices are expected to become a major priority.

Forrester's forecast calls for spending growth to shrink to 2 percent in 2007 from 7 percent next year, due primarily to changes in the overall economy and the state of new technology adoption. Nevertheless, the economic downturn is expected to be short-lived, and IT spending is expected to rebound to near double-digit growth by the end of the decade, Forrester said.