While Microsoft may have surrendered this week to the European Union's 2004 anti-trust order to share Windows proprietary code with its competition, the company was already shifting to incorporate another realm of revenue from computing. Beating rivals Google and Yahoo, Microsoft paid $240 million to Facebook garnering 1.6% equity in the social network and the right to deliver ads on the social network now valued at $15 billion.

Brad Stone observes in the NY Times

The high valuation also represents a belief that Facebook is creating an important new operating system — one that exists on the Web instead of on personal computers.

Stone's article illustrates the fascination some in Silicon Valley have with the geography of social networks.

“Once a social operating system takes over a country it’s like it becomes the native language of that country,” said Lee Lorenzen, a venture capitalist who is bullish on Facebook and notes that Google’s Orkut dominates Brazil, Friendster dominates the Philippines and Facebook is becoming the dominant forum in the United States, Canada and Western Europe.

To some observers, like British developer Ben Metcalfe, the $15 billion valuation is a piece of crafty theatre.

With $40 billion in current assets, Microsoft seems for now not to want to launch its own social network war to reap benefits from the digitally connected, as it did with Internet Explorer when faced with the Netscape browser's 85% market domination in 1995.

By way of comparison, Novell paid $210 million to acquire German Linux company SuSE and $40 million for Ximian to enter the open source arena in 2003.

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Think Different
We weren't surprised to hear Steve Jobs announced a new WiFi iPod that will connect to a chain of coffee shops with songs for sale, but not to your home wireless network. Such closed system thinking at Apple (AAPL) is all co-branding and ROI thinking. It's quick and easy retail - a fast food mentality perfect for shareholders and convenient, if limiting, for customers.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels.
The troublemakers.

- "Think Different" campaign

Speaking of Apple customers, those well-heeled early adopters of the iPhone, some of whom stood in line for hours to spend $599 plus tax were surprised at a $200 price drop two months after the device went on sale. The 33% drop fired up an electronic hailstorm of complaints which overshadowed the new iPod announcement and quickly prodded a mea culpa of sorts and a $100 Apple store credit for The Troublemakers from Jobs:

even though we are making the right decision to lower the price of iPhone, and even though the technology road is bumpy, we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price. Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these.

Good Will
Last month, technology writer-videographer David Pogue complained about how iMovie '08 had removed important audio and video editing functions as well as the plug-in capability that earlier versions contain. Different code, inferior product. Same name, new version. Proprietary, of course.

Good will is the one and only asset that competition cannot undersell or destroy.

Despite a dip this week, shares in AAPL have skyrocketed (Chart) since the company started selling its iProducts. If customer relationships with users take a backseat in Cupertino, the company will be hardpressed to extend their market postion, particularly in a declining economic climate.

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Big Bang over the Charles River on the Fourth

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The son of a door-to-door salesman of household goods, Walt Mossberg, targets his Wall Street Journal column on technology to "the individual person actually faced with buying and using the core hi-tech devices—the customer whom industry calls the “end user.” His profile, written by Ken Auletta in The New Yorker magazine, highlights how valued (and feared) Mossberg's product reviews are by corporate executives and their public relations representatives.

It is these corporate executives, investors and technorati, not the consumers on the street, who are the attendees at D5: All Things Digital conference organized by the Journal. This year's conference, held at a resort in southern California, featured notables such as George Lucas who spoke about the future of his proprietary technology and warned hedge funds to find investments other than the movie business.

Mossberg and fellow journalist Kara Swisher (seen in the following video clip) interviewed Bill Gates with Steve Jobs and the two moguls provided some of their ideas on the Internet as an entertainment distribution system, 3D, user interface and how good things will be for those who own content in the technological future.


Bill Gates & Steve Jobs together again at Wall Street Journal Conference

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A visit to Washington

We always enjoy a trip to the seat of American democracy, particularly in Spring.




The Honorable Gentleman Brussels Griffon

Cherry blossoms and daffodils outside U.S. Capitol

Pollen and politics in the air
Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) has seen a lot of cherry blossoms in his day and his senority in the United States Senate excuses him for waxing all warm and fuzzy in the Spring.

"She sleeps on my bed,'' said Byrd, in his 90th year and prone to meandering. "She goes with me to the Senate, rides in the car with me. She stays in my office. When somebody comes into the office, she rises and comes over and greets them, goes on about her business and gets back on the couch.''

The beloved female companion Sen. Byrd spoke about at a recent Appropriations Subcommittee hearing was his dog. The subcommittee, which oversees the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) budget, is looking into the how numerous pet foods have recently been poisoning thousands of dogs and cats causing kidney failure.

Video of hearing here.

D.C. Spring

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Happy Birthday, Jean-Paul et al

We were wondering what sort of conversation might take place if some people who share a birthday today came to the same party.

Jean-Paul Belmondo, actor, born on April 9, 1933

Women over thirty are at their best, but men over thirty are too old to recognize it.

Charles Baudelaire, poet, was born on April 9, 1821

It is the hour to be drunken! To escape being the martyred slaves of time, be ceaselessly drunk. On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.

Sol Hurok, impresario, was born on April 9, 1888

If I would be in this business for business, I wouldn't be in this business.

Paul Robeson, singer. was born on April 9, 1898

As an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for peace, and no one can silence me in this.

Hugh Hefner, publisher, was born on April 9, 1926.

My life is an open book. With illustrations.

Jeff Zucker, television executive, was born on April 9, 1965.

Sometimes when you're down a little, you see things more clearly.

Sacha de Boer, photographer, was born on April 9, 1967.

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Irish Eyes (and noses) are smiling

Galway Mayor Niall O Brolcháin (center) flanked by Connacht Rugby and Galway United captains Andrew Farley and Wes Charles promote the Rehab Foundation’s Green Nose Day. Photo: Andrew Downes, Galway Advertiser

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"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."
--Marcellus in Shakespeare's Hamlet

Ungdomshuset
Unique is a building where the footsteps of Lenin and Bjork have passed. Yet so goes the history of Ungdomshuset built in 1897 as a theater and center for the labor movement in Denmark.

Johan Olsen from Magtens Korridorer joined fellow Danish singers Anisette, Natasja and the band Ooh Sticky when they recorded the song Ungdomshuset Blir! by København musician Anne Eltard.

Automobiles Burn
After 25 years as a youth house and alternative cultural center, the eviction of squatter residents from Ungdomshuset by police sparked street rage not seen in the likes of peaceful Denmark in many a year. Eyewitness pedestrian video and camera phone shots of the rioting on YouTube captured the destruction of property by protestors and charges by police vehicles. One professional video clip by CBS News, which recently had all its video removed from YouTube, ironically was preceded by an automobile insurance commercial on its website.

Stephen Hand ponders the violence in Denmark:

As I was reading about the present Copenhagen riots my mind drifted back to the riots of the 60's---especially and ironically after the death of Martin Luther King. Whole cities were in turmoil, many parts of each in flames.

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A Beacon of Morality

Father Bob Drinan

Photo by Algis Kaupas, Christmas 2002

In May of 1971, Father Robert Drinan invited a ragtag group of college students into his Congressional office and offered them cold drinks. The UHaul 13, as the students satirically referred to themselves, had driven to Washington in a rented cargo van to protest the Vietnam War. He listened to their firsthand account of the ominous and illegal roundup[pdf] of thousands of people walking on the sidewalks outside the Nation's Capitol.

Father Drinan passed away Sunday afternoon, January 28th, one day after tens of thousands of protestors gathered in Washington to rally against the folly of another insidious White House. To know the life of Father Drinan is to realize he is as much an inspiration for citizens and politicians facing the moral questions of war, poverty and human rights today as he was thirty five years ago.

Father Drinan represented the Massachusetts 4th District in Congress for ten years until Pope John Paul II ruled that no priest could hold a legislative position.

Last year, Rep. Barney Frank, who was elected to Father Drinan's seat in 1980, remembered the Jesuit priest's role in those turbulent times on the house floor of Congress:

Father Drinan served here in this body for 10 years as one of its intellectual leaders, having been elected in 1970 as one of the most effective opponents at that time of the war in Vietnam. He also played a very significant role in the impeachment of President Nixon, insisting that appropriate legal standards be applied in that matter.

After his tenure in Congress, Father Drinan stayed in Washington at Georgetown University, where he taught over 6,000 students in international human rights, constitutional law and legal ethics.

Father Drinan continued teaching at Georgetown Law School until this semester when his health started to fail. His fellow Jesuits urged him to stay home. "What would I do?" he asked. "Rest." replied his colleagues. "But I don't rest in the afternoon," he said.

Besides his ten years in Congress and long career as a professor and Dean at Boston College Law School, Drinan authored nearly a dozen books. His last book, World War: Can God and Caesar Coexist? was published in 2004.

Father Drinan was a beacon of morality and lucidity for many. Rep. Ed Markey, from Massachusetts, visited Drinan in the hospital and called the him his "North Star of truth and justice."

Georgetown University posts Remembrances. National Public Radio has made available his interviews.

A Drinan family friend said it best:

You never expect (or at least hope) that people like Bob are going to go and it's always so sad when they do.

- Marshall T. Spriggs

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