Microsoft Plays The CryBaby While Google And Yahoo Japan Zip A Deal

July 30, 2010

Remember how Microsoft rejoiced having a deal with Yahoo USA last year after all the brouhaha? Its desperate attempt to become a minor number two in the search market competing with Google. Almost everyone was after Google like a pack of wolves to ensure the search giant wouldn’t sniff a deal with Yahoo and it continues to date. At least with Microsoft.

Google has struck an advertising deal with Yahoo Japan and that is hurting Microsoft. Why? I think don’t need to elaborate and my post yesterday on Google’s absolute dominance of the Search Market. With Google signing this deal, it would further solidify its position [though it really doesn’t need this]. However it would greatly benefit Yahoo, given that it will be leveraging Google’s dominance in both search and the ad market and it will most definitely not harm the Microsoft – Yahoo partnership but the Redmond, Washington based software provider has all the issues and things to worry about. A couple of those are:

It will severely damage a healthy competition for search

Google would become the dominant supplier of Ads in Japan for an indefinite period

These can be legitimate concerns but we have seen that Japan’s Fair Trade Commission has given a green signal to this deal. This is unlike the troubles Google faced when the Justice Department called the Yahoo – Google partnership in the US to be anti-competitive. That is just a tale Microsoft would continue to cry over given it has failed itself at search and what ever little respect it could have mustered by cementing a more global partnership with Yahoo. Yahoo Japan on the other hand is steering clear of the fight between number 1 and number 3 in search business stating that Yahoo will use Google’s search technology but would keep its advertising business separate.

I feel a bit sorry for Microsoft though, the heads must be cursing a missed opportunity and being outmaneuvered by Google. Can’t Google give in a small percentage of search share to Microsoft, as charity?

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Posted by TechPulse 360

Vestas Wins Huge Order As Safe Money Bets On Wind

April 26, 2010

Entrepreneurs hope to build power plants at sea. Aquamarine Power of Edinburgh favors its wave power converting Oyster machine.

Floating Power Plant wants to combine offshore wind energy and wave converters into a single, floating unit.

GE researches electric car recharging, Better Place tests taxis, but wind energy appears the great steady

General Electric threw in its lot with Nissan on Monday. The two companies will explore ways to recharge electric cars without over burdening the utility grid. The demands on the grid and on home wiring could be considerable as electric cars become popular. The news came as Better Place began a trial in Japan with taxis designed to have their batteries swapped out when they run low on juice.

Research and product develop is raging ahead in the clean-tech industry. But the steady money appears to continue to favor traditional wind power. This was evident in a massive turbine order placed with Vestas Wind Systems, the world’s leading supplier of turbines.

Vestas said it received an order for up to 2.1 GW of wind turbines from alternative energy company EDP Renewables of Spain. According to a press release, 1.5 GW of the equipment is to be delivered for projects in the U.S., Europe and South American by 2012. An additional 600 MW could be added to the order by 2011.

The companies said the order was among the largest ever for wind turbines.

The news comes after a solid year for wind energy growth in 2009, despite the international recession. Part of the explanation is that wind energy is the closest in cost to electricity from coal and natural gas. Wind installation in the U.S grew 39 percent last year and, according to a report issued Monday, rose 23 percent in Europe.

Vestas turbines already make up 40 percent of EDP’s worldwide wind installations, or about 2.5 GW of installed capacity.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Los Angeles Mayor Proposes Solar Feed In Tariff

March 17, 2010

As Germany winds down its solar feed-in tariff, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is suggesting one of his own.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa sees LA becoming a "booming cpaital of solar power."

Villaraigosa said he sees the proposal turning Tinseltown into a “booming capital of solar power.” In a piece on the Huffington Post blog, he estimates 16,500 jobs could be created over 10 years.

Feed-in tariffs appear to be gaining some traction around the world. Late last year, Ontario adopted a generous feed-in tariff to attract solar development – with some success – and a month later Japan followed suite. This year, the United Kingdom enacted a modest proposal of its own. California has its own feed-in tariff with consumer rates yet to be set.

Nevertheless, the push comes against a backdrop of fiscal restraint due to the global recession. Germany’s pioneering feed-in tariff, which helped create the world’s largest solar market, is being cut back after a conservative government returned to power. Italy and the Czech Republic are considering cuts of their own.

With these international cross currents, Villaraigosa’s move could suggest that progressive cities and town are ready to take maters into their own hands.

According to his proposal, an extra 7 cents will be charged for each kilowatt hour of electricity used – about $3 a month. The majority of this money will pay residents for electricity they generate from newly installed solar systems.

Villaraigosa claims this will help the city build a green economy. He may be right. Already Ontario’s efforts have attracted international interest, with Samsung and others committing to establish manufacturing plants.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

US Loses More Ground In Global Broadband Race

May 29, 2009

The United States is the world’s largest broadband market.

But the country lost considerable ground last year in the average broadband speeds its residents receive.

And the despite its affluence, the U.S. remains far from the top of the list of developed countries in the number of broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants. With 26.7 broadband users per 100 residents, the U.S. is 15th and trails many Western European nations along with Korea and Canada. Denmark leads the world with 37.2 subscribers per 100 people.

The survey is interesting fodder for the debate that has sprung up over President Obama’s planned broadband spending initiative. With some of the leading nations having received government support, the analysis from the European based Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development points to their advantage.

The U.S. remains the world’s largest broadband market with 80 million subscribers, or 30 percent of those in the developed countries the OECD surveys.

But in 2007, it was 13th in the world in terms of the speeds its commercial providers offer users. Last year it slipped to 19th.

The average download speed available in the U.S. is 9.6 Mbps, or almost a tenth of what is offered in Japan, where the average speed is 92.8 Mbps. Korea, which like Japan uses a lot of optical fiber, provides an average speed of 80.8 Mbps, and countries such as France (51 Mbps), Finland (19.2 Mbps) and Netherlands (18.1 Mbps) also best the states.

The U.S. didn’t lose ground last year in broadband per capita. But that points to an interesting observation that should influence government policy makers as they allocate money to extend broadband into rural areas.

Perhaps some of the money should be used lifts speeds in communities that already have broadband since that is where the nation continues to lose ground.

The US is 19th in the world in average broadband speeds, according to th OECD

The US is 19th in the world in average broadband speeds, according to the OECD

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Better Place Ready To Demo Japanese Charging Station And Ignite Build Out In Israel

April 23, 2009

By now it is widely known that Better Place will show off a prototype of its electric car charging station in Yokohama, Japan, on May 13.

2010 is the massive build out for Israel, says Sidney Goodman

2010 is the massive build out for Israel, says Sidney Goodman

But what is less well known is that the company remains on track for a far more ambitious 2010 rollout in Israel, among its first big markets.

Better Place, which intends to develop a business recharging electric-car batteries, said Wednesday it hopes to have 150,000 plug-in outlets for cars in place by 2011. And it forecasts 100 battery swap-out stations also will be live the same year.

At present only 900 charging outlets have been installed and no stations built. A couple of stations are expected by the end of the year, said Sidney Goodman, vice president of automotive alliances, but the massive construction will begin next year.

Better Place is obviously a company with big dreams. The Palo Alto clean-tech enterprise wants to reduce the world’s reliance on petroleum by harnessing renewable energy to charge cars, often at off-peak times.

But to do so, it has to change the habits of drivers, and the minds of carmakers that aren’t always keen to install standardized batteries in electric cars that Better Place can then replace when they run down.

“I don’t think we’re going to have everybody” on board, says Goodman, referring to the world’s major car manufacturers.

And that may not matter as long as drivers are willing to swap batteries instead of fill their cars with gas.

An electric Nissan at Better Places headquarters

An electric Nissan at Better Place's headquarters

Goodman said Yokohama will be an important demonstration for the company. Swapping a battery needs to be done in about the same time as it takes to fill a tank of gas – and Goodman says Better Place has achieved this 5-minute milestone.

The physical removal of a battery from underneath a car, “we already have down to under a minute,” he says. It will be interesting to see the process on May 13.

It also will be interesting to see what Better Place is able to show next. Someday soon, the company will release more information about the complex software it is developing to monitor battery levels and schedule appointments at the swapping stations.

To accomplish this, cars will need to sometimes communicate wirelessly with the Better Place control room – a wonderfully efficient but technically challenging task.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Why Is Yahoo U.S. Not More Like Yahoo Japan?

March 11, 2009

Online search continues to be hot in Japan.

Searchers in the world’s third largest Internet market set a record in January by conducting 6.8 billion searches, an increase of 8 percent.

Home and work locations

Home and work locations

It is the highest monthly total on record, says comScore.

Just who led the search-engine pack? The surprising answer is Yahoo, the Japanese market leader responsible for handing 51.3 percent of all searches, with its volume rising faster than the market at 13 percent.

In an unfamiliar spot, Google is number two in the market with a 38.2 percent share. Growth was less than the market, at 5 percent.

The local engine, Rakuten, came in at a distant third with Microsoft trailing closely behind.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Korea Looks To Boost Broadband Speeds To 1 Gbps

February 2, 2009

Korean regulators are looking at extending that country’s lead in broadband by boosting connection speeds to 1 Gbps in 2012.

Korean broadband connections are already a world-leading 100 Mbps

Korean broadband connections are already a world-leading 100 Mbps

Already Korea has some of the world’s fastest broadband speeds with links of 100 Mbps, rivaling Japan and well ahead of the U.S., which has fallen behind many developed countries during the Bush Administration.

The Korean Communications Commission wants to increase wired connections while also improving wireless broadband speeds by a factor of 10 to 10 Mbps, according to a post on the GigaOM blog and a story in Korea’s JoongAng Daily. The government estimates the two initiatives will cost $24.6 billion over five years and create 120,000 new jobs.

Private telecom companies are expected to come up with the lion’s share of the build out with government paying only a small share.

Government planners claim the faster speeds will make high-definition television signals up to 16 times clearer and enable interactive TV services, such as e-commerce and home schooling.

The plan also calls for digital TV coverage to reach 96 percent of the country by 2012, up from 87 percent today.

More than 94 percent of Korean households presently have access to high-speed Internet connections.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

UK Threatens To Displace Japan As The Second Largest Gaming Market

February 2, 2009

Video games sales in 2008 rose 11 percent in the world’s three largest markets as strong growth in the United States and United Kingdom offset a slump in Japan.

The performance discrepancy was so great that sales in the U.K. (which are measured by units and which have doubled since 2003) last year overtook those in Japan for the first time, according to a Top Global Markets report. The report is put together by the NPD Group, GfK Chart-Track and Enterbrain.

“Although (the U.K. is) still behind on revenue, the gap has narrowed considerably and it will be interesting to see how things develop during 2009,” said Dorian Bloch, business group director at GfK Chart-Track.

Game sales in the three combined markets rose to 410 million units, with 15 percent growth in the U.S., 26 percent growth in the U.K. and a decline of 13 percent in Japan.

Japan’s decline came as sales of Sony’s PlayStation 2 tumbled 46 percent. However, several key titles that could improve sales are coming in 2009, including Nintendo DS’ Dragon Quest IX: Hoshizora no Mamoribito and the console games Monster Hunter 3 and Final Fantasy XIII.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Intel Releases Nehalem In Japan As It Prepares For Monday Launch In The US

November 16, 2008
Core i7 top speed is 3.2 GHz

Core i7 top speed is 3.2 GHz

Intel will unveil its newest chip, the Core i7, Monday in the States, but reports show that the processor also code named Nehalem already hit the shelves in Tokyo.

Here are the details, according to CNET. Three models are available in Japan: the 965 running at 3.2 GHz; the 940 running at 2.93 GHz; and the 920 running at 2.66 GHz. Prices range from $340 to $1,160 depending on the performance.

The speeds and prices are pretty much what followers of the company have expected, with the high-end price perhaps a touch higher than anticipated.

Nehalem is a major redesign of the x86 architecture used by chips in personal computers and PC servers. It is made with the same 45-nanometer production techniques Intel has used for its current Penryn and will come in 2-, 4- and 8-core models.

Perhaps the greatest alteration in Nehalem is the integration of a memory controller, an innovation rival Advanced Micro Devices has used for some time. The integrated controller allows information to flow more quickly into the chip’s computing cores.

The chip is likely to strengthen Intel’s competitive position against AMD as the economic pullback slows demand in the processor market

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Posted by Mark Boslet

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