Oct 102008
 

Some tech news from this week worthy of another look.

Larry Dignan at ZDNet writes on online ad growth, reviewing the IAB/PWC numbers, which have been the gold standard since the boom days. Ad spend is up over 15% for the first six months, but what about the second half?

Simply put, knowing what happened to online ad revenue in the first half of 2008 is interesting, but not exactly what inquiring minds want to know. Will the second half negate the first half’s growth amid a slowing economy and the implosion of two key ad categories–financial services and automotive?

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=10329

Om Malik on the falling price of wholesale broadband — but it’s not trickling down to residential users:

Sure it’s not like back in the early 2000s, when those crooks from Enron were driving the prices of bandwidth down into the ground, but even today prices on Internet bandwidth continue to fall. If you are a consumer, however, there’s a good chance you’re wondering what I’m talking about — after all, broadband service providers like Comcast and Time Warner are talking about putting the meter on the bandwidth they serve up to residential subscribers.

http://gigaom.com/2008/10/07/wholesale-internet-bandwidth-prices-keep-falling/

Luke Dittrich in Esquire on the “Google Diaspora” and what ex-Googlers are doing — good read:

In just the past couple years, ex-Googlers like Rajaram and Ullah and Dempsey have started about two dozen new companies and invested tens of millions of dollars in other start-ups. As you would expect, this new breed of Google graduates has already come up with a cute and clever name to describe themselves. They, the ex-Googlers, are Xooglers.

http://www.esquire.com/print-this/google-diaspora-1008

Colin Gibbs of RCR on the state of the enterprise mobile email market. RIM is hanging tough, Nokia is giving up on IntelliSync, and Microsoft and Apple iPhone lurk:

There may not be much room at the top of the mobile e-mail service food chain, but there seems to be plenty of opportunity below.

http://www.rcrwireless.com/article/20081007/WIRELESS/810069974/-1/rss01#

Joab Jackson of Government Computer News reports that open source is A-O-K with the Pentagon:

Military IT folks wondering if their use of Apache, Perl, Linux and other open source software is copacetic with the brass will soon get some answers from the Defense Department’s Office of the Chief Information Officer.

http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/47320-1.html?topic=&CMP=OTC-RSS

Elise Castelli of Federal Times reports that 85% of federal agencies have missed the transition deadline to the much ballyhooed Networx contract:

Agencies installing new telecommunications systems under the General Services Administration’s Networx contracts were supposed to choose their new vendors by Sept. 30 or risk forfeiting million of dollars in transition funding. But most agencies are far behind in making their choices.

http://www.federaltimes.com/index.php?S=3762331

Finally, retiring congressman Tom Davis shares what is really on his mind with Peter Baker of the New York Times. Not exactly tech, but I just did a writeup on Davis when he spoke to the Association for Corporate Growth in DC — http://tinyurl.com/6m9sjd — and he sounded tired but not this down:

A few minutes later, in fact, an aide emerged from the House chamber to ask Davis if he wanted to manage the next bill, H. R. 6575, the Over-Classification Reduction Act. Davis shook his head no. “In the old days, you’d jump at the chance to manage a bill,” he told me.

No more. The revolution is over, the thrill is gone and the Republican brand under President Bush has, in Davis’s view, been so tarnished that, as he likes to say, “if we were a dog food, they would take us off the shelf.” These will be Davis’s last few weeks in Congress. He decided against re-election, disaffected by the partisanship, by a process he calls broken, by a party he considers hijacked by social conservatives. “We’re just not getting much done,” he said.

http://tinyurl.com/4bahrw

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