Steve Ballmer | MediaGuardian 100 2010
Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer slides down the MediaGuardian 100 as the software giant is overtaken by Google and Apple Job: chief executive, Microsoft Age: 54 Industry: digital media Turnover: $58.44bn Staff: 88,180 Worth: $13.3bn 2009 ranking: 5 "We have only one way to go, and it's up, baby. Up, up, up!" said Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer two years ago. Now it feels like he's playing catch-up, catch-up, catch-up. Ballmer's slide down the MediaGuardian 100 is not to be dismissive of a company with a market capitalisation of more than $200bn. But it is a reflection of how the software giant has fallen in the pecking order, superseded first by Google and now by Apple, whose own market cap exceeded Microsoft for the first time this year. But it's not all about the numbers. It's also about perception. No one wakes up thinking "What will Steve Ballmer do today?" They do with Steve Jobs. Well, some people do. Ballmer fought a rearguard action against Google with the launch of Microsoft's search engine Bing . His company has also fallen behind Apple and Google in the smartphone market. The Microsoft boss dismissed the iPhone at its launch in 2007 as having " no chance ". Now it finds its core territory – the PC – under threat from tablets such as the iPad. " The race is on ," said Ballmer. " We've got great long-term optimism. " Critics of his company may suggest he needs it. Microsoft's revenues went into decline last year for the first time in its 34-year history, and it embarked on a cost-cutting programme that will see 5,000 jobs go around the world. The company's Office software and Windows operating system, which runs on more than 90% of the world's PCs, continue to do huge business, but its online services division including search, Hotmail and its "Live" services have racked up huge losses , and there were embarrassing technical problems with its XBox 360 games machine. The debate about the number one position in this year's MediaGuardian 100 was all about Apple and Google; Microsoft did not even come into it. "Ballmer
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Steve Ballmer | MediaGuardian 100 2010
The Difference Engine produces first round of digital upstarts
ScreenReach co-founder Paul Rawlings says the Difference Engine was the most rewarding experience of his life Reflecting on 91 days holed-up in an intense business hub in the North East, entrepreneur Paul Rawlings exhales heavily. "It was the most rewarding experience of my life. Seriously, I can't emphasise it enough," said the ScreenReach co-founder. Rawlings' feet have barely touched the ground for the past three months. Along with entrepreneurs from eight other fledgling companies, he has just completed the first 13-week programme of new start-up incubator The Difference Engine . "When we started The Difference Engine we started with a technology which we had high hopes for," Rawlings says. "Being part of the Engine has really helped us focus our technology into a series of products, given us access to some of the North East's finest mentors, and given us the confidence to sit in front of global businesses and tell them why they should be using ScreenReach." Using Reach XML code, ScreenReach offers an "audience engagement technology", ripe for content companies and retailers to interact with their customers. Having secured £250,000 first-round investment through the programme, Rawlings and fellow co-founder Chris Farrell are in talks with big-name potential clients with partnerships expected to go live in the next two weeks. As well as the access to mentors, initial funding of £20,000 (in return for 8% of future stock) and being surrounded by like-minded digital upstarts, Rawlings said being squirreled away in Middlesbrough – away from the hustle-and-bustle of London – helped focus attention on the product. The importance of this can be understated, says Jon Bradford, who originated the idea of The Difference Engine two years ago, eventually launching the first programme in December last year. "There are significant advantages of being outside London," Bradford says as he catches a breather inbetween catching trains and aeroplanes marketing the Engine.
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The Difference Engine produces first round of digital upstarts
BBC Builders: Image wizard Crystal Hirschorn
Another key developer making ripples in the BBC tech talent pool is Crystal Hirschorn, senior web developer of BBC Images. Hirschorn moved from the US in 2001 to study computer science and business at Kingston University. After six years working for the National Archives , helping to build the Electronic Records Online and Domesday sites, she joined the BBC as a clientside developer. But her UK move had been in the planning for years; she completed high school in the US a year early because she was so keen to move. • What are you working on? I am a senior web developer on the BBC Images project which sits within the technology enabling and frameworks section of the BBC (we provide the bits of tech and templates that makes other bits of tech work together). The aim of the project is to provide reusable, easy to integrate web applications templates to best showcase and find attractive images from our programmes. These applications can be embedded on almost any BBC web page and in the long-term we're aiming to enable them to be embeddable on any website, anywhere. One of our most recent projects was for the new series of Doctor Who . The Doctor Who team were keen to show off images of their new monsters, such as the amazing new daleks, so I built a application template which allows audiences to easily find and view them. The new Doctor Who website has 360 degree views of the new Tardis and special videos of the new monsters in action
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BBC Builders: Image wizard Crystal Hirschorn
Apple’s next trick: the trackpad for desktops
What's better than iPhone 4.0? How about a new Apple touchpad to replace keyboards for its desktop computers... Published on Engadget , these images were leaked with perfect timing [insert marketing conspiracy theory here] hours before Steve Jobs will introduce the [spoiled] next generation iPhone at Apple's Worldwide developer conference in San Francisco. Take a metaphorical look backwards at Apple's road map: iPhone spent three years training consumers how to use a touchscreen, and was then followed by iPad. Take a look forwards, we'll all be using touchscreens at our desktops, as I said on the Guardian Tech Weekly podcast recently. Beyond that, it probably gets a bit conceptual and Minority Report. But here it is: The leaked images were published by Engadget , who point out John Daring Fireball Gruber and MacRumours wrote about an Apple trademark application back in for a ' Magic Trackpad ' and rumours dating back to 2008 . Digital media Apple Computing iPad iPhone Steve Jobs Jemima Kiss guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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Apple's next trick: the trackpad for desktops
How Apple could bite the free press | Dan Kennedy
Apple is hailed by many as saviour of the news industry, but its iPad and iPhone aren't entirely compatible with an open society What started out as a narrow dispute between Apple and software developers has turned into a raging controversy over free speech. The case of Mark Fiore , an editorial cartoonist who was banned from Apple's iTunes Store, illustrates a heretofore unappreciated connection between open systems and an open society. And it raises serious questions about Apple's supposed role as a saviour of the faltering news business. Our story begins on 12 April, when Fiore won a Pulitzer prize for his animated political cartoons at SFGate.com, the San Francisco Chronicle's website. A few days later Fiore, a freelancer, revealed to Laura McGann of the Nieman Journalism Lab that Apple had rejected an app he submitted the previous December for the iPhone and the iPod touch. The rejection meant that he had been effectively banned from Apple's latest toy, the iPad, as well. Apple had informed Fiore that his app violated the iTunes Store policy against content that "ridicules public figures", notwithstanding the fact that ridiculing public figures is pretty much the primary mission of any political cartoonist. Although Apple had previously attracted notice for rejecting apps, especially those with a sexual theme, the Fiore matter represented an escalation. Within a day, Apple had contacted Fiore and asked him to resubmit his app. "I feel kind of guilty," Fiore told the Wall Street Journal . "I'm getting preferential treatment because I got the Pulitzer." The trouble, as Fiore noted, is that Apple rectified its mistake while maintaining the right to ban any content it doesn't like from its new generation of closed-system devices. (Apple's signature computer, the Macintosh, is unaffected.) And there is a direct relationship between the battles Apple and its chairman, Steve Jobs, are waging against software developers and Apple's dispute with pornographers and other purveyors of content it doesn't like. The best-known example of the former involves Adobe, whose Flash animation software has been excluded from the iPhone, iPod and iPad. According to Apple, Flash hogs resources and makes its devices unstable – an assessment shared by many computer experts. Still, you'd think Apple might let its users decide whether or not to install Flash.
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How Apple could bite the free press | Dan Kennedy
Celebrating @ - the symbol of the computer age
What does the @ symbol mean to you? New York's Museum of Modern Art has decided the time is right to honour the 'at', by officially adding the concept to its architecture and design collection. Writing on Moma's blog , senior curator Paola Antonelli said "physical possession of an object as a requirement for an acquisition is no longer necessary" and that that acknowledgement "sets curators free to tag the world" whether objects too large to bring into the museum, or abstract concepts. The @ symbol, says Antonelli, has become part of the fabric of life around the world. "Germans, Poles, and South Africans call @ 'monkey's tail' in each different language. Norwegians see a pig's tail, Chinese a little mouse, and Italians and the French, a snail. For the Russians @ symbolizes a dog, while the Finnish know @ as the 'miukumauku', meaning the 'sign of the meow,' and believe that the symbol is inspired by a curled-up sleeping cat. The @ symbol has become so significant that people feel they need to make sense of it; hence it has inspired its own folkloric tradition... Tracing the history of the symbol, Antonelli explains that it dates back to the 6th or 7th century, according to some linguists, and by 16th century Venice it referred to an amphora, a measurement vessel. It first appeared on a typewriter keyboard in 1885 and was eventually reappropriated by engineer Ray Tomlinson in 1971 - who can take credit for "imbuing it with new meaning and elevating it to defining symbol of the computer age". "Its potential for such succinct negotiations (whether between man and machine, or between traditional gender classifications and the current spectrum) and its range of application continue to expand. It has truly become a way of expressing society's changing technological and social relationships, expressing new forms of behavior and interaction in a new world." Moma has added @ to its collection as a design icon. Photograph: _rockinfree / Flickr / Some rights reserved Digital media Computing Design Museums Internet Jemima Kiss guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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Celebrating @ - the symbol of the computer age
Tech Weekly: The iPad analysed and Amazon’s ebook war
There's an iPad flavour to most of this week's progamme as we deconstruct the most anticipated launch of 2010. Was the launch of Apple's iPad a whole lot of hot air or the next evolution in gadgetry? The debate begins as author and technology commentator Nick Carr joins us to debate the highs and the lows of the next must-have gadget, and Bobbie Johnson describes getting his hands on the iPad. The studio is also buzzing with the escalating row between publishing house Macmillan and Amazon . Did the virtual bookseller drawn a line in the sand by removing all of Macmillan's books from its shelves at the weekend? Was the launch of the iPad a contributing factor
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Tech Weekly: The iPad analysed and Amazon's ebook war
Tech Weekly: SoundCloud interviewed, the IBM PC enters our Hall of Fame
On this week's Guardian Tech Weekly, we'll be talking to the brains behind SoundCloud, the online music sharing and collaboration service which was ranked number two in the Tech Media Invest 100 list, and counts the like of Dave Grohl and Moby as its supporters. We'll also be flinging open the door's to Jack's Hall of Fame. Over the next few months we will be filling it with the game changers of the technology world – and we want your help in doing so. This week we kick things off with the ancestor of home computing, the IBM PC. And of course, there's a look at what's been making the headlines this week, from Facebook to Skype, and we'll be scrutinising the blogs, to see what's been creating a stir online. Don't forget to...
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Tech Weekly: SoundCloud interviewed, the IBM PC enters our Hall of Fame
Does Twitter really cost British business £1.4bn a year?
Of course not. If you are weak-willed enough to believe that – or if your manager is, and has therefore cut off your access to the social network – then consider a few facts. The "survey" that came up with that number was carried out, as Mike Butcher of TechCrunch Europe has noted , by a company that makes staff-monitoring equipment. It has an interest in selling things to companies to stop their staff "wasting" money by – allegedly – spending 40 minutes a week on social media. If the company (which we won't name) succeeds in selling some of its equipment to anyone as a result of the survey, then that will be a net gain for the UK economy through its sales. So Twitter won't have lost the economy money – why, it'll have generated some, though one would have to offset that against lost productivity through not being able to contact customers, clients and others through the social network. But the economic justifications for Twitter go well beyond selling slightly spooky monitoring equipment. Louis Halpern, CEO of the digital marketing agency Halpern Cowan, thinks that idea that time on social media sites is "wasted" is nonsense: "The first step to getting a return on investment from the time employees spend on social media is to empower them to use social media to help their business," he said in response to the "survey". "A company's employees are its most effective advocate, and can directly sway the opinion of customers and stakeholders … Customers will only continue to buy if they feel good about the service they're receiving, which staff actively posting positive sentiment online can impact directly." Sometimes, naturally, the use of social media goes awry. Halpern acknowledged as much when discussing the recent case of Dixons Store Group staff being abusive about customers on Facebook . But with companies such as Dell and JetBlue recording millions of dollars in sales through Twitter, it's clear that the network has value; and newspapers find it useful in contacting sources, getting readers to their site and even, occasionally, helping overturn injunctions – the latter service being hard to price but definitely socially valuable. The fear that employees let loose on the internet will waste time is as old as Sir Alan Sugar, who thought it had "obvious disadvantages" when used by web-surfing staff and that it could "all go pear-shaped". (He did answer his own emails, though.) The reality though is that people at work have always found ways to waste time. The key problem for managers remains, as ever, finding ways to make them like their work enough not to
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Does Twitter really cost British business £1.4bn a year?
Martha Lane Fox: fixing the holes in Britain’s net
As the Digital Inclusion Task Force's 'champion', web entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox is charged with taking the disconnected online. But is it the right solution? Behind the desk where Martha Lane Fox works at the Digital Inclusion Task Force – in an office right next door to Private Eye in Soho, London – is a map with a handful of tags on it: blue, yellow, red. One set is labelled "Beacons"; another "Martha's visits"; the third, "Not-spots". It's a map of division, indicating how people are failing to join the computer revolution that has been sweeping through our lives for more than 20 years now – driven by characters such as Sir Clive Sinclair, whose overriding ambition was to make computers affordable for everyone, and Chris Curry, whose Acorn Computers won the BBC Micro contract in 1982. Lane Fox has a case to make: that despite all those efforts over the past 25 years there are at least 10 million adults in the UK who have never been online; that there are another 1.6 million children whose earning potential is being stunted.
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Martha Lane Fox: fixing the holes in Britain's net