ZDNet: Ballmer hints at Microsoft's future in the 'cloud'

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer hinted on applications hosted on Microsoft's servers, rather than the end-users desktop at the Worldwide Partner Conference.

"This is an ambitious project for us but it is very important," Ballmer said. "We have a lot of news and things that we'll be talking about and unveiling...this year."

Ballmer said that later this year Microsoft will deliver the first version of a set of developer tools to build on top of Microsoft's Windows Live effort and noted that the tools will be based on .Net.

"We are in the process today of building out a services platform in the cloud," Ballmer said.

If Microsoft starts developing Web apps, it might be a radical shift but a positive one. The only question is: Will it work in Firefox?

ComputerWorld: IBM pledges access to its IP for standards

Under a pledge issued by the company Wednesday, IBM is granting universal and perpetual access to intellectual property that might be necessary to implement standards designed to make software interoperable. IBM will not assert any patent rights to its technologies featured in these standards. The company believes its move in this space is the largest of its kind.

I think - and this is pure guesswork - that the strategy of designing software and hardware in a "vendor lock-in" style has reached a turning point where you lose more sales to non-lock-in competitors than you retain by keeping your customers locked in. Locking a person into your software may pad out the next year's bottom line, but it can't be good for customer satisfaction.

This post from Patrus4 on Slashdot makes a very good point:

The consumer declares their demand, and a company that wants to make money and last a long time supplies that demand, rather than trying to change or control what the consumer's demand is.

Another poster, Gujo-Orodi, had this to say:

You try to level the playing field by commoditizing the thing your opponent sells. Microsoft is a software company; IBM sells a lot of software, but their primary business is hardware and services. If they can commoditize the software that runs on their hardware and on which they provide value-added services, it gives them a competitive advantage against software companies (and against hardware companies that don't use open source, too). The revenue stream of the software company goes down, while the revenue they make on service and on hardware sales increases as a result of reduced software costs.

ZDNet: Index ranks IT industries by nation

An IT competitiveness index has ranked more than 60 countries, based on factors such as business environment.

The United States grabbed the top spot, followed by Japan, South Korea, England and Australia, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit of The Economist Group, publisher of the eponymous magazine.

The countries were scored on a scale of 1 to 100 for factors such as a country's business environment, IT infrastructure, and efforts in research and development.

Of course, it's not without controversy. The Russian judge seems to be scoring Warsaw Pact IT departments higher than NATO IT departments, and there's some questions about the performance of Lithuania's IT department being involved in a doping scandal…

Onion News Network: All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash [Parody]

"Just moments ago, FBI officials announced that they had traced the crash of the Internet tonight to this man, Eric Tipton of Wallingford, CT. Tipton said he had more than 35 windows open on his computer at the time of the crash. He had been downloading the Yo La Tengo discography from iTunes while streaming several YouTube videos, listening to an NPR broadcast, instant messaging his friends, checking three e-mail accounts, talking on Skype and playing online poker, all while installing the latest version of Firefox and updating his system software. When he opened his friends Myspace profile, an animated gif of the Peanuts character Linus dancing started to play, along with a MIDI version of Justin Timberlake's 'sexy back.' Authorities believe it put too much strain on the Internet, causing the global shutdown."