SJA Mobile & FBI Launch SMS Tipline

SJA Mobile today jointly announced with the FBI’s Washington D.C Field Office and Metropolitan Police an initiative which will enable D.C-area citizens to anonymously report crime tips via a novel new medium -– SMS. SMS, or “text messaging,” has up until now never been used before as a medium for crime tips.

Citizens in the D.C area can report a crime or homeland security tip by sending a text message with the tip to the number 50411. The 5-digit number to text to is called a “Short Code.” Currently the service is available on all major wireless carriers, along with several Tier 2 carriers.

SJA Mobile is in talks expand the service to several other major cities.

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It’s good to see that law enforcement agencies are finally embracing technology. I have several things to say about this:

• Danger on the road?
• What’s faster?
• What took them so long?

Danger on the road?

Research shows that text messaging while driving is more dangerous than talking on the cell phone while driving, since one needs to use one’s fingers and attention to send a text message. Though not everyone sending in a tip is going to be doing it on the road, I believe that encouraging SMS could lead to (at least) a few incidents on the streets.

What’s faster?

Do you text message faster, or do you talk faster? In another comparison, do you type (on a computer keyboard) faster than you can speak? I believe that one’s voice can contribute a greater amount of information in a shorter amount of time.

However, if the FBI or Homeland Security isn’t equipped to handle a large volume of calls at the same time — for instance, not enough operators — then SMS allows them to receive a large volume and go through that pile in sequence as it piles up.

Unfortunately, that also increases the likelihood that important tips are queued. I hope they use some smart filtering/searching technology (Google, perhaps?) that will allow them to see urgent tips more quickly.

What took them so long?

Why did it take so many years for law enforcement to finally embrace this sort of technology? It’s fortunate that SJA Mobile finally made it happen.

This post is brought to you by our friends at SJA Mobile.

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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iTunes movies now in Canada

Finally! More than 1200 titles are now available for rent or purchase on iTunes for users living in Canada. I have previously expressed frustration that a great deal of technological services are available in the U.S. and not Canada, but Apple is finally (somewhat) addressing the Canadian crowd.

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Rejected!

Apparently, Yahoo! has once again rejected Microsoft’s $40+ billion bid. They feel that it underestimates their company’s value.

Don’t forget, there are predictions that this deal will never go through on account of the European Union.

(3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)

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Impatient Microsoft

The following letter was composed by Steve Ballmer to the Yahoo! board:

April 5, 2008
Board of Directors
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089

Dear Members of the Board:

It has now been more than two months since we made our proposal to acquire Yahoo! at a 62% premium to its closing price on January 31, 2008, the day prior to our announcement. Our goal in making such a generous offer was to create the basis for a speedy and ultimately friendly transaction. Despite this, the pace of the last two months has been anything but speedy.

While there has been some limited interaction between management of our two companies, there has been no meaningful negotiation to conclude an agreement. We understand that you have been meeting to consider and assess your alternatives, including alternative transactions with others in the industry, but we’ve seen no indication that you have authorized Yahoo! management to negotiate with Microsoft. This is despite the fact that our proposal is the only alternative put forward that offers your shareholders full and fair value for their shares, gives every shareholder a vote on the future of the company, and enhances choice for content creators, advertisers, and consumers.

During these two months of inactivity, the Internet has continued to march on, while the public equity markets and overall economic conditions have weakened considerably, both in general and for other Internet-focused companies in particular. At the same time, public indicators suggest that Yahoo!’s search and page view shares have declined. Finally, you have adopted new plans at the company that have made any change of control more costly.

By any fair measure, the large premium we offered in January is even more significant today. We believe that the majority of your shareholders share this assessment, even after reviewing your public disclosures relating to your future prospects.

Given these developments, we believe now is the time for our respective companies to authorize teams to sit down and negotiate a definitive agreement on a combination of our companies that will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders, creating a more efficient and competitive company that will provide greater value and service to our customers. If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo! board. The substantial premium reflected in our initial proposal anticipated a friendly transaction with you. If we are forced to take an offer directly to your shareholders, that action will have an undesirable impact on the value of your company from our perspective which will be reflected in the terms of our proposal.

It is unfortunate that by choosing not to enter into substantive negotiations with us, you have failed to give due consideration to a transaction that has tremendous benefits for Yahoo!’s shareholders and employees. We think it is critically important not to let this window of opportunity pass.

Sincerely,

Steven A. Ballmer
Chief Executive Office
Microsoft Corp.

Yes, interesting, isn’t it?

“a friendly transaction” - hardly so. Suddenly offering more than 40 billion U.S. dollars without solicitation doesn’t seem very friendly to me. Furthermore, the threat that follows that phrase does not appear friendly.

“tremendous benefits” for shareholders, perhaps not for employees (many of whom will be fired to be replaced!). Not tremendous benefits for the general public and those who actually love Yahoo!

I, for one, hope that this deal is never completed. I hope that the E.U. will stop the merger. Even China has some influence that can prevent the purchase from being completed.

What are your thoughts?

(2 votes, average: 2.5 out of 5)

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Blu-Ray the winner, Microsoft fined $1.3 billion

By no means are the two related; Blu-Ray winning the format wars of 2007 (and a bit of 2008) has little to do with the E.U.’s judgement that Microsoft charged too much for interoperability.

Blu-Ray and HD-DVD have really been going at it, and with the withdrawal of their HD-DVD players from the market by Toshiba (the last manufacturer of HD-DVD players), HD-DVD is officially dead. There were so many benefits that I feel it had, but Sony had the PS3 with which they could BUNDLE another product.

By taking the risk and including a Blu-Ray drive in their PlayStation 3, Sony was able to push the Blu-Ray technology into more than a million homes in North America, and effectively leverage the appeal of one of their products (PlayStation) to introduce customers to another (Blu-Ray).

If this is sounding like what Microsoft did during the browser wars (after which they won), you’re right. There is the element of BUNDLING. But what Sony has done was not illegal under antitrust laws. (Until a lawyer can come along and prove me wrong by winning a lawsuit against Sony, I stand firmly behind that statement.) They do NOT have a monopoly in gaming consoles: Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are all dominant players, with the Xbox sales at the highest, and the Wii in hyped demand.

Since Sony did not make use of a monopoly to try and gain a monopoly in another field, they cannot be held culpable under law.

However, they did gain a monopoly: since Blu-Ray is effectively the only remaining high definition, large storage disc medium, it will surely dominate the field.

In other news…

Microsoft has been ordered by the European Commission to pay $1.3 billion (USD equivalent) in fines for failing to comply with a 2004 ruling until October 2007. Microsoft was requested to open its software and protocol specifications to other developers, but they have charged large sums for any use of the documents.

Recently, Microsoft has claimed that it will make available the official file format specifications of previously proprietary formats like .doc, .xls, and .ppt. Many are doubting whether or not they will actually do what they have claimed they will do.

There is nothing but contempt between Microsoft and the European Union. It doesn’t seem to be improving, and hopefully the European Commission can put a stop to the Microsoft-Yahoo! deal.

Will the EU fine change Microsoft? by ZDNet’s Dana Blankenhorn — I think Microsoft needs to undertake some diplomacy that will put a final, definitive line under all this. But what would you do if the EU fined you?

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Don’t let Microsoft buy Yahoo!

It’s been widely reported that Microsoft has offered $44.6 billion to acquire Yahoo! Inc., which comes to around $1500 per user of Yahoo!. It’s evident that they are doing so in order to compete with Google’s rising (56%) share of search queries. But don’t let Microsoft do it! It will be the downfall of Yahoo! and will negatively impact many people.

How many times have we seen Microsoft do questionable things? Here are some of the likely things to happen if and when Microsoft purchases Yahoo!:

• Yahoo! products to disappear:
  • Yahoo! Messenger (to be replaced with Windows Live Messenger)
  • Yahoo! ID and plans for OpenID (to be replaced with Windows Live ID)
  • Personals (to be replaced with Windows Live Spaces)
  • Maps
  • Yahoo! Widgets
  • Mozilla Firefox Yahoo! Edition
  • Music Jukebox (to be replaced with some form of Windows Media Player / Zune Marketplace)
  • All the Yahoo! toolbars (to be replaced with some form of the Windows Live Toolbar)
• MSN and Yahoo! merge into some sort of weird portal
• Yahoo! Publisher Network becomes an active competitor to AdSense (and accepts publishers outside the U.S.)
• Yahoo! Mail loses the “unlimited” storage and the interface changes

Doesn’t it seem a tiny bit anticompetitive if Microsoft eliminates the Yahoo! products that would have competed with the Windows Live products, and forces those users to switch to the Microsoft products? This simply consolidates the users into one group of people locked into Microsoft products.

Clearly, Yahoo! has created a great deal of services that compete directly with Microsoft: Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! ID, Maps, Mozilla Firefox Yahoo! Edition, and the Yahoo! Toolbar… even Yahoo! Mail. Does it not seem likely that Microsoft will favour its own products over those of Yahoo!, despite the strong Yahoo! brand?

We will see hundreds of thousands of dissatisfied users. They have remained dedicated to Yahoo! products for its strong brand, some of the reputable features in its services, and also for its willingness to help open source — as demonstrated in the Yahoo! Developer Network as well as some of its open API’s.

It is good that Google will have competition, but not when the opposition is Microsoft. In such circumstances, we will not see benefits for the users — only more hooks to “lock” the users in.

TechCrunch also has an article on this, but is more specific about some of the changes, although I seem to disagree with some of them. For instance, I do not believe that Live Search will replace Yahoo! Search — rather, I feel that they will merge into one. Hopefully, they’ll come up with a better name than Yahoo! Live Search. TechCrunch also mentions that it’s possible for Flickr to integrate with Windows Live, or to offer a Picasa-competing download.

TechBlog mentions that this purchase will need to be approved by various regulating agencies, and that would include the Justice Department. Quite obviously, this hostile purchase is intended to crush a competitor, Google, and given the history that Microsoft has in antitrust, we can probably expect some trouble from the E.U., where corruption isn’t an issue. (I’m not saying it is for the U.S., but Microsoft does pay a great deal of money to the government — can we really trust an entity that contributes so significantly to the U.S. economy, which is heading into recession?) This issue will create an uphill battle for Microsoft.

But there are others, who feel that such a purchase or merger will be very beneficial for bloggers, the Internet, and even Google. The argument is that this sort of action does increase competition (agreed), and that will allow cheaper search engine advertising, push Google to improve its services even more, and allow third parties such as bloggers to earn a higher revenue share from programs like AdSense. Respectfully, I understand this view, but it has to be seen that this power that Microsoft-Yahoo! would have can be abused, and it’s quite possible we’ll see the decline of Google services like AdSense.

Some people, including John C. Dvorak, previously mentioned for his Tech5 podcast, do feel that this purchase won’t go through. Clearly, the European Union has dealt with Microsoft before, and Microsoft has not yet won a major fight in its courts. Hopefully, this is the case and Microsoft’s attempt is crushed.

What do you think? Should we let this happen? Should the European Union allow Microsoft to take such drastic measures? I don’t think so. What about you?

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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