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"Together, SAP and Business Objects intend to offer high-value solutions for process- and business-oriented professionals," said the joint statement.

The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of next year, but Business Objects will operate as a stand-alone business as part of the SAP Group, the companies said.

"Business Objects customers will continue to benefit from open, broad and integrated business intelligence solution," said their statement.

"The acquisition of Business Objects is in keeping with SAP's stated strategy to double our addressable market by 2010" to reach 100,000 clients, Henning Kagermann, CEO of SAP AG, was quoted as saying.

SAP currently has around 41,200 clients and sold software licenses worth 3.1 billion euros last year.

The purchase marks a radical change of strategy for SAP, which in contrast to its US rival Oracle which spent more than 25 billion dollars on acquisitions since 2004, has instead opted more for organic growth.

SAP also bought management software producer Hyperion in March for 3.3 billion dollars.

Labels: Internet

by dayatna at 12:01 AM | 0 comments (create) - (View)

IBM Rational Build Forge Express Edition will be available starting October 23rd at a price of $49,000 per server, IBM said. IBM obtained the foundation for the software when it acquired application development specialist BuildForge in 2006 for an undisclosed sum.

Another new tool introduced Friday by IBM, the Tivoli Network Manager IP Entry Edition, gives IT staffers at mid-sized businesses the ability to monitor their network performance in real time. Pricing details were not disclosed.

IBM has spent considerable efforts in launching "Express" versions of its middleware products. Rational, WebSphere, DB2, Tivoli, and even Lotus all have less expensive versions available for smaller companies to run or as evaluation software for larger corporations.

SMBs represent an important growth market for IBM, whose sales to large enterprises have been relatively flat in recent years. Researchers at AMI Partners say IT spending by SMBs will grow by 10% in 2007 -- driven by high double-digit growth in emerging markets such as Brazil, India and China.

IBM's total sales, adjusting for currency, increased 5.9% in the second quarter, while software sales rose 9.1%.

To help build out its own software developer product plans, IBM has said it plans to acquire development tools maker Telelogic. However, the proposed $745 million acquisition of the Swedish vendor is now the subject of a European antitrust investigation, EU officials said Friday. Europe's second highest court recently upheld antitrust penalties against software maker Microsoft.

Labels: Software

by dayatna at 11:57 PM | 0 comments (create) - (View)

The products allegedly sold without proper health-claim substantiation included: ProBalance transdermal cream; Elation Therapy Natural Progesterone Cream; Preserve Progesterone Cream; Restored Balance progesterone cream; Serenity for Women Natural Progesterone Cream; Nature's Precise Cream; Eternal Woman Progesterone Cream.

The consent orders settle the FTC's charges against the following people and businesses:

-- Lawrence A. Jordan and Stephanie L. Jordan, doing business as Springboard and Pro Health Labs of Spring Valley, California;

-- Elation Therapy Inc. and Robert Rutledge, an officer of the company based in Marietta, Georgia;

-- Merilou Barnekow, doing business as Women's Menopause Health Center of Surfside Beach, Texas;

-- The Green Willow Tree LLC of Asheville, North Carolina, and manager Robert Burns;

-- Health Science International Inc., of Port Orange, Florida, and David Martin, an officer there;

-- Shelly Black, doing business as Progesterone Advocates Network of Trabuco Canyon, California.

Under the terms of the orders, sellers are required to have reliable scientific evidence substantiating claims about the health benefits, performance, safety and side effects of any dietary supplement drug, or health-related service. In addition, the orders prevent the sellers from misrepresenting the existence, validity or interpretations of any research.

Finally, the orders contain 20-year record-keeping provisions designed to ensure the sellers comply with their terms.

The charges against Herbs Nutrition Corp. of Torrance, California, and Syed M. Jafry, an officer there, have not been settled, and the case will be tried by an FTC administrative law judge.

The FTC is not aware of any competent and reliable scientific evidence to support claims that natural progesterone products are safe, or that they are effective in preventing osteoporosis, increasing bone density or preventing, treating, or curing cancer, heart disease or other diseases, the agency said. When evaluating health-related claims for any product, consumers should talk to their primary-care doctor or pharmacist, the FTC recommended.

The FTC staff identified the respondents through an Internet search of Web sites advertising products that claimed they were natural alternatives to hormone replacement therapy. The FTC sent warning letters to 34 Web site operators informing them that they must have reliable scientific evidence to support any health-related claims made for their products. The FTC advised the marketers to revise or delete any false, misleading or unsubstantiated claims.

Twenty-seven of the 34 Web sites modified the health claims about hormone replacement therapy after the FTC letters.

The very influential Professional eBay Sellers Alliance (PESA), a group of large eBay sellers, has been watching from the sidelines with increasing concern and skepticism.

"Having those ads on the Web site we view as very negative. Encouraging people to leave eBay can never be good for the seller who is paying to be on the marketplace," said Jonathan Garriss, PESA's executive director.

While eBay has had advertising on its Web site for years, sellers generally hadn't perceived it as a major threat, for a variety of reasons.

For instance, the advertising program that the Yahoo deal replaced in May of last year was run in-house by eBay and was designed to let eBay sellers promote their products in the marketplace. In other words, the ads didn't link outside of the eBay Web sites.

Also, whenever eBay has allowed external ads in its sites, as it did in the late 1990s and early 2000's via a deal with AOL LLC, the ads weren't as precisely targeted as is possible with the current ad-matching technology from Google and Yahoo.

Now, with Google and Yahoo delivering ads that are contextually relevant to the eBay pages on which they run, eBay sellers feel that the barbarians aren't just at the gates, but inside the marketplace's walls, luring buyers away.

The deal with Yahoo made it the exclusive provider of pay-per-click (PPC) text ads and banner ads for eBay sites in the U.S., while the Google deal, signed a few months later in August 2006, is for PPC text ads in eBay sites internationally.

In the second quarter of 2007, eBay reported $76 million in advertising and "other non-transaction revenue," an increase of 96 percent from the same period in 2006. An eBay spokesman acknowledged that most of that revenue came from advertising.

Making some rough calculations, Garriss believes that eBay visitors clicked about 250 million times on the Yahoo and Google ads during the second quarter. "The biggest issue is seeing ads that compete with products already on eBay," Garriss said.

Hani Durzy, an eBay spokesman, acknowledges that the company has fielded concerns from sellers about this issue, but he argues that the worry is unwarranted.

"Our first priority is always to encourage buyers to transact on the site and click on our sellers' listings. If our sellers aren't successful, they're not paying eBay fees, and then we're not successful," Durzy said.

In an ideal world, every visitor to eBay would end up buying something in the marketplace, but research has shown visitors don't always come to buy. Often they do research or browse, he said.

Thus, eBay can potentially monetize those visits and improve those users' experience by showing them relevant, targeted ads, Durzy said.

"Our strategy is to serve ads differently based on what we think you're most likely to do, in order to ultimately give you as a buyer the best experience," he said.

An increase in buyer satisfaction ultimately benefits sellers. "Serving relevant, compelling ads in certain situations makes for a better buying experience," Durzy said.

Still, eBay is considering reactivating the in-house ad program for eBay sellers that it cancelled last year, because it recognizes that it had some value. "We're examining parts of that [program] that we can reconstitute within the context of our deal with Yahoo," he said.

What's not negotiable is the existence of external ads on eBay. "We continually test what's the best mix and how to improve our targeting so that we serve the right ads to the right people and avoid that thing which sellers legitimately fear," Durzy said.

Recently, Steve Hartman, eBay's director of on-site advertising strategy, addressed these issues in a blog posting. "We want buyers to transact on eBay," he wrote. "But we also want to offer alternatives when we believe it will improve the buying experience."

EBay won't claim that the ads have never driven a potential buyer away from the marketplace, but those situations would be exceptions, not the rule, Durzy said.

"Our initial testing period shows no significant impact to our core transaction business, which means no significant impact to our sellers' revenue, because the two are inextricably linked," Durzy said. "We feel very confident that our strategy is working."

Garriss, also CEO of Gotham City Online, an apparel store on eBay that also has its own site, isn't convinced.

"We think it hurts the sellers, while eBay benefits from the ad money," he said. "This is one of our fastest-growing concerns."

That shift is important for the major Internet businesses to grab a substantial share of the marketing dollars expected to flow at the expense of television and print.

For consumers, the development means greater freedom and a further erosion of artificial walls designed to keep visitors from leaving sites.

According to comScore Media Metrix, the U.S. audience for the four major Internet brands grew over the past year. But the total time spent at Yahoo and AOL dropped about 10 percent, while Microsoft's MSN-Windows Live services saw an 8 percent decline.

In other words, these sites are attracting more people but are keeping them for shorter durations as users find what they need elsewhere.

Google was the exception, with a 57 percent jump in total time spent, but even the company recognizes that "no individual property will have all those products and services" a user might want, said Tim Armstrong, Google's head of North American ad sales.

"The Internet is basically being built and scaling (faster) than any one property on the Internet is," Armstrong said. "Companies in the Internet space are changing their business models to have models which are consumer driven, not property driven."

That's not to say the major Internet destinations are ceding their own properties.

In a few cases, the large companies have bought wildly popular sites. Google spent about $1.76 billion last November to absorb the leading video-sharing site, YouTube. It also owns the blogging service Blogger, while Yahoo has the photo-sharing site Flickr.

They are also innovating. AOL revamped its video search site in August, while Yahoo retooled its core search engine this month to try to make it more engaging and lure back those who had defected to Google.

"Everyone still wants to be your home page. They are always going to battle for that," said Nick Nyhan, chief executive of market research firm Dynamic Logic. "But they have to think beyond that. Consumers aren't going to just take your stuff."

Google, Yahoo and AOL still make most of their ad money from sites they own and operate (Microsoft did not break down figures in its regulatory filings). Google and Yahoo even reported relative growth there in the second quarter.

Ad networks set the stage for the future and help the large Internet companies ensure they will have enough inventory to sell in the years ahead.

Ford Motor Co. can, for instance, come to Google and buy ads that run not only there but also at The New York Times' Web site and thousands of others within Google's AdSense network. Ford wouldn't have to deal with all those sites individually; third-party sites wouldn't have to expand their sales team.

Meanwhile, Google gets a cut of ad revenues — without spending a dime developing those specialty sites.

Although this concept isn't new, what is changing is the scale.

In agreeing to acquire DoubleClick Inc. for $3.1 billion, Google is looking for better ways to deliver multimedia display ads to supplement the small, text-based ads the company already does well.

The still-pending acquisition also extends Google's reach beyond AdSense to all the outside sites for which DoubleClick now distributes advertising.

Likewise, in buying Tacoda Inc., AOL not only gets Tacoda's technology for targeting ads, but also extends its reach to NBC Universal, Scripps Networks and the Times (sites can join multiple ad networks). AOL also has a network through its 2004 acquisition of Advertising.com and separately bought companies this year serving international markets and wireless devices.

Yahoo, meanwhile, paid about $650 million for the 80 percent of Right Media Inc. it did not already own and agreed to buy BlueLithium Inc. for $300 million. Microsoft bought aQuantive Inc. for $6 billion.

"It's not that networks are going to supplant these mass-market sites, but they will have less influence as networks have more," said David Hallerman, a senior analyst at the research group eMarketer, which projects U.S. online advertising spending at $44 billion in 2011, more than double the $17 billion last year.

The shift didn't happen overnight. Many factors are involved, including online hangouts like Facebook and News Corp.'s MySpace commanding more of a user's time over the past few years. Web sites big and small are making features available, through tools called widgets, for viewing directly at those sites.

Of course, the major brands would still prefer visitors going to them directly, as they wouldn't have to share ad revenues with another site.

But as audiences disperse, advertisers have become reluctant to concentrate their spending at a traditional portal.

Besides standardization, efficiency and diversity, advertisers get better targeting with networks. Say you are trying to reach Seattle natives with a propensity to fly to the remote Arctic island of Svalbard. On a portal you might find 10. On a network 100 times larger, you'd find 1,000 without changing your campaign.

There are drawbacks, though.

U.S. and European regulators are reviewing Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick. Critics complain Google would have too much control over online advertising and personal information collected on users.

And despite the efficiencies, consolidation could hamper flexibility, said Jason Turner, vice president for interactive at advertising agency Ignited.

"When there were four television networks, you were beholden to those four, (who could say), `Here are the rules. This is what it's going to cost and if you don't like it you're not going to get on TV,'" Turner said.

Nonetheless, ad networks are here to stay.

"Advertisers are going to need to start to use the Internet the way people always use the Internet, spreading out in hot pursuit of the things they need and want," said Jarvis Coffin, chief executive of Burst Media Corp., an independent ad network. "It's much easier to fish where the fish are."

Until Power Over Ethernet (IEEE 802.3af, but you knew that) goes wireless, a glowing, network-detecting T-shirt still needs batteries. The three AAA cells for this one are concealed in a pocket sewn inside the shirt, according to ThinkGeek. When it's time to wash the shirt, you can take them out and then peel off the glowing decal, which is attached to the shirt with hook-and-loop fasteners. A ribbon cable concealed inside the shirt links the batteries to the decal, and it can go through the wash-- as long as you hang dry the shirt.

One thing the shirt can't tell is whether the network in range is open or encrypted. It also can't detect the very latest certified Wi-Fi technology, 802.11n Draft 2.0, which is several times faster than 802.11b and 802.11g networks. There aren't enough of 802.11n networks yet, explained Jennifer Kuropkat, a spokeswoman for ThinkGeek, in Fairfax, Virginia.

BT on Thursday became the latest service provider to let ordinary home broadband users share a portion of their Internet connections with the public using software from Fon Technology SL and a Wi-Fi router. The carrier hopes users of the free service will flood suburban streets all over the U.K. with wireless Internet signals. However, Wi-Fi is invisible to the naked eye.

Asked whether the Wi-Fi Detector Shirt will solve a critical problem for users, Gartner Inc. analyst Ken Dulaney said, "Probably for a very few people in the world, yes."

"We have every reason to believe, based on torrid sequential growth quarter after quarter, and year after year, that robust growth will continue," said David Doty, an IAB senior vice president.

Growth slowed compared with last year's first half, when spending increased 37 percent over 2005's first half. However, that is mainly due to the fact that spending this year is so much higher than last year, Doty said.

"The growth is on a much larger number. Both quarters and the half year are historic highs in pure dollar amounts," Doty said. "The results are very encouraging."

In the second quarter, revenue reached almost $5.1 billion. "Advertisers understand that they need to move their dollars here [to the Internet] to reach their audiences," he said.

Once again, the search ad format was the largest one, nabbing 41 percent of the spending during the first half, followed by the display format (32 percent), which includes types like video and banners.

Regarding pricing models, performance deals, such as pay per click, accounted for 50 percent of the first half's spending, while impressions accounted for 45 percent. The rest were hybrid deals involving both pricing models.

The pictures had been digitally altered to disguise the man's face with a swirly pattern, but computer specialists at Germany's federal police agency, the BKA, worked with Interpol's human trafficking team to produce identifiable images.

The global police body said it was making the unique public appeal because, despite extensive efforts through its network of 186 member states, the man remained unknown.

"For years, images of this man sexually abusing children have been circulating on the Internet," Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said.

"We have tried all other means to identify and to bring him to justice, but we are now convinced that without the public's help this sexual predator could continue to rape and sexually abuse young children whose ages appear to range from six to early teens."

Photographs of the man are available on Interpol's Web site, www.interpol.int and anyone with information on him is urged to contact their local police or Interpol's human trafficking unit.

Anders Persson, a Swedish police officer seconded to the unit, told Reuters the dark-haired man in the photos was thought to be a European aged around 35-40.

He said a child abuser seeking contact with like-minded individuals on the Internet would sometimes post pictures of himself in the act of abuse as a kind of "ID card" to prove he is a genuine hard-core pedophile.

The inquiry began when the first pictures of the man were found by German police in 2004. A link to a Vietnamese hotel emerged from advertising material seen on a bedside table in some of the pictures, Persson said. But checks against passport photos of people on the hotel's guest list drew a blank.

Other photos were taken at outdoor locations in Cambodia that were recognized by police there.

Interpol runs a huge database of images of child sex abuse and uses sophisticated software to find connections between them, even analyzing tiny details like wallpaper and fabric patterns in apparently anonymous indoor settings.

Now containing more than 520,000 images submitted by 36 member states, the database has helped police identify and rescue nearly 600 victims from 31 countries to date.

Around 1,600 Web sites hosted by server-provider Proinet and 3,800 sites hosted by another company have been targeted, Proinet spokesman Kjetil Jensen said Sunday. Jensen said hackers, operating on a Turkish network, at times replaced files on the sites with messages.

According to Swedish news agency TT, the Web site of a children's cartoon called Bamse was replaced by a message saying Islam's prophet had been insulted.

The incidents have been reported to the police.

Islamic law is generally interpreted to forbid any depiction of the prophet, even favorable, for fear it could lead to idolatry. Dogs also are considered unclean by conservative Muslims.

The Swedish newspaper Nerikes Allehanda published the drawing by artist Lars Vilks in an Aug. 19 editorial. It triggered protests from Swedish Muslim groups and formal complaints from Muslim countries, including Pakistan and Iran. An insurgent leader in Iraq, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, put a $100,000 bounty on Vilks' head.

Similar caricatures of the prophet, first published in 2005 by a Danish newspaper and reprinted in other European newspapers, triggered furious street protests in Muslim countries.

Stefan Grinneby, head of the Swedish communication watchdog's Internet incident center Sitic, said attacks against Swedish Web sites from Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country, have increased in the past three weeks. Some contained messages alluding to the drawing.

"You would need a very large police investigation to establish the connection to the prophet drawings, but considering the increase in recent weeks it is a fair assumption to make," he said.

Vilks said recently that he has no regrets about his portrayal of Muhammad, despite receiving death threats. He said Muslims living in the West would have to get used to disrespectful drawings of their religious symbols, "because here in the West we mock everything."

He also said he may convert the dispute into a musical, with prominent roles depicting Iran's president, Sweden's prime minister and al-Qaida terrorists.