TechAgility

This is just some ramblings from me over the xmas/new year break and some general thoughts about the global economy and some technical thoughts

Economy

Option ARM’s – could this be the harbinger of the Second Wave of Foreclosures in the US? 

• Subprime Loans Caused the Initial Illness, Option ARMs will Cause the Relapse
• OptionARM Homebuyers See Monthly Payments Go From $95 To $3,500
• 2010:Foreseeable and unforeseeable risks, the room for policy error is enormous
  Domestic Risks and Uncertainties:
  The Bulk of the Option Arm resets trigger in 2010-2011 – “The reality is that these loans were never meant to survive the reset. Unless an alternative is created, the human pain and loss will be massive.” Institutional Risk Analyst Chris Whalen
• I would certainly like to think that all the Bankers ( <– substitute rhyming slang here ) have actually done their job correctly and with due diligence and actually “priced” in the risk that some of the “Assets” they may be holding could be exposed to any potential risk associated with the Option ARM’s? But that’s probably hoping for a bit too much?

The US economy appears to have somewhat recovered it’s confidence – However most of the “Stimulus Package” has not actually filtered down to the point where it’s spent?

• Presumably it still sits somewhere between the Senate and the States where the money is to be spent?
• One Year After Near Financial Collapse, Americans Wonder: Where’s MY Bailout?

I would imagine that the UK economy will continue to lack confidence until the upcoming Election (mid-year?) is resolved?

• Until then you will still have the “Dead man walking” ex-Chancellor Gordon Brown in charge?
• Who knows, it may still end up being something of a contest, or it may be the Tories are back in charge?
• CBI Raises U.K. Growth Forecast for 2010, Predicts BOE ‘Pause’
• Engineering a Strong UK Economic Recovery into a May 2010 General Election?

Is the European Union starting to flex its economic muscles?

• I have heard that the EU is considering a Flat Tax rate for business?
• I have also been told that there the EU is now considering/implementing a Pan-European Legislature?
• What will the repercussions of this be?
• Will this allow the EU to implement laws quicker than the member states?
• Would we have a situation where the UK prefers to implement legislative motions through the EU process because of convenience or speed?
• Will traditional US based HQ’s start considering moving HQ’s to EU in order to potentially take advantage of these proposed changes?

Technical

MS should be releasing the latest edition of Windows Embedded (WES) 2011 in mid-year – this could be very interesting for a number of reasons

• This is essentially Windows 7 “super lite” and appears to be pretty much compatible with everything
• So easy to build a new runtime it no longer needs a developer to create bespoke instances
• Comes with the choice of enabling either Enhanced Write Filter (EWF) or File Based Write Filter (FBWF) to protect the base image
• A “Thin Client” install is only 1.5G in size – well down for the standard Windows 7 with Office reaching more like 20Gb
• Sure – the terms of the EULA specifically prohibit the *install* of Full MS Office Products
• But that doesn’t preclude any Application Streaming or Virtualization efforts?
• At only USD$90 a runtime version – will this be *THE* VDI base OS of choice? 
• It’s small, light, cheap AND it is non-persistent straight out of the box – it’s certainly worthy of some consideration?

The “Cloud” will continue to gain traction – Amazons Web Services (AWS) has had its 5^th anniversary and MS’s Azure (pricing here) makes its debut.

written by dcaddick

So as things slowdown in the lead up to the break I have had some time to get back and review some twitter posts and other blog articles that I have been meaning to catch up on. I must admit that I tend not to use Twitter that much but do find it quite useful as pointers to additional material for research and recently posted material on the topics that I’m interested in.

So one article that really caught my eye was this from Ruben Spruijt’s post at Brian Madden, because for a number of years now it is the Hard Drive that has not kept pace with advancements in technology for the rest of the PC/Laptop components, and in particular I have noted a number of people getting very enthusiastic about the performance improvements they have actually noticed when using Laptops with SSD’s

Runcore SSD’s – promises to boost computer performance vs. the traditional 1.8" HDD by more than 400% with read/write speeds up to 75/40MB/sec.
Experience with 128GB 1.8" ZIF in HP 2710p – Read/write performance for 4K random files has improved over 500% (even under Bitlocker). it just became the fastest computer I ever used… Word and Excel launch in one or two seconds (compared to 30-60 before)…

Just how fast does the storage component of VDI have to be?
So it stands to reason that if you are going to Virtualize your Desktops (and by definition centralize?) then you are going to need to give some serious throughput for the Disk I/O or IOPS? So for anyone who is embarking on this then I would seriously recommend giving this article a through read? Understanding how storage design has a big impact on your VDI!

Possibly the most interesting point that Ruben did bring to my attention with this is that in VDI implementation the Disk I/O is predominately Writes and not Reads – I know this sounds contradictory in some respects, but do review this for yourself – in particular is a good comment from Claudio Rodrigues regarding the nature of how the O/S’s deal with this, as well as confirmation from Dan Feller at Citrix who confirms that most of the numbers and math are in sync with his findings. Ruben has also supplied a Sizing Tool to get a good idea of what might be needed?

So it also starts to make sense that you make sure that you focus very sharply on the XP or Windows 7 Template VM’s in the first place to reduce the I/O required as much as possible?
Citrix has some great tips in this document - Best Practices – Citrix XenDesktop with Citrix Provisioning Server

So as this brought up some interesting thoughts I also found this article relating to sizing and best practices, VMware View sizing & best practices
which followed on from this original article Virtual Infrastructure best practices and in essence this confirms that the storage requirements will need to focused somewhere around an 20/80 split on the Read/Write (20% read and 80% write)

While this table gives a quick representation of what sort of sizing requirements are out there please make sure you research this subject thoroughly, and read the post in full? J

In all fairness I must also confess at this point that my weakest area in IT is storage, and as yet I have not had a functioning Lab running either Citrix’s XenDesktop or Vmware’s View to be able to play around with this and get my hands dirty with either Provisioning Server or Composer. From what I can see (based on Marketing so far J) both of these products have the ability to drastically minimize the storage needed for VDI and as a consequence I am assuming that this may indeed have a flow on effect to mitigating the IOPS issue? (Can anyone comment or set me straight on this?)

I then went on to find some more details around the costing and financial side of VDI implementations and found this article of Doug Brown’s regarding Cost Savings of VDI: Is It Possible? as the diagram below points out, it is complex, and as such it could be that the regular ROT/TCO calculations are not highlighting all the potential benefits and savings?

Changing the ROI/TCO Calculation?
So this then brings me to another update in my Twitter was from Tyler at LiquidwareLabs.com with a new addition to the ROI/TCO debate,
COP – Coefficient of Productivity in VDI the New Math , in which he points out that you should also factor in any additional productivity gains and use this to dilute the true cost of the CAPEX.

Now I wonder how many VDI proposals are brave enough to start assigning values to what has traditionally been seen as "additional" benefits related to an architectural change? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against it, but I can see the debate might start to get a bit heated in the boardroom? and in some respects maybe that’s exactly what’s needed – by assigning values and assumptions and then extrapolating them across an enterprise the resultant *potential* savings become too hard for the board to ignore?

Sure there will be debate, and rightly so, but in following this sort of process it should quickly become apparent that there is a technological shift under way where the concept of "My Desktop" still being something that can be pointed to in the Office sitting on a desk somewhere is rapidly becoming redundant?

Now having said all that – it’s interesting to note that Gartner’s Hype Cycle Report for 2009 seems not to have VDI listed? Maybe it’s hiding under something else here?

So will VDI make it to "mainstream"? AMD seems to think so, Taking Desktop Virtualization Mainstream, but also a lot of it will depend on a number of factors.

My main thoughts on this are:

To truly succeed VDI needs to be able to deliver a *High Fidelity* User experience equal to or better than what users have today – if what you are designing is unable to provide this then you should stop and re-evaluate now

If you can build a system that is able to provide this then users will want (no, Demand!) that they have it ASAP – you will know that you have succeeded when demand outstrips supply

To provide this *High Fidelity* User experience I’d suggest focusing on two key areas that may/or may not apply depending on your particular focus and what is considered in or out of scope for your project?

• Graphics
  
  • Bottom line – Graphics performance in this design CANNOT be measured, it has no metrics, or Best Practices. One persons "that’s fine" is another persons "there is absolutely no way I’ll put up with that", etc. This will always be a completely subjective assessment based on whoever is rendering the judgement.
  • You may think that you don’t need to focus too much on Graphics because "there isn’t much need or requirement for Video from the business" but I can almost bet that you would be wrong – if you are operating on this assumption be sure that you double-check with Stakeholders and get their agreement in writing?
  • So much content on the Internet is done in Flash today, it’s not just watching a CEO or Analyst briefing via YouTube, a lot of Web Based Training modules use the same or similar technologies, so even if you currently block YouTube and Facebook today it’s still quite likely that you need to factor this in to your design
  • Is RDP good enough? Check this assumption by giving targeted business users a Thin Client and removing their desktop to the lab and forcing them to access via the Thin Client – this is a simple but effective test that validates whether they truly need/demand High Fidelity, or will OK Fidelity do?
  • Do you need Citrix HDX? PCoIP? RGS? While I’m making the point about Remote Protocols – don’t forget to gather details of connecting accessories? Do you need to support serial or parallel?
• HDD or IOPS
  
  • Make sure the VM performs as well as possible while measuring the I/O on the VM itself? Check the disk queue, and ensure that it’s not the disk performance that’s holding this back – and make sure you have enough throughput to allow for Login’s etc.

So where does that leave us?
In the Graphics space there is already a number of solutions for VDI that have been out for some time (Citrix’s HDX) or have recently been released (Teradici’s software version of PCoIP). In addition to that there are other approaches if you need to support High Fidelity Users at the top end with HDX-3D taking advantage of Nvidias GPU’s that almost bring TeraFLOP performance to the Desktop.

A good introduction to CUDA – Just how powerful can GPU’s be? Back in mid-2008 the GT200 was able to deliver 1 TeraFLOP performance, the G80 supports 768 Threads per Core – on 128 Cores… Want a Personal Supercomputer? What would you use it for?

So I suspect that we are not far away from seeing vGPU’s being available to VM’s that will be able to deliver the performance on demand – the main thing is that you make sure you are either using a Remote Protocol stack that can provide this functionality – OR make sure you are using a Broker that supports a shift to one?

At the HDD level I’d suspect that as SSD prices come down and SSD longevity increases, along with improved methods of utilising this in some kind of shared caching mechanism in a VDI deployment we may well see some serious advances that enable VDI to overcome this IOPS roadblock?

With the monotonous regularity of Moore’s Law driving CPU performance up it should be possible to provide way more CPU power to users than they really need to enable this – but again – it’s quite possible that the Disk I/O that has the potential to spoil this party?

Please feel free to correct any of my ramblings?

written by dcaddick

Japan is struggling after more than a decade to get their interest rate above 2%

Japan GDP Could Force Changes

Economy Minister Says Data May Result in New Stimulus Plan

A government survey released Tuesday showed analysts expect Japan’s economy to have contracted at a 10.59% annualized pace in quarter ended Dec. 31. A month ago, the 38 economists had expected a 5.14% contraction.

The economists also see GDP as likely to continue falling at least until the June-September quarter. Furthermore, due to expected weaker domestic demand, consumer prices are forecast to fall for all of the next two years, the survey showed.

The US is going to be in a state of recession for most of this year and possibly in to 2010 before any recovery is likely?

Alt-A loans: New fear for middle-class subprime

Gideon Spanier, Evening Standard
9 February 2009, 10:27am

We can’t say we haven’t been warned. The doom-mongers reckon America’s property market is on the verge of a new crisis as big as the subprime disaster that began in 2007. The fear is that borrowers with better credit histories, who took out Alt-A mortgages, are defaulting on a similar scale.

Global exposure to American Alt-A (it stands for Alternative-A) is estimated at $600bn – the same as subprime. Bearish observers think losses could hit $150bn. ‘the performance of Alt-A is clearly deteriorating rapidly, and we believe that 2009 will see such mortgages worsen further,’ says David Watts, an analyst at CreditSights in London.

……….

According to CreditSights, 9.2% of Alt-A mortgages from 2005 had been repossessed or were in foreclosure by December 2008. For 2006 mortgages, repossessions leapt to 17.1% by the end of 2008. The 2007 vintage is shaping up to be even worse, with 13.6% having already been repossessed.

Moody’s reckons total losses from the 2006 Alt-A vintage could peak at 20%, and the 2007 vintage may average 24%. Some have ‘performed similarly to subprime’. Historically, Alt-A losses had been just 1%.

Dozens of banks are affected because they bought parcels of Alt-A mortgages that were sold as securities and traded around the world. Britain’s Lloyds Banking holds more than £7bn worth, Barclays has over £3bn and RBS about £1.5bn. the picture is bleak.

Falling US house prices mean negative equity and fewer cheap mortgage deals. creditSights says an alarming 60% of Alt-A borrowers from the 2006 vintage are in negative equity. no wonder there is much talk about the growing trend for ‘ walkaways’ – that is people who are giving up repaying a loan because it is worth more than the value of their home.

UK is now getting more of a cold shower after RBS’s share price has fallen through the floor, and it’s starting to look possible that more than a few banks will be nationalized?

HBOS Posed Threat to Financial System, Ex-Compliance Chief Says
Bloomberg – 8 hours ago
The Treasury fully nationalized Northern Rock Plc and Bradford & Bingley Plc. RBS plans to cut as many as 2300 UK jobs, about 2 percent of the bank’s …

……..

BBC News

RBS Retreat From Global Banking Reveals Financial Protectionism Bloomberg – 12 hours ago Nationalized banks are problematic for international markets because the interests of governments and global capital don’t easily align, said Michael Marks, …

…….

British Bankers Apologize For Events That Led To Nationalization … AHN

Australia would appear to have weathered the storm reasonably well so far and the Base Rate is still at 4.25% with some wiggle room left? However I’m of the opinion that we have been somewhat sheltered by our relatively recent "Resource Boom" and the exports to China – and it looks like this is all about to end soon?

As far as China goes it is very disturbing to see some recent reports of corruption on a possibly systematic scale that tend to indicate that they have also been somewhat caught up in the Hype and have overextended themselves with too much emphasis on building Infrastructure for the sake of it?

China’s export down 17.5% in January China Daily, China China faces the worst international economic environment since the Second World War, with lingering high pressure on its exports, said Fan Jianping, …

…….

February 11, 2009

China’s economy worse than government figures suggest, experts say

Plunging exports. Factory closures. More than 20 million people thrown out of work. Official data showing that China’s economy is cooling but still growing strongly obscure what economists say is a sharp recent decline that has inflicted obvious pain.

What is happening matters far beyond China. Whether the third-largest economy is stalling or still growing could affect how quickly the world recovers. A stagnant China would mean less demand for industrial materials and consumer goods from the United States and others.

The difference lies in the way growth is measured. Beijing uses a method that compares growth in one quarter with a full year earlier and says its economy expanded by a healthy 6.8 percent in the final quarter of 2008.

But experts say that compared to the previous three months — the system used by most other major countries — China’s growth fell to as low as one per cent or possibly zero.

“The recent weakness is much worse than the long-term trend,” said JP Morgan economist Frank F.X. Gong. Merrill Lynch economist Ting Lu said fourth-quarter growth from the previous three months was “close to zero.”

…………

Related readings:
Export of high energy-consuming products down 16.2% in 2008
January coal exports down 36.3%
Steel exports drop 5.5% in 2008
Jan exports shed record 44% for 5th monthly loss

If and/or when their growth forecasts get pegged back from 6% to 2% or lower (maybe even negative?) then I think we might be looking like we might have hit bottom? But it’ll only take a natural disaster or something similar to add some more serious drops to the market?

I don’t want to be pessimistic, far from it, but I do think we need to be realistic? – as it is I don’t think we have seen the bottom yet!

The very reality is that while it looks like the world has suddenly woken up with a massive Credit Hangover, and the real antidote is deleveraging with the attendant risks of slower growth, recession, etc. all the Govt’s around the world seem to be hell bent on printing more bank notes and approving stimulus packages? Surely this isn’t the way to go? This leaves the new brave world (and the interconnected global economy) severely at risk of either a prolonged recession (or depression?) or perhaps even inflation further down the track?

written by dcaddick

So how is this, these guys use a system that I guess effectively makes it impossible(?) to copy their text from the web page – but in doing this you can’t even read the article……

Caveat:
I am now using Windows 7 Beta on my day-to-day Laptop and as such I am now running IE8, so that might cause it? But I have also used Chrome and this can’t display it either.

Looking at the URL it appears that they somehow parse the content through some server based viewer at their end?
http://www.misaustralia.com/viewer.aspx?EDP://20081201000030572227§ion=home&xmlSource=/magazine/feed.xml&title=A+house+of+cards

UPDATE:
Compatibility View in IE8 does correct this….

Click on the image to go to their web page if you’d like?

written by dcaddick

So I have been very quiet of late and there really is no excuse, I guess I just needed a bit of a break?

But as we look around the Global Markets this morning I can barely believe the amount of the drop on Wall St. overnight – the Dow Jones being down some 7+% doesn’t even do it justice – looking at how the individual sectors have fared makes it look even worse?

Energy and Financial’s are both down close to 9%

Scary stuff, and from the sounds of there’s very little end in sight and we could be riding this for some time yet?

At least here in Australia (if we believe our Govt.?) we are well positioned with very little debt and current accounts that are in surplus, along with a current base rate of 6.0% there is at least some room to manoeuvre, where as in the US now down to 1.5% it is beginning to look like there is no room left?

written by dcaddick

Chris Anderson from Wired first postulated the “Long Tail” phenomenon back in October 2004 and it was updated again in Wired on 2006 Tiny slice, Big Market (the concept of a MegaNiche?)

Wiki on Long Tail:

The phrase The Long Tail (as a proper noun with capitalized letters) was first coined by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article ^[1] to describe the niche strategy of certain business such as Amazon.com or Netflix. The distribution and inventory costs of those business allow them to realize significant profit out of selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers, instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The group of persons that buy the hard-to-find or "non-hit" items is the customer demographic called the Long Tail.

Given a large enough availability of choice and a large population of customers, and negligible stocking and distribution costs, the selection and buying pattern of the population results in a power law distribution curve, or Pareto distribution, instead of the expected normal distribution curve. This suggests that a market with a high freedom of choice will create a certain degree of inequality by favoring the upper 20% of the items ("hits" or "head") against the other 80% ("non-hits" or "long tail"). ^[2]

My take on a Long Tail
In essence one of the easiest analogies is the difference between a Music Store and an iTunes. A physical store has a finite limit on the amount of stock it can display on it’s shelves, so as a consequence of this limit it needs to stock and display the most popular music to ensure a decent turnover and revenue – whereas with an on-line store with little restriction on it’s stock (add more HDD’s?) and a very cheap and scalable distribution system (the internet) that the customer actually pays for can not only stock a huge amount of titles but it also needs to only hold one of each.

His latest missive was about the way everything on the Web is free…  or getting there?

Everything get’s cheaper in digital format?
Essentially this distills down to the trend that once anything gravitates from physical to silicon/software it appears that there is an almost unstoppable force that will place the price of that commodity under a constant downward pressure due to what might be described as the “Economics of IT” and the way the cost accelerates downward under the sheer weight of scalability, it almost seems to be the nature of Technology?

Appendix at the bottom for example of how cheap hardware is getting

This can also be demonstrated very clearly with the news of Google’s new App Engine being released today? Google Jumps Head First Into Web Services With Google App Engine  – It’s free for the first 10,000 developers who get in the door, and even though there are restrictions on its capabilities (at the moment) I think it’s all quite reasonable to expect that this will build from here and still be listed as Beta in a couple of years when it’s still free and got millions of users?

In an aside as to how Google manages to provide it’s service for free, I was recently chatting to a colleague, and he told me that Google don’t buy Servers or even Desktops – they just buy the motherboards and hang them in the racks – the maintenance cycle simply consists of a tech going around the Data Centre and replacing the failed systems once a week. Apparently they are looking at moving to newer DC supplied M/B’s so that it’s safer, but other than that it just keeps ticking. (Please let me know if this is correct? I’d consider this info to be anecdotal and not confirmed)

So from my perspective the one shining ray of light that shouts about being free is Music via MP3.

On the one hand, now that it has been absorbed in to Silicon (i.e. Digitized) the price is in an ever downwards spiral, and yet on the other hand it perfectly validates Chris’s Long Tail theory that people can still make money in fulfilling a niche demand?

This is also demonstrated somewhat by the more popular artists who have branched out beyond just providing the musical content and now diversified into clothes, designer accessories, perfumes, etc.

Video
The main issue looming on the horizon here is what is going to happen to the Motion Picture Industry (isn’t that a quaint way of phrasing it?) if they don’t pull their collective finger out? Just in case they haven’t been paying attention during the last decade we have moved from traditional TV (I’m not counting VCR’s) to Tivo for the US (1999) and Sky+ for the UK (2001) so that for most people who do enjoy TV they have had it on demand for some time now.

In some ways TV and Video have stagnated in development since the launch of these devices, I’m sure there will be folks carrying on about BluRay etc. but once the commodity has been digitized it’s game over – from that point on the ONLY medium that we all want to use is whatever we have to hand – iPod, PSP, Portable HDD, SD Card, iPhone, Laptop, etc. Who cares if you can or can’t burn it on to a plastic disk? What I’m trying to point out here is that once the product or service has been turned in to a string or stream of bits then the Studio has effectively given up control, and the sooner that they can understand this from the recent history of the Music Business the better off they will be.

There are other ways to make money from content, and clearly the biggest one going at the moment is advertising where we would appear to be in the midst of a titanic fundamental shift where advertising that was normally placed with traditional media is now moving steadfastly in the direction of the Wired World, be it YouTube, whatever. I seriously think the Studios have had a coffee or two and are up to speed on this, but at the moment they don’t see a way out and so they are watching the dwindling revenues and hoping for a miracle?

TV Shows and Movies
So what’s going to happen to Video? If we take it that we are now entering an age where Video is something that by default is now stored, transmitted and received in digital format it becomes pretty simple to hit the "Forward 30 secs" button and pass the Advertising completely – and this is what is scaring the pants of the Studio and TV execs.

After all this is the fundamental difference between Movies/PayTV and Free to air TV (FTA), the advertising segments on FTA broadcasts are what pays for the whole model, now if people are recording the TV series, episodes etc and retransmitting via bittorrent (with or without stripping the ads) to other folks then this is effectively curtailing the Broadcasters revenue stream?

My take on this (please feel free to comment if you disagree?) is that the Movie and TV players have always kept a keen eye on trying to make as much money out of the content as is possible, and rightly so in a free market economy, and this has been possible while the distribution system was tightly controlled by them. So Movies typically play to large cinema complex’s first (that presumably pay a premium to premier?), then a wider number of cinema and distribution houses, then DVD release, then DVD Rentals, TV Premiere’s and then finally TV reruns? And in this way they try to maximize the return on the original investment of making the content in the first place.

Now unfortunately this cosy state of affairs that was all very nice for the content creators but what they didn’t quite anticipate was that they had effectively "let the genie out of the bottle" when they decided to go along with changing over from VHS tapes to DVD’s, once this was agreed to and they had conceded to move from Analogue to Digital then this is the moment they lost control of the content. By 2000 the DeCCS code for the DVD was broken, the AACS for HD content was broken in early 2007, and since then the only real impediments to holding back the masses from going ahead and sharing this wildly across P2P sites has been the size of the files and the corresponding bandwidth as well as the threats of lawsuits from the Studios and TV Stations.

So once we started to get to around 2005/2006 and bandwidth was becoming a bit faster, XViD and DiVX codecs were becoming commonplace in consumer DVD players, DVD Recorders were getting cheaper and before you know it entire TV shows and full episodes were appearing on the internet within hours of them being aired in the US – now the Exec’s were really starting to get worried…

Advertising
So what are they going to do? I would say that the distribution system that we now take for granted for Audio (MP3 files) and Video (AVI files) via the internet is so efficient and personal that it is here to stay unless something better comes along – what they need to do do is stop thinking of how they can stop it, it’s like King Canute trying to stop the tide, it is nigh on impossible. I would think they are better off trying to follow the lead of what most people are turning their hands to on the Web and embrace the concept that once it’s turned digital and it’s in the silicon it’s as cheap as can be – but you get it with advertising!

The old model of advertising in video was to stop what the customer is watching and force them to watch something that you want to advertise but only for a short time and then go back to the original material that the customer wanted. Typically people would tend to ignore this, so advertisers manage to pack more sound effects in to "pump" the volume without the volume changing – we just muted the set. With modern technology it’s getting easier to bypass the advertising all together, and if you are watching recorded shows on a DVR you can just skip 3 minutes in a heart beat.

So it would appear to me that the old method of TV advertising is almost at it’s use by date anyway? I think what we will be seeing soon is ads that appear along the edge of the screen (left, right, top or bottom depending on the action?) during the actual program and these will be akin to the banner ads were are used to seeing on web pages.

One example of what this might look like is here: Overlay.tv Adds Links and Easter Eggs to Music Videos
The key to this will be getting ALL the TV signals being broadcast in digital otherwise it wouldn’t work, so there is still a window of opportunity on a number of fronts, so in the meantime you’ll have to keep trolling the bittorrent sites for the episodes of the show you *were* watching before the local station decided to move that show to a 3am time slot on Monday morning?

Appendix: Examples of Hardware costs from days gone by….

The Macintosh II, introduced in 1987 for US$5,500
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/total-share.ars/6

Try this for size, anyone with an iPhone has more power at their disposal than this server from 10 years ago:
The Hewlett-Packard NetServer E50 is a case in point. The unit I tested (street price: $2589) had a 333-MHz Pentium II CPU, 64MB of RAM, and a 4GB Wide Ultra SCSI hard drive; the 4GB SCSI tape backup is a nice enhancement. Like many bargain-basement desktop PCs, the E50 comes without a monitor. More important, it lacks an operating system:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,3992-page,3-c,servers/article.html
And….  that’s without a display or an O/S? now you can get the equivalent from AT&T…. 

written by dcaddick

So this is an interesting development where the technique of creating a Mashup of different information sources helps create a stark and frightening visual perspective of just how deep this Credit Crisis has hit?

As you can see in the images below it’s almost scary how it shows that foreclosures are starting to bite at almost every level?   

Foreclosures Shown On Scary, Encroaching Heat Maps

Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch

18 comments »

If you want to see in stark colors exactly how the mortgage credit crisis is spreading across the country, go to real estate search site HotPads and look at the foreclosure heat maps in your area. These are map mashups that take foreclosure data from RealtyTrac and overlay them on a color-coded map. Red indicates a high rate of property foreclosures per capita, and blue indicates a low level. Since foreclosures are now hitting record rates, there is a lot of red on these maps. In Silicon Valley, for instance, only a few pockets like Palo Alto and Sunnyvale remain in the blue.
A view of New York City shows the foreclosures beginning to close in on Manhattan from the outer boroughs.

In addition to the 500,000 foreclosures you can find on HotPads, the site also lists 1.2 million homes for sale and 130,000 active rentals (which co-founder Douglas Pope claims is the second-largest rental listings after Craigslist). These are culled from real estate broker sites and submitted directly by property owners.

Foreclosures Shown On Scary, Encroaching Heat Maps

written by dcaddick

Just the US? I’d say this was across the board globally, there is a general decline in Newspaper and Magazine advertising that is heading to on-line substitutes, and those that don’t get their head around this will be left as dinosaurs?  

Decline Of US Newspapers Accelerating

Duncan Riley

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Figures released by the Newspaper Association of America show that the decline of newspapers is more rapid than previously thought, with total print advertising revenue in 2007 plunging 9.4% to $42 billion compared to 2006, the biggest drop in revenue since 1950, the year they started tracking annual revenue.

Online provides some solace for the dead-tree business, with internet ad revenue growing 18.8% to $3.2 billion compared to 2006, but a rate significantly lower than the 31.4% growth the year before, and not even close to replacing the losses from print. Online revenue now represents 7.5% of total newspaper ad revenues.

Newspapers do have a future, but as I wrote in November, we are yet to see a major consolidation of print in the United States. Declining revenues will ultimately force consolidation across print media in the United States, and many of those that fail to embrace change will be on borrowed time.

Decline Of US Newspapers Accelerating

written by dcaddick

So the Feds have staved off the "Running of the Bulls Bears"?

Well it would appear that they have for today at least.

Until of course everyone wakes up tomorrow and recovers from the hangover and notices that they are only just back where they started? Today’s *massive* rally has simply clawed back the gains from last Wed. and I can’t help thinking that it’s not a good idea to add more and easier access to money when we are seeing a worldwide credit squeeze? Surely this is like pouring petrol on an already lit fire? Is this some neat way to make it burn bigger and brighter so that it consumes things faster?

So what are the Feds going to do next week or month when they see a drop of 6 – 800 points over a week? add another couple of hundred billion to the pile?

If anyone has a bright suggestions of what to do with Cash (apart from give it away) please drop me a line – but it’s getting scary out there.

U.S. Stocks Advance Most in Five Years on Fed’s Liquidity Plans

By Eric Martin

March 11 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks rallied the most in five years after the Federal Reserve said it will pump $200 billion into the financial system to shore up banks battered by mortgage- related losses.

Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. and Fannie Mae led the Standard & Poor’s 500 Financials Index to its biggest gain in eight years on expectations the Fed’s move will spur lending. Washington Mutual Inc. climbed the most since 2000 on speculation the largest savings and loan will get a cash infusion from an outside investor. All 10 industry groups in the S&P 500 rose except for health-care companies, which fell after WellPoint Inc. cut its earnings forecast.

The S&P 500 added 47.28 points, or 3.7 percent, to 1,320.65, climbing the most since October 2002 and trimming its decline for the year to 10 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 416.66, or 3.6 percent, to 12,156.81. The Nasdaq Composite Index increased 86.42, or 4 percent, to 2,255.76. Almost 11 stocks gained for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange.

“It’s like they’re putting jumper cables onto a battery to kick-start the credit market,” said Nick Raich, who helps manage $34 billion at National City Private Client Group in Cleveland. “They’re doing their best to try to restore confidence.”

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide

written by dcaddick

So it looks like the gloss is coming off the VMware IPO? now that we are back down to the $70 mark I wonder how many people will stop and remember that this was an IPO of only $29?

Let’s be honest here, regardless of the hype surrounding the stock and the IPO, most companies and advisors do not normally release a stock for IPO and price it at 30% or 50% of value? It was priced at $29 for a reason and now we are starting to come back to that.

If anything I feel sorry for those that are not intimately familiar with IT and VMware and bought in above $100 – but in all fairness we are in turbulent times and with the credit squeeze from the sub-prime issue hanging over this and this has clearly exasperated the issue.

Market Scan
Storm Clouds Ahead For VMware

When VMware unveiled the second generation of its virtualization software two weeks ago, the company seemed to be building on the foundation investors have gone wild for since its initial public offering in August. But now, with more competitors cropping up that are adding their own virtualization software to their products, the question is whether VMware shares can continue to soar.

The answer on Monday seemed to be “no,” as the stock tumbled 9.4%, or $7.40, to $71.44 at the close. To be fair most business technology companies fell Monday, but none took a beating quite like VMware (nyse: VMW – news - people ). International Business Machines (nyse: IBM – news - people ) fell 2.0%, or $2.08, to $101.97; Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT – news - people ) slid 3.3%, or $1.14, to $32.97; and Oracle (nasdaq: ORCL – news - people ) tumbled 3.0%, or 61 cents, to $19.70. One of the few bright spots in the sector was Sun Microsystems (nasdaq: JAVA – news - people ), whose shares jumped 1.4%, or 27 cents, to $19.43.

VMware’s "virtualization" software lets a single computer function like multiple machines, allowing companies to spend less on equipment and energy in their data centers. Right now VMware is the only company which concentrates solely on server virtualization, whereas its rivals bundle virtualization software with their products.

When it first had its IPO, VMware had near-exclusive claim on the idea of virtualization, but once its competitors caught on, investors realized the firm was going to be just one player in the larger virtualization market. Now virtualization software is being duplicated for free by Xen hypervisor and being added as a feature of products sold by Citrix and Oracle.

Canaccord Adams analyst Mark Kelleher said that the risk for VMware is that Microsoft decides to add virtualization as a feature for free in its products. “What you’ve seen is just some realization of where VMware fits in the world,” Kelleher said. “There’s a lot of competition coming into the market right now and I think some of that competition put a little more reality around VMware.”

….

Chowdhry says VMware is on borrowed time for one or two more quarters. “Then it will probably tank,” he said.

Storm Clouds Ahead For VMware – Forbes.com

written by dcaddick