ubitechnology.com

“(The security breach) does not affect communications where all parties are using standard Skype software,” he said. “Skype-to-Skype communications are, and always have been, completely secure and private.”

“It was our understanding that it was not TOM’s protocol to upload and store chat messages with certain keywords,” he writes in the blog. “And we are now inquiring with TOM to find out why the protocol changed.”

Earlier this week, Canadian researchers at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto published a report in which they said that “TOM-Skype was censoring and logging text chats that contain specific, sensitive keywords and may be engaged in more targeted surveillance.”

But he tried to reassure Skype users that Skype’s computer-to-computer voice calls are completely secure.

In a blog published Thursday, Josh Silverman, Skype’s president, explained he did not realize that TOM-Skype, Skype’s partner in China, was logging and storing users’ instant messages that were deemed offensive by the Chinese government.

Silverman pointed out in his blog that TOM, like all other ISPs in China, is required by the Chinese government to monitor all communication. And he said it is “common knowledge that censorship does exist in China.” Keywords that triggered action included words related to Taiwanese independence, the banned religious group Falun Gong, and political opposition to the Chinese Communist Party.

Skype’s president said that the company was largely unaware of a major security breach affecting Skype users in China.

The report also said the service was logging and capturing millions of records that include personal information and contact details for any text chat and voice calls placed to TOM-Skype users, including calls from Skype users. In addition, TOM was storing this information in a way that was inadequate in protecting the privacy of TOM-Skype users, the report said.

Silverman said that once Skype became aware of the problem it contacted executives at TOM, and the security issue regarding stored personal information has been resolved. But he also noted the company’s concern that TOM has been storing this information.

He said the company knew that instant-messaging chats were monitored by the government, as all communications in China are. And he explained that Skype disclosed this to users in 2006, explaining that a text filter was being used to block certain words in chat messages. But he added that his understanding was that messages deemed unsuitable were “simply discarded and not displayed or transmitted anywhere.”

“We were very concerned to learn about both issues and after we urgently addressed this situation with TOM, they fixed the security breach,” he said. “In addition, we are currently addressing the wider issue of the uploading and storage of certain messages with TOM.”

Lenovo Group reported a 10.5 percent increase in its fiscal first quarter revenues, despite a weakening global economy.

Lenovo posted earnings of $1.25 a share for the quarter, up from 78 cents the previous year.

Sales in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region, for example, increased by 26 percent, while Asia Pacific shipments grew 11 percent.

The computer maker reported revenues climbed to $4.2 billion in the quarter ending June 30, up from $3.8 billion a year ago. Shipments of PCs climbed 14.6 percent for the quarter.

The Americas, however, continued to be affected by a weak economic environment, the company stated.

“Despite a softening global economy, we delivered solid gains in worldwide sales,” Yang Yuanqing, Lenovo chairman, said in a statement.

When do reorganizations make sense and when are they frivolous and disruptive? How can they be executed to minimize productivity disruption and worker frustration? Here’s an insider’s perspective on organizational change in two parts. First we deal with “how,” then we deal with “when” and “why.”

When and why does it make sense to reorganize?

Corporate or product strategy. A material change in product strategy usually triggers a reorganization. Some examples include adding or consolidating distinct product lines, or addressing entirely new geographic markets, market segments, or sales channels.

More often than not, restructuring is triggered by the need to lower operating expenses to achieve profitability, usually because the company’s business no longer supports a legacy operating model. This type of restructuring usually takes the form of centralizing, shutting down, or spinning off various operating functions, product lines, or administrative functions.

A change in corporate objectives or strategies typically results in a reorganization to better align the company to achieve a new or different set of metrics.

For employees: Under the right conditions, reorganizations are necessary and critical to any company’s continued growth and success. That said, if your company suffers from frivolous and disruptive reorg-du-jour, you might consider a change of venue.

1. Reorganize as infrequently as possible and make it count when you do (surprisingly, many executives just don’t get this)
2. Develop a complete reorganization plan and timeline; execute it crisply and in a timely manner
3. Give appropriate level executives some advance notice and train them in what to communicate to their people (see 6 below) at the appropriate time
4. Timing is everything–too little notice to key managers and they’ll feel cut out of the loop, too much notice and news will leak into the organization
5. In the case of public companies, material information must be communicated to all shareholders simultaneously, so the staging of an external release followed by internal communication must occur as rapidly as possible to minimize disruption
6. Have a complete communication plan for managers and employees, including the strategic or operating reason for the move and the new organizational structure
7. The goal is to have all employee questions adequately answered–in person–by appropriate levels of management at the time of the announcement

Restructuring. Reorganizations driven by the need to improve operating results or efficiencies are generally called restructuring.

How to reorganize effectively

Not to pick on Yahoo, but the frequency, if not the execution, of its notorious reorgs has almost certainly contributed to its talent exodus and loss of productivity at a time when it can scarcely afford it.

Conversely, companies sometimes restructure due to significant growth or expansion. This can take the form of decentralizing, creating, or acquiring various product lines, operating functions, or administrative functions.

One of the most evident signs of dysfunctional executive management is reorg-du-jour (reorganization of the day, for those who didn’t take French in high school). Nothing is more disruptive or counterproductive to the effectiveness of an organization than frequent reorganizations.

Competitive landscape. The competitive landscape for technology companies is constantly changing at a rapid pace. Companies must periodically reassess their product-line’s value proposition and competitive positioning to meet this challenge. These reassessments can certainly result in organizational change, although these should be more incremental and less drastic than the examples discussed above.

For executives: To be effective, reorganizations must be undertaken with the utmost consideration and respect for managers and employees. Timing is everything, planning is critical, and the devil’s in the details.

That said, reorganizations go hand-in-hand with changes in corporate and product objectives and strategy that are often implemented to meet an ever-changing competitive landscape. To that extent, they can be critical to business success, if done correctly.

Many technology industry executives are surprisingly inept when it comes to planning and executing reorganizations effectively.

Mergers and acquisitions. M&A typically results in restructuring. The more “equal” the merging companies, the greater the impact, nominally to take advantage of operating synergies or efficiencies. That’s just a fact of life. On the flip side, the dozen or more acquisitions a big company like Cisco Systems makes on an annual basis have virtually no effect on the rest of the organization. Imagine the effect of a tiny stream dumping into an ocean. Nada.

Last word

The Tactical Garbage to Energy Refinery (TGER, pronounced “tiger”), was co-developed with Purdue University and deployed in May at Victory Base camp in Baghdad, where it will be tested until August.

The U.S. Army is testing two prototype generators in Iraq that run on garbage, rather than diesel fuel.

If the TGER units work well in the harsh Baghdad conditions, he envisions the generator will be deployed in smaller camps, where the higher percentage of food waste can improve efficiency.

A number of companies are also trying to convert municipal solid waste into ethanol using a range of processes.

Handling garbage is a logistical challenge, too, because the Army hires contractors who need to be followed.

“Ultimately, what we would like to do is have a clean-sheet design so that you could automate it more. So you literally put trash in one end and electricity comes out the other,” Valdes said.

People put trash into a chute and then the wet waste–like food slop–is separated from the rest. The cardboard, plastic, and other dry trash are crushed and pelletized.

Trash, as it turns out, is an attractive feedstock. There are several commercial companies developing technologies that use wastes as fuel.

The purpose of the unit is to cut down on the amount of diesel fuel used and to cut down on the amount of garbage that camps generate, which are both security risks.

Compared to an incinerator, TGER is far more efficient at converting garbage to usable energy, said Valdes, who also said it runs at 90 percent efficiency. And it significantly cuts down on the amount of garbage that needs to be trucked around.

(Credit:
U.S. Army)

“Those convoys that carry fuel are also known as targets,” said James Valdes, scientific adviser for biotechnology at the U.S. Army Research, Development & Engineering Command. “Officers say ‘We don’t calculate the cost of fuel in dollars, we calculate it in blood.’”

That ethanol is blended in with the synthetic gas, which boosts the generator’s output to 55 kilowatts.

Those pellets are then put into a gasifier, which heats them until they turn into synthetic gas–fuel for the generator.

Developers found that the relatively low-grade fuel from the trash over-heated the generators and maxed output at about 40 kilowatts.

TGER uses a variety of technologies to fuel a standard 60-kilowatt electrical generator.

Starting up the contraption takes 6 hours and still requires 5 percent of the diesel the generator usually uses, or about 1 gallon per hour.

So it created a system to convert the sugar-rich wet wastes (apparently, U.S. soldiers drink a good amount of Kool-Aid) into a form of ethanol. The wet waste is treated with enzymes and then fermented into hydrous ethanol–a mix of 85 percent pure ethanol and water, Valdes explained.

Right now, the Army’s trash goes up in smoke by burning it. The problem with incinerators, though, is that they require a lot of energy to run and many people to operate it.

Valdes said the portable generator could also be used in disaster-relief situations where there is a lot of trash and the need for generators. The U.S. Navy has shown interest in the unit as well.

Saving on fuel isn’t a question of conservation for the military. It’s about saving lives.

A waste-to-energy generator being tested by the U.S. military in Iraq.

Cellulosic ethanol companies convert agricultural or forestry residues into ethanol, while portable generators use similar feedstock, such as wood chips, to make electricity.

(Credit: Daniel Dura)

[via RefreshingApps]

If you’re keen on moderating blog comments in near real time and would prefer to do so without a browser window open, you should check out Moderator. It’s a hybrid tool that uses both a WordPress plug-in and an Adobe AIR desktop application to keep you up to speed with the latest user chatter on your blog.

The tool, which was released earlier this week, is just an early version. Planned features for future releases include the option to reply right from the application, manage comments on multiple blogs, and get near real-time notifications when new comments come in.

Once installed, you simply leave it running and it will update itself throughout the day, letting you approve or deny comments to go live. Because it sits on your desktop you can keep your blog comments lean and clean without ever having to visit the moderation page on your WordPress install, although creator Daniel Dura says you might run into some slowdown if you’ve got more than a few hundred comments awaiting moderation.

(Credit:
Duke University)

As I wrote Saturday, Yang and his No. 2, Sue Decker, are on a short leash, and will very soon have to explain and show how they are going create shareholder value above what a Microsoft marriage would have delivered. Yang and Decker might be on the right track with the changes underway, but they are now working in a negatively charged environment, with pundits and shareholders lobbing bombs into Yahoo’s board room.

Joe Nocera gives Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang a very public drubbing in his New York Times column, accusing him of shirking his fiduciary responsibilities to shareholders.

Speculation is starting about who might be the next CEO of the company if the founder is bounced. It will be someone from the outside who has loads of experience and credibility in running an large media and technology company. And many of the current board of directors will have gone on to other things.

A takeover by Microsoft was your last, best hope of rewarding your long-suffering shareholders. Now that opportunity is gone. It says here Mr. Icahn is not going to go as gently into the night as Mr. Ballmer did — and if I were a betting man, I would be taking odds that your days as Yahoo’s C.E.O. are numbered.

Yahoo board Chairman Roy Bostock

Yahoo is not on its last legs or unable to articulate a business plan. It’s a profitable company with huge assets, but it’s hard to look great compared with Google. The messaging has gotten out of Yahoo’s control, which has put Yang and company in a perpetual defensive mode.

While Yang is taking the brunt of the criticism, Yahoo’s board of directors, led by executive Chairman Roy Bostock, pulled the strings that led to Yahoo’s miscalculation in handling Microsoft’s bid to acquire the company. It was just about the money. Forget about Yang’s bleeding purple, founder’s desire to stay independent and antipathy toward Microsoft. For $37 per share Yahoo’s board, or less, was willing to sell out. Microsoft’s desire for a union faded as Yahoo’s board played hard to get, and eventually Gates and Ballmer soured on the whole deal.

It’ll be better for everyone to have someone in that role who understands who he’s supposed to be working for. Wouldn’t you agree?

Corporate raider Carl Icahn is hoping to bounce the board in the upcoming proxy battle at the annual shareholder meeting on August 1, but that’s not likely to bring Microsoft back to the negotiating table.

Nocera, who writes about financial issues for the paper, concluded:

Starting Thursday, searching the Web with a Nokia series 60 phone will be a little faster.

The convenience of the home screen search bar could also make this OneSearch widget the most effective of Yahoo’s latest experiments in pushing its search platform, including last April’s launch of OneSearch 2.0, a version that accepts voice search.

Yahoo’s OneSearch shortcut will work immediately on all Nokia series 60 phones, including N70, N95, N73, and E65 models, with support for other platforms reportedly coming soon.

Yahoo’s mobile team has released a free shortcut for OneSearch, Yahoo’s search engine, that will live on your phone’s home screen. The OneSearch widget promises to cut your labor two ways; first, by giving you a place to begin a Web search as soon as you turn on the phone and second, by suggesting search terms as soon as you start typing.

The home screen search widget has already been in effect on other mobile platforms, but this add-on software gives it greater prominence than it might otherwise receive.

(Credit:
Yahoo Inc.)

Updated on 8/21/08 at 3:54 pm to correct information about the models supported.

Yahoo has its stalwart supporters, but this application’s degree of success will depend on just how many Google search-loyalists end up suspending that preference in order to save time with Yahoo’s search bar.

Today, for kicks, I tried to draw a map of all the places I write content, all the places it is displayed, and all the intermediate services that re-post my content in places other than where I originally write it. It’s a spaghetti of interlinked services, and it’s becoming unmanageable. I think it’s just dumb luck that I haven’t created an infinite loop of republishing so far. Adding one more service could push things over the edge.

Although my profession is creating content and publishing it, my problem is hardly unique. I post a few times a day on Webware and Twitter, and I contribute to some other blogs and podcasts, and once in awhile I update Delicious and Flickr. But compared with some people in non-publishing jobs my output is modest. There are people active on multiple personal content services like Facebook, Digg, Vox, Blogger, and Youtube that produce more content than I do, and they’re also using republishing services to make sure that all their friends, on all their networks, see all their content.

The challenge is keeping track of all the connections between services. It’s a tangle, as I said: I have Friendfeed republishing my Twitter posts. Ping.fm, which I often use to post to Twitter (and thus, to Friendfeed), could just as easily publish to Friendfeed directly. I just happened to set up the Friendfeed-Twitter link before I started using Ping.fm. I have Ping.fm updating several other nanoblog feeds, like Jaiku, Pownce, and Plurk. Meanwhile, my Webware article feed (just my stories) is read into Friendfeed and directly by Jaiku. I do not feed Webware into Twitter directly; I use a republisher called Twitterfeed. I am also using Twitterfeed to republish my ProPRTips blog into Twitter, which is strategic, since I get more readers for that blog’s content on Twitter than the blog gets itself.

Or should I drop it all and just write e-mail newsletters instead?

Twhirl, a desktop client for Twitter and Friendfeed that I dearly love, updates only one site at a time, so I can use it to send Twitter posts to either my main Twitter account or other specialized accounts I occasionally write to. Friendfeed reads in only what I write in my main Twitter account, though. And since Twhirl does not update other services I use, like Jaiku and Plurk, when I use Twhirl I need to be mindful that some of my followers on these other networks aren’t going to see the posts.

It gets worse. Each of the sites my content ends up on (partial list: Webware, News.com, ProPRTips, Swagalicio.us, Twitter, Friendfeed, Jaiku, Identi.ca, Pownce, Kwippy, Flickr, Delicious, Digg) has its own communities. And I never know where a conversation will take hold. Since I’m most active on Webware, Twitter, and Friendfeed, I check those services more frequently. Sometimes something I write will spark a conversation on one, sometimes another. There’s no telling. (By the way, Plurk gets a decent share of community action; every time I go there I think I should check in more frequently.) Disqus can do a lot of discussion bridging between blogs, but one thing it doesn’t do is bridge communities between the microblog sites.

It shouldn't be this complicated (click for full-size).

(Credit:
Rafe Needleman / CNET)

I am, so far, managing to keep most of these connections in my head, but I fear that if I sleep for more than nine hours I could forget how my network is put together. I could look at my sketch. But we really shouldn’t need network maps to keep track of what we’re doing where, should we?

So this is my challenge to the Web 2.0 community: Solve the personal content and community problem. Take the multi-publishing chops of Ping.fm, the aggregation features of Friendfeed, the republishing capability of Twitterfeed (with more functions, please), and the discussion aggregation of Disqus, and put it all together into one simple, easy-to-maintain product that acts as a hub for publishing, reading, and community in all these services. And while you’re at it, make sure you don’t steal traffic or community from the services you’re front-ending; they all have personalities we want to keep alive.

Under Lou Gerstner and now Sam Palmisano, IBM moved away from commodity businesses like personal computers and recast itself as a heavy-duty supplier of myriad services to IT customers. In its conversations with prospective customers, IBM never fails to draw the (invidious) comparison with HP, which it depicts as the relative newbie.

That’s why Hurd ordered up an across-the-board pay cut, starting with the boss–he’s taking a 20 percent salary reduction. Other execs are taking a 10 percent haircut, while the base pay for all other exempt employees will be reduced 5 percent. HP also announced changes to its U.S. 401(k) plan as well as its share ownership plan.

Both HP and IBM have their strengths in services, but as Roger Kay writes, “for too long observers have been treating them like peas in a pod when, in fact, in many ways they are night and day.”

OK, all’s fair in love, war, and marketing, but there’s more than a grain of truth in a PR pitch. Charles King, of Pund-IT Inc., who writes an insightful newsletter on IT trends, puts a magnifying glass on the recent earnings reports turned in by IBM and HP. And he finds that the usual apples-to-apples comparisons between the two companies’ services businesses is a flawed one.

Ready to rumble?

Tough news to deliver, but no CEO has yet been able to repeal the business cycle. The one upbeat tale to tell was in the services group, which accounted for more operating profit than any other segment of HP’s business. In his note to employees, Hurd even likened HP to two different companies. Hyperbole? To be sure, but it’s not that much of a stretch, really. There’s a lot of experimentation going on in the IT world as companies struggle with how to make do with less. One increasingly pronounced trend: more IT departments are shifting their computing functions to the cloud. That means money in the bank for the services that can speed the transition.

That seems like an eternity ago. The good times are over for now and the latest IDC report does not offer encouragement about near-term prospects for companies in the hardware business. Of course, Hurd still can count on services, but that’s where HP squares off against IBM, which competes with a much deeper (and larger) bench. (Also, it appears that Big Blue is not feeling the same pain as HP. In an 8K filing on Thursday, the company confirmed its guidance for the year.)

After Carly Fiorina flamed out as CEO, Hurd stepped in and effectively refocused a company that was foundering. The timing of his arrival was propitious as it also coincided with a global IT boom. With the Dow heading for new records seemingly each month, what did it matter that HP still relied on a low-margin, commodity hardware business?

There was a point a decade or so ago when side-by-side comparisons of the pair was reasonable. In the 1990s, system vendors including IBM and HP pursued “desktop to datacenter” strategies that included everything from PCs and workstations to enterprise-class servers and storage products. But since 2000, system vendors including IBM and HP have pursued highly individualistic paths that diverged significantly from that tradition.

“Today, HP announced first quarter results amid one of most difficult economic downturns that any of us has ever faced. I am proud to say that we continue to execute well in this very challenging environment.”

Good enough. But if HP’s going to weather this “econo-lypse,” then services will have to grow even faster–and that’s going to test even Hurd’s formidable managerial talents.

Hurd obviously doesn’t need me or any other outsider to remind him how his company’s services arm stacks up against the competition. He knows his company has got to step up its game.

In black and white, here’s what happened in HP’s first fiscal quarter:

Hewlett Packard CEO Mark Hurd

•  Personal System Group revenue down 19%
•  Imaging and Printing group revenue down 19%.

•  Enterprise Storage and Server revenue down 18%.

But in the absence of a U-shaped economic recovery–and few economists predict that–the pressure is on to give IBM a run for the money (literally) in an area where profit margins are still great. If Hurd is the superstar executive that his press clippings suggest, he’ll do whatever is necessary to make sure HP gets its fair share. At this point, he doesn’t have much choice.

That was a prime reason behind HP’s acquisition of EDS, which King correctly notes now accounts for a big part of HP’s profits.The challenge is that “the size of HP’s software revenues (less than 1/7 of IBM’s) punctuates the stark differences existing between the pair.”

So began Mark Hurd’s recent letter to Hewlett-Packard’s employees. Hurd, who has earned a justifiable reputation for straight talk, did not mince words. Like every other tech company these days, he explained, HP is feeling the impact of slowing global demand for IT products.

By the numbers, IBM has become a company focused on the computing needs of businesses of every size, with the majority of revenues coming from enterprise services engagements bolstered by deep software and hardware portfolios. By contrast, the majority of HP’s revenues come, as they have for years, from highly commoditized printer, PC and notebook products.

“Alexa toolbar users’ interests and surfing habits could differ from those of the general population in a number of ways, and we described some of those possible differences on our Web site,” the announcement explained.

Even with the new rankings system, Alexa would not allow me to rank Alexa.com alongside other sites, specifically Compete.com. But Compete.com would: It shows that a year ago, Compete was far behind Alexa in traffic, but now the two are neck and neck.

Did your site’s Alexa ranking change overnight? That’s because on Thursday, the chart-friendly Web analytics company announced an overhaul of its rankings system.

Because of the new method of tabulating analytics, Alexa data now goes back only nine months. The company says it is “recalculating historic traffic data and will continue to add it over the coming weeks.”

Alexa, according to a company announcement, now “aggregate(s) data from multiple sources” rather than just the surfing habits of those who’d installed its browser toolbar.

It might have been fine back in 1998 for Alexa, bought shortly thereafter by Amazon.com, to track traffic only from users who manually installed a piece of software. But a decade later, it’s led to punchline status and a reputation for unreliability–and more competition.

Rivals such as Compete.com, as well as more formal analytics firms (read: ones where you can’t just type in a few URLs and get a pretty graph) like Hitwise and ComScore, have tightened the market.

TechCrunch’s Duncan Riley, for example, pointed out that the “old Alexa” statistics had TechCrunch’s “reach” comparable to the news powerhouse Drudge Report, which has now taken a considerable lead.