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(Credit:
CNET Networks)

See which of your YouTube videos are doing the best, then stack them up against Flickr photos, blog posts, and other shared Web media.

I stumbled upon this really simple one stop service last week and it’s something I think a lot of casual media creators will find useful. It’s called Traackr, and it lets you keep tabs on what’s going on with the media you’re sharing on the Web. You can plug in your accounts from several popular services including YouTube, Flickr, MySpace, and Dailymotion, and then have the service track usage for each using handy charts and indicators. Think of it as Google Analytics for Web sites you don’t own.

I would love to see something like this make its a way to Google Analytics. For those who haven’t used Analytics, it’s a wonderful way to dig through a lot of information very quickly. In this case viewing all that information in one spot is far easier than jumping from site to site to check out what people are looking at.

To see how you stack up against others, Traackr compares your daily numbers to others on the service and gives you a buzz and popularity rating out of 100. Each users profile page is simply a place for people to list a little information about themselves. Traackr also does some of the heavy lifting and shows the most recent and most popular content from each service in little widgets below whatever information you’ve listed. That’s about as far as the community portion goes though, there’s no way to befriend other Traackr users or send them a private message.

All the content you want to track on Traackr is mashed together, but power users can compare certain groupings of content with others by creating “campaigns.” Unlike advertising campaigns these are the equivalent of folders, allowing you to mix things such as videos, music, photos, and blog posts together into single containers. You can then compare campaigns with one another and see which ones are performing the best.

Think about it. What software could you or I write in a world where there are only a few “computers” (five, according to Yahoo), computers to which you and I don’t have access? I suppose developers will increasingly be able to write code for others’ “clouds,” but will this be the same?

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Or will open source be something that Google et al give away when it suits them, and only when it won’t help their competitors? (This would be much like what they do today, but today they aren’t the focal point for open-source development.) The Web world has tended to be a net consumer of open source, not a net producer of it. Will this change when its open-source raw materials run dry?

First, what happens to the open-source development community if the world moves to cloud-based computing? Open source has been a server or PC-based phenomenon. Why did Linus Torvalds develop for an x86 architecture? Because that’s what he had. He didn’t have a massive server farm to work with. Neither do you.

Thoughts?

Second, when is the last time you got excited about enterprise software? That market and its ideas are clearly dying. It’s an old world that open source is successfully commodifying. But what comes next?

I’ve long believed that open source is a natural way to innovate, so I’m not worried that open source will have no future. I’m just wondering what it will look like if the enterprise moves into the cloud and traditional enterprise software dissipates.

I had two conversations today that set me to pondering the future of open source. One was during a panel I moderated on “cloud-based computing” at the Webguild Web 2.0 Conference. The second was over lunch with an old friend.

Display advertising and classified advertising aren’t expected to fare quite as well. Because of short-term economic problems, display advertising growth should drop slightly, but rebound for 14 percent annual growth over the full period of the report.

Not surprisingly, search advertising should continue to be the largest category, growing from $9.1 billion in 2007 to $20.9 billion in 2013. But there’s an interesting caveat to Jupiter’s research: The growth rate for search advertising should slow toward the end of their forecast because of an “inability to tap into small local US advertisers and a steady maturation of the U.S. paid search market.”

But look out for video advertising. Jupiter predicts that static and text ads will account for 63 percent of banner advertising in 2008, but that share is expected to drop to 41 percent by 2013 as advertisers look to rich media and video. Video advertising, in fact, is expected to quadruple to $5.1 billion in 2013.

The economy may be lousy, but the amount of money spent on online advertising should continue to grow at double-digit rates all the way through to 2013, according to a report released Monday by JupiterResearch.

Likewise, classified ad spending is forecast to be 20 percent of the total online ad market, while growing at annual 9 percent rate.

Total online ad spending is expected to increase just a little less than 20 percent this year, from $19.9 billion in 2007 to $23.8 billion. By 2013, Jupiter expects total online ad spending to hit $43.4 billion. (For you stat aficionados, that’s a compound annual growth rate of 13 percent. By comparison, offline advertising is only expected to have a CAGR of 4 percent over the same period.)

The online world’s share of advertising is also expected to increase, but there’s still plenty of room to grow. Last year, Jupiter says online ads accounted for 8.4 percent of total ad spending in the U.S. That’s expected to grow to 9.6 percent this year, 10.7 percent next year, and 14.3 percent in 2013.

The Palm Pre next to the current iPhone 3G.

While many lined up this past weekend to buy the
Palm Pre, some decided to wait on making a purchase to hear what would come out of the WWDC 2009 keynote, and as we all found out on the Monday, the answer was the iPhone 3G S.

(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET)

Since then, the cell phone editors have received numerous reader e-mails wondering whether we’d be doing a prizefight between the two smartphones and we just wanted to let you know that the answer is most definitely yes. As soon as the
iPhone 3G S is released on June 19 and we get a review unit, we’ll pit the two devices against each other in various categories, so stay tuned!

I thought I would start Tuesday off with some lighter fare. Some of you may have seen this, but there is a YouTube video of music composed using the start-up sounds from Windows XP and Windows 98.

I’m sure it’s not the biggest challenge facing Vista, but it is a small example of people finding utility from and an affinity for Microsoft’s older Windows versions. What do you think, is it an anthem for XP’s enduring quality or a swan song for an operating system on the precipice of extinction? I’ve included the video below.

(Credit:
Sun Microsystems)

Updated at 12:30 p.m. PDT:
Added comments from Andy Bechtolsheim.

The company’s statement went on to say that “Sun can confirm that Andy will remain with Sun to continue his present involvement with the Sun Systems group in helping to drive new product architectures.”

As in the past, Bechtolsheim said Thursday, it was time to move on to something new.

“The recession has impacted the big enterprise server market more than other things,” he said. “That is a market that Sun is strong in and so it will suffer from a spending reduction. In that respect, it’s not ideally positioned. But the fact it has great products will help it weather the storm.”

Indeed, Sun, which provides servers for large corporations, including the many banks and investment houses on Wall Street, has been hit particularly hard recently by the economic slowdown. Earlier this week, the company warned investors that it expected to report a big loss in the third quarter. The company said it expects to lose 25 cents to 35 cents a share. Excluding one-time charges, the loss is expected to be about 2 cents to 12 cents a share. This is worse than the loss of 1 cent a share that many analysts had expected.

Andy Bechtolsheim at a Sun analyst summit in 2004.

Earlier Thursday, there had been some confusion about where exactly Bechtolsheim stood, following a report in The New York Times suggesting that he was leaving Sun. The company’s PR team quickly responded by saying that there were a “few inaccurate articles published regarding the status of Sun co-founder, Andy Bechtolsheim.”

“The whole server business is not so much fun lately,” he said. “And that’s a problem way beyond me.”

Sun reclaimed Bechtolsheim in 2004 by acquiring Kealia, a move that powered a fundamental technology shift to sell servers based on x86 chips as well as its own UltraSparc processors.

Bechtolsheim, who had left Sun in 1995 to found
networking start-up Granite Systems, which he later sold to Cisco Systems, has a long history as an entrepreneur. After selling Granite, he worked for Cisco for a time and then left in 2003 to found a start-up called Kealia that was
making high-end media servers.

Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim is shifting to a reduced role at the Silicon Valley stalwart as he turns his attention to getting yet another start-up off the ground.

I talked to Bechtolsheim in the wake of the Times story and he confirmed that he will still be part of the Sun family, but he also said that his role won’t be what it was.

“I will be an adviser to Sun on a part-time basis,” Bechtolsheim said. “I still have my Sun badge and e-mail address. But I will be working full time at Arista. I will always be associated with Sun, because it’s my baby. I have a lot of friends there, and of course, I want to help them when I can.”

CNET News staff writer Stephen Shankland contributed to this
report.

While Bechtolsheim will continue to advise Sun on product architecture and strategy, most of his attention will be on his start-up, Arista. The company, which he invested in early, makes 10-gigabit Ethernet equipment designed to help companies with large data centers create a cloud-computing environment.

Can Sun weather the storm?
But Bechtolsheim believes he is leaving Sun in a good place in terms of its product road map.

The company, which has been battered by competition and slowing demand from financial customers, has struggled for nearly a decade with financial issues. The current economic crisis has only exacerbated the situation.

He’ll be taking on a new full-time gig as chairman and chief development officer at Arista Networks, which is focusing on 10-gigabit Ethernet switches. But Bechtolsheim believes that the company he helped found and build will do just fine without his day-to-day involvement.

“Sun is in the best product position they have been in for years,” he said. “Many of the things that I have worked on since my return haven’t even come out yet. There are many great products coming in the near future. So I don’t worry about them from a product standpoint.”

And even after the current product road map runs its course, Bechtolsheim said, he would continue to advise Sun on what to do next. But he acknowledged that Sun is struggling at the moment.

In his upcoming time with Sun, Bechtolsheim’s efforts will include X64 servers and storage servers, along with strategic initiatives such as high-performance computing, Sun said.

In another sign of trouble, Sun’s largest shareholder, Southeastern Asset Management, upped its stake this week and has taken a more aggressive attitude toward its investment.

The big selling point of the new 10-gigabit Ethernet switches is that they have better performance and cost much less than products made by Cisco, the leader in the Ethernet switching market. But Bechtolsheim claims that this latest company is going after a niche market not currently addressed by Cisco.

“Believe me, I had gotten my share of opportunities to be CEO at Cisco competitors in the past,” Ullal said. “But I knew I didn’t want to compete directly with Cisco. In any market there are different segments. And we fully expect Cisco will have its place in mainstream, classical switching. We hope to complement them.”

Arista is using a unique software design to make its switch perform faster at a lower cost. And because the price is so much lower than what Cisco charges, Bechtolsheim and Jayshree Ullal, Arista’s new CEO, believe the company can address a market that is underserved by Cisco. Ullal, who recently came on board, is a 15-year veteran of Cisco, where she led the company’s switching and data center businesses.

In any case, Twiddla’s packing a lot of features that might attract users of premium paid collaborative services such as ConceptShare and Octopz who are seeking a very simple way to get feedback on Web design or photography. It could also easily replace WebEx for a large number of people who use the tool simply for its text chat and shared work space.

I’m holding off on giving Twiddla a thumbs up for the time being. It simply didn’t perform as well as I think it should to make me ditch some of the alternatives. However, I’m happy to see some little guys come up and show WebEx and others like the recently Google-acquired Marratech what can be done on the user interface side to make these tools simple and attractive.

One of Twiddla’s killer applications is the built-in screenshot tool. It will snap the current iteration of the whiteboard and save it into both your saved media folder and the meeting’s history archive. For photo or Web design consulting, this gives you the option of coming back to a work space and editing content asynchronously.

Read Web pages at the same time with others, and make live markups to a site on the fly. You can also chat live with others either via text or VoIP conference calling.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

The application won an award for technical achievement at last night’s SXSW Interactive Web Awards. While technologically fantastic, in my testing I ran up against some noticeable speed and local resource problems. At times I found the application to be nearly unusable despite its simple interface and snappy menus. At other times it was incredibly responsive.

Collaborative whiteboarding applications can be handy tools for small groups looking to do some brainstorming despite geographical displacement. Meet Twiddla, a free tool that lets you mark up media and live Web sites, or simply organize ideas together on a virtual whiteboard. It also tacks on live communication with text chat and free VoIP conference calling that doesn’t require additional plug-ins or software.

In the first segment of this week’s show, Don Reisinger and Wil Harris tackle EA, Google, and much more. After that, Don chats with Sharp Electronics about the HDTV market and why it thinks the future is LCD. Finally, Don talks it up about owning your own music — why you should and why you don’t. Listen now:

Download today’s podcast
EPISODE 20

TODAY’S LINKS: Check out ChannelFlip! Thanks to Sharp!

Apple is reportedly talking to Verizon Wireless about bringing the
iPhone to the carrier, according to USA Today. And Verizon executives aren’t exactly pooh-poohing the reports.

(Credit:
Larry Dignan/ZDNet )

And then there’s network reliability. Verizon Wireless’ coverage is just better than AT&T’s. And as Om Malik notes, Verizon Wireless could give Apple an LTE network to play with. The iPhone with better coverage and 4G could be interesting. Verizon executives talked up their LTE buildout.

But this Apple-Verizon story probably comes down to negotiation. AT&T put its cards on the table. It really wants to extend its deal with Apple. Apple obviously wants to explore other options. The game: Squeeze AT&T into a better deal. Verizon is more than happy to play along.

First, Apple is likely to want to expand iPhone distribution to other networks. And Verizon Wireless is the second half of a U.S. wireless potential duopoly. Why wouldn’t Apple want to lock down the U.S. wireless market by having the two largest carriers in the fold?

A move to Verizon would be notable because the iPhone would be available on a CDMA wireless network compared to AT&T’s GSM technology, according to USA Today. But is this a really big deal? Other phones work on both technologies.

On a conference call to discuss first-quarter earnings, Verizon operating chief Dennis Strigl said the company is always talking to device makers, but had “no announcements to make relative to Apple today.”

We’re always open to discussions with any supplier. We have no announcements to make relative to Apple today. Historically we haven’t been dependent on any one device.

This was originally posted at ZDNet’s Between the Lines.

This Verizon-Apple story largely boils down to two words: network and negotiation.

USA Today reported that Apple is in high-level talks about bringing the iPhone to Verizon Wireless. The news comes just a few days after AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said that the company was looking to extend its exclusive pact with Apple. Following Verizon’s strong first-quarter earnings, Strigl said the following:

The message: Verizon Wireless could very well be talking to Apple–not that Strigl would say so directly. And Verizon is in a strong position since AT&T had its iPhone bump and the wireless carrier is still performing well. Reading between the lines, it could be that Apple needs Verizon Wireless’ 86.6 million customers more than the wireless carrier needs the iPhone. Apple has an exclusive deal with AT&T, which has 78.2 million subscribers, but the iPhone’s addressable U.S. market could more than double with a Verizon deal.

(Credit:
Larry Dignan/ZDNet)

The energy sector can’t claim they weren’t at the table. The principles were developed by the banks in consultation with a who’s-who of power industry giants: American Electric Power, CMS Energy, DTE Energy, NRG Energy, PSEG, Sempra Energy, and Southern Company.

Rise and shine! Climate change is a real phenomenon, and carbon legislation is coming–let’s begin to deal with it!

Given how Wall Street didn’t seemingly exercise any leadership whatsoever on the subprime mortgage debacles, it’s refreshing to see that they’re actually out in front (at least a little bit) on the climate change issue.

Put another way, Wall Street sees federal carbon legislation as imminent, and doesn’t want power sector executives to try to “sneak in” any last coal plants before the legislation whose economics might be threatened in a carbon-constrained world. The banks’ interest is not necessarily environmentally motivated–they simply don’t want to see any more loans go bad–but the effect of this announcement is likely to be positive.

But apparently, the willingness of these utilities to participate in the process of developing The Carbon Principles doesn’t mean everyone in the energy sector is yet reading the writing on the wall regarding climate change. In the February 4 Wall Street Journal, reporter Jeffrey Ball quoted Jeffrey Holzschuh, vice chairman of institutional securities at Morgan Stanley, as saying, “We have to wake up some people who are asleep.”

Last week, three financial titans–Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley–announced “The Carbon Principles” to provide guidance to energy companies in managing carbon risks. The upshot of The Carbon Principles is that these big banks are stating explicitly that going forward, they will only provide debt financing to new power projects if proponents can prove that the proposed plants will remain economically viable under future climate change policies.

If a remarkable July 2006 letter (PDF) from Stanley Lewandowski, general manager of the Intermountain Rural Electric Association in Colorado is any indication, it would seem there’s still a number of Rip Van Winkels out there in the electric utility world.