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Looks like Google is starting to take Apps Premier a bit more seriously, providing users with SLA credits for the August outage and realizing that the guy who chose Google Apps has to report to someone else when things go haywire.

Given the production incidents that occurred in August, we’ll be extending the full SLA credit to all Google Apps Premier customers for the month of August, which represents a 15-day extension of your service. SLA credits will be applied to the new service term for accounts with a renewal order pending. This credit will be applied to your account automatically so there’s no action needed on your part.

a. business description of the problem, with emphasis on user impact;
b. technical description of the problem, with emphasis on root cause;
c. actions taken to solve the problem;
d. actions taken or to be taken to prevent recurrence of the problem; and
e. time line of the outage.

E-mail pasted below from the Google Apps team:

1. A description of the problem, with emphasis on user impact. Our belief is during the course of an outage, we should be singularly focused on solving the problem. Solving production problems involves an investigative process that’s iterative. Until the problem is solved, we don’t have accurate information around root cause, much less corrective action, that will be particularly useful to you. Given this practical reality, we believe that informing you that a problem exists and assuring you that we’re working on resolving it is the useful thing to do.

Disclaimer: The opinions represented here are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

1. We’re building a dashboard to provide you with system status information. This dashboard, which we aim to make available in a few months, will enable us to share the following information during an outage:

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2. A continuously updated estimated time-to-resolution. Many of you have told us that it’s important to let you know when the problem will be solved. Once again, the answer is not always immediately known. In this case, we’ll provide regular updates to you as we progress through the troubleshooting process.

Not much more to comment on…I hope they make it work. I switched entirely to browser-based Gmail and I’m still liking it.

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We’ve also heard your guidance around the need for better communication when outages occur. Here are three things that we’re doing to make things better:

2. In cases where your business requires more detailed information, we’ll provide a formal incident report within 48 hours of problem resolution. This incident report will contain the following information:

3. In cases where your business requires an in-depth dialogue about the outage, we’ll support your internal communication process through participation in post-mortem calls with you and your management team.

“The nForce 200 SLI processor features patented SLI technology for graphics bandwidth management and multi-GPU peer-to-peer communications, both required to optimize graphics performance,” Nvidia said. GPU stands for graphics processing unit.

Nvidia included statements from system suppliers in the Monday release. “It’s great to see that Nvidia opted to enable SLI on the future Intel Bloomfield platform,” said Rahul Sood, CTO Voodoo Business Unit, HP. “Make love not war I say…and Nvidia’s (enabling) of Intel chipsets to support SLI will make our jobs much easier.”

Motherboards and PC systems that will use the Nvidia nForce 200 SLI chip, Nvidia GeForce GPUs, and Nvidia SLI technology will be available from companies such as Acer, ASUS, Dell, Falcon Northwest, Legend, and Velocity Micro.

Update at July 15, 3:00 a.m. PDT with additional information and corrections concerning the Intel-Nvidia dispute.

Future systems “can be powered by one, two, or even three Nvidia GeForce GPUs, including the new…GeForce GTX 280 and GTX 260 GPUs,” according to Nvidia.

Upcoming SLI motherboards will use Nvidia nForce 200 SLI silicon, Intel Bloomfield processors, and Intel Tylersburg (X58) chipsets, Nvidia said in a statement.

This announcement may help Nvidia to work around a standoff with Intel over whether Nvidia can make chipsets that work with Intel’s next-generation Nehalem platform, due later this year. And also demonstrates that despite Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang’ s rhetoric, Nvidia must cooperate with Intel in order to thrive.

Monday’s announcement has no relation to separate licensing negotiations, according to sources familiar with the discussions. In other words, Nvidia is not announcing a chipset for Nehalem–which would require a license. It is simply a statement that Nvidia will support Nehalem with its nForce 200 Scalable Link Interconnect (SLI) chip.

Nvidia SLI technology supports multiple graphics boards.

The nForce 200 chip will work with Intel’s “Bloomfield” line of Nehalem processors and the accompanying Intel chipset. SLI allows Nvidia to use multiple graphics boards in one system.

Nvidia said Monday that its multichip technology will be architected to work on Intel’s upcoming Nehalem chip platform.

Nvidia claims that nForce 200 SLI silicon with Intel’s new Bloomfield processor and Tylersburg chipset core logic chipset will deliver up to a 2.8X performance boost over traditional single graphics card platforms.

However, some reports say Nvidia has reached an agreement with Intel to license Intel’s Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) technology, paving the way for Nvidia to design chipsets for Nehalem.

(Credit:
Nvidia)

Nokia tunes up new music phones

Calif. lawmaker wants to blur Google Earth

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Apple shrinks its iPod Shuffle

Google crowdsources maps directions, too

Microsoft details app store plans

Apple overhauls the iPod Shuffle with new features and more storage in an even smaller case. Reporter Tom Krazit stops by the podcast studio to talk about where the Shuffle fits into Apple’s lineup. Also in this podcast: Google is opening up its Map Maker tool so people can make maps and directions more accurate. At the same time, a California politician wants to blur parts of Google Maps out in the name of national security. And AMD says the problems some users are having with their new MacBooks shouldn’t taint the entire graphics chip industry.

AMD: MacBook issues giving graphics bad rap

For The New York Times, the digital future is now

‘Silent Drum’ makes noise at music competition

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Today’s stories:

Selected Flickr images now sold through Getty

But that’s what Adelson and Rose were saying in the last town hall event, too, and that presidential election isn’t going away any time soon.

The first question asked complained about the dilution of Digg’s trademark tech news by partisan politics, with the submitter declaring, “I’ve had enough Huffington Post stories for a lifetime” in reference to the popular liberal news aggregation site. Another question wondered whether Adelson, Rose, & company might make it so that users could customize it so that they see only the extremely popular stories in categories they don’t prefer. A Digger who’s not a fan of political news, for example, could limit politics stories to stuff on the caliber of a winner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

On one hand, Digg’s geeky early adopters ought to welcome the red-and-blue hordes because they’re helping to bring the site to a new level. But the questions in Monday night’s Webcast, which were selected by users “digging” and “burying” the questions, revealed that the politicization of Digg hasn’t been altogether popular.

That wasn’t all. Still another participant asked whether the management could institute a feature to block stories that contain certain words, another complained about “special interest groups” and “rude, agenda-driven people,” and yet another said that “useful information is pushed aside for whatever the mob wants.”

When Kevin Rose founded Digg, the site caught on as a hub for quirky geek news, and it’s retained a reputation as being full of extremely opinionated tech enthusiasts. But with the 2008 presidential election on the way, Digg has caught on among another very vocal set of news junkies: the political crowd. It’s helped boost the site’s numbers for sure: Digg now boasts 230 million page views per month, 26 million unique visitors, and 15,000 stories submitted per day.

What it shows is that, politics or no politics, Digg is getting big, and its tight-knit, active community isn’t sure that it’s a good thing. Adelson and Rose kept hinting at more customization features on the way. Soon you’ll be able to get suggested stories, they said, and Rose said that the suggestion about letting members block stories in an unwanted category unless they rake in a minimum number of Diggs was “an awesome idea.” Fixes are in the works, they kept reiterating.

But something it did reveal: There’s a storm afoot at Digg, and it could very well shape the site’s future.

Monday night’s Digg Town Hall, the second in the social news site’s live Webcast series hosted by CEO Jay Adelson and founder Kevin Rose, didn’t answer any of the really big questions. No acquisitions, no Series C funding, no dirt about Rose’s dating life.

Since Inrix collects data from actual moving vehicles, not just road sensors, it can report on traffic speeds on any road where there are drivers. Today, the company announced that it’s now providing coverage on all U.S. freeways, for instance–over 100,000 miles of roads. Mapquest will be the first of Inrix’s customers to use that data in its direction-finding service.

But I digress. The technology development effort to predict traffic flow on unmetered roadways was led by Microsoft’s Eric Horvitz. What’s interesting is that Horvitz et al. also developed another traffic prediction system, which was spun out to the company Inrix (previous story), which in turn sells its data back to Microsoft.

Inrix does not do the routing itself, but it supplies its data to Microsoft (and other mapping companies, auto manufacturers, and GPS device makers) who then can incorporate it into their routing algorithms. Microsoft’s new Clearflow prediction system doesn’t overlap much with Inrix’s prediction algorithm, since Clearflow predicts what the traffic of the moment will be on unmetered streets, while Inrix provides data for all highways, and predicts traffic flow in the future.

What’s next in traffic routing? Inrix CEO Bryan Mistele says the “Holy Grail” is routing based on the routes real drivers take, not just observed speeds. For example, a navigation service could record the actual paths people take between points, and use this data as well speed information to generate directions. Of course, there are privacy implications when you’re recording users’ driving in this way, but there’s all that data to be got from commercial vehicles. So in the future, the wisdom of taxi drivers may end up popping up on our in-car GPS gizmos.

Inrix collects traffic-flow data directly from vehicles (mostly the GPS units in trucks and other commercial vehicles, but also some mobile phones and Dash Navigation units). Based on the historical data it collects, it can predict traffic on the routes it has coverage for.

Microsoft now considers surface street traffic as well as freeway speeds in its routing.

I find the Clearflow product of only marginal usefulness on a PC, since traffic patterns change quickly. I’d trust it to get me on to a freeway in the most efficient way, but if my route takes more than 20 minutes, I’d worry about its accuracy at the other end. If this technology can be applied to Microsoft’s Live Search Mobile, and if it can update the route in real-time when conditions change, then it will be killer.

Today Microsoft announced a new feature on its Live Search Maps service: Clearflow, an option that will alter driving directions based on traffic, not just on the usually metered major freeways, but on adjoining connector ramps and streets as well. See news story.

If you’re not the tweaking type, simply pick one of the available templates (also free) and start publishing your photos.

There are plenty of free ways to build an average photoblog, but if you have dreams of creating one that meets your needs and not just the masses, check out Pixelpost 1.7.1. Updated earlier this year with a bunch of new features including an Install Assistant, this MySQL/PHP-based application is a free download and needs only a modicum of technical knowledge and some server space to use.

Everything is tweakable and functionality can be extended with a number of free downloadable add-ons for everything from the ability to use PayPal to let visitors buy photos to adding histograms to images to an Adobe Lightroom exporter. All of them have easy-to-follow instructions for installing them, too.

To see what I mean, pop over to GatheringOfPixels.com (click the skull above the photo at the right to see “before” shots) or any of the Pixelpost featured photoblogs.

(Credit: Pixelpost)

At the same time, Facebook’s executive ranks began more and more to resemble those of a Silicon Valley power player rather than a geeky college start-up. The social network hired former Google executives Sheryl Sandberg and Elliot Schrage as chief operating officer and vice president of communications and public affairs, respectively, and just last week announced the hire of veteran D.C. insider Ted Ullyot as general counsel.

Dustin Moskowitz, one of Mark Zuckerberg’s co-founders at Facebook and one of the young CEO’s longtime confidants, has left the company according to Valleywag. He’s leaving to found an undisclosed new company with Justin Rosenstein, another departing Facebook engineer, the blog said.

Moskowitz, who served as a head engineer at the social network, was one of Facebook’s earliest employees–so early, in fact, that he was named along with Zuckerberg and several other then-Harvard students in the ConnectU vs. Facebook lawsuit that was finally settled this year. Moskowitz’s departure was reportedly announced in an e-mail to the company from Zuckerberg.

Facebook representatives were not immediately available to confirm Moskowitz’s departure.

In recent years, Moskowitz’s role at the company was primarily behind-the-scenes, but he was responsible for some public product debuts like the Facebook for BlackBerry application.

Update: Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed Moskovitz’s departure from the company, saying “Dustin has always had Facebook’s best interests at heart and will always be someone I turn to for advice.”

This week a report from Fortify found that, while vulnerabilities exist and are reported within the open-source community, not every open-source project had a clearly defined contact or security alias. Nor was it clear what the process would be for issuing a patch, or how the projects conduct their own vulnerability assessments. The report looked at several known open-source projects such as JBoss and Tomcat.

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Open-source software can be found in over half of the enterprises today. And open source code can be found within the
Mac OS 10 operating system. But how are open source vulnerabilities and, more importantly, their patches handled?

For years, one of the arguments for using open-source software instead of proprietary software held that open source was more secure. After all, having thousands of eyes looking at the code can’t but help find and mitigate potentially dangerous bugs. A new report from Fortify challenges that assertion.

CNET’s Robert Vamosi spoke by phone with Roger Thornton, CTO at Fortify about the report and its findings.

(Credit:
Yahoo)

Is it frustrating, sure, when people talk about the departure of employees, but I would like to get the distractions behind us.

She noted that the stock has held its ground, despite a tough economic environment. And that she tries to avoid getting consumed by the swirl of distractions that have been under way since Microsoft announced its unsolicited buyout bid in early February.

And in defense of turning down the $33-a-share buyout offer Microsoft had floated to the Internet search pioneer, which it later withdrew after Yahoo countered with a bid of $37 a share, Decker had this to say:

Yahoo President Sue Decker

Icahn, who reached a settlement with Yahoo earlier in the week, agreed to halt his proxy fight in exchange for being appointed to the board after the company’s August 1 shareholders meeting. Yahoo also agreed to expand its board to 11 members and select two directors from a list that Icahn provided.

Pre- and post-Microsoft’s offer, our stock is pretty much in the same place as when we evaluated its $31-a-share bid.

In the past two months, Yahoo and Icahn have been exchanging barbs, as the proxy fight gained steam.

Yahoo President Sue Decker has taken the high road. In a CNBC interview that aired Wednesday, she said she looks forward to meeting investor activist Carl Icahn when he joins the company’s board and would “love to get his advice.”

I’m totally looking forward to meeting him and would love to get his advice.

As Yahoo heads toward its annual shareholders meeting and institutional investor advisory services weigh in on which Yahoo directors to re-elect, the background noise may still be a bit distracting for the next week and a half.

Nonetheless, Decker, who has never met Icahn, said in the interview recorded Tuesday:

I try to focus on things I can control.

Sanderson also lowered his earnings estimates for the company to 8 cents a share for the quarter, compared with 9 cents under his earlier forecast, and an earnings per share of 67 cents for the year, verses his earlier projection of 69 cents a share.

With its shares dipping into the $13 range, Yahoo not only sets a new 52-week low but also reaches a trading level not seen since late May 2003.

Since “walking away” from the previous Yahoo offer, the OSB (online services business) division of Microsoft has not come close to meeting expectations. Organic revenue growth has decelerated from 16 percent in March to 2 percent in June, according to our estimates. Losses have nearly doubled sequentially, from $1 billion operating loss run-rate in March to nearly a $2 billion loss run-rate in June.

Yahoo, as a result, also now has a market cap of $19.35 billion.

OSB leadership and organizational structure remain in flux following the departure of Platform & Services President Kevin Johnson and the re-organization in July. Two months later, Microsoft has yet to name a new head of OSB. Other senior managers have also jumped ship with the general manager of digital advertising solutions leaving for Amazon and its media network VP & chief marketing officer going to Yahoo.

Yahoo shares broke through another psychological barrier Wednesday, edging down into the $13-a-share range.

Yahoo fell as low as $13.62 a share during intraday trading, down more than 6 percent from the previous day’s close. Although Yahoo’s shares continue to give up ground, the company’s performance during the trading session has largely mirrored the broader markets.

(Credit:
Yahoo Finance) Updated at 8:33 a.m. PDT, with analysts comments on whether Microsoft might make another bid for Yahoo.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s organic efforts in search are falling further each month. ComScore reports that MSN has lost 260bps of U.S. search query share from a year ago to only 6.4 percent in August. This represents a greater than 30 percent drop in market share in one year.

On the revenue front, Sanderson expects Yahoo to pull in $1.78 billion in the third quarter, slicing that projection down from his previous forecast of $1.85 billion. Similarly, for the year, the analyst revised his earlier estimates to $7.34 billion from his previous projection of $7.62 billion.

At its July analyst day, Ballmer emphasized the importance of traffic and scale in the online search business…

Sanderson noted that because Yahoo’s third quarter is expected to be weak, he’s cutting his price target for the company and financial outlook.

Yahoo's stock has been trending downward since the spring.

Analyst Rob Sanderson with American Technology Research, meanwhile, believes Microsoft may make another run at Yahoo, but at a “significantly” lower offer.

Said Sanderson in a research note Wednesday:

At this rate, Microsoft may be able to acquire the entire company for what it was willing to pay for just the search business, should it decide to make another run at the company.

Last May, Microsoft walked away from its buyout offer of $47.5 billion to snap up all of Yahoo, only later to return with a partial buyout offer of $9 billion to acquire just the company’s search assets.

His new 12-month price target for Yahoo is $22 a share, verses his previous forecast of $33 a share.