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“This (cycle), I think, lasts longer,” said Michael Pachter, a video games industry analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities. “I don’t think Sony and Microsoft can afford to go back to the drawing board.”

“We have always said we believe PS3 has a 10-year product life cycle,” said Patrick Seybold, the director of corporate communications and social media for Sony Computer Entertainment America. “We’ve only begun to scratch the surface with PS3…Our investment in future technology is important, and we continue to look at advances in technology to see where we would benchmark our next-generation product. But right now, PS3 is just hitting its stride, and we’ll continue to focus on driving the development of games that tap the full resources of PS3.”

That, of course, is a nod to the fact that Sony has included a Blu-ray player in the PS3 from day one, a move that initially added a significant amount to what the company had to charge for the console, but which over time, is likely to make the PS3 a much more attractive machine.

Nintendo of America’s vice president of corporate affairs, Denise Kaigler, would barely address the issue when I asked her.

And Sony, as expected, took the position that the PS3 itself is its console of the future.

And instead of releasing a Wii 2, Pachter said, Nintendo may decide to add high-definition capability to the existing console.

The most likely scenario, according to analysts, is that the Nintendo Wii will be upgraded to include high-definition capability, but not be immediately replaced with a ‘Wii 2.’

“I’m sure everyone has a different idea on when that should happen,” Kaigler said. “We’re happy that people are still discovering Wii and having fun with it.”

“I really don’t see how the boxes need to get any faster,” Pachter said. “The boxes are ridiculous right now. No one’s going to write code that requires the processing power of these boxes for 7 to 10 years.”

(Credit:
Nintendo)

For example, Sony’s
PlayStation 2 was released in 2000 and its PlayStation 3 in 2006. Microsoft’s original
Xbox came out in 2001 and its Xbox 360 in 2005. And Nintendo’s GameCube first launched in 2001, and its
Wii hit store shelves in 2006.

“IDC expects next-generation launches to begin in 2010 with successive Microsoft and Nintendo consoles likely,” Pidgeon wrote. “Sony is likely to hold off a next-generation launch until 2012 or later.”

“Everyone has realized that consoles can continue to sell for quite an extended period of time,” he said. “It feels a little premature to think about what (the next) generation might be like. We’re always thinking about the future, but we have no plans for years to launch another console.”

Of course, it’s probably far too early to tell what the next cycle of consoles will feature, and in his report, Pidgeon doesn’t address the next round of major improvements.

But as it demonstrated by putting out the PS3 in 2006, the continued life of an existing console hasn’t stopped Sony from moving on to a future generation.

But one would have to assume that for the companies to put in the time and energy needed to create entirely new consoles, they would have to be built around significant upgrades. And in one sense, that’s hard to imagine.

On June 10, Geek Gestalt hits the highways for Road Trip 2008. I’ll start in Orlando, Fla., and visit many of the South’s most interesting destinations. Stay tuned, and be sure to keep up, both now and during the trip, with what I’m doing on Twitter.

In a report forecasting the next four years of the video game industry, IDC analyst Billy Pidgeon predicted that the next console generation could arrive in as little as two years.

Video game console makers have tended to operate on approximately five-year cycles. That is, the manufacturers generally wait about five years between new consoles, give or take a year.

Of course, Sony has maintained all along that its consoles actually have 10-year lives, and it has a good point: The PS2 is still selling quite well, having moved 124,400 units last month, according to market researcher NPD Group. And Sony clearly expects to produce PS3s well into the next decade.

Not everyone agrees with Pachter, of course.

But with the release of the so-called next generation of consoles–with the 2005 release of the Xbox 360 and the 2006 release of the Wii and the PS3–it began to look like the companies might be ready to wait a little longer between cycles.

For their part, the manufacturers are, not surprisingly, playing coy about their future console plans.

Greenberg said he thinks that Microsoft still has plenty of opportunities to “leverage the platform we have,” in particular because the company hopes that the biggest growth for the Xbox will be in its online component.

So, as we get closer to the two-year anniversary of the launch of the Wii and PS3 and the three-year anniversary of the Xbox 360, it’s only natural to wonder whether the next round of machines is on its way. But according to analysts and representatives of the three manufacturers, we shouldn’t be holding our collective breath for any imminent announcements.

If you think that Greenberg was playing it too coy, his responses were little different than that of his rivals.

For example, Pachter said, he would expect Microsoft to try to put out a new version of the Xbox 360 that comes with a 500GB or 2TB hard drive and Wi-Fi functionality built in. Currently, hard drives and Wi-Fi are add-ons for the console.

More likely, added Pachter, is that Microsoft–and possibly Nintendo–will try to make iterative improvements to their existing consoles, but keep the guts of the machines.

“They’ll go back and try to one-up Sony,” Pachter said. “They may have to ultimately give away a Blu-ray drive.”

“Is there a next generation?” said Aaron Greenberg, director of product management for Xbox 360 and Xbox Live. “I don’t know. It’s hard to think about that right now…It feels like we still have a lot of growth between where we are and (the sales) ceiling” of the current generation.

Here’s the full text of Yahoo’s response after Microsoft withdrew its offer to acquire the company.

• enhanced expense and resource management to support improved profitability.

• a refined strategic focus to drive enhanced volume and yield;

• invested in innovations designed to revolutionize display advertising and facilitate closing the competitive gap in search; and

• reorganized to focus its efforts on its most promising products and services;

Chairman Roy Bostock: We remain focused on maximizing shareholder value and pursuing strategic opportunities that position Yahoo for success and leadership in its markets. From the beginning of this process, our independent board and our management have been steadfast in our belief that Microsoft’s offer undervalued the company and we are pleased that so many of our shareholders joined us in expressing that view. Yahoo is profitable, growing, and executing well on its strategic plan to capture the large opportunities in the relatively young online advertising market. Our solid results for the first quarter of 2008 and increased full year 2008 operating cash flow outlook reflect the progress the company is making. Today, Yahoo has:

CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang: I am incredibly proud of the way our team has come together over the last three months. This process has underscored our unique and valuable strategic position. With the distraction of Microsoft’s unsolicited proposal now behind us, we will be able to focus all of our energies on executing the most important transition in our history so that we can maximize our potential to the benefit of our shareholders, employees, partners and users.

Believe me, I am the first person to stand up and cry foul when the industry tries to hide security vulnerabilities, over-market security functionality, or use proprietary security technologies to lock out competitors and lock in customers. Wi-Fi security passes all of these hurdles in my mind. As such, it is time to start considering the “all wireless office” in earnest and stop reviving the arguments of the past.

I recently blogged about how the 802.11n Wi-Fi standard may make wired Ethernet ports a thing of the past in some industries. Whenever I write about wireless in this way, I always get dinged with security concerns. Do we really want our financial transactions and health care records riding over radio waves willy-nilly across the enterprise?

I certainly understand the sentiment. After all, security professionals are paid to be paranoid. My contention however is that while Wi-Fi security has greatly improved over the past few years, many security professionals still hark back to the early days of the easily hackable Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) and use this to fuel their current skepticism. With all due respect to the security community, things have changed quite a bit.

One final note on wireless security. A lot of today’s commercial technologies had their roots in the military and were used in battlefield environments. Aruba Networks has received certification from the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.K. Ministry of Defense. Pretty tough security crowd, if you ask me.

Don’t get me wrong. A mis-configured or rogue wireless access point is still a huge vulnerability, but a strong configuration based upon the WPA2 and 802.1x standards make Wi-Fi pretty secure. Still not convinced? Talk to Wi-Fi security leaders like Aruba Networks, Cisco Systems, and Trapeze Networks and you’ll find some of the smartest network security minds around. Hey, they have to be more paranoid then security professionals or they don’t sell a thing.

Google has released the beta version of a new browser, Chrome. In its comic-book pre-announcement, Google stated correctly that watching videos, chatting, and even playing Web-based games didn’t exist when browsers were first invented. For the user, Google wants the browser to disappear and to focus on the applications and pages users are viewing, rather than on the border with its tools, and such. Google has rethought the Internet browser–some of its basic underpinnings are quite novel–but users will recognize some features as they exist in other, open-source browsers on the market today.

For more details, see the Chrome First Take on CNET.

At the moment, only the Windows version of Chrome is available for download. Plans call for
Mac OS X and Linux versions in the near future. That said, Google has released Chrome in 43 languages and in 122 countries.

Click here for full coverage of the Google Chrome launch.

The interface in Chrome is very different from other browsers and takes a little getting used to. Instead of the traditional Netscape/IE-style toolbar across the top, Chrome uses tabs. Moreover, the tabs are detachable, so the terms "tabs" and "windows" become interchangeable within Chrome. Detached tabs can be dragged and dropped into the browser, and tabs can be rearranged at any time.

Chrome is based on the open-source project Webkit, the same rendering engine used by Apple
Safari. If a page renders in Safari, it will render in Chrome. Webkit is also the basis for Android, Google’s mobile platform, so it seems that Google is planning to use Chrome in mobile environments.

(Credit:
Robert Vamosi / CNET)

A demonstration of several searches revealed results that resembled dossiers on people. For instance, the company showed how you could find someone using just the first name and a past employer. The bio page retrieved was longer than a page and included a list of previous and current schools and employers, as well as basic contact information.

Rebus Technology offers desktop search that helps people find digital documents as well as paper documents that are faxed and scanned. See full story here.

Searches can be run based on age, relatives, screen name, e-mail address, and interests as stated on social networks and other sites.

SAN DIEGO–The promise of Facebook and the nightmare for privacy advocates has arrived in the name of a people search site called iSearch, one of a handful of search-related products announced at DemoFall on Tuesday.

Semantic introduced SemantiFind, which offers Web search based on meaning of the keyword being used. For instance, it can separate results for Apple the computer company from apple the fruit. Results are displayed next to those from a search engine. Users can add pages to the catalog to help future searches using the same terms.

Intelius’ iSearch site links offline and online data to help people find other people. It uses proprietary algorithms to integrate data from public records, online social networks, and professional sources to provide a comprehensive people search engine.

Infovell offers a way to mine the deep Web of unstructured data that is hidden from major search engines. The initial focus will be surfacing medical and biopharmaceutical-related information. Results are organized into folders that can be saved and shared with others.

Also launched was TetraBase SDT, software designed to improve the performance of relational database operations by reducing bottlenecks using advanced processing technology. For example, the system can inform the database in advance of expected spikes or recommend techniques to reduce drain on bandwidth during rush hours.

For corporations there was Radiant Logic’s Virtual Context Server. It organizes structured data from across databases and applications into meaningful contextual information. The system turns operation data into English-language sentences. Employees can do searches based on phrases and context.

Needless to say the Microsoft agreement gravy train was the big topic among analysts covering Novell. A few nuggets gleaned from Novell executives:

Linux invoicing was $23 million, down 42%. As we have stated before, our Linux business is dependent on large deals which may result in some fluctuations of our quarterly invoicing. This quarter we did not sign any large deals, many of which have been historically fulfilled by Microsoft certificates. Today we have invoiced $199 million or 83% of our original $240 million agreement.

Hovsepian elaborated on Novell’s earnings conference call. Linux, viewed as Novell’s growth engine, sputtered in the quarter. Hovsepian said:

This was originally published in ZDNet’s Between the Lines.

Novell CFO Dana Russell noted:

Novell’s fiscal first-quarter results were a mixed bag, and Linux invoices fell sharply as the company failed to sign big deals.

• Russell said that “customers certainly are price-sensitive” and Novell expects that the prices for Microsoft-Novell Linux certificates are not going to hold.

On the surface, Novell’s quarter told a familiar tale. Open platform sales, which are dominated by Linux offerings, were $35 million, up 24 percent from a year ago. Other units had a mixed performance. Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian said that “invoicing was below our expectations in this weak economy.”

For the first quarter, ended Jan. 31, Novell reported non-GAAP earnings of $24 million, or 7 cents a share, on revenue of $215 million. Those results were a penny better than Wall Street estimates. Net income for the first quarter was $11 million, or 3 cents a share.

Add it up and it appears that the Microsoft reselling agreement that put Novell’s Linux business on the map has played itself out. Meanwhile, an aggressive pricing strategy-for services attached to free software-can’t be good for profit margins going forward.

On the bright side, Novell said it is rolling out Suse Linux Enterprise 11 later in the quarter. That rollout may improve Novell’s Linux invoicing fortunes.

• Demand generation for Novell’s Linux business is the company’s responsibility-not Microsoft’s. The big problem was that Novell was relying on big deals that failed to materialize.

Our Q1 Linux performance did not meet our expectations as our pipeline coverage and conversion was overly reliant on direct sales and sales cycles lengthened. Going forward, we are focused on building our pipeline with and through partners and we will be aggressive on pricing to gain market share.

• Invoicing for Novell’s Linux certificates appear to be moving back to historical norms, said Russell. If that’s the case then the first quarter hiccup will be an aberration.

Slashdot has been owned by the publicly traded SourceForge (LNUX) since 2000, when the company–then known as VA Software–acquired Slashdot operator Andover.net.

“We are currently working with our datacenter team to determine the root cause of this outage. All sites are now operating normally and we do not anticipate any other outages related to this issue.”

Performance monitoring firm Pingdom reported that Slashdot was down from 3:38 a.m. ET (12:38 am. PT) until about 8:48 a.m. (5:48 a.m. PT), slightly more than five hours.

Another blogger said simply, “SourceForge is down.” And the site for a Scotland-based software start-up called MonAmi that hosts its downloads on SourceForge’s servers said, “With some unfortunate timing, it looks like the ‘Axis of Openness’ Web pages (SourceForge, Slashdot, Freshmeat) have gone for a burton. There seems to be some networking problems with these sites, with Web traffic timing out…This is a pain because we’ve just done the v0.10 release of MonAmi, and both the Web site and the file download locations are hosted by SourceForge.”

CNET News.com received an e-mail early Wednesday morning from a reader saying “Slashdot is down and has been since late (Tuesday) night.” A run through Google Blog Search yielded few results, but the Belgium-based BosIT blog had a post dated Wednesday afternoon (in that time zone) saying “Slashdot down…So is this what the end of the world looks like? It certainly is a first to my knowledge. Good luck guys!”

UPDATE (6:04 a.m. PT): SourceForge’s sites are back up.
UPDATE (1:27 p.m. PT): Comment from SourceForge was added.

On Wednesday morning, there appeared to be some sort of outage at SourceForge Inc., parent company of iconic geek news forum Slashdot and retailer ThinkGeek (among others). Neither SourceForge nor the sites it operates were accessible at 5:30 a.m. PT. According to SourceForge, it was an emergency maintenance window that “caused an unanticipated network outage.”

SourceForge vice president of operations Jay Seirmarco responded with an e-mail statement on Wednesday afternoon: “The datacenter serving SourceForge.net, Slashdot, Freshmeat.net and ThinkGeek had an emergency maintenance window today, starting at 1:00am PT. While datacenter maintenance windows do not usually cause service outages for these sites, this specific maintenance window caused an unanticipated network outage that lasted until about 5:45am PT, at which time service was restored,” he explained.

As they might have said at Slashdot rival Fark, “Everybody panic!”

SmartSynch makes communications devices and software that go into smart meters.

(Credit:
Martin LaMonica/CNET News.com)

If SmartSynch gets its way, your utility meter will have its own address on the Internet.

Joining the Internet: an electricity meter.

Secondly, utilities can take advantage of new wireless networks, such as WiMax or municipal Wi-Fi, as they become available since SmartSynch uses IP, he said.

In a statement, Nadim Barakat, a managing director in Credit Suisse’s
Customized Fund Investment Group, said that its investment was driven by the anticipated demand in smart-grid technologies.

“Utilities are deploying smart-meter technology at a rapid rate to avoid the difficulty of building and permitting new power plants, to prepare for impending carbon regulation and more importantly because managing electricity use at a granular level opens up new business
opportunities with customers,” he said in a statement.

SmartSynch introduced a residential smart meter, which will double or triple the number of products installed in the next few years, Johnston said. It now has 120,000 installed.

Its gear gives meters their own Internet Protocol (IP) address and uses wireless networks used for cell phones to communicate information back to utilities.

First, they don’t need to build their own network, either by upgrading existing infrastructure or establishing a broadband-over-powerline network.

Using the existing wireless networks gives two big advantages to utilities, said the company’s CEO Stephen Johnston.

The smart-grid company on Thursday announced that it has raised $20 million, led by Credit Suisse, to invest in development and sales of its networked utility meter technology. To date, the 8-year-old company, based on Jackson, Miss., has raised $80 million.

Technologies to upgrade the electricity grid is one of the most active of the clean-tech area. A number of smart-grid companies are building software to better operate the power grid or build “smart meters” that can communicate usage information between customers and utilities.

Its systems are used by 75 utilities, which are using the metering technology mostly to cater to commercial and industrial customers. For example, a business could sign up for an energy efficiency program where it agrees to let a utility dial-down usage during peak times.

“I suppose my reaction’s pretty similar to a lot of other people who think that we are on the brink of a very scary situation, and a lot of us thought that our political leaders were going to be able to come together and do the right thing, and put together a reasonable package,” McCrea said. “I’m hopeful that they will return to work on it and get something passed soon, but I would say that there’s a very big question mark hanging over all of our heads and we’re seeing companies that were once considered blue-chip evaporate in days.”

If even banks are having a hard time getting money, what does that say for the small and midsize business? The Wall Street Journal had a story on Monday on how companies like McDonald’s may face a squeeze as their franchisees are unable to get loans to purchase or upgrade stores. I suspect that is just one visible example of a growing issue for businesses across the country.

Here’s C.H. Low, CEO of social-networking software start-up Orbius and a serial entrepreneur.

Here goes.

I’m going to try to briefly accomplish in a few paragraphs what it seems to me our government has completely failed to do in this financial crisis.

No, I don’t have $700 billion of my own to shell out. But to me, Congress’ failure came not today on the House floor, but over the past week as both elected officials and members of the administration failed to translate the crisis into terms that have meaning for everyday Americans.

“As an early stage start-up, we rely on venture investments to carry us through a few more stages before we can be self-sustaining,” Low said. “With turmoil, smaller venture funds which fund many early stage companies themselves get anxious and their own investors may be affected and may affect their capital call. We ourselves planned for a rainy day but even we don’t have that much for a prolonged monsoon.”

News.com Poll Bailout bombshell
Was the House right to vote down the $700 billion bailout plan?

Microsoft, for its part, has also called on Congress to speedily revisit its decision.

In terms of where things are at, Milken Institute senior fellow James Barth said that we are a long way from another Great Depression, but added that we are also far enough in that even the legislation Congress proposed isn’t alone sufficient to solve it. In the meantime, cash really is king.

“I think we need a game where instead of shooting (Nazis), we shoot Congress,” he said. “This is embarrassing.”

If the credit markets should freeze up–which many say is happening and will continue without massive intervention–everyone that borrows money will face a cash crunch. That means companies that take advantage of short-term loans to get by won’t be able to buy raw materials or make payroll. Even businesses that don’t need short-term capital may defer purchases to preserve capital.

Then, he tried to put the best possible spin on it. And it was such a good spin, I decided to leave it in. “In such uncertain times one certainly is not surprised to see an awful lot of activity in services like Plaxo and LinkedIn. Now would be a good time to make sure that one’s information and network are up to date…”

“When financial markets don’t function well, the ramification is broad,” he said in an e-mail interview on Monday. He said he is disappointed that the bailout is so misunderstood. Even the term bailout, he said, is a misnomer.

He said that the seizing up of credit creates uncertainty in every sector. “Doing nothing is the worst of all choices,” he said.

Low noted that the main beneficiary is not Wall Street.

I’ve heard the phrases “Main Street” and “Wall Street” a lot, but what I haven’t heard is plain explanations of what credit really means and how essential it is to our system of doing business.

You don’t have to take it from me.

CNET News’ Daniel Terdiman, Elinor Mills, Jim Kerstetter, and Caroline McCarthy contributed to this report.

“This is an asset purchase, not a 100 percent bailout expense to taxpayer,” he said. “There is risk but also possibility of making a profit. Government’s main function is to do things that private sector cannot handle. This Market Stabilization Bill…is as necessary as having an Armed Forces to defend the country.”

“Any firm that has lots of cash that can tide itself over during this credit and liquidity crunch will be in far better shape than other companies,” Barth said.

John McCrea, vice president of marketing at Plaxo (now owned by Comcast), said it was “shocking and scary that they failed to come together on an issue of such vital importance. ”

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Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter, who tracks the video game market,
said his industry will suffer like any other, though he did offer a suggestion for how to make lemonade from the financial lemons being lobbed from Washington.

We are stuck trying to move forward with new loans–essentially to keep the economy moving–while dealing with clearly bad ones of the past. While much of the attention has focused on concern over home loans, there are also construction loans and business loans that are at risk of default, risks that grow as those businesses find themselves essentially shut off from getting any new capital, extending the vicious circle.

Phomance, writes Ben Nahorney, is actually the foreboding cross-section between phishing and online dating–and he should know, as he recently received a suspicious e-mail from a hot Russian nurse who seemed unusually interested in corresponding despite the paltry details in his online dating profile.

The Wall Street Journal
pointed us to Nahorney’s quite funny blog about the occurence, which is both a darn good read and a darn good cautionary tale (consumer tips included) about what can happen when scammers slowly win open-hearted victims’ trust and then attempt to start bilking them.

Phomance might sound like some hip new description of a romantic phone conversation, but Symantec’s senior information developer says there’s nothing sexy about it.

Why, out of the multitude of members on the site, had this woman decided to contact me? Did I seem open-minded, having stated that my ideal partner would have “Any” hair/eye/body type? Was I mysterious due to my lack of a picture? Was it that we had “All of the above” in common when it came to the hobbies section? Obviously my skeleton of a personal ad was picked from the site for other purposes.

Little did that most-likely apocryphal Slavic beauty know who she was dealing with when she contacted Nahorney. He immediately saw the telltale signs of a con and went about investigating his potential suitor (who, he noted from her photo, was “I’ll wire her money just to take care? of her sick puppy” gorgeous).