Google plans to launch its Chrome App Store in October, Google executives told a German Gamescom audience in Germany this week in August. This store will essentially be Google’s iTunes, supporting devices like the HTC Tablet running Chrome OS, due out in November.

The HTC device is said to have a relationship with Verizon.  This is critical as most of the ‘big iron’ in the tablet will be in the cloud and apps may not be able to run without being connected to the Internet.  Questions remain on whether or not there will be caps on the data plans like AT&T did to iPhone users, but this may be the new normal.

Again, like Apple, Google will be opening up the opportunity for developers to write programs and apps for Chrome and Chrome OS in exchange for a cut of each sale, rumored to be at 5%. The app store would be available to users of its Chrome browser and the Chrome OS, which means the potential market is much bigger than just tablet PC users running the Chrome OS as Chrome can be ran on any computer.  It will be interesting to see both how the store performs and how people like using mobile devices that only work when connected to the Internet, ala cloud computing-style.  I personally use a HTC Droid, which mostly only works when connected, so maybe it will be okay.

As Facebook vies to compete with Google and expand it’s search functionality from searching Facebook.com to searching the world wide web, it has looked to a vertically focused company steeped in Internet glory including Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen, LinkedIn chairman Reid Hoffman, and Google Ventures general partner Joe Kraus who are all investors and/or advisors at Chai Labs.

Chai Labs specializes in a technology it calls “Semantic Search,” which “uses proprietary crawling, artificial intelligence and data mining technologies to analyze and extract insights from millions of real-time data points across the web,” according to the company’s website. The “Semantic Web” is a term coined by World Wide Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee, which is a, “New form of Web content that is meaningful to computers.” The semantic web is gaining momentum as HTML5 includes more support for it.

So what does Facebook want with the semantic web?

Unlike when it has aquired online sharing sites like Friendfeed* and ShareGrove or purchased Web-based image-hosting companies like Divvyshot, Facebook’s purchase of Chai Labs does not have an immediately apparent value to users-the value it seems, is to Facebook who may be able to use the semantic functionality to hone search results based on a person’s profile, making results theoretically more accurate. While Facebook does have a built-in search engine that lets users search the entire Internet (which is basically just an embedded Bing engine), many users still use Google or Yahoo for search, but Facebook is trying to change that. While Google is trying to become more like Facebook by creating Orkut, purchasing Jaikut (and then abandoning it), rolling out Wave (and then pulling it back), and now Buzz (and possibly a Buzz/Wave combo called Google Me), Facebook is trying to become more like Google.  Why?

Follow the Money

Search engines and social networks both make money by selling ads and they are successful at doing so because ads are displayed to the users most likely to click on them (and purchase the product or service).  How they are able to do this has everything to do with the purchase of Chai Labs.  The more targeted search results are, the more likely users will find ads relevant, and the more likely users are to click, which makes Google and Facebook gobs of cash.  While Google makes some money from Google Apps customers, the majority of their revenue is from ad sales and Facebook wants a piece of that pie.  This is all part of the recipe.

• IT capacity – storage (GB or TB), CPU cycles (GHz or THz), network bandwidth (Mbs or Gbs), and/or memory capacity (RAM) a measure of performance.

• IT utilization – uptime availability (% available per year) and volume of usage (# of requests) as indicators of activity and usability.

Effective cost/performance ratios and levels of usage activity do not necessarily imply proportional business benefits. They are just indicators of business activity that are not in themselves more valuable than lower operating costs. What is needed instead is a set of business metrics that build on the cloud computing model.

The following are business metrics that can help translate the indicators from the capacity-utilization curve to direct and indirect benefits to business and examples of how a CAPEX is different than an OPEX in cloud computing:

1. The speed and rate of change – Cost reduction and cost of adoption/de-adoption is faster in the cloud. Cloud computing creates additional cost transformation benefits by reducing delays in decision costs by adopting pre-built services and a faster rate of transition to new capabilities. This is a common goal for business improvement programs that are lacking resources and skills and that are time sensitive.

2. Total cost of ownership (TCO) optimization – In cloud computing, users-not just IT-can select, design, configure, and run infrastructure and applications that are best suited for their business needs. Traditionally this has often been strictly in the realm of IT even after projects are handed off to production services, but in cloud computing environments end users are more involved.

3. Rapid, elastic provisioning for dynamic usage – Resources can be scaled up and down to follow business activity as it expands and grows or is redirected. Provisioning time compression can go from weeks to hours. This service management affects end users and business needs as the scope of functionality and services for users evolve and seek new solutions.

4. Increased margin and cost control – Revenue growth and cost control opportunities allow companies to pursue new customers and markets for business growth and service improvement. And because it can scale, IT avoids over-and under-provisioning of IT services to allow for smarter business services. This is enhanced capacity utilization, the ability to add and use hardware on-demand without extra hardware or labor costs.

5. Business process improvement – Cloud computing capabilities can be leveraged through shared services. Users can have access to business capabilities allowing improvement or development of new skills and solutions through cloud sourcing and on demand solutions like Amazon Web Services, Google Apps, IBM Cloud Computing, Microsoft Azure, and HP Cloud Assure.

These five measures define a new set of business metrics that can be used to create a matrix and dashboard of your current and future operational business and IT service needs relating to your cloud computing potential return on investment.

• For Those Who Want To See Where Others Are Driving
• Small, Pocket-Sized GPS Device Tracks GPS Data
• Receives Signals From 24 GPS Satellites Orbiting The Earth
• Internal Computer Accurately Determines the Location Of Device Within 2.5 M & Records Data Every Second
• Can Be Easily Hidden In Or Under Car
• No subscription necessary

The battery lasts about two weeks. It shows on an overhead map (adjustable to satellite images with Google Earth) the exact path it took, or an animated time-clocked journey, showing where it went, how long it stopped, when it moved again. Data is downloaded to a PC for viewing. Takes Lithium batteries.

Down, but not out, Hotmail is still used by millions of people around the world and is still a critical aspect of Microsoft’s online business strategy, especially as Microsoft moves more into the cloud with its more traditional revenue models like Microsoft Office, which is releasing version 2010 this year. Hotmail is particularly useful to non-english speaking users because of its large language support and according to Comscore its still the most used web email with 360 million users compared to Yahoo’s 300 million and Gmail’s 200 million. Still, Hotmail hasn’t changed much since Microsoft bought it in late 1997. This was after starting up in 1996 and garnering over 9 million users.

So what is changing?

Microsoft announced that this summer they will begin rolling out new, advanced features that are akin to what Gmail users are used to:

• The option for viewing emails as conversations (although the default will still be as single emails)
• Automatic filter buttons to filter emails from people on your contact list, emails from social networks, shopping sites, and others.
• Larger attachment sizes, up to 10 GB using Microsoft’s SkyDrive

One thing that remains the same is the huge banner ads running alongside your email, ala 1996, in addition to the text ad tagged onto all of your emails beneath your signature. That is, unless you pay $20 a year to remove the ads.

Our first post

It seems fitting that our first post would be about Hotmail who provided me with my first personal email account, which I still have, back in 1997.