Google Revamps Homepage - In Japan

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Japan found out yesterday that their defaulted Google homepage looked like nothing they had ever seen before. The clean white background was tainted by
some tabs that weren’t there the previous night, but overall the feedback the team responsible for the change received was ranging from "good" to "hell yeah!," or at least that’s what it must have been, I can’t really read Japanese.

The post on the Official Google Japan blog, although translated here, is pretty much unreadable. Nevertheless, as you can see in the screenshot on the left, the additions blend in nicely with everything else, and all the services that have been included in the tabs are a whole lot easier to access than in the traditional manner.

The four new tabs are named (approximately) "Featured," including Gmail, YouTube, News, Maps and Transit, "Various search," that hosts links to Image Search, Blog Search, Books and Google Desktop, "Useful tool," with Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Reader and Google Toolbar and, finally, "More enjoyable," and YouTube once again, Picasa, Blogger and Google Earth.

By the looks of it, this revamp will prove to be rather successful, and I dare say that it would be welcomed in other Western markets, because it grants instant access to the Google slew of services. Right now, until the Mountain View based company manages to link all the accounts in the mega-project dubbed Google Accounts, it’s a tad more difficult to pull such operability through.

"Our fundamental strategy is to take ideas from Japan and apply them to other markets," Emmanuel Sauquet of Google told Business Week, in regards to his company’s mobile strategy. Will this also affect the other policies and strategies as well, like changing the default homepage for everybody? Gosh, I hope so, the Japan page looks almost too good to be true!

Microsoft Touts the Superiority of Dynamics AX 4.0 over Oracle 11.0.3 - In terms of cost savings

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Microsoft has applauded the superiority of its own Dynamics AX 4.0 over Oracle 11.0.3 in terms of the cost reduction it will provide to customers. It were in fact major cost savings that have prompted supply chain integrator PACCESS to opt for Dynamics AX 4.0, Microsoft's enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution is less expensive to maintain and more capable of satisfying the PACCESS' needs, the Redmond company
argued, in comparison with Oracle 11.0.3.

"We tried to add five users, but we would have had to pay Oracle $365,000 because of a license-model change," said Nina Palludan, vice president of IT for PACCESS. "The five-year total cost of ownership for Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 was more than $1 million less than Oracle’s, even though we already owned the Oracle software. Actually rebuying the Oracle e-business suite would have cost less than upgrading our current licenses."

The expensive upgrades to its Oracle system turned PACCESS toward Microsoft. The Redmond company pointed out that Dynamics AX 4.0 was not only highly scalable and adaptable, but also less costly. And in this context one of the aspects which contributed to cutting down costs was the fact that Dynamics AX 4.0 uses the same graphical user interface as the Office System, which helped cut down training costs for employees.

"Global companies are finding ways to simultaneously save money and advance their processes with the capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics AX," said Michael Park, corporate vice president for Microsoft’s U.S. Dynamics business. "Companies that seek new business management systems are looking for solutions that are simpler to use, less costly to own and easier to scale than their existing solutions. Around the world, companies are finding these benefits in Microsoft Dynamics AX, an ERP solution designed for growing businesses."

Antigua Welcomes IP Piracy - Only a matter of time

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A rather strange decision of the World Trade Commission was awarded last December to Antigua, should its negotiations with the United States fail. The problem in question is that of the US rules, more or less blocking foreign gambling sites. Even Europe is going at the regulations,
as many sites based there (bwin among others) have encountered the same ban and are threatening to ask for a WTC ruling of their own.

Antigua, based on the Commission’s decision, has made it clear that it will no doubt give free reign to intellectual property piracy should Americans not be allowed to access its very lucrative online gambling businesses. Come to think of it, The Pirate Bay could very well profit from this situations and simply relocate there, if need be.

Right now, the ball is in the United States’ court, as a battle will be waged between the Motion Pictures Association of America will not likely stand and watch as their work gets pirated without being able to do something and those who came up with the banning rules. And if the MPAA isn’t enough, Microsoft will most likely back up their claims, as the software company would also have a lot to lose if things go south, and not only for the winter.

Talk about an Island Paradise, that’s exactly what Antigua is going to turn into if the US rules won’t bend. Like I mentioned earlier, Europe is pretty interested in the results of this ‘tough negotiation’ as well, so all the pressure should start wearing down the rules into something closer to pointers and guidelines.

Peer to peer BitComet sharing users should wait for the decision biting their nails, because chances are that it will be a new booming start to what is already a very wide network. Keep your fingers crossed, both gamblers and file sharers!

SanDisk Goes for Apple's Neck...Sort Of - Announces a new digital music distribution scheme

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Apple's iTunes service represents probably the best-known method of music distribution, next to the CD and DVD, of course. However, it would seem that the people over at SanDisk are seriously considering a whole new approach to this concept, as they've announced that the company will promote DRM-free music from more than 50 new and emerging artists on a microSD card. This U.S.-based program is the first of its kind to use microSD cards, and helps launch the new 8GB Sansa Fuze MP3 player.

According to the company's statement, the "Sansa Sessions" microSD card is comprised of a collection of rock, pop, and hip hop songs, music videos, and photos from more than 30 labels, featuring artists like All Time Low, Ladytron, Magnet, Nada Surf, Of Montreal and The Coup.

"The Sansa Sessions microSD card is an innovative medium for music distribution, and great exposure for our artists," said Matt Lunsford, co-president, Polyvinyl Record Co., which represents Of Montreal and other artists featured on the card. "This promotion benefits all involved, aligning the interests of the musician, label and consumer. We look forward to doing more together."

"We’re excited to be working with labels and artists to create a new ecosystem for music," said Daniel Schreiber, general manager and senior vice president for SanDisk’s Sansa audio/video product line. "The Sansa Sessions music card gives customers a simple way to enjoy, manage, and discover new music. This is just the beginning of our efforts to bring consumers a simplified and highly enjoyable music experience."

As mentioned earlier, this new offering is directly related to the launch of SanDisk's Fuze media player, as US customers will have the opportunity to redeem a promotional offer inside their box to receive the exclusive Sansa Sessions music sampler on a pre-loaded microSD card.

Of course, it's rather difficult to expect that this particular approach to music distribution will actually affect in any way iTunes' business model. However, it might represent a challenge for CDs and DVDs, especially since the manufacturing prices for microSD cards have seriously dropped over the past few years.

Google SafeSearch Showing XXX Picture - Or it did, at least

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The all-knowing and all-algorithm writing Google has failed utterly in what it has been bragging to do so well: keeping children from having access to pornographic material. Their SafeSearch option missed a very explicit photo of a woman’s vagina, and, as beautiful as it might be or not, there was no reason for it to show on top of the web search results, where the Google Universal Search returns are shown.

The image was there no matter what filter was checked in the Preferences page, even the one that was supposed to block both explicit text and explicit pictures wouldn’t change anything. The query I’m talking about is "hot celebrities," but unfortunately I wasn’t able to capture a screenshot of the results, I was too busy changing the filters back and forth. In the meanwhile, Google either dropped the image from its index or just modified its algorithm for the better, but you can still see their goof-up on The Blog Bryn blog, here.

This comes just after Google responded to the founder of the world’s biggest pornographic movie producer that by its filters and every other action it does, the children are being kept away from the explicit material. I guess they were wrong, and if memory serves me right, I can remember two other cases when the Mountain View based company was involved in similar scandals. The images back then were on Google News, and related to a story entitled "Employee of the Month": Big-box banality. In that situation, the image was removed and even now there’s no picture attached to the article on the Seattle Times’ online edition.

Feel free to try the query that caused the trouble, you will now find that instead of the vagina photo, there’s one of Michelle Anderson, that’s much more… viewable, to say the least.

Yahoo! Video Considers XXX Clips to be “Health and Beauty” Material - YouTube flashback?

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Never ever, in the history of Internet videos, has a user-generated video hosting site been avoided by those who wanted to share their triple X rated clips with the world. The rules are already classic and have been around ever since man climbed down from trees and discovered
the power of marketing: the first to come is the first to be served. Abiding by them, the latest video site to surface is the latest one to have been ‘given’ the not safe for work (NSFW in short) clips. Drumrolls, please… it’s Yahoo! Videos to have the dubious honor!

The filter problems that YouTube experienced when it first opened its doors – its servers, actually – have come back to bite Yahoo! in the rear, just because it is young and inexperienced. Two clips are now hosted on the Sunnyvale based company’s video sharing service, and have received all the attention: one is of Jenna Jameson, a woman, a star that needs no further introduction, and the second is equally provocative and enticing, but the protagonists are not as well known.

The clips seem to have been around for quite a while, judging by their number of views (above 6,000 as I write this), and are viewable by accessing the "Health and Beauty" tab in the Category view of the video sharing site. The screenshot shows that they’re not difficult to get to, kudos to them for making top page. Others can be found via the related videos section, but I decided to single out just the two based on the above argument.

As one user commented on Valleywag, there’s a new XXX video site to browse when at work, and it’s got the Yahoo! logo up and visible, so there’s a perfectly good excuse for those caught watching. Just hit the button and scroll up to where the Y! is placed and there’s no need to worry.