Before I begin, I want to highlight a couple of changes over the past week. I've hinted at one in the past, and it's finally come to pass - RCW is now a podcast too. I've signed my good friend Jason Salas of Digital Pontifcation fame to a lucrative contract to record them for me. I'll still be writing the posts every week, but when I get done, I'll send it over to Jason, who will be putting his voice to my words. Ok. No lucrative contract. Actually, he was nice enough to volunteer his services for a while. But if you want to sponsor RCW, I'll gladly share it with him!

The other news is that I'm now offering an RSS feed for just RossCode Weekly, and since it's now voiced, it's going to be a podcast feed, so you have a choice - do you want to read it, or have it read to you? Anyway, here's the info you'll need, and then it's on to this week's RCW.

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I feel like a broken record, but there really was a lot of news this week. As a warning, this'll probably get a little more technical than normal. No, RCW won't delve into code samples, but there's a lot of news that only developers will be interested in for a few years. Eventually, end users will be interested, but not in the technology itself, but in what the technology is used to build. Anyway, on with the show!

Where to start? Well, there's two directions that include most of the news this week. Consolidation or Introduction? Let's start with consolidation - that'll be more appealing to the masses. Then we'll bore you with the technology news once you're hooked.

Remember that rumor I reported last week about eBay buying Skype? It's true. Of all the rumors of who was going to be buying Skype, the eBay rumor had the most buzz - but it was mainly negative. Why would eBay want Skype? Voice auctions isn't a reason enough to spend $2,600,000,000, is it? For those detail-oriented ones out there, the deal is $1,300,000,000 in cash, 32 million shares of eBay (about $1,300,000,000 worth), and the possibility for another $1,500,000,000 if certain performance metrics are reached - although, no details about those numbers, and there probably never will be, nor will there be a mention if those numbers are ever hit. Here's some speculation. Could eBay be looking to expand it's marketshare, and is going to use it's excess cash to build a Vonage competitor?

We'll pause the consolidation machine for a minute to venture down the VoIP road. So, Skype offers conference calls, but what if you want the call to be free, and have up to ten participants. And what if those participants could be land line phones, cell phones, or SIP devices? Well, that's exactly what SIPphone is offering! This is what Google Talk is missing right now: conference calls (and any calls to the "real" phone network, for that matter). And Skype? Well, if you have an existing conference call service, which a lot of corporations have, and the number is a toll-free number (again, what most companies have), then connecting with Skype is free - remember, Skype offers free outgoing toll-free calls right now. But it's not totally free because you have to pay for the conference?call service. This is totally free. Well, for the Gizmo users, at least. And most cell phone users. It's not going to be a local number - so you pay for long distance, but it is a good way to include both computer users and "old schoolers" who still use land lines. You know, the more I look at this, the more I think an 800 conference call number would be better, with Skype users and land liners calling in for free. But I'm sure some will find it interesting.

One last VoIP item. This one's a little strange to me, but ViseonMedia is teaming with ABC News to offer content via it's VoIP software. What does that mean? Will ABC News be calling you with the newscast? Or will you dial in and be able to hear what's going on? It apparently will also offer video too. I have no idea what this means. Wouldn't this content be better delivered via RSS and enclosures? Does Dave "Don't Call Them Feeds" Winer need to talk to them and explain the whole thing?

Back to consolidation-ville. Oracle buys Siebel. For $5,800,000,000. So, let me see if I have this straight. Siebel has revenue in the $400,000,000 range. Skype is expected to have about $60,000,000 in revenue. Yet, Siebel can be bought for only (potentially) $1,700,000,000 more? Does this mean that the new business model is that much more valuable, or is there another bubble forming? Either way, this definitely strengthens Oracle's CRM offerings, something that seemed to be only part way there the last time I looked at Oracles CRM solution (which, in fairness, was over three years ago, just as the CRM wars were heating up).

These come in three's right? Well, Seagate did buy Mirra. Does that count? One less storage player in the game. And Seagate's aim now? Build an appliance that allows content to be accessed from anywhere, but without the whole "hardware as a service" model. And yes, I do realize that it's "software as a service."

Before we move to the introduction section, let's go to rumorville. Last week, Apple revealed the ROKR Motorolla phone. And it was, in essense, a flop. Not much excitement. iTunes 5.0 generated more buzz, albeit for the wrong reasons. Now come reports that people are waiting for the Apple iPhone - a phone built by Apple. But is this a good idea? Remember, it was Apple who wanted to have the song limit set to 25 for the ROKR, and only the prodding of Motorolla moved that number to 100 - the reason no one was excited about the new phone. Now, if Apple has control, they can go either way - they could get their way on the limit, or they could have introduced the limit as a way of pre-fending off competition. If they have a phone that can 1.) download songs directly, and 2.) doesn't have the 100 song limit, which would you buy?

Apple's always good for rumors, and there's another one this week too. The Apple Expo is next week, and any time a company has some sort of conference, that usually means something new. Could they be upgrading their Power?Mac G5 line? And if they are, what does it mean? Problems with the current line? Dipping sales that need a boost (why buy PowerPC chips when you can wait for the Intel ones)? Or could it just be that they did it because they can?

One more quick note about iTunes. It (at some point) gained support for video podcasts. It's not exactly clear when it happened, but it did. I guess this really lends some more credibility to the iPod Video rumors?I've talked about in the past.

How about skipping the whole iTunes thing and just getting the HTC Universal for $149? That's what about 1,000 attendees at this year's PDC did. It's a Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Phone, and looks pretty sweet. Of course, the announcement caused mad dashes for the doors during the keynote. This is reason enough to go to the PDC!

And that, folks, is the introduction section. The Professional Developers Conference. It started Tuesday, and there was a lot of bits dropped. For those who don't care about the developer tools, I've still got other content I'll sprinkle in throughout the rest, so you have to keep reading. I'm mean.

Anyway, PDC started on Tuesday, but a lot arrived on Sunday. What greeted them? A power outage! The only good news about that is that the wireless network performance was unaffected - it still didn't work! Eventually, the lights were turned back on, and Microsoft had a lot to show. First, a new cut of Windows Vista is going to be given to all attendees, and guess what it has? The Sidebar! But not just any sidebar. A sidebar that supports gadgets, which sound amazingly like widgets, which is what Konfabulator uses. But it's better than that - Gadgets can be used on Start.com. And any windows or web app. Remember Start.com/developer? It launched too, and it's all about Gadgets! Want to mess around with your own gadget? You can on start.com/pdc.?What info about gadgets? Check out Microsoft's Gadget site.

More cool Vista news? Well, if you run out of memory, you can just stick a USB memory stick in, and it'll use it. Seemlessly and securely. So with last week's revelation that there will be 7 SKU's, which SKU is going to be given out at the PDC? Some say the Ultimate one. It seems that the SKU thing has caused quite a stir, but here's what I don't get - why? Right now, XP has a starter version, a home edition, an MCE version, Tablet version,?an x64 version,?and a Pro version. That's 6. Why the fuss over 7?

Anyway, what else happened on the first PDC Day? Office 12 and it's new UI. And while it's pretty slick, and I'm looking forward to some of the features, such as RSS being baked into Outlook, the high level stuff isn't the important stuff. It's under the hood that's going to keep Office the champ of desktop productivity. Remember VBA? I'm all too familiar with it - but guess what? It's going away, and being replaced with Visual Studio Tools for Applications. It's now managed and uses the .NET framework. Combine this with VSTO, and this'll be much better! Even OneNote is getting better!

Ok.?VSTA doesn't go deep enough into the Office System foundation. How about adding in a workflow engine??I know this doesn't seem like an Office feature, but in my mind, with WSS and SPS and CMS being part of the Office umbrella, I think the WWF fits in there nicely. It's also a part of WinFx, which got a new developer center,?and will make it easy for companies to automate their business processes. I think this is an awesome development. Workflow and business automation is a key to most solutions, yet it's always one of the hardest because it requires you to bring together a wide variety of systems. BizTalk supposedly fills this need, but hasn't gotten the traction at the lower levels. With it being baked in now, you'll have no excuse not to use it.

Unless you listen to Novell's CEO. He says Vista's going to drive people to Linux because it's cheaper. I thought we got past this a while ago. The total cost of ownership of Linux is not free, and a lot of people agree that in the long run, it's actually more expensive. Vista's top competition will not come from Linux - it'll come from XP. So many of the key features are being ported back to XP that a lot of companies will be reluctant to migrate - maybe the WWF will give them a push in the right direction.

Am I the only one who pictures the Hulkster holding a CTO over his head ready to slam him down unless he upgrades? That'd be a motivator too!

There's two new products from Microsoft too. First, Max. This was Project M, and is a way to share photos, and uses WinFx too. Sense a theme here? Next, we have Expression, as I reported last week. There's three SKUs here - Acrylic, a graphics designer, Sparkle, an interactive designer - think Avalon designer. Lastly, we have Quartz - designer for the web.

One more thing that Microsoft's done - and it's an "It's about time" moment. From this summary of PDC revelations?(read the whole list - good stuff!), there's a nice little tidbit about Infopath forms being available without having to have Infopath installed. Infopath is a nice way to fill out documents and store them in a data store, such as Sharepoint, but it's always required the client to have Infopath installed. It sounds like they've finally remedied that situation - something they should have done from the start.

Let's take a small tangent from the PDC, because what's left is completely technical. Let's talk about Google. How do you transition from Microsoft to Google? Ask Mr. Lee. He's been cleared to work for Google, although not on search. He's a recruiter in China right now - and Google says that's why they hired him. Good spin. You're not paying him a $2,500,000 signing bonus to recruit - you paid him that to help you build a better search.

Oh - Steve never threw that chair. I don't know what happened in that room, but one of the most preposterous arguments I heard was that the chair throwing testimony came from Mark Lukowski, so it must be credible. That's like saying that Apple copied the iPod interface from Creative, and it must be true because Creative's CEO said so. It may be true, but the fact that a competitor levies those charges certainly doesn't add credibility!

Ok. Back to Google. They're?selling $4,180,000,000 in stock - that's at $295 a share. The odd thing about this (and I don't claim to understand how an offering like this works) is that Google's stock price was at $303 at the time of the offering. Why the discount on new shares? Are they anticipating a drop in share price because there's that many more shares out there?

How do you help prevent your stock price from dropping? Offer a new solution. How about blog search? It's fast and you can subscribe, but is it good enough? Will it change how you use Google? How many people use blog search engines - I know there are some who do, but when you look at using Google's, what's the reason you would choose to search the blogs they index versus everything they index? And, how do you? tell a blog from a regular site?

So what if your competitors are launching something you don't have? Ask Yahoo - they don't have blog search yet, but they do have Instant Search. Type in a search term, and it'll return a nice little balloon of a quick results. It's like the "I feel lucky" button without the fear of getting unlucky.

Back to Google. I haven't seen it, and I haven't heard anyone else talk about it, but Randy over at iBLOGthere4iAm says he's seeing click throughs on searches. That really would be helpful information, especially if it was by search term. And do you want a Google rumor? Could they be considering buying Baidu? This was around last summer, but it apparently?has some renewed vigor behind it - and some don't see it happening because Google would be?competing with the government.

Remember GoogleNet? It's the supposed attempt by Google to provide a nation-wide wireless network. Do you think you'll ever see it? Maybe, but I'm guessing we'll see it Canada first - especially since?Rogers Communication?is teaming with Bell Canada to do it now!

Let's talk email for a second. Web-based or thick client? Let's start with the web. Yahoo is offering up a limited beta of a new mail interface. And according to one analyst, it's "a vast improvement over Gmail" - now that's saying something. Is Thick client your thing? Thunderbird hit 1.5 beta - which isn't surprising since Firefox hit 1.5 beta last week. Back to web-based email. Microsoft demoed their new Hotmail interface at PDC.?It uses Atlas.

What's Atlas? Warning: We're going technical again! Atlas is Microsoft's AJAX solution, and it was released at PDC this week. This is going to be huge! One thing Microsoft is very good at is making these types of things simple, and that's what the web world needs right now to get adoption. The best news is that the ASP.NET team is going to be as completely transparent as possible, releasing monthly or more, and working with the community to make it what we want. This is honestly a very cool development coming out of Redmond.

We'll stay technical with this next one. Microsoft rolled out it's plans for C# 3.0 and Linq - yes, one release beyond where we are at today. It's got some very innovative features, and looks to take C# to the next level. Although, I do have some concerns that it's going to become a fairly complicated language. I won't delve into too many of those details here, but you can go read a post with some examples. To be honest, Linq, XLinq, and DLinq (ObjectSpaces reborn!) look to be very cool - once you understand how to use them. Linq is an in-memory query language. XLinq allows you to use Linq to talk to XML documents and DLinq allows you to use Linq to talk to databases (think O/R mapper).

So, that looks to be it from PDC this week. Lots of very cool stuff! I'm excited, but the major drawback to all of this is that none of that will be released until probably 2007, save Vista, which will be 2006.

So what's coming out this year? XBox 360 - on November 22nd.?A little later outside the US. But some are pondering how well XBox 360's backwards compatibility will work, especially when Microsoft is asking which games you want. I think I'll just keep my XBox classic around, and not worry about it! More XBox news? How about something about XBox Live? Well, it won an Emmy. Best Actor? No. Outstanding Achievement?in Technology and Advanced New Media. Oh yeah - the ole' OATANM Emmy! Seriously, this is?pretty cool.

Ok. Enough facts. What about the rumors? How about this? Could Microsoft be in talks with Time Warner to buy a stake in AOL? No one on either side is talking - sound familiar? I think I wrote the same thing about eBay and Skype last week, and we know how that turned out. Now, there have been other rumors around this that it's not a purchase agreement - it's a search agreement - that instead of AOL using Google search by default, they could be looking to move over to MSN's search. Just a note to say that Google's number one revenue source is AOL, so this could be a huge shift in the search wars - Google only has it's revenue from it's search engine and ads to fund it's ventures, where as Microsoft has other sources (reportedly $1,000,000,000 a month) to help the company along - they can afford to take a loss, or a very small gain, on a venture with AOL. If this goes through, could this be a sign of Microsoft's renewed aggressiveness towards competitors?

One more AOL story? I got an email from Ken Lempit noting that Podscope has signed a deal with AOL to provide their podcast searching capabilities to AOL's search. What effect this has on the whole Microsoft deal remains to be seen, especially since it's still a rumor. Here's the official press release from TVeyes, the company behind Podscope, since I can't exactly link to the email.

A couple of sour notes now. First, this past week is the one year anniversary of the Kryptonite story. Not familiar with Krptonite? They had a bike lock that was supposedly unhackable. Well,?Engadget did - with a Bic pen. And they posted it. And everyone talked about it. And Kryptonite never answered the charges. Ok, that's not exactly fair. They answered, but very slowly, and they took a huge PR hit because of it. They did eventually make it right.

Everyone likes TiVo right? Well, everyone did. They've taken a bit of a PR hit lately too. First it was the ads that are being inserted when you fast forward, and that doesn't seem like a huge deal. But now there's this: People reported that episodes?of the Simpsons were being "red flagged" and deleted after seven days - not exactly going with the TiVo philosophy, is it? And how do you answer criticism like this? Don't know? Either does TiVo apparently. They say noise in the line caused it. I can't be the only one whos skeptical about that!

Lastly, have you seen Memeorandum? Always wanted a tech version? Well, now you have it. And it's completely automated, which is pretty cool. But the bad thing is that the RSS feed is all but useless now. It should include the same content that's on the site - that's my opinion.

So that's it. A huge geek week if you're into the Microsoft scene, which I am. But even without that, it was still a pretty big week for mergers. Anyway, let's get this out and in your hands. And, as always, send any suggestions for stories to weekly at rosscode dot com.