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(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET News.com)

Jeff Weiner, a top Yahoo executive who announced his departure from the company last week, is indeed joining two venture capital firms.

Weiner was executive vice president of Yahoo’s network division, overseeing many of the Internet company’s most important products.

Jeff Weiner, executive vice president of Yahoo's network division

“Weiner will advise the leadership teams of existing Accel and Greylock consumer technology portfolio companies, and will also work closely with the firm’s partners to evaluate new investment opportunities,” the firms said.

Accel Partnerse and Greylock Partners both announced Monday that Weiner is joining as “executive in residence.”

According to a memo from Yahoo President Susan Decker, reported on TechCrunch, “On an interim basis, Jeff’s team will report to me as we consider how to best move the organization forward.”

What’s making this week’s votes more pressing than usual is that a temporary law amending FISA expires on Friday.

#2. Renew a modified version of the Protect America Act permanently, and immunize telecom companies from the legal consequences of any illegal activities they committed. This is what Bush dearly wants, and what a minority of Democrats are prepared to give him. If the president gets his way, the retroactive immunization would derail a slew of lawsuits pending against telecommunications companies, most notably the one against AT&T that’s currently before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Note that the Intelligence Committee version goes further than merely immunizing telecommunications companies. As I wrote in October, it also would retroactively immunize e-mail providers, search engines, Internet service providers and instant-messaging services. It may cover black bag jobs too.

Reid added, “In my 20 years in Congress, I have not seen anything quite as cynical and counterproductive as the Republican approach to FISA. The American people deserve to know that when President Bush talks about the foreign-intelligence bill tonight, he’s doing little more than shooting for cheap political points–and we should reject his efforts.”

That leaves Congress with three major options:

#1. Renew last August’s law, called the Protect America Act, for 30 days. Both sides would get more time to maneuver. This is what the Democrats want, but Bush has threatened a veto of a temporary extension.

A high-stakes political debate over wiretapping and immunity for telecommunications companies has been pushed back by at least one day.

Expect the Senate to resume debating options #1 and #2 on Tuesday. So will the House of Representatives, where Democratic leaders have scheduled an afternoon vote. The House vote, especially, could call Bush’s bluff–by putting him in a position to veto a law that he claims is necessary to thwart a terrorist “attack.”

So that leaves Reid and most other Democrats to rally around #1. Republicans want #2, and are being especially forceful. Bush said in last week’s radio address, which he’s likely to repeat in his State of the Union speech:

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell elaborated on Bush’s statement on Monday, saying Republicans will not allow the Judiciary Committee version of the legislation (which has no retroactive immunity) to become law. They want the Intelligence Committee version (which does). He said of the Judiciary version: “That bill will not, I repeat, will not become law. Reconstructing the judiciary committee bill is a pointless exercise. It’s an exercise we do not have the luxury to engage in. We can get serious and pass the bipartisan Intelligence Committee product.”

That means the debate on how to rework the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will continue later this week. In his State of the Union address Monday evening, President Bush is expected to press Congress to grant retroactive legal protections for telecommunications companies that allegedly opened their networks to the Feds in violation of privacy laws.

#3. Let the Protect America Act (also known as the pro-privacy option backed by the ACLU and others), expire.The argument goes as follows: The Patriot Act dramatically expanded police eavesdropping powers in 2001, and there’s no pressing need to go further. FISA has worked for decades, and has long included emergency no-court-order-required wiretaps as long as proper procedures are followed.

Even though House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last year that the Protect America Act “does violence to the Constitution,” there seems to be little official interest in option #3. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who voted against the measure on August 3, did something of a flip-flop on Monday, saying “none of us want the current law to expire.”

In two votes on Monday, senators failed to reach the 60-vote supermajority required to curb debate and force a vote on either of two wiretapping-related proposals, one favored by Republicans and the other backed by Democrats. Each vote was 48 yea to 45 no.

“Congress is now considering a bipartisan bill that will allow our professionals to maintain the vital flow of intelligence on terrorist threats. It would protect the freedoms of Americans, while making sure we do not extend those same protections to terrorists overseas. It would provide liability protection to companies now facing billion-dollar lawsuits because they are believed to have assisted in efforts to defend our Nation following the 9/11 attacks. I call on Congress to pass this legislation quickly. We need to know who our enemies are and what they are plotting. And we cannot afford to wait until after an attack to put the pieces together.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The transaction is expected to close by the end of June, Symantec says.

Symantec is acquiring AppStream, a maker of application streaming technology.

(Credit:
Symantec)

Symantec already uses AppStream’s technology in its Software Virtualization Solution (SVS) Pro. Using application streaming enables end users to perform functions by accessing parts of a software program over the network as needed, without having the program fully installed on the client computer.

Win or lose, it’s a gutsy move and Ballmer was brave in making it.

We all know what happened next. Yang did little to get the company on the right track, Ballmer made the offer, and here we are, just a few days away from Microsoft’s “take it or we’ll take it to the shareholders” deadline.

Just to reiterate what I’ve said before, Yahoo’s board is made up of smart people. That said, they’re too smart to let this turn into a proxy fight that will ultimately harm the company. In the end, the deal will get done. But smart as they are, the big mistake they made was to turn a once great company in trouble over to novices.

As I said at the time, Yang and Decker were poor choices. Neither had ever run a company or turned one around before. I couldn’t imagine a board being comfortable with on-the-job training of skills few possess with so much at stake.

Fear is a human emotion. It’s part of our survival mechanism–the adrenaline fight or flight response. In ancient times when a caveman felt fear, he ran and hid or readied himself for battle. Those who paid attention to their fear survived; those who didn’t, well, let’s just say their descendants probably aren’t around to read this.

But remember, as I said, these are highly accomplished people. They’re no dummies. So how do you explain their actions?

Yahoo’s board of directors, on the other hand, has not acted so courageously. In June of last year, just one week after a contentious shareholder meeting, it bowed to shareholder pressure in accepting the resignation of CEO Terry Semel.

So Ballmer took a bold step in moving to acquire Yahoo. He didn’t choose the easy path, since battling with Yahoo’s board and potentially its shareholders is a difficult and arduous task. Still harder will be the integration of the two companies. That’s where most mergers fail.

Looking back on that decision now, I have no better inkling of what the board was thinking than I did then. In addition to being surprisingly reactive and poorly thought out, it now seems like an almost frivolous decision.

While that wasn’t necessarily the best move, it wasn’t a disaster, either. Sure, not everybody can run a company and even fewer can turn one around, but Semel wasn’t the only one, to be sure. What the board did the same day, however, was a disaster and it really surprised me. It installed the combination of Jerry Yang and Susan Decker as CEO and president respectively of the beleaguered company.

I’m neither a Yahoo fan nor a Microsoft foe. But I still mourn the loss of a unique business entity that, but for the lack of a few brave people, might have survived this ordeal. After all, survival is what life is all about, isn’t it?

In my opinion, at a crucial moment in the company’s history, Yahoo’s board stuck its head in the sand and made believe things weren’t as problematic as they were. If the members felt any concern or fear at all, they ignored it. Not only isn’t that what boards are supposed to do, it isn’t the brave thing to do, either.

The most successful people on the planet are the ones who face the cold, hard truth of reality and act accordingly. They don’t surround themselves with “yes men” and they don’t view the world through rose-colored glasses.

They feel fear just like you and me. But they understand that it’s not the “be all” and “end all” of their existence. They understand that they need to face that fear and make hard decisions anyway. They’re brave.

In the Microsoft-Yahoo saga, I believe Steve Ballmer was brave. He faced the truth and saw that, while Microsoft had spared no expense and made a valiant effort to compete in the Internet space, those efforts would not be enough to ensure the continued growth of the company. That’s why its stock has languished in recent years. Analysts and smart investors know this.

When executives and directors act courageously, the results are evident. And when they don’t, the results are also evident.

Having courage does not mean ignoring fear. It means facing fear head-on and doing the right thing anyway. At least that’s my definition. If you fail to face fear and act appropriately you’re not necessarily a coward, but you’re not the best you can be either.

After more than a year of doom-and-gloom PC market forecasts, things are looking up.

Customers will begin buying again, but not until later this year, and picking up through 2010 and 2011, according to Gartner Research Director George Shiffler. He also cautioned that the first wide availability of
Windows 7 won’t spur as many new sales as may be expected.

Market research analyst firm Gartner predicts that the fourth quarter of this year will bring the beginning of a rebound that will gain momentum next year. With a stronger fourth quarter, the industry is on pace to move 274 million PCs worldwide this year. While that’s still a 6 percent drop from last year’s total shipments of 292 million units, it’s not as bad as once thought. Earlier this year, Gartner was predicting a 9.2-percent decline for the year.

“Although the buzz surrounding Windows 7 has generally been quite positive, we don’t expect the market to significantly deviate from its normal seasonal trends in reaction to its release,” Shiffler said in a statement. “Unless Microsoft mounts a major marketing campaign in support of Windows 7, we think consumers will simply adopt the new operating system as they would normally buy new PCs and/or replace old ones. As for professional users, we still expect them to put off adopting the new OS for at least a year until they have fully tested their applications against it.”

Gartner says next year’s shipments will swing into positive territory, predicting growth of 10.3 percent. But its analysts say it’s too soon to assume the worst is over. People are still delaying purchases while the overall economic outlook remains uncertain.

Founder Joshua Rosen, who presented his product at Demo 08 Wednesday morning, said the genesis for Cozimo was a bit of desperation. Working on the artwork for the movie Peter Pan several years ago, Rosen and his team were split up all over the world and finding it hard to find time to edit images and video for the film. His boss said that if he don’t find a way to get it done, they’d all be fired. Rosen’s solution? Cozimo.

It works like this: An image is sent to your e-mail by one of your colleagues. When you open the image, it launches Cozimo’s collaboration tool. Anyone invited to the project can mark up and leave comments on the image or video in question. Chat windows appear to talk in real time about the changes.

It also works with video clips. Everyone online sees the video play in real time and any can leave notes on particular frames. It has a clean, simple interface and appears very intuitive, but Rosen is not the only one to come up with this idea. See also: ConceptShare, Octopz, and ReviewBasics.

Cozimo is a tool for real-time collaboration around photos and videos.

It promises tight synchronization–at the exact frame level in videos–when multiple viewers are online, and a timeline-based annotation system that sounds a bit like Viddler’s video-commenting feature.

The 8GB iPhone has practically disappeared from the U.K. after a price cut last week.

Price apparently was an object for U.K.
iPhone shoppers.

Does this mean Apple has a 32GB iPhone planned for the 3G launch, expected to come in June at or around the Worldwide Developers Conference? Perhaps, although it’s only been a few months since it upped the capacity to 16GB. At that time, Apple’s Greg Joswiak said the company still believed there was demand for a 8GB model, but that stance might have changed to reflect a “bigger is better” mentality.

The decision by U.K. carrier O2 to cut the price of the 8GB iPhone prompted shoppers to exhaust stocks of that model at O2′s Web site and at Carphone Warehouse, an authorized iPhone reseller. Pocket-Lint confirmed with Carphone Warehouse that the 8GB models are kaput, and O2 told the site that while online stocks of the 8GB model are gone, retail stocks are dwindling fast.

It was only a week ago that O2 cut the price of the 8GB model from 269 British pounds ($533) to 169 British pounds ($335), a move that was seen as a inventory-clearing measure ahead of the expected introduction of a 3G iPhone. Both Carphone Warehouse and O2 told Pocket-Lint they were “reviewing” whether to order more 8GB models from Apple, which is yet another hint we’re going to see a new model soon.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

It appears that Google will stay on the same path that it is on today, taking advantage of Moore’s Law in terms of faster and cheaper systems, as well as faster and cheaper storage and networks, and moving from hundreds of thousands of servers to millions working in parallel to deliver more relevant and media rich answers to queries.

Google is publishing a series of brief articles during September by 10 of its top scientists on how the Internet will evolve in the next 10 years. In the first article, Alfred Spector, a vice president of engineering, and research scientist Franz Och, outline how Google’s search engine will evolve over the next decade.

Google isn’t betting on pure artificial intelligence, replicating all the functions of the human brain, as the way to put more intelligence in the network. The army of Google software engineers will continue to focus on machine-learning and human-engineered relevancy algorithms to unpack trillions of data bits collected from Web crawling and user inputs.

At this point in time Google performs somewhere around 71 percent of Internet searches in the U.S. Google appears destined to increase that share over the next decade unless Microsoft or some company just hatching can come up with a substantially superior search experience.

Traditionally, systems that solve complicated problems and queries have been called “intelligent”, but compared to earlier approaches in the field of ‘artificial intelligence’, the path that we foresee has important new elements. First of all, this system will operate on an enormous scale with an unprecedented computational power of millions of computers. It will be used by billions of people and learn from an aggregate of potentially trillions of meaningful interactions per day. It will be engineered iteratively, based on a feedback loop of quick changes, evaluation, and adjustments. And it will be built based on the needs of solving and improving concrete and useful tasks such as finding information, answering questions, performing spoken dialogue, translating text and speech, understanding images and videos, and other tasks as yet undefined. When combined with the creativity, knowledge, and drive inherent in people, this “intelligent cloud” will generate many surprising and significant benefits to mankind.

(Credit:
British Music Rights)

Last week, the British Music Rights organization published a study about the musical habits and desires of younger listeners. The survey (available here in PDF form) included more than 1,000 recipients, age 14 and up, enrolled in universities or “feeder schools,” and the results contain some positive nuggets for the ailing recorded music industry.

Most notably, given all the warnings about video games and other forms of entertainment taking music’s place, music is still important to kids: 73% of those surveyed said they’d want to take their music collection with them to a desert island. Music came in ahead of all other possessions, including their mobile phones, books and magazines, and musical instruments. Moreover, while illegal downloading is popular (63% do it) and the most frequently cited reason for it is “to save money,” CDs are far from dead: 97% of survey respondents had a CD collection, and only 14% of those CDs were ripped from friends.

These numbers are probably exaggerated: survey respondents might say they’re willing to pay for something, then change their minds when the actual product goes on sale. Even so, the demise of physical music is not imminent–people want the artwork, the physical connection with the artist, and an item to place on their shelves to show an aspect of their personality to friends.

According to this survey, students value their music collections more than their other physical possessions.

But here’s the part that really caught my attention–74% of kids say they’d pay for a legal file-trading service that contained every song ever recorded and let them keep the songs indefinitely. But even with this infinite online database, 63% would continue to buy CDs because they want a physical artifact.

This looked a little bit more like a science experiment than a robot, but Wurzer explained that the key to this robot is software that is “customized for martini mixage.”

Indeed, while the spilling of the screwdriver had seemingly fried Chapek’s microcontroller, rendering the cocktail robot useless for the moment, Calkins wasn’t all that perturbed. It was clearly nothing that he or his colleagues hadn’t seen before.

“Probably fuel,” Davalos joked.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

She tried to get it running properly again, but still, no fire erupted. Instead, we all began to smell a very strong odor of fuel.

To which Davalos deadpanned, “Every robot bartender needs to dry out once in a while.”

He flicked a switch and Chapek was ready.

Davalos had the robot serving Spanish Coffee, a particularly strong mix of several alcohols, but at first she couldn’t get it to do just what it was supposed to.

“Yeah, that happens,” Davalos said matter of factly, before stamping out the little flames with her foot.

Back in Vienna, Wurzer said, Roboexotica has grown to include dozens of cocktail robots, as well as others that people bring just because they’re cool.

“Last year, I did this and set my arm on fire,” she said. “And I didn’t notice at first because the floor was also on fire.”

Chapek begins to move its arm to get the booze to serve the first drink of Friday evening. It would eventually mix a screwdriver but instead of serving the drink, it slammed the glass against itself, spilling its contents all over–and damaging–its microcontroller.

She tinkered with it a little more and then tried again. And this time, it worked: Huge jets of flame shot out the side of the little robot, blasting the drink.

Someone asked, “What does it taste like?”

I’m not much of a martini man, and not wanting any gin, I switched the controller over to screwdriver, and pressed the button that would set Chapek in motion.

SAN FRANCISCO–Since I was one of the first people to arrive Friday night for a preview of this weekend’s cocktail robots exhibition here, I was going to get the first drink.

For example, he said, someone had recently brought a robot that was capable of flipping a cigarette into peoples’ mouths.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

But one that was on hand was Davalos’ creation, which she called El Espanol Borracho.

“I suppose I should look at the (computer) code,” a chagrined Calkins said, before explaining to someone who had just wandered by that, “Chapek is being greedy again. He made the drink and then he stole it.”

Chris Veigl’s Mind Reading Martini Maker begins to mix up one of its specialties.

This cocktail robot–from a 2004 event–is designed to blend up a fruity drink even as it belches out plumes of fire.

Meanwhile, Calkins was trying to get Chapek up and running again, but he was frustrated by the effects of the robot’s drinking problem.

Sure enough, it came alive and slowly, its arm began to swing in the direction of four bottles that were suspended and awaiting martini glasses. Chapek swung the glass in front of the vodka, paused while some of the liquor poured in, and then continued on toward the O.J.

But just as it reached that point, the arm sped up, and instead of stopping and serving my drink, Chapek slammed the glass against its body, spilling my screwdriver all over itself and its interior electronics.

This was after, of course, Calkins had finished getting Chapek ready to go.

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.

“Chapek, he’s an alcoholic,” said Simone Davalos, Calkins’ co-organizer. “We can’t take him anywhere.”

David Calkins, one of the organizers of the San Francisco version of Roboexotica–an event that has been taking place in Vienna, Austria, for a decade–had set up his robot, Chapek, and, determining it was ready, asked me to tell the machine what I wanted to drink.

“Orange juice and microcontrollers do not mix,” Calkins said, exasperated.

Though it wasn’t working Friday night, Chapek is designed to speak a series of corny bartender lines. Calkins’ computer has the lines programmed into its code.

On Friday night, there were only a few cocktail robots set up for the invited guests to see. So I was not able to see some of the machines that will be on display on Saturday, such as one that can test your blood alcohol content, or another that I believe is intended to blend a fruity drink while shooting out big fire.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

“Let’s see if it turns on and explodes,” he said, “which it has in the past.”

This small robot is a cylinder that, if you weren’t paying close attention, you might mistake for a kettle. But it’s attached to a small container of high-pressure fuel and has spigots coming out of it that serve up the booze.

Over on the other side of the room, Magnus Wurzer, a founder of the Austrian Roboexotica, was setting up Chris Veigl’s Mind Reading Martini Maker.

(Credit:
David Calkins)

During a Friday night preview of the Roboexotica event in San Francisco, which takes place Saturday, Simone Davalos’ cocktail robot ‘El Espanol Baracho’ applies its special elixir to a Spanish Coffee. Roboexotica, which has been taking place for a decade in Vienna, Austria, and is visiting San Francisco, is an exhibition of robots geared to serve and mix drinks.

We all cheered. And then someone noticed that the floor had caught fire a little bit.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

Chapek the Robot Cocktail maker is named after Karel Capek, who came up with the term robot. Chapek, the creation of San Francisco Roboexotica organizer David Calkins, is designed to mix and serve a series of cocktails.

“David, unplug me please,” Davalos urged Calkins. “Quickly.”

For a decade, Roboexotica has been a growing hit in Vienna. Now, it has come to San Francisco, where it will be open to the public on Saturday from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. at Space, 354 5th St.

Chapek, which is named after Karel Capek, who coined the term “robot,” is a small robot with a mischievous face, wiry metal arms, and an attached control box where you tell it what kind of cocktail you want it to mix up and serve you. The choices? Gin and orange juice, a gin martini, a vodka martini, and a screwdriver.

Finished, it reversed directions and headed back toward the beginning, where my hand was eagerly awaiting my beverage.

Clearly, fire was supposed to be involved, because she began to tell a funny story.

“Hey,” he said, pleased. “It didn’t.”

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

He explained that the robot measures how many alpha waves on average are being detected by an electroencephalogram (EEG), and that the more alpha waves it finds, the drier the martini it makes.

A few minutes later, though, he offered, hopefully, “(the microcontroller) might be drying out.”

By now, the robot had squirted out a full cup of alcohol. And for a moment, a small halo of flame shot out of the side of the robot, illuminating the cup.