The on again off again potential collaboration between Microsoft and Yahoo seems to be on again.  Of course, the merger of giant internet companies is nothing new to the vast world of cyberspace business.  And ever since Google pretty much took over the world in regards to online activity, both these two huge companies have been playing footsie about merging, buying each other out or working together in some fashion.  The idea is to mount some kind of counter offensive against the mighty Google.  And it looks like that counter offensive may be about to shape up.

Of course, there are a lot of obstacles to very large internet companies like this getting together.  The first obstacle was a tough one when Microsoft set out to buy Yahoo outright back in 2008 for just shy of $45 billion.  Yes, that is billion with a "B".  At that time, Yahoo was not prepared to play ball with Microsoft.  But with a few high level changes in management, both companies have found common ground and a deal has been forged that could do be just the thing for Yahoo and Microsoft to get back in the ball game when it comes to who calls the shots in cyberspace.

Both companies walk away with this partnership with something that will benefit them both. For Yahoo, who has been hammered by the superior search engine design that Google has, they will be able to implement the Bing search engine logic into Yahoo searches. It is hard to remember now but there was a time when Yahoo dominated the internet as the premier search engine of choice for a lot of people.  Google stole that crown away from Yahoo and all other competing search engines in a big way.  But Bing has been an up and comer in the search engine wars ever since Microsoft launched it.  So that would put Yahoo back on the map when it comes to competing for lucrative web searching traffic.

Microsoft stands to win because Yahoo still retains a lot of brand recognition as a premier web site for a lot of services.  By empowering them to become serious competition to Google through the power of the Bing search capabilities, Microsoft can share in the explosion of internet advertising revenue that will come their way.  The deal has been in place for some time but for the two internet giants to work together required approval by regulatory agencies in American as well as in the EU.  In February, the roadblock of that approval was resolved so Yahoo and Microsoft can now roll up their sleeves and get busy with their plans to implement their partnership.

The regularity roadblock was no small issue especially in regards to getting approval from the EU commission.  There had been some long running disagreements that have been going back and forth between Microsoft and the EU that had to be overcome to allow this very large merger of two internet giants to go forward.  With the approval of the EU in hand, the lights are all green for both Yahoo and Microsoft go get moving making the power of their combined innovation to begin putting them back in the game in the internet search engine online competition.

There is definitely work to be done.  As of January of this month, Bing had grabbed control of just over 11% of internet search activity in cyberspace. Yahoo had fallen to a low of retaining just 17% of that business.  By comparison, Google continues to command a dominant position by holding on to an amazing 65% of the internet search activity that flows through ISPs all over the world. 

Yahoo and Microsoft will have the challenge of somehow displacing a company whose name has become a byword for finding information online.  You have to know that anytime someone on TV says the phrase, "I will just Google that", the heads of Yahoo and Microsoft are reminded of the tough job they have ahead of them to unseat Google as the dominant player in internet access and search activity.

In terms of how much this merger will be bad for competition, that point seems to be somewhat moot.  With Google dominating all interent search activity, any move to arrest some of that business away from one company is good for competition.  That may be one of the reasons that the EU and other regulatory commissions saw the value in approving this partnership. 

From a consumer point of view, having two giant companies keeping over 80% of the internet search engine business to themselves hardly seems like robust competition.  But in terms of the amazing products and services all three of these companies have brought to the internet community, there is something to be said for the big, rich and powerful companies doing a lot of the innovation that drives the internet.

For people who can remember the glory days of Yahoo, this deals seems to spell the end for the Yahoo approach to internet search logic.  Both Yahoo and Microsoft openly admit that the demise of how Yahoo used to operate a search engine is going away to be replaced by Microsoft's logic that has made Bing realize some of it's early success.  But in light of the fact that such a huge percentage of internet users have turned away from the old paradigm of internet searching, there is no room for nostalgia when there is such a need to create a new competitive dynamic. 

It remains to be seen whether the Microsoft and Yahoo combination can really challenge much less bring down the mighty Google.  It will take the better part of this year to implement the changes and for both companies to find their place in the partnership so that the power of their combined internet offering uses the best of what each can do.  Google is not the kind of company to sit still either so it is certain that they will be continuing to surge ahead capturing more cyberspace real estate which will compound the challenge of taking on Google's in interent technology.

The Microsoft and Yahoo partnership still needs approval from some markets such as in India, Japan and other big markets.  There are some real opportunities in some large markets like China where Google is in trouble.  But these approvals are not the war and they don’t even represent the first battle to take back some of the internet traffic that has been lost to Google.  But it is a start.  We will all just have to watch to see if Microsoft and Yahoo can pull off the coup against Google that they hope to achieve.  It will make for an interesting conflict.

If you used Surveymonkey to create a poll and asked people what social networks like Facebook and Twitter are for, you would get a lot of answers.  Probably the most popular answers would be for fun, to share pictures and to keep up with friends and family.  Maybe a good sized group would say social networks great because they allow them to play Farmtown or some other Facebook game.  But the odds are you would get precisely zero people saying that they think social networks are great places for spies.

But apparently our federal government thinks the big social networks are wonderful places to do some spying.  But they are not just spying on evil doers from the dark world of international espionage.  There is now plenty of evidence that the groups that some very large government agents are spying on are American citizens like you and I.

Fortunately there are groups who are keeping an eye on the government such as the advocacy group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation who brought a lot of this clandestine activity to light.  If not for the Freedom of Information Act, the public would have no idea that Uncle Sam was lurking out there on their social networks gathering information that could potentially be used against them.  The particular departments that were "busted" would be the ones that we might call, "the usual suspects including the IRS, The Justice Department, The Department of Defense, Homeland Security and several others. 

What the EFF found out when they dug into just released government documents could send chills up your spine.  These agencies are foraging around all of the major social networks gathering information that could eventually used to mount a formal investigation into the lives of American citizens.  One of the documents that really spilled the beans on this domestic espionage was an IRS training document that not only instructed IRS agents to go after taxpayers using social networking sites, it teaches them how to do it.

The social networks that were primarily targeted take in a huge population of anyone active on the internet.  They include, of course, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter but the investigations also extended their snooping into Google Groups, YouTube and even Second Life. 

One aspect of what has been revealed about how these agencies go about their spying on our own citizens is that they do have some limitations and rules they have to live under.  For example, they are only allowed to gather information that is "out there" for pubic viewing.  They are also not allowed to deceive citizens that they are snooping on or represent themselves as a fake person such as to set up a false profile to "friend" suspects to get access to their profiles and pictures. 

That is some comfort just knowing that even though this kind of spying is being done without our permission, there are some restrictions that keep the government from really digging deep into your social networking sites.  So if you use some of the security tools that are available on the better social networking sites, you should be able to block the prying eyes of government agents from snooping around in your affairs.  But who knows if they will be that conscientious forever.

This kind of spying is right up the alley of an agency like the IRS.  Because people are so open and transparent on their Twitter or Facebook sites, an IRS agent could detect enough information to launch a formal investigation into a citizen just using clues that were spilled online. For example, they might be investigating someone who pays a small amount of taxes and they want to get deeper into his pockets. 

By watching posts and other information leaked on social networking sites, perhaps they will find that the suspect has been moonlighting as a bartender or a cab driver.  By getting paid in cash, that suspect would be able to avoid paying taxes.  A few off the cuff comments about how their little side business is going may be just enough for the IRS to open a formal investigation which gives them the power to get into all of your accounts and do an audit to find out if they can get their mitts on more of your money.

But dodging taxes is not the only thing the government could be lurking around to catch citizens doing.  Law enforcement agencies are taking a lot of interest in citizen's private lives.  A photo of you smoking something in a suspicious way or being in the room with people who were breaking the law like that could be enough to get a warrant and haul you in for some serious interrogation.  The wrong comments on your Twitter or Facebook posts that reflect your disapproval of the government might excite the secret service or Homeland Security to put a grab on you to find out just how close you are to becoming a terrorist. 

Now, law enforcement has used social networks to nab real criminals who had committed real crimes.  There was a case where a bad guy went on the run after a robbery and then posted pictures of himself on the beach in Florida.  That brought the feds down on him in a big way.  Most of us would not argue that in cases like that, this kind of investigation is a good thing.

But when you have to be looking over your shoulder now even when having fun interacting with friends and family on Facebook or Twitter, that is too close to that "Big Brother" society we all want to avoid.  These documents reveal that our government is trading dangerously close to violating the privacy rights of citizens.  We can be thankful there are watchdog groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation keeping an eye on Uncle Sam to let us know what they are up to.  It is important that just as the government is finding new ways all the time to watch the citizens, we need to watch them just as much.

There is something perverse about an attacker who would fool us into downloading a very destructive package of malware and viruses by using our desire to make our passwords more secure as a way to make us less secure.  But the most recent internet attack on the broad population of Facebook users taps that desire people have to keep their Facebook profiles safe.  The malware that you can innocently be victimized by is called Bredolab and it’s a nasty one, to be sure.

Bredolab attacks internet citizens the way a lot of ugly things get spread around online, through an email.  This email appears to be coming from Facebook stating that as a security measure, they have reset your password for you.  This approach right away should set off alarms in the minds of users because…

1. Facebook doesn't reset passwords for people.  That is up to users to manage.
2. Security matters are not handled through email.
3. To get access to your new Facebook password, you are asked to open an attachment in the email.   Attachments are almost always suspicious because they are an open door for malware and other nasty code to enter your computer.

The attachment that is supposed to have your new password will have a file name that looks like this…

Facebook_details_ (random numbers).zip

And the message in the body of the emails reads…

Because of the measures taken to provide safety to our clients, your password has been changed.  You can find your new password in attached document.

Thanks,

The Facebook Team.

This all seems very innocent which is the idea.  By fooling you into thinking a trusted application like Facebook is looking after your best interests, that trust opens the door for this very ugly malware that functions as a Trojan downloader.  It is in that classification because once Bredolab lives on your system, it is very crafty as hiding out, avoiding capture by your security software and then downloading lots of other malicious stuff to do more damage on your system.

Bredolab wastes no time once it breaches the security of your computer because it gets busy downloading all of it's nasty friends.  Bredolab downloads a password stealer that captures how to get into all of your secure websites and sends your usernames and passwords to crooks.  But that is just the opening attack of Bredolab.  Just for good measure, an ugly virus is downloaded to your computer just to make your life miserable.

Bredolab is a very clever piece of virus software because, like a virus, it constantly evolves and changes how it looks in a computer.  A researcher at he University of Alabama at Birmingham documented 17 different variations on Bredolab had been sighted in just 24 hours which means that in a few short days, there would be thousands of more variations on the dirty program proliferating all over the interent.  This insidious malware knows how to "repack" itself which changes what is called its "signature" as a virus.  This makes it very difficult for conventional antivirus software to recognize where the dirty code is hiding and get rid of it.

This not just a random virus attack that is easily defeated by conventional means.  In the last month, companies that track the most potent cyberspace threats have given Bredolab a ranking of number six on the list of the most active and dangerous threat to internet users.  In terms of attempts to infect user's computers using email, Bredolab has been identified to be involved with as high as ten percent of malicious emails that are reaching computer users worldwide. That means that of all that spam that hits your email system, the odds are that you have seen a Bredolab attack come your way.

While the email that is being used to infect many thousands of user's computers says it is from Facebook, Facebook has nothing to do with this.  If you spend any time looking at how Facebook security is handled, they would never just change your password for you and they would never address a serious security issue with a user through email.  At very least, if a Facebook user were to get this kind of email from the system, the first thing to do is to go log on to the site.  When you do that and you realize your password was not changed, you know that the email is a lie and to delete it. 

Above all do NOT open the attachment!  Facebook is not the first major online application that has been used like this.  The bad guys of the internet know where the big traffic is going.  It doesn’t take a genius to know that a huge amount of people are using Facebook.  And it isn't hard to "harvest" email addresses from Facebook users.  Many of the "apps" that people play with on Facebook are really just scams designed to harvest emails for this kind of attack plan.

The use of a spam email to gain entrance to a user's machine demonstrates that even new and very potent malicious software like Bredolab is no better at getting to internet users than similar malware and viruses that have been around for many years.  While it is smart to have top quality virus and malware protection software on your computer, there is no substitute for being a smart internet citizen and knowing how these people attack so you can dodge their schemes.

It is a good rule of thumb to view with suspicion any email that comes in that you did not solicit, even if it "seems" to be from a service you use.  Many respectable online services have been targeted like this including MySpace, EBay and large online banking websites.  No respectable business would send out an email like Bredolab tried to use here.  And avoiding opening any attachments that you are not 100% certain of is always a good policy to follow. 

If you are careful and you can recognize a scam when you see one coming to you in an email, you can block even the nastiest virus from getting inside your PC.  It pays to stay informed though because fighting internet malware and virus attacks is something we can never relax about.  The bad guys are never going to quit trying to attack us so we can never stop defending ourselves either.

It has been observed that many times a former president of the United States does more good after he leaves office than during his term.  Bill Clinton has had more than his share of controversy during his public life.  But that principle applies to him because the work he has done with other former presidents to reach out and provide aid during huge global emergencies has been worthwhile.  And because Clinton has always been a forward thinking leader, he has championed the use of the internet and advanced communications tools to help the poor of the world and to speed aid to the needy during horrific emergencies.

Bill Clinton has been aptly named the first internet president.  It is no accident that the White House website was launched during his eight years in office.  Clinton also made it a priority by executive order to direct all federal agencies to become more internet enabled when interacting with the American people.  It was largely his influence that has opened up so much government information to the people via cyberspace and made interaction with federal agencies at least somewhat tolerable because much can be done online.

Where Clinton has shown his best skills have been in raising money for large international relief efforts through his foundation.  One aspect of his organizational efforts that has stood out is that online contributions have taken on a much larger percentage of the total amount solicited for disasters like the 2004 tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and right on down to modern crisis events like the earthquake in Haiti.

Through Clinton's leadership, some well established rescue organizations like the Red Cross have "discovered" much more effective ways to raise money for disaster relief using internet communications and other up to date digital systems like Twitter and text messaging.  The huge push to raise money to quickly help people in Haiti who were suffering after the earthquake was a textbook example of how to mobilize all aspects of the media and cyberspace to focus millions of people on a cause and to get help to them quickly.

This is Clinton stuff where he is at his best.  The most recent use of the ability to blend so many resources for generating relief aid has been mounted by the Millennium Foundation.  It is an effort that is being coordinated with the United Nations and given the name The MassiveGood Initiative.  This time the target of so much high level fund raising power will be on helping very poor nations fight deadly diseases like malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. 

MassiveGood has found more innovative ways to tap the power of technology to raise money to fight in these very worthy battles against human suffering.  The Millennium Foundation is working to build partnerships with the travel industries including rental car companies, hotels, travel agencies and online travel assistance websites like Travelocity and Orbiz. 

Through these partnerships, people using the internet to book travel will have a resource on each web page to click a box and dedicate a small donation to the MassiveGood initiative.  There will be a link there where interested web surfers can learn more about what they can do to help fight global poverty and disease.  Considering how successful online bookings of travel arrangements has become, this simple but effective internet strategy has a great deal of potential to raise funds to help others around the world.

This is the power that online commerce has made available to charities that otherwise could never have risen to the occasion when very serious global tragedies occurred.  But it took vision, an ability to mobilize a lot of high powered people, a heart for modern technology and a certain amount of star power to make it come together as well as it has so far.  Those qualities sound like a resume of what someone like Bill Clinton can do.  The fact that he has sunk his teeth so seriously into this kind of work and that he is using his status as "Mr. President" to help people sets a great example for leadership in all areas of politics, entertainment and business to follow.

Of course, just as the internet is being used for good as in the case of the MassiveGood imitative, there are plenty of people online who want to do bad things or use this surge of good will flowing through cyberspace for scams.  This can be a problem because online crooks are not above stealing the official logo of a program that is doing good things for people to steal money from well intentioned internet web surfers. 

There really is no way around the fact that such dangers are lurking online and most people who surf the internet are aware of how interent terrorists and thieves work.  By taking care to verify that you are only giving your money to a legitimate online charity that will use the monies to benefit people who are suffering around the world, causes like MassiveGood can continue to thrive and use cyberspace to mobilize armies of people to help those less fortunate especially in times of terrible crisis.

Despite any political leanings, when a national and international personality like Bill Clinton uses his skills and notoriety to help others, that is a good thing.  It has been helpful to these causes to see former political rivals like Clinton and both president Bush and the younger President Bush work together to use their popularity to help organize international relief efforts. 

If we could only use this kind of cooperation between political parties and the unifying force of good will that causes like MassiveGood inspire to motivate our politics in Washington, lots more would get done.  It is probably one of the most honorable aspects of national political life to see men who served their country as President working hard after their terms are over to do good things for people in need in this country and around the world.  And with the leadership of people like Bill Clinton to bring in the power of cyberspace to raise even more revenue for global relief efforts, we can have strong hopes of seeing these kinds of efforts become even more successful in the future.

For some reason, the vision of a future where we can control all of our machines with vocal commands continues to be a strong.  The ability to simply speak to a machine and have it respond flawlessly has been the stuff of science fiction for a long time.  Just consider the wonderful relationship between HAL and the human astronauts in the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey.  When you consider how well having a smart computer that could talk to you turned out for those astronauts when HAL lost its mind, that utopian world of speech recognition may not be so attractive.

Of course, that is not to say HAL would happen when we can simply tell our furnace to come on or say "lights" and the lights respond or we can talk to our computer rather than use that old fashioned keyboard.  In a world where you can simply command your toaster to do its stuff doesn’t mean that toaster will turn on your with murderous revenge.  2001 A Space Odyssey was a science fiction movie after all.  It was not a documentary.

A Long Strange Trip it has Been

The attempt to bring about the utopian world of speech recognition has been going on for a long time.  When the idea of a computer recognizing a human voice came out, it seemed like a pipe dream. And the actual first applications that tried to make this kind of application a reality were pretty laughable.  Then about ten years ago, a major breakthrough occurred at the International Computer Science Institute at UC Berkeley.  The breakthrough was called Rasta and among other things, it opened up the potential of different kinds of hardware to take advantage of the same software that does speech recognition. 

Rasta made it possible to enable devices that were not supercomputers to use the massive databases and software genius it takes to simply have a conversation with a human being. In last ten or so years, we all have gotten used to a certain amount of interaction with speech recognition software.  Probably the one you and I are most familiar with are automated phone answering systems that have you "key in or say" your account number and use your voice to confirm other information before you can do business with the agency you called on the phone.

But even with that breakthrough and even though that speech recognition is pretty good, that doesn’t make it any more attractive to have that conversation. For one thing, a chat with a computer on the phone has to go along a very strict script and there is no saying, "wait a minute, I have to chase my dog". 

You can bet if you said that to an automated speech recognition software system on the phone, it would have no clue on how to handle that situation.  Speech recognition software has not gotten to the point that it can handle the infinite verity of things that can come up during a conversation with a human being.  Until it does, even if the computer can recognize every syllable you say, it will still be irritating to be "handled" by an automated personality, even if the voice on the other end sounds like a pretty girl.

Accents and Other Speech Recognition Hurdles

When you are having that phone conversation with voice recognition software, it is quite irritating each time it asks you to repeat what you said.  While the ability of computers to recognize the human voice is better than it was, it is still not very good.  To be fair, the ability to sort out inflections, accents and the huge variety of the way people talk even just in this country is phenomenal.  You can talk to someone from New Jersey, someone from Tennessee and someone from south Louisiana and for all intents and purposes, they might be speaking a completely different language.  Even in New England, some natives there have trouble understanding the differences between how people talk in the Bronx compared to Boston compared to Rhode Island.

When you put speech recognition in the context of human communications, even humans have trouble with it sometimes. You might try to count how many times in a given day you ask someone to repeat themselves because you did not understand what they said.  So add in to the problem of accents the additional issue of people that stutter or mumble or if you are talking to someone with a stuffed up nose and you can see how impossible the task is to teach a computer to figure that all out.

Stubborn Gurus

The gurus in the computer programming world are absolutely determined to get this right.  Now there are projects going on to try to teach computers to use context to figure out what someone has said.  Of course, this is another attempt to teach a computer to do what a 10 year old kid can do. It is a tough logic to teach because context is a phenomenally diverse undertaking. But the amount of powerful intellect that has been put to the task is impressive and we can expect some more breakthroughs in the field of speech recognition in the future.

Between now and then, most of us will probably not give up our keyboards in hopes we can speak to the computer and see it get what we said right.  It really is amazing that the scientific world is so stubborn about enabling computers to pull off this parlor trick. Even if computers could recognize every word you said and then they executed the next huge leap in programming to teach computers to be able to hold up their end of a conversation, the question would come up, "Who would want to talk to a computer anyway?"

That is a big question.  There are some great applications for speech recognition such as in helping the disabled and in education.  For those reasons, we applaud what the computer gurus are trying to make happen.  But their vision of a world where every device we own is run by voice recognition is probably a pipe dream.  After all, the last thing I want to do is to go to bed and say to my computer enabled house, "Turn out the lights" and for it to answer, "I don't think that’s a good idea…. Dave."

The justification and pay offs for business and for employees for promoting more telecommuting are well known.  That is why it is so surprising that employers seem to be dragging their feet on offering work at home programs for their employees so that they can sponsor a strong telecommuting program for their staff.  But a recent study that was sponsored by Microsoft using an online survey reflects that the percentage of companies offering this option is far below the level of interest in employees to participate in such a program.

The Microsoft survey which is available online here reveals some numbers that are not that surprising such as…

• 60% of the people surveyed had the opinion that telecommuting was more productive, not less.
• 46% of employees had an opinion that their employer might be open to offering telecommuting. That is not a positive statement that such a program is in place.  It is just an impression that employees have of their current employers.
• An astounding 37% of employees were open to a pay cut if allowed to work at home.  That alone should be an attractive idea for employers because they could save money on office costs and on salary.
• 72% of employees surveyed were quite interested in working at home.  That is a surprisingly high number of office workers who feel it would be a change for the better.
• The reasons that employees responded to that they felt were positives about telecommuting were split three ways. 55% felt saving gas was a value of the program.  47% liked the idea of skipping that commute and 60% preferred the idea of telecommuting because it would help them balance their work and private lives more effectively.

With that much employee interest, it is hard to fathom that employers would not move forward with offering work at home programs for their employees.  Now, obviously not every job is a good fit for work at home employees.  Hands on jobs such as manufacturing or construction are not a good fit.  But for companies that sustain a large office staff where they fill office buildings with cubicle farms full of employees, many of those jobs could be moved to a home based system rather easily.

There are numerous financial incentives for businesses to offer telecommuting to employees.  If an employer were able to export 25% of their jobs to home based employment, that would represent a quarter less floor space they would have to rent in their office park.   Office space is expensive so that is a significant savings. 

Also, the use of office supplies including everything from pens to toilet paper to employer supplied coffee would drop off dramatically as well.  A work at home employee pays for his own coffee.  That is a small cost but it adds up  The cost of providing an employee with a computer, a desk and office supplies could also all go down somewhat.  While some employers may continue to supply some of those needs to home employees, some savings are still available to employers.

The statistics that the Microsoft survey reported are telling because they represent how much employees dislike the commute and their desire to cut down on their gasoline usage by working at home.  Part of this priority may be due to the price of gas, which makes the cost of holding a job much higher.  If workers have to pay for parking to work in an office, that is another expense that workers resent.  While public transportation is an option for some workers, it is a nuisance and a time investment.  All of this can be compared to the ease of getting to work for a telecommuter who can walk to his or her work station in a matter of seconds and get to work.

It could be that the cost savings of not having to commute to work are so significant that those who responded to the survey answered that they would even take a pay cut to work at home.  In addition to the gas savings, wear and tear on the vehicle is a consideration. Commuting can also be emotionally draining in that heavy traffic takes its toll on a driver.  With the increase of awareness of our need to find ways to live green and not increase carbon emissions, cutting down on the use of gasoline just makes sense.  Workers see these telecommuting as a way to achieve all of these objectives with a change to working at home rather than driving to an office to sit in a cubicle all day long.

There may be some hard to change opinions that employers hold that may be holding back the telecommuting movement.  Many employers insist on being able to monitor employees so assure they are getting 8 hours of work for the 8 hours of pay they shell out.  They believe that an employee who is working at home would goof off and not get as much work done as an office worker. 

Anyone who works in an office setting knows well that few workers actually deliver 8 full hours of work.   There are ample opportunities to goof off at work right under the nose of the employer.  Office socializing, trips to the break room or the rest room and playing on the computer are common ways that office workers pad their time while at the office.  The only true way to measure the success of an employee whether he or she is working at home or at work is by productivity measurements, not by doing time in a cubicle like it was a prison sentence.

Another misconception is that office communications with staff would suffer with employees separated by distance.  In this day and age of digital communications, there is no reason to hold on to that old belief system.  Staff meetings can be conducted by teleconferencing either by phone or even using webcams so everybody can see everybody else.  Email, instant messaging and other digital methods for communications means that a employer can stay as much in touch with employees who are working at home as he would with employees in the office.

The biggest cultural shift in managing a distributed team of employees is learning to measure their effectiveness by actual product or results instead of by time served.  But employees often blossom under that kind of measurement system.  If an employee has "X" amount of work to produce in a given day, the employee can arrange that work to suit their own schedule.  If the employee needs to take a child to the dentist, he or she can work other hours to keep up those work responsibilities.

Telecommuting also enables employers to tap a wider work force.  By employing people who cannot work in an office, employers can keep older workers on staff or make it possible for ladies on maternity leave or disabled workers to make a contribution to the workforce.  Employers can even broaden their pool of potential employees by offering telecommuting jobs that could be done from anywhere in the world as long as the employee has the skills. 

Telecommuting changes the dynamic of how the employer/employee relationship works in ways that benefit both with very few downsides. The more employers realize this, the more this movement will begin to spread in the future.

 It was just a matter of time. It seems anytime a technology company demonstrates tremendous success, the government gets their nose out of joint about it.  Last December it was Intel's turn to see the FTC file a lawsuit against them for anticompetitive practices.  Now an FTC investigation is nothing to sneeze at.   And to say that Intel does not dominate the computer processor chip market would be silly.  In fact, if you ask just about anyone on the street to name a company that makes computer chips, the only company they will be able to name will probably be Intel.

But just being successful doesn’t make you evil.  If the dominance of the computer chip marketplace has resulted from the fact that Intel simply makes a superior product, it is wrong for the government to put a stop to that.  Similarly, Intel may be the only computer chip that people know due to good marketing rather than uncompetitive practices.  Hopefully, that will be what this lawsuit will bear out rather than any dirty dealing by the world's biggest computer chip maker.

Part of the grounds for the lawsuit is based on the fact that Intel computer chips have been selected to be the exclusive chip to be used by some of the biggest PC makers in the world including Dell, IBM and HP.  The language of the lawsuit alleges that Intel used "threats and rewards" to strike these kinds of deals.  It would seem clear that it is true that the computer lines that most people buy are powered by Intel chips. 

But it may be getting a little ridiculous to think that somehow one computer maker would be forced to buy into more than one chipset just to give the other guy a fair chance.  A big PC maker has to standardize their hardware or it would be a nightmare to create a consistent product that they could support.  Yes, Dell does use Intel chips which means more Intel chips are sold than any other.  But that may simply meant that Intel has a chipset that works best for Dell rather than any idea that it was Intel that somehow blocked the other chip makers from competing for the business.

The phrase in the lawsuit that is troubling charges that Intel used "threats and rewards" to capture such a large share of the marketplace.  One wonders just how well anyone could use a threat to browbeat a company like IBM into doing things their way.  If Intel sold an inferior product to other microcomputer chips, would IBM really have caved in to Intel because of some kind of threat? 

No, if there is a threat, it is that if IBM went with another computer manufacturer, they would not avail themselves of the design skills and the manufacturing capability that a big chip maker like Intel can provide.  If there was a reward, it might have been a quantity discount that would be given to a huge PC maker like IBM and Dell.  Quantity discounts are not unfair "rewards" or bribes.  They are just good business that are used by just about every retailer in the world.

Despite some of the language of the lawsuit being flawed, there is no reason the FTC should not look into any problems with how Intel does business that reach to the level of attempting to enforce an illegal monopoly on the markets.  In some respects, the FTC filing shows a level of restraint that implies that the agency is out to correct any improper behaviour and that they are not on a "witch hunt". 

It is true that when one particular company becomes so dominant in a market, it is easy for them to overstep their boundaries and behave as thought they owned that market.  If Intel has done that, this lawsuit will do some good at putting more competition in the computer chip market.  Competition in general is healthy for any market and it is the job of the FTC to make sure markets stay competitive in this country.

Part of the restraint shown by the FTC is that there are no monetary damages being sought in the lawsuit against Intel.  If the company is found guilty of what is being alleged, the outcome will be enforced correction to their anticompetitive practices.  That is appropriate even in a very technical field like computer chip manufacturing.

One reason that the FTC is taking action now is that they are beginning to see Intel stating to dominate the newer market for graphics processor units.  However, one of Intel's responses or complaints about the lawsuit is that the investigation into the details of the alleged anticompetitive practices has not been completed yet.  In other words, the FTC filed suit with the intent of THEN researching whether they had a leg to stand on.

Intel correctly pointed out that it is general practice for the investigation into the crime to be conducted before the charges are formally filed.  This is a fair complaint.  After all, without adequate proof or substantiation that the crimes alleged were committed, the FTC's allegations could come up empty.  The FTC felt they needed to move more quickly to stop Intel from using the same anticompetitive practices in the graphic processor markets that are rapidly developing.

The FTC filing is not the only war that Intel is fighting on this issue.  Last May the European Commission laid a pretty hefty fine on Intel for the same crime.  Intel has also been forced to do business differently in Japan because they were found culpable for anticompetitive practices there. 

The number of infractions that Intel is mounting up worldwide tends to lend credibility to the claims of the FTC lawsuit.  Intel has some top level lawyers on their side and they will need them.  This battle will be ongoing at least through the rest of the year.  And when you include the appeals process, it could be keeping Intel's lawyers busy for much longer than that as well.

As a rule, the less government sticks their nose into how business works, the better things go.  In some cases, government intervention is necessary such as to break up a company that is hurting the markets or to make working conditions humane in the workplace.  But our economy thrives on as little intervention as possible so corporations can use their own innovation to achieve the most that they can achieve. When it comes to technology companies, there is so much innovation done that combines technical sophistication with creativity that we need to keep the government out of that sector as much as is possible.

But once again we see the government trying to run things when a few weeks ago, a senator by the name of Dick Durban began to get critical of technology companies saying that they should be ready to "stand up" to foreign governments that restrict access to internet content.  Never mind the fact that there are fairly frequent efforts by our own government to either tax or restrict the internet.  One wonders if Durban would like to see the big technology giants stand up to their own government who want to meddle in how they do business.

But Durban didn’t just leave his comments a petty complaining, which is what they really were.  He also wants to take his complaints through the legislative process and get laws passed that penalize or fine technology companies based on human rights violations that occur in other countries.  Durban's comments make one wonder about his logic when he said…

"The bottom line is this: with a few notable exceptions, the technology industry seems unwilling to regulate itself and unwilling to even engage in a dialogue with Congress about the serious human rights challenges the industry faces,"

One reason this senator is up in arms is that he has gotten nowhere with a plan to make internet providers and internet companies all sign on to "The Global Network Initiative" which calls upon such companies to live up to a "voluntary code of conduct" and censor themselves to live within an arbitrary code that dictates what should be on the internet and what should not be there.  For somewhat obvious reasons, technology companies have given a cold shoulder to this kind of government intervention in how they do business.

The discussion of these alleged outrages that Durban is talking about is full of inconsistencies.  On one hand, he is angry at technology companies for not standing up to governments like China who want to restrict the internet.  But on the other hand, the legislation he wishes to pass seeks to punish technology companies that do not "voluntarily" agree to a code of conduct.  In this case, "code of conduct" is little more than an organized way to restrict internet content which is exactly what Durban wants technology companies to fight back against when other countries try to push that same agenda. 

Secondly, the very idea of a "voluntary code of conduct" puts the emphasis on "voluntary".  If you enforce your will on technology companies to sign on to that code of conduct, it is no longer voluntary.  Why not just pass the code of conduct as a law rather than make it so wishy-washy.  The answer is that if they passed a law on what the code of conduct for the internet might look like, every special interest group, church, civic organization and social organization would line up to add their own line items to that code of conduct. 

Moreover, if you leave the code of conduct "voluntary", you can change it whenever some new trend in social consciousness gets popular.  But because companies will get nailed with Dick Durban's penalties if they fail to "voluntarily" comply in a satisfactory way, the rules for how the internet should be run can change on the fly and the big technology companies that make the internet possible have to play ball.

The Global Network Initiative is holding hearings to try to get the ball rolling on "voluntary" compliance with their goals.  Durban has invited some of the top players in the evolution of the internet including Twitter, Facebook, Google and Microsoft to come to the hearings.  But with just a few exceptions, he has received back a resounding yawn from these companies who have no time or interest in cooperating with government take over of how they do business.

What is being ignored here is that many of these large technology companies already police themselves.  Facebook has policies in place to remove any offensive material from their user's photo pages when they can identify that material.  Users can easily complain about posts or pictures that are over the line and Facebook will take action.  Most of the online video organizations like YouTube have similar policies about user posted content.  In all cases, when police agencies or federal authorities wish to access content on these big internet sites to find out if a crime is being committed, they cooperate fully to help keep their sites clean and useful for their large populations of users.

Technology companies do not need the government to tell them to police themselves.  Facebook, as an example is used by millions of people worldwide for social networking.  It is in Facebook's best interest to police the network so that their huge user base continues to feel safe in using the site.  In other words, the normal rules of how to maintain market share are doing a much better job of policing the internet than the government could ever do.

Durban's rant also reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how the internet works in a WEB 2.0 world.  Big internet services are sustained by user generated content.  That means that sometimes a user will post something that might offend the delicate sensitivities of the GNI committee.  It is not entirely the job of technology companies to tell the internet world how to think or behave.  As long as user based content is not illegal, there is no reason to get involved.  It makes no more sense to dictate that technology companies "police" their content than it does to mandate that the post office read every letter that is mailed and police that content as well.

Google has already engaged in a spirited dispute with China over restricting content.  It is absurd to hold Google or any other technology company accountable for human rights violations done in other countries.  As a rule, companies do not get into conflicts with governments so it is also ridiculous to ask technology companies to start acting like governments in dictating the human rights of foreign societies.  If our own government cannot pull that off, how does Dick Durban think YouTube or Twitter will be able to accomplish it?  Hopefully this entire rant will die out as people realize just how ridiculous it was in the first place.

The Federal Communications Commission or the FCC is a part of the federal government.  Its right there as the first word in their title - "Federal".  The government does a lot of things, some we like and others we don't like so much. But overall, we pretty much have a system in place where the taxes that are collected by the government pay for their programs.  It isn’t a perfect system, but it is our system for the moment.

So the FCC made a plan that does a neat little "end around" on that system that most government agencies must live under.  The agency wants to build a security network.  The purpose of the network would be to provide wireless nationwide emergency response so the country would be more prepared to act in the event of another 911 type of attack.  But instead of going through all that fuss and bother of getting the $16 billion network approved by Congress the old fashioned way, they are looking to impose a fee on all US broadband users that would help pay for the network.  And the really neat trick about that fee is that even after the network was built, it could stay in place so the people could be part of paying for the network to continue to operate.

The need for this kind of network came to light during the hours after the 911 attacks when fire fighters, emergency response workers and law enforcement were hampered from communicating with each other because of the lack of a good network.  Similar breakdowns in communications hampered the ability of public service agencies from helping people trying to survive during the hurricane Katrina disaster.

The fee that is to be imposed on broadband users is described as "nominal".  Of course, "nominal" is in the eye of the beholder.  But the purpose of the money is to…"ensure that this country's emergency responders have access to critical communications capabilities when and where they need them."  Now this plan does have to go to Congress for approval.  While it is not stated directly in the request, it could be that using the vast broadband network as a source of funding is a lot more appealing than trying to get a tax through with the budget being in the state that the federal budget is in right now.

The request for the funding is ready to go to Congress to encourage approval because… "It is essential that the United States establish a long-term, sustainable and adequate funding mechanism to help pay for the operation, maintenance and upgrade of the public safety broadband network."  The proposal goes on to state without qualification that the security of the country is at stake if we do not have the funding to build this network.  And because the broadband fee would be spread over such a large community of users, the proposal considers this methodology of funding to be a "fair, sustainable and reasonable funding mechanism".

The actual proposal is roughly 19 pages long.  So it is doubtful if a lot of detail was included in the proposal about how this network would operate and, above all, how it would be tested so the first responders would know without a question that communications would work in the more dire of emergency situation.  This raises a lot of questions.  If the network is nationwide and it will benefit everybody, why does a small community have to fund it?  Were 911 and Katrina not local disasters?  How would a nationwide network have helped them?  What does "nominal fee" mean anyway?

If we think about the situation in those towers during the 911 attacks, was the problem with the communications the lack of a network or the lack of communications tools that were in the hands of those going into the towers?  Or perhaps the problem was the inability of wireless tools inside those towers to communicate due to damage to the units because of the harsh conditions or because of the amount of interference that was going on as a result of the collapse of the towers.  How will first responders be able to access this nationwide network in a crisis and what good will it do for them to access it?

Similarly, in the Katrina situation, one wonders if sufficient detailed examples of communications breakdowns during the days that the disaster was at its worst were documented in the proposal for funding.  If this network was to be approved, it should be shown that the communications problems that occurred during the Katrina disaster were directly related to the lack of this kind of network and not something else. 

And there should be some detail available to demonstrate that the design of this wireless nationwide emergency response network was planned to address those particular failings and to deal with a wide variety of potential emergency situations in the future.  Without that kind of analysis, this proposal does not represent sufficient "needs analysis" to justify the fee on all broadband users, no matter how "nominal" that fee might be.

The language of the proposal is hard to argue with because of the emotional response almost everyone has to both of these terrible events in recent American history.  But appealing to the emotional response is no way to justify a new tax to build a network that has not been properly justified. 

If this proposal went before congress as a request for a new tax rather than as a "nominal fee", you can bet that kind of detailed analysis and justification would be required.  Just because the purpose of the network is to address problems we had during national emergencies in the past, that is no reason to wrap ourselves in the flag and fail to do our homework upfront to justify a network the old fashioned way, through hard work and good design plans.

On the surface this nominal fee is being raised to do something good.  But if we go back to basics, if it is a program that the government is organizing, should it not be paid for by tax money?  The language of the proposal would almost make one think that broadband users should and will be thrilled to contribute to this network, even though the fee would be imposed without asking them if they are that thrilled about it.  After all, 911 and Katrina, who wouldn’t pay a fee to assure we could handle the next such disaster better?  In many ways, the use of emotional appeals to get around solid reasoning for this network is sufficient cause to raise some suspicions. 

So in that the proposal has not been approved yet, it is to be hoped that the congressional bodies who must grant approval for the fee and the network will have enough scepticism to ask these kinds of questions and to recognize that a tax is still a tax, no matter what title you put on and no matter how wonderful the cause being addressed might be.

It seems the bigger and more successful Google gets, the bigger they want to get.  A company with as much financial and technical power as Google has is capable of some pretty amazing things.  Google already pretty much took over the search engine world in such a phenomenal way that the phrase "Google it" is a byword for performing an interent search for information.  In the last few years, Google has also begun to extend their grasp to try to take over the social networking world and to capture the YouTube fan base as well.

But the most recent Google venture seems to be the most ambitious and forward thinking of anything ever done before.   Most Google conquests were done by redefining something that had already been done before.  But now Google wants to invade your television which is something no internet company has done to any great extent.  Oh sure, internet companies often advertise on television.  And AT&T has integrated a few interent applications into their U-Verse packages but they really don't work that well.  But what Google has in mind is much more ambitious than that.

One reason to take this next big push by Google seriously is that they have forged a pretty impressive partnership team of some very powerful companies to help make it a reality.  Google will be working together with Intel, Sony and Logitech to make this vision of a television based internet a reality.  But the name they have chosen lets us know who is in charge here and which company created the vision in the first place. If it is successful, it will be called Google TV.

The goal of Google TV is as simple to express as it is ambitious.  Google wants to make it as easy to move around the internet on your computer as it is now for you to change channels.  In other words, in the same way you may now flip from MTV to the Golf Channel to Comedy Central, Google wants you to be able to jump to your Facebook account to YouTube or to Hulu.  And as incomprehensible as this may seem, Google and their partners have the technical power to pull it off.

Of course, Google TV isn't being put together just because Google dreams big dreams and wants us all to take another big step into a future designed by Google.  There is plenty of money to be made if Google TV is a hit.  Just as now, television advertising is big business, by putting the most popular website on TV and capturing that business to the Google partnership that made Google TV possible, there will be a volcano of advertising revenue that will surge toward Google and their partners and it will just keep on coming year after year after year.

Logitech is an outstanding addition to this partnership because they are a company that are well known for making affordable but high quality computer accessories like the keyboard and the mouse you may be using every day.  Already design is being done to provide a small keyword to Google TV users so you will be able to interact with cyberspace as you browse the web on your big screen TV.  The availability of accessories like this will be necessary for Google TV to be successful.  After all, what good would it be to be able to pull up your Facebook or Twitter accounts on your TV if you could not post a status or tweet to the world, "I am on Google TV"?

Initially Google TV will be marketed as a separate box that you will plug into your TV.  Exactly how that will work with your existing cable TV connection is not clear just yet.  But the box that can sit on top of your TV set is already under development.  It will utilize the power of Android and the most recent Intel Atom CPU chip.  Whether this service will operate under the authority of your existing internet service provider or if there will be a fee that will give you additional internet connectivity also has not been defined just yet.

One area of internet commerce that will be certain to benefit from Google TV will be internet access to video and movies.  Google TV could provide an alternative to conventional movie channels like HBO and Showtime by providing access to a huge online library of movies that could be accessed for a low monthly fee.  Netflix is already offering a similar service that allows users to either get their movies through the mail or watch them on TV.  Considering the success of Netflix, it makes sense that they will eventually partner with Google TV to migrate their service to your TV screen as well.

Another possible partner for Google TV is the Dish network.  This large television provider has already been doing some research into providing internet service through their satellite service.  This makes sense because a satellite feed could solve the ISP problem for Google TV.  Since the set up box for Google TV has already been under development, it is a natural next step to integrate that hardware directly into the Dish TV devices and eliminate a free standing set up unit.  Google TV and Dish are already in discussions about how to join forces on a project such as this.

This is an entirely new kind of technology for anyone to offer and it will take some skilled marketing and deployment experts to make it a success.  If the service is too expensive for customers, they will not see the value.  But the costs of hardware, internet access and support will have to be absorbed somehow.  If the advertising revenue alone can do that, Google TV may explode onto the cultural landscape like nothing ever before.  But there are a lot of questions to be answered before that can happen.  But with this kind of potent partnership and the visionary leadership of Google, we can be assured that the Google TV revolution is coming and it will not something to be ignored.