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“Oracle understands that enterprises would like the flexibility of choosing to run their enterprise systems in either private or public clouds, but in order to do that, cloud computing needs to be highly efficient, secure and standards based,” Robert Shimp, Oracle’s technology business unit group vice president, said in a statement.

The technology giants announced Wednesday they’re teaming up to accelerate cloud computing for corporate titans, collaborating on improving the efficiency, security, and standards-based technology for pushing programs and data storage into virtual clouds.

Forget stargazing. Oracle and Intel are looking up at the clouds.

On the security front, both companies aim to improve the integration of their data encryption technologies for customers using shared cloud computing. They also will work with other industry players in enabling portability of virtual machine images and creating Web services standards for securing and managing cloud-based services.

As part of the cloudy collaboration, Oracle and Intel will continue their efforts to improve the performance of Oracle’s software on Intel chips. Recently, the companies said, their teaming up of Oracle VM and the Xen open-source hypervisor with Intel VT produced a 17 percent performance improvement in virtualized Oracle databases running on Intel’s Xeon processors.

From deep inside TechCrunch50… Although there are 50 companies presenting on stage, even the companies that didn’t qualify for stage time get attention at the event. I explored the demo pit yesterday, where the runners-up pitch to the passers-by.

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Companies covered in this video:

Nehalem can deliver greater performance at the same power consumption level of the Core 2 architecture, Intel says.

Current high-profile netbooks include the Asus Eee PC
and Acer Aspire.

An Intel IDF blurb that describes the technological highlights of Nehalem also states that chips will have “dramatic new energy efficiency gains when workloads are scaled back.” Intel will presumably clarify nebulous statements like this at IDF.

Atom is next on the short list of high-profile topics–and Atom is all about power efficiency, not high performance. The tiny mobile chip has a power envelope not exceeding 2.5 watts, far below the 35-watt power envelope of mainstream Intel mobile processors to date.

Though Anand Chandrasekher, general manager of Intel’s Ultra Mobility Group, will talk about Atom in handheld mobile Internet devices and discuss Moorestown, the next iteration of Atom, the netbook category is the driving force behind Atom right now. David (Dadi) Perlmutter, general manager of Intel’s Mobility Group, will talk about the low-cost mobile market and show off a variety of netbooks, according to Intel.

Overall, Nehalem is better than previous Intel architectures at scaling up performance while keeping a lid on power consumption. So, for example, a Nehalem quad-core desktop processor may deliver better performance at power levels equal to current Core 2 quad processors–so Intel says. Nehalem will have all four cores on one piece of silicon, a first for Intel in the mainstream market.

Dual-core processors in this category have thermal envelopes as low as 10 watts, though more mainstream low-power processors (like those in the MacBook Air) will fall somewhere between 10 and 25 watts.

Many of these sub-one-inch-thick notebooks will also offer 80GB and 128GB solid state drive options. Micron Technology has introduced solid state drives in 128GB and 256GB sizes. Large-capacity SSDs will be part and parcel of ultralight notebook offerings in the coming months.

The current ultra-low-voltage lineup will be refreshed in September with 45-nanometer parts. All LV and ULV processors being sold now are based on older 65-nanometer technology.

“(Nehalem) is pretty subtle because it’s a change in microarchitecture. A lot of the changes aren’t all that visible to the end user. But one of the most notable (changes) is power saving,” said Roger Kay, founder and president of Endpoint Technologies.

Since netbooks are synonymous with low power don’t expect dual-core Atom processors from Intel designed specifically for netbooks anytime soon, according to Bill Calder, an Intel spokesperson. “There’s no reason to do dual core in the netbook. Single-core Atom is perfectly adequate,” Calder said. (Dual-core Atom chips for “nettop” desktops are coming by the end of the year.)

The headliner at IDF this year is indisputably the upcoming “Nehalem” Core i7 processor. Though the new microarchitecture is replete with esoteric technologies like QuickPath (for faster chip-to-chip communication) and on-chip memory controllers–things that end users can’t readily relate to–better power efficiency is something every consumer gets because it results in better battery life.

This won’t become apparent to many consumers, however, until Nehalem mobile processors hit the market, according to Kay. “Nehalem notebooks should have dramatically longer batter life,” Kay said. Nehalem mobile chips will not appear until next year.

“These things are intended for basic Internet use. Mostly reading, sharing, viewing. Not creating, building, burning,” Calder said.

(Credit:
Intel)

In the more immediate future, Maximum PC recently tested a Nehalem “Bloomfield” desktop system that uses a 2.93GHz processor and an Intel motherboard with an X58 chipset. Both of these are expected to ship in the fourth quarter.

At the high end of power spectrum, Intel will also talk more about its first quad-core mobile processor. Both Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo are already showing off quad-core laptops and HP lists the quad-core mobile chip as an option on its EliteBook 8730w mobile workstation. The quad-core mobile processor is also expected to appear in gaming laptops from Dell’s Alienware unit.

Click here for full coverage of the Intel Developer Forum.

When the Intel Developer Forum kicks off Tuesday in San Francisco, the theme of low power will be high on the agenda of topics.

Intel will also mention more about it’s ultra-low-voltage (ULV) mobile processors. These are essentially Core 2 mobile processors designed for the stringent power requirements of ultralight notebooks like the MacBook Air, Lenovo X300, and the just-introduced Dell 12-inch Latitude E4200.

In keeping with Apple’s long-standing retail pricing policy, Best Buy’s iPhone prices will mirror those at Apple and AT&T: $199 for the 8GB model and $299 for the 16GB model. Best Buy customers will also still have to sign a two-year contract with AT&T.

Best Buy will begin selling the iPhone 3G in September.

The new distribution channel could help Apple could help achieve its goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. Apple announced in July that it had sold 1 million iPhone 3Gs through Apple and AT&T stores during its first weekend on the market.

(Credit:
CNET)

“It solidifies us as the place to go for the cool stuff,” Best Buy Mobile President Shawn Score told Reuters in an interview. “Our customers are looking for this product.”

Starting September 7, the 8GB and 16GB
iPhone 3Gs will go on sale at 970 Best Buy stores and 16 smaller Best Buy Mobile stores, the retailer said. The deal is a coup for the Richfield, Minn.-based chain, which has been expanding its wireless offerings and introducing cell phone departments to its U.S. stores.

The move could also help more people get their hands on the device. An AT&T representative confirmed last month that most of the company’s stores ran out of iPhones the first day the devices were for sale. The current waiting period for iPhones at AT&T stores is about 7 to 10 days for customers, the company has said.

Best Buy stores will begin selling Apple’s iPhone 3G next month, becoming the first national retail chain outside of Apple and carrier AT&T to offer the wildly popular device.

The distribution deal is an expansion of an existing relationship Apple has with Best Buy, which now sells Macs and iPods.

I look forward to working together with Frank, John, and the rest of our board to continue the progress we’ve made on our strategy to be the starting point for the most Internet users, a must buy for the most advertisers, and to develop the world’s most open platforms.

It wasn’t the world’s worst-kept secret but it wins honorable mention.

Biondi is a senior managing director of investment adviser WaterView Advisors, former chairman and chief executive of Universal Studios, and former head of Viacom. Chapple is president of Hawkeye Investments in Redmond, Wash., and former CEO of Nextel Partners.

This seemingly puts a final coda on the months-long Carl Icahn soap opera, which featured the billionaire investor’s sundry attempts to take control — or force a sale — of the company. In the end, Icahn settled for a board seat for himself as well as Yahoo expanding the size of the board to accommodate two more directors. Yahoo agreed to select the candidates from a pool that included Icahn’s former slate of dissident directors.

In a statement, CEO Jerry Yang had this to say:

As expected, Yahoo announced Thursday afternoon that it had appointed Frank J. Biondi Jr. and John H. Chapple to its board of directors.

“Over the last 20 years, the flood of physical counterfeit projects and the scale of digital theft (have) gone off the chart,” he said. “What drives (the U.S. economy are) precisely technical invention, innovation, and creativity–if we don’t protect that, we dramatically undermine our economic future.”

The bill was stripped of a controversial measure that would have given federal prosecutors the power to file civil lawsuits against peer-to-peer users who violate copyright laws. The Commerce Department and Justice Department voiced their opposition to the provision in a letter this week, saying it would create “unnecessary bureaucracy.”

Along with the recording industry, the bill is backed by the Chamber of Commerce, and labor groups like the AFL-CIO and Change to Win.

The Recording Industry of America gave resounding praise for the bill.

“The legislation still includes provisions that overzealous federal prosecutors could misconstrue to allow the seizure of important components of our Internet infrastructure,” he said in a statement.

Other groups opposed to the bill also spoke out Friday.

“At a time when the entire digital world is going to less restrictive distribution models, and when the courts are aghast at the outlandish damages being inflicted on consumers in copyright cases, this bill goes entirely in the wrong direction,” said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge.

Rick Cotton, executive vice president and general counsel of NBC Universal, said concerns that the bill goes too far are unfounded.

Not all of the Bush administration’s objections with the legislation were addressed, however. The bill replaces the body that currently enforces intellectual property law with a White House Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator. The new coordinator will chair an inter-agency committee to combat counterfeiting and piracy. In its letter, the administration said the establishment of a White House IP coordinator was “objectionable on constitutional grounds.”

This post was updated at 4:25 p.m. PDT with more details.

“At a critical economic juncture, this bipartisan legislation provides enhanced protection for an important asset that helps lead our global competitiveness,” RIAA Chairman and CEO Mitch Bainwol said. “Additional tools for intellectual-property enforcement are not just good for the copyright community but for consumers who will enjoy a wider array of legitimate offerings.”

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who pushed to have the controversial Justice Department provision removed, was still dissatisfied with the state of the bill.

The Commerce Department said it is still reviewing the legislation as it was passed.

The U.S. Senate on Friday unanimously passed a bipartisan bill backed by groups like the recording industry and the labor movement that would increase federal protections over intellectual property.

Introduced in July by Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act now moves to the House of Representatives, where it will be taken up either Friday or Saturday, before Congress adjourns.

The legislation still provides increased resources for the Justice Department to combat intellectual property theft and provide coordination for federal and state efforts against counterfeiting and piracy. It also increases penalties for intellectual property infringements.

Here at the CTIA Wireless conference in San Francisco, Quickoffice, historically a mobile documents viewer for Nokia phones, is showing off demos for four new
iPhone and
iPod Touch apps aimed at Apple’s contingent of MobileMe users.

The first, called MobileFiles, will let you view e-mail attachments, including Google and Box.net documents from your iPhone, something that iPhones don’t currently allow. Quickoffice is expected to launch MobileFiles as a free, view-only app in November.

Unless a competitor steps up to challenge the pricing and app layout, by the time Quickoffice’s premium applications launch in Q1, Quickoffice will have the market advantage. We haven’t heard much from DataViz, the likeliest contender, about an iPhone play, though with the company fresh off releasing new versions of its flagship viewer, Documents To Go, for Windows Mobile Pocket PCs and BlackBerry, iPhone is their next logical platform to conquer.

Following that, Quickoffice plans to release three more applications for reading and editing spreadsheets, Microsoft Word documents, and PowerPoint presentations, respectively. Called Quicksheet, Quickpoint, and Quickword, the three editors will likely go for $10 apiece. On the performance end, Quicksheet and Quickword clearly displayed MobileMe attachments as multipage files and allowed users two ways to edit by tapping the screen. $30 seems like a hefty surcharge for the privilege of editing and saving all three document types back to the MobileMe account from the iPhone, especially when the viewing documents alone will be free. Not all users will need all three editors, but those who do should receive a markdown for purchasing the entire suite.

“Curriculum standards aren’t written around having a computer” as part of the teaching process, said Jeanette Hammock, chief technology officer for True North Logic, which trains teachers on how to use technology in academically rewarding ways. There’s a lot of pressure on teachers these days to follow lesson plans aimed at standardized tests, and it doesn’t appear that many school districts have thought about how to integrate technology into those plans.

Don Helfgott, CEO of Inspiration Software, agreed. “It takes a teacher 5 years before they become facile in (a one-to-one) environment. (There’s) hundreds of years of non-technology-based book curriculum that exists.”

We’ve heard a lot in recent years about the One Laptop Per Child initiative, and similar competing programs, which aim to improve educational standards in various parts of the world through computing power. But according to a panel discussion at the Future in Review conference, the computer itself isn’t the issue; educators need to find meaningful ways to introduce computers into their day-to-day instructional process.

While that may sound dismal, last year it was even worse: only 17 percent of those surveyed said they were noticing substantial academic progress from one-to-one programs, Greaves said. The problem is that while computers are nice and all, they must be part of a teaching plan and a community’s educational mission, and teachers need help figuring out the best ways to use the computers.

(Credit:
Tom Krazit/CNET News.com)

No matter what technology they employ, teachers need support and training not just on how to use the computers themselves, but how to make them a useful part of the teaching process. That’s not a technology question, that’s an educational question.

So while the debate over whether the OLPC should use Windows or the custom-designed Sugar interface is interesting, it obscures the real obstacle to technology-assisted learning.

Don Helfgott of Inspiration Software, Tom Greaves of Project Inkwell, and Jeanette Hammock of True North Logic (left to right) discuss technology in education.

CORONADO, Calif.–This probably doesn’t come as a surprise to most parents, but plopping a computer down in front of a student doesn’t necessarily translate into academic success.

More than two-thirds of teachers surveyed in a recent inquiry said they were not getting any substantial improvements in academic progress from their participation in a one-computer-per-student program, said Tom Greaves, an education consultant and member of Project Inkwell. Project Inkwell was founded and is run by Mark Anderson, the organizer of FIRe and head of Strategic News Service, to help get technology into classrooms.

According to a report in today’s Wall Street Journal, Dell is considering re-entering the MP3 player market later this year. This time, the company is considering building its own software based on technology it gained in its acquisition of Zing, as well as a modified version of somebody else’s subscription music service, most likely Rhapsody’s.

This is about something much bigger and more interesting: the shift of power in the PC market away from Microsoft and toward the hardware manufacturers. The process has been going on since the Department of Justice’s antitrust settlement with Microsoft back in 2001–a lot of onlookers derided that settlement as toothless, but it actually made a difference with regard to Microsoft’s relationships with OEMs (original equipment manufacturers–Microsoft parlance for the big PC makers like Dell and HP). Instead of being allowed to push them to include whatever software Microsoft bundled with Windows, the OEMs were free to choose their own bundling strategies. If Microsoft wanted placement, it would have to pay like everybody else.

Fast forward a few years. Vista launches to mostly bad reviews. Apple launches a series of brilliant advertisements slamming Vista. These advertisements, combined with the popularity of the iPod and a generally smoother experience on the
Mac (even Ballmer admitted it last week) create a big spike in Macintosh sales. That hurts Microsoft a little bit, as Windows still has more than 90 percent of the market for personal computing operating systems. But it hurts the PC makers more: even the biggest ones, Dell and HP, have only about 30 percent share.

Let’s leave aside the question of whether the world needs yet another end-to-end hardware-software-services play in the MP3 player space. (Ask Microsoft how that’s going with
Zune.)

Dell gave up on MP3 players in 2006, after three years of fighting the
iPod juggernaut. Initially, Dell’s players relied on Musicmatch software for library organization, content syncing, and online music purchases, although they synced with the Windows Media Player as well in case of problems with Musicmatch (which CNET reviewer John Frederick Moore encountered back in 2005 with the flash-based Dell DJ Ditty). The reviews were middling at best, and the players never got much above 3 percent market share.

Which raises the question: how much marketing should Microsoft do for Windows anyway? Rumors have been flying about a $300 million rehabilitation campaign for Vista. Why bother if OEMs like Dell are going their own way anyway? Instead, Microsoft should focus on building the most reliable, secure, multipurpose operating system it can, one that the OEMs will be happy to put on their PCs and that end users will be happy to adopt. Forget the user interface bells and whistles. Scale back on the included apps, which Microsoft now has to pay OEMs to place anyway. Just build a great OS, let the OEMs figure out how to use it, then leave the sales, marketing, and user experience details to them.

Instead of relying on Microsoft to fight back against Apple, Dell’s taking matters into its own hands. The company’s been focusing on better design for some time now–that’s phase one, since Apple consistently wins praise for its hardware design. Phase two: create a differentiated consumer experience for digital media and entertainment, and make it available only on a Dell. The MP3 player’s just a side note.

(Credit: CNET reviews)

The Dell DJ Ditty, discontinued in 2006.

Last month, Obama signaled he might be open to new offshore drilling in some circumstances.

McCain went out of his way to tout green technology. In addition to building more nuclear power plants, he said: “We will develop clean coal technology. We will increase the use of wind, tide, solar, and natural gas. We will encourage the development and use of flex fuel, hybrid and electric automobiles.”

McCain’s speech comes a day after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, his vice presidential pick, said her state was ready to provide more energy for America. “The fact that drilling won’t solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all,” she said.

“We are going to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don’t like us very much,” McCain said. “We will attack the problem on every front. We will produce more energy at home. We will drill new wells offshore, and we’ll drill them now.”

He added: “Sen. Obama thinks we can achieve energy independence without more drilling and without more nuclear power. But Americans know better than that. We must use all resources and develop all technologies necessary to rescue our economy from the damage caused by rising oil prices and to restore the health of our planet.”

The Arizona senator received one of his loudest rounds of applause when he lashed out at his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, and characterized the dispute over oil drilling as a matter of international relations and security as well as economics.

John McCain says nation must drill new oil wells now, while supporting innovative transportation technologies and "the use of wind, tide, solar and natural gas."

(Credit:
Declan McCullagh/CNET News)

A comparison of McCain and Obama’s energy plans shows that the Republican opposes existing federal government ethanol production targets and would eliminate a tariff on Brazilian ethanol, a move that would expose U.S. producers to more competition. Obama supports the ethanol regulations (one factor that has led to higher corn prices), wants to raise automotive fuel-efficiency rules, and is not willing at the moment to support expanding nuclear power.

ST. PAUL, Minn.–John McCain formally accepted the Republican Party’s presidential nomination here on Thursday in a speech extolling the virtues of both oil drilling and green energy.