Technology Trends

Initial sales numbers for Windows 7 are in and it seems that the operating system is delivering the redemption for Windows Vista that Microsoft was hoping for. Lower revenue and lower PC hardware sales figures related to Windows 7 hint at issues, but those figures have to be put in perspective.

Microsoft has reported that Windows 7 sales are 234 percent higher than Windows Vista for the initial week after its release. That figure however is tempered with the statistic that Windows 7 has not prompted the same surge in PC sales that accompanied the release of Windows Vista.

Does that mean that Windows 7 isn't incentive enough for users to purchase new computers? Not really. First of all, when Windows Vista was released the Windows XP operating system had been the flagship desktop operating system for more than 5 years. Users who had jumped on the Windows XP bandwagon early would have been more than ready to make a hardware upgrade when moving to the new operating system.

For users that have held on to Windows XP through the dark years (the timeframe between the release of Windows Vista and the release of Windows 7), that same fact may still hold true. However, many Windows XP users have upgraded the PC hardware since 2001, but have bought new Windows XP systems or re-installed their Windows XP operating system on the new hardware.

While Windows Vista faced a variety of issues both real and perceived, there are still millions of users that have embraced the operating system. Windows Vista makes up nearly 19 percent of the desktop operating system market. Whether those users like Windows Vista or hate Windows Vista, the hardware they are using should be sufficient when upgrading to Windows 7.

Timing also has a huge impact on the PC hardware sales figures. Windows Vista was released in January–after the holiday season. With Windows 7 being released in October, users who just want the operating system software may jump on board, but customers that are interested in purchasing a new system with Windows 7 installed are likely holding out for holiday bargains and Black Friday deals. Talk to me again in January about PC hardware sales related to Windows 7.

Another factor in the sale of new PC hardware is corporate adoption of the new operating system. Many enterprises held on to Windows XP and are now planning to upgrade to Windows 7, but massive hardware and operating system upgrades take careful planning and time to implement. Many large companies also operate on funky fiscal year calendars which can affect the timing of the Windows 7 upgrade.

Certainly other operating systems have had an impact as well. The issues surrounding Windows Vista opened the door to alternative operating systems and caused many users to think twice about sticking with Windows. As much success as Mac OS X or Ubuntu Linux have experienced though, they are still niche operating systems with less than 5 percent of the market combined. The vast majority of users and businesses are not giving any serious consideration to them or considering adopting an alternative operating system.

The fact that Windows 7 is doing so well so soon is a good sign. With the holidays and the new year, things will continue to pick up. When we look back next October and compare first year sales of Windows 7 versus Windows Vista rather than first week sales, the picture will look different and the comparison will be on a more level playing field.

Tony Bradley is an information security and unified communications expert with more than a decade of enterprise IT experience. He tweets as @PCSecurityNews
and provides tips, advice and reviews on information security and unified communications technologies on his site at tonybradley.com
.

Steam, it seems, may finally have tromped across the proverbial bridge too far. The online PC games storefront with the sales leverage of a lion but the transparency of a two-way mirror reportedly signed a deal with Activision to load its Steamworks technology into retail and digitally distributed PC copies of Modern Warfare 2, and online sales competitors are bristling.

Don't call them nonplussed, though. Key digital storefronts Impulse, Direct2Drive, and GamersGate–all three boasting comparable games software catalogues–have responded by stating they simply won't carry Activision's first-person modern military shooter, which arrives next Tuesday. Their rationale? Put it this way: Would Walmart sell retail products that required the customer periodically drop by Kmart or Target for service, support, or just basic use?

"We don't believe games should force the user to install a Trojan Horse," a spokesperson for Direct2Drive told games blog Kotaku. The company's Modern Warfare 2 store page no longer offers pricing or game information, and instead displays the following notice:

At Direct2Drive, we believe strongly that when you buy a game from us, you shouldn't be forced to install and run a 3rd party software client to be able to play the game you purchased. Because COD MW 2 requires you, the consumer, to do that, we aren't able to offer the game via Direct2Drive at this time.

"We share some of the same concerns as Direct2Drive over the bundling of the Steam client with the game," an Impulse spokesperson told Voodoo Extreme. "The most obvious issue is the forced inclusion of a competitor's store that blocks us from carrying the game."

Steamworks, it's important to note, isn't synonymous with Steam. Steam comprises Valve's combination online storefront and social gaming network, a relatively low-impact wrapper that embeds itself in your operating system and puts its tendrils into your gaming environment. The Steam client is necessary not just to purchase games from Valve, but also to play them thereafter. Without the Steam client and steady online access, games can't be purchased, downloaded, played, backed up, or restored.

Steamworks, by contrast, is a separate (but related) set of development tools–an API, if you will–designed to help publishers keep games up-to-date, handle DRM, and manage saved games.

It's not yet clear which of the above components come bundled with the PC version of Modern Warfare 2, and whether you'll be forced to access the Steam client and/or storefront itself every time you want to play the game. In either case, it raises questions not just about fair market competition–this is unambiguously a hostile move on Valve's part–but also digital rights management (what's the difference between Steam and something like SecuROM?), application-encapsulating (how many "fail points" should we tolerate?), and privacy rights, i.e. the traditional right to play a game without feeding back unlimited "User Generated Information" to a company that brazenly states it "may share aggregate information and individual information with other parties" in its privacy policy.

Another day, another Modern Warfare 2 controversy. Before this, it was terrorist gameplay. Before that, it was dedicated multiplayer servers. And last but not least, who can forget Washington in flames?

Follow me on Twitter @game_on

Gigabyte Technology issued a BIOS update on Friday that fixes a problem for some Windows 7 users who have been unable to sync their iPhones.

Earlier this week, Intel, Microsoft and Apple said they were investigating the issue, which people are complaining about on an Apple forum. The problem seems to be mainly affecting Windows 7 64-bit users with Intel P55 chipsets, and it prevents them from synching their iPhones with their computers.

On Friday, a few people posted on the forum that they'd downloaded the new BIOS from Gigabyte, a motherboard maker, and it solved the problem. In the description of the update, Gigabyte calls it a Beta BIOS and says that it fixes the iPhone sync issue, among other enhancements.

The BIOS update will help people who have the Gigabyte motherboard in their systems, but it won't help other people who have the problem, such as those with an Asus motherboard.

Earlier this week, Microsoft also said it was looking into the problem and recommended that people visit its help page for updates. It does not appear to have posted any information there and did not immediately reply to a request for comment about the Gigabyte update.

Though an Apple employee asked people on the forum to send details of the issue, it does not appear to have posted further information about the fix yet.

Intel said it could not comment on the Gigabyte BIOS update.

ScanSafe researchers are seeing renewed activity regarding Gumblar, a multifunctional piece of malware that spreads by attacking PCs visiting hacked Web pages.

Gumblar can steal FTP credentials as well as hijack Google searches, replacing results on infected computers with links to other malicious sites.

When the Gumblar malware was found in March, it looked for instructions on a server at gumblar.cn. That domain was taken offline at the time, but has been reactivated within the last 24 hours, wrote Mary Landesman, a senior security researcher with ScanSafe, on a company blog.

Web sites that are infected with Gumblar contain an iframe, which is a way to bring content from one Web site into another. Malware writers usually make those iframes invisible. When a victim visits the site, the iframe will launch a series of exploits hosted on a remote computer to try and hack the visiting machine.

Gumblar checks to see if the victim's PC is running unpatched versions of Adobe Systems' Reader and Acrobat programs. If so, the machine will be compromised by a so-called drive-by download.

Domain name registrars will often suspend domain names that have been used for malicious purposes, and malware writers will usually frequently change the domains their software looks to for instructions as those bad domains are blacklisted. For some reason, the gumblar.cn domain was released and is in use again.

Landesman wrote that Web sites still infected with Gumblar may now be able to call back to the newly activated domain. It would allow those infected PCs to get updated with new malware.

"It's a mess," Landesman wrote. "Stay tuned."

Shortly after European regulators opened an antitrust probe into Oracle's pending acquisition of Sun Microsystems, SAP CEO Léo Apotheker wrote Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, asking for a meeting to discuss the merger and "other open issues" between the vendors, according to a Wall Street Journal editorial published late Thursday.

SAP spokesman James Dever confirmed on Friday that Apotheker had written Ellison "seeking a dialogue," but declined to provide a copy of the letter.

The letter was sent Sept. 15 and consisted of the following brief statement, according to the Journal: "As you know, we have significant concerns about Oracle's proposed takeover of Sun. We renew our invitation to meet to attempt to resolve our concerns and other open issues between our companies. Please let us know if and when you would like to meet."

The WSJ's editorial referred to speculation that the European Commission is blocking the Sun acquisition due to lobbying efforts by SAP. It also noted that one major "open issue" between the companies is the intellectual property lawsuit Oracle filed against SAP in connection with TomorrowNow, a now-shuttered subsidiary of SAP that provided third-party support for Oracle applications. Oracle has said its damages could top US$1 billion.

Meanwhile, the timing of Apotheker's letter implies that he "either believed, or wanted Oracle to believe, that he could smooth the merger review if he so desired," the editorial alleged.

The insinuations raised by the WSJ are baseless, according to Dever. "I disagree with the assumptions and inferences that were made," he said. "It certainly overstates what SAP can and is able to do."

"The fact is we have a deep relationship with Oracle that goes beyond a lawsuit," including many mutual customers, Dever added. "We're partners as well as competitors."

An Oracle spokeswoman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, the European Commission is reportedly planning to issue a formal "statement of objections" against the merger. If that happens, Oracle plans to mount a vigorous offensive campaign with the aid of senior US political officials, IDG News Service reported this week.

When Microsoft first started talking about building mobile-phone software back in the late 1990s, handset makers that had been in the market for years scoffed. Sure, Microsoft was a huge software developer, but making software for mobile devices is different and more complicated than for PCs, they argued. After all, by the late '90s, some companies had already spent decades developing their mobile platforms.

But Microsoft, with its deep pockets, worked away at it and by last year, after first launching in 2002, Windows Mobile had a respectable 13.9 percent of worldwide smartphone market share, according to researchers at Canalys.

This year brought an abrupt backward slide. By the second quarter 2009, Windows Mobile had slipped to just 9 percent market share, its lowest since early 2006, Canalys said.

Now the questions that most mobile onlookers ask are: what happened and can Microsoft reverse the slide?

While most of them agree about what happened — in a nutshell, the iPhone — there's some disagreement over what's to come. Many analysts are saying that Windows Mobile is too far behind and will fade into obscurity or that Microsoft will quit the business. But others say mobile is too important and so Microsoft will buckle down now and invest in a turnaround.

Even Microsoft executives admit they haven't done a very good job of keeping up with the competition. At a meeting with analysts in July, Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division, acknowledged that Windows Mobile has not performed well. While the software works well for business applications, other consumer-centric aspects like browsing, media and video aren't as "rich" as they need to be, he said.

Analyst Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates agrees. Part of the problem is that Microsoft hasn't updated Windows Mobile to include capabilities that people want, he wrote in a recent report. .

Despite the obvious trend in the market toward touchscreens with user interfaces similar to the iPhone's, Microsoft's first response has only just emerged with Windows Mobile 6.5, more than two years after the iPhone hit the market. Gold called it a minor release that isn't apt to draw hordes of new phone buyers.

Microsoft's slide has happened while the market for smartphones is growing at a brisk pace, fast enough to accommodate new devices like the iPhone. From the second quarter of 2008 to the same period this year, smartphone sales grew 13.4 percent, during otherwise dismal worldwide economic conditions, according to Canalys.

In the second quarter of 2009, just two years after its introduction, the iPhone surpassed Windows Mobile, selling 5.2 million phones and garnering 13.7 percent of the market.

Microsoft's inability to keep up with innovations by competitors may have driven some long-time allies away. Palm recently said it would no longer make any new phones running Windows Mobile. Motorola has said that the vast majority of the phones it releases in 2010 will be based on the Android platform developed by Microsoft archrival Google. It has not released any phones based on Windows Mobile 6.5 and says it is anxiously awaiting the next version of the operating system.

In addition, HTC, previously one of the biggest Windows Mobile supporters, has become a very vocal supporter of Android. While HTC used to contribute 80 percent of Windows Mobile phones, that's down to around 65 percent now, said Jonathan Goldberg at Deutsche Bank.

The situation is so dire that Gold says Microsoft at this point cannot win the battle to control the mobile operating system and thus he expects the company to exit the mobile market in the next one to two years.

Nick Jones of Gartner wrote in a blog post that he expects that Windows Mobile 7, a more significant upgrade expected to come next year, will be Microsoft's last attempt at success in the mobile-phone market. "Imagine you're Steve Ballmer, and in two years time WinMo was still 4th in smartphone market share. How much longer would you keep throwing money at it?" he wrote.

Quite some time, other analysts say, arguing that naysayers are ignoring some pertinent facts. "For some reason, everyone we speak with about mobile operating systems wants to entirely write off Windows Mobile. We admit WinMo is not our favorite operating system, and we are equally frustrated by their long development cycles. Regardless, this is Microsoft we are talking about and they have so many advantages that dismissing them out of hand would be a mistake, in our opinion," Goldberg wrote in a June report.

Microsoft has a "mountain of cash," the most integrated desktop synching offer available and strong relationships with developers and the supply chain, he wrote. "Most importantly they have a lot of patience."

Windows 6.5 is, in fact, just the beginning of a new direction for the mobile software that will become more apparent over the next 12 to 18 months, Microsoft executives say. The software, launched in early October, is already off to a great start, with 30 phones running it expected to appear in the first three months, according to Microsoft.

Executives there have been recently describing a new vision for the software that integrates it with other devices like computers and televisions.

"We've changed our strategy in a number of ways," said Andy Lees, senior vice president of mobile communications for Microsoft. "The first is to focus on multiscreen scenarios."

As an example, he points to the fact that many people take photos with their phones but don't ever move those photos off the phone. "They want to put them on the PC and the TV, share them with others, fix red eye, make slideshows. Yet they can't," he said. Microsoft wants to include the software on the device, in the PC and TV, and in the cloud to make it easier for people to manipulate their photos.

The company wants to do that in a way that is not exclusive to Microsoft, he said. "We think we can be catalytic in helping those scenarios," he said.

Whether that vision becomes a reality and is attractive to users, Microsoft has other things going for it compared to the competition, Goldberg said. The company offers a lot of support to hardware vendor partners, something the free operating system developers, like Android, don't offer. That lack of support is the reason that only two Android phones appeared in the first year the operating system was available, he said.

Researchers at iSuppli agree that support for handset makers is a key advantage Microsoft has over some of its competitors. Microsoft offers a complete infrastructure that phone makers need to use its software, iSuppli said. By comparison, phone makers that want to customize Symbian or Android by tweaking the user interface must invest in additional software to help them do so. Windows Mobile includes tools necessary for such changes, iSuppli said.

ISuppli is so confident of the potential for Windows Mobile that it predicts the number of Windows Mobile phones will triple between 2009 and 2013. That will give Windows Mobile a 15.3 percent share of the global market, second only to Symbian.

ISuppli acknowledges that Windows Mobile faces some challenges including strong competition and the loss of some licensees. Still, Microsoft has enough of an edge over competitors that it could turn around its lagging fortunes, it says.

ISuppli also notes that while Microsoft has lost a couple of licensees, they are relatively small and it has simultaneously gained support. Palm only represented a small portion of business for Windows Mobile and Motorola's market share has been declining in recent years, making it less significant, iSuppli said.

But Microsoft recently signed on LG, the number-three phone maker in the world, which has promised to make 50 Windows Mobile models.

Also, Microsoft could gain some traction in the market by leveraging its Zune music software as well as software acquired along with Danger. Danger created the operating system and service that runs the Sidekick phones that are popular with a niche of young users. While the Zune MP3 players have not been a success, users praise the software that runs them. Integrated onto the Windows Mobile platform, Zune software and components from the Danger software could appeal to a wider audience.

Improvements may also come from a decision by Microsoft to try to focus on the hardware form factors of phones running Windows Mobile. The company is making reference designs to help handset partners build attractive phones that will complement the software.

But the question remains whether Microsoft will deliver the features that users want and soon enough to stop its backward slide. Many initial reviewers of Windows Mobile 6.5 found it lacking and Microsoft has not said when Windows Mobile 7 will appear. If it comes out late next year, as some industry observers expect, that will be a full three years after the first iPhone hit the market. In the fast moving wireless industry, that's a lifetime.

An announcement earlier this week that indicated that China's Baidu would start linking to licensed music downloads may not mark a fundamental change for the company, but according to officials involved in the deal, it is a step in the right direction.

Qtrax, an ad-supported music download service, said on Monday that Baidu woul d direct some users performing music searches to Qtrax. The statement appeared to mark a big shift for Baidu, which has been criticized for years for allowing its music search results to link to pirated copies of songs on third-party Web sites.

But Qtrax says the deal is only for two specific Baidu portals, which would leave untouched Baidu's MP3 search engine, its most visible section for users looking to download songs. And comments from a Baidu representative on Wednesday did not confirm whether or how it would direct users to Qtrax. "The partnership with Qtrax regards text-based information, such as singer backgrounds; it has nothing to do with the music itself," the Baidu representative said via e-mail.

No links to Qtrax appear to be showing up yet in Baidu's entertainment portal, one of the two where Qtrax said artist biography pages will link to its Web site. But Qtrax, which runs what it calls a global music download service, will not launch its service in China until next month. The Baidu artist pages will include a button linking to Qtrax only for artists in the Qtrax catalogue, Qtrax CEO Allan Klepfisz said in a phone interview.

"It's a small step but a very important step … a step toward legitimacy," Klepfisz said.

Baidu earlier this year said it was considering revenue splitting or another form of cooperation with music labels. The company said it was working with multiple labels to find a mutually beneficial form for its music search.

Baidu is by far the dominant search engine in China. It handles about two-thirds of online searches performed in the country, with Google in a distant but clear second place, according to local consultancies.

The popularity of Baidu's free music download search helped lead Google to launch its own competing service. Google this year expanded its ad-supported music search, offered only in China, after reaching deals with major music labels. Baidu has followed Google by moving toward a music search based on such deals.

Baidu and Google continue to unroll other services as well to win users from each other. Most recently, Google has enabled search by voice in Mandarin Chinese for Nokia S60 series phones, letting users input search terms by speaking them, the company said this week on its blog. Phones in that series, including the Nokia E71, are popular among well-off Chinese users. Google voice search in Chinese will later be offered for the iPhone and Android-based handsets, the state-run China Daily said, citing a Google engineering vice president.

As Microsoft launches Windows 7 and seeks to banish the ghost of its less-than-successful Vista OS, it is fighting to defend its primacy as the world's leading software company.

Apple and Google are leading markets that Microsoft once had hopes of extending its dominance to — mobile telephony and Internet search. The Redmond, Washington, company also finds itself defending Office — its biggest cash cow next to Windows — from Google Apps and other Web-based productivity applications.

With billions of dollars of revenue still coming in, Microsoft remains the most successful software maker in the world. But the next year will be pivotal for Microsoft to prove it can hold the ground it already has and also gain a critical mass in search traffic and the emerging mobile ecosystem.

These stories form this news-analysis package:

Search: the market that created Microsoft's worst enemy

by Juan Carlos Perez

Has Microsoft just placed its last mobile bet?

by Nancy Gohring

MS Office battles Google in the cloud

by Elizabeth Montalbano

Microsoft seeks to leverage strengths in midmarket ERP

by Chris Kanaracus

Nintendo DS uber-RPG Dragon Quest IX won't reach US shores until sometime next year, but it's already leading Wii Sports Resort, Madden NFL 10, and Halo 3: ODST in key international markets. A new report from Top Global Markets combining third quarter sales data from trackers NPD Group (US), GfK Chart-Track Limited (UK), and Enterbrain, Inc. (Japan) reveals Dragon Quest IX with four million units from July, up a full million over the next bestselling game, Wii Sports Resort.

3.925m - Dragon Quest IX (Japan)3.014m - Wii Sports Resort (1.7m US / 841k Japan)2.612m - Madden NFL 10 (2.6m US / 30k UK)2.068m - Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver (Japan)1.847m - Halo 3: ODST (1.5m US / 33k Japan / 294k UK)

The report also briefed on general third quarter market trends, indicating Japan unit sales increased 15 percent overall, compared to a 20 percent decline for the same period last year. While year-to-date sales are down 9 points, the country saw console and handheld software growth of 7 and 19 percent respectively.

Third quarter UK unit sales dropped 19 points, contrasted against a 9 percent downswing in the US. UK handheld software sales plummeted 34 percent, compared with 14 percent in the US, while UK console software sales fell 12 percent against an 8 percent decline in the US.

As expected, the numbers showed significant downturns in the UK and US, with year-to-date unit sales declining 13 percent in the UK against an 8 percent decline in the US.

While the numbers sound grim, they're not as bad as they might have been (speaking strictly in terms of US data) without September's sudden upturn. Top Global Markets' third quarter data includes unit sales from July to September 2009–as it stands, September 2009 unit sales were flat over the same period last year, but notably up over the prior five months.

Recent console price cuts coupled with the arrival of holiday blockbusters should improve year-to-date unit numbers. Whether that'll be enough to swing the US full circle–possibly even into the black before year's end–remains to be seen.

Follow me on Twitter @game_on

Before naming him CEO of the Decade, perhaps Fortune magazine should have asked other successful CEOs: Could Steve Jobs run your company? The question is not meant to diminish Job's success, just put it into perspective.

Apple is a company that Steve Jobs has–twice–created in his own image. The second incarnation has been an incredible success. For that, "CEO of the Decade" might be appropriate.

However, if we measure greatness by overall ability, that is the ability to run a company as he finds it and leave it for someone else, Jobs fails. I think a survey of other CEOs would have made that point.

What will people say when the Jobs era ends and Apple sinks? That happened after Jobs was forced out (for cause) in 1985 and there is little reason to think it will not repeat the next time Jobs leaves.

(Here is another view of the honor, from Dan Moren at Macworld).

The current Apple team, which works wonderfully around Jobs, probably would not work so well without him. And as for finding the next Steve Jobs? There won't be one. Whether or not he's CEO of the Year, Decade, or Century, Steve Jobs is one thing for sure: Magic.

Nobody comes close to Steve Jobs in being able to imbue a product with whatever it is he has. His magic does not always work–see the part about Next, Inc. in Jobs' biography. Yet, it has worked splendidly in consumer products, be they computers, music players, the recording industry, or motion pictures (with Pixar).

Apple without Steve Jobs lost its way between 1985 and his return in 1997. Good people tried, failed, and almost sent the company into bankruptcy before Jobs was invited back.

For Apple, Steve Jobs is what George Washington has been for America: The Indispensible Man. No Washington, no America as we know it. No Steve Jobs, no Apple as we know it.

Again, the difference is George Washington created something with self-replenishing talent. None, perhaps, as good as G.W., but good enough to last.

Will Apple last without Steve? Of course, it takes a long time to squander the bankroll Steve has built. Nevertheless, is there a system in place to replace Steve with someone as talented? Not that we have seen.

More likely, in the post-Jobs era, Apple will end up trying to hold on more than move forward, which some say is what characterizes Microsoft after Bill Gates.

The difference between Steve and other great CEO's–including Bill Gates and even his friend, Larry Ellison– is that after Jobs, there may be no third act for Apple. Microsoft and Oracle will survive Gates and Ellison.

The real reason Steve Jobs deserves CEO of the Decade is that, beyond being an incredible success in his second Apple incarnation, he is one other thing: impossible to replace. So why try?

People who really love Apple's products understand this, I think.

David Coursey tweets as

@techinciter

and can be

contacted

via his Web site.

Google has decided to release as open source several of its key application development tools, hoping that they will prove useful for external programmers to build faster Web applications.

Google has used the tools in some of its most popular Web applications, including Gmail, Google Docs and Google Maps, said Amit Agarwal, a Google product manager.

"By enabling and allowing developers to use the very same tools that Google uses, we hope that they can not only build rich applications but also make the Web really, really fast. That's our primary motive in getting these tools outside to the global community," he said.

The tools include Closure Compiler, which streamlines, optimizes and consolidates Javascript code to make it run faster and more efficiently, increasing the chances that the application will perform well even for users with slow connections, the company announced Thursday.

Google is also releasing Closure Library, a Javascript library that contains a set of standard application services and components that run across different browsers.

"It has served as the standard Javascript library for pretty much any large, public Web application that Google is serving today," Agarwal said. "It's very broad and comprehensive, well-tested, and very modular."

Google is also making available Closure Templates, designed to automate the dynamic creation of HTML. These templates can be used within Javascript in client machines or in Java on servers.

AT&T has created different mobile calling models for every major city in America as it tries to improve a network that has come under fire for poor performance as the data-friendly iPhone has proliferated, an executive said Thursday.

Other carriers just use one nationwide calling model to plan for all cities, claimed Chief Technology Officer John Donovan, speaking at the Open Mobile Summit conference in San Francisco.

The nation's second-largest mobile operator has a hard time planning for bandwidth needs in the rapidly changing mobile world, Donovan said. AT&T has seen rapidly growing mobile data usage — and much criticism over its 3G coverage — as the exclusive iPhone carrier in the U.S.

"If a network is not fully loaded, it's hard to know exactly how much demand is out there," Donovan said. "You put all you can in the ground, and they eat it all up, and then you put more in there, and they eat it all up."

The explosive growth in use of mobile data, which Donovan said has risen 4,932 percent at AT&T over the past 12 quarters, or in other words three years, has forced the carrier to throw out its traditional planning models, he said.

Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg pressed Donovan to talk about coverage in San Francisco, saying he regularly hears from readers about poor AT&T coverage in the city.

AT&T is in the midst of leveraging its prime 850MHz radio spectrum for 3G in San Francisco, a step that is 90 percent complete, Donovan said.

"We've seen a significant improvement here in San Francisco, and we expect by year end we'll have a great experience here," Donovan said. Securing sites and zoning approvals for infrastructure is one of the issues that can hold up network improvements, he said. "It's not a question of commitment, will, understanding or power. It's how fast you can get the assets on the ground," Donovan said.

Also at the conference, Donovan said AT&T is pushing toward IPv6 (Internet Protocol, Version 6), the major new step in the Internet's underlying software that will exponentially expand the number of available IP addresses. Based on the current rate of depletion, analysts have forecast that addresses under the current protocol, IPv4, will run out some time in 2011. The additional addresses in IPv6 may be especially vital in the wireless world, where not only handheld devices but embedded sensors and other machines may need addresses.

"We have a major program under way to transform ourselves to IPv6," Donovan said. He receives monthly forecasts of the date when IPv4 addresses will run out, to make sure the carrier is on track.

Donovan also said AT&T ultimately would like to make applications for any of its phones run across all of them, plus PCs and TVs. He envisions subscribers looking at a summary at the end of the day, possibly over IPTV, of all the applications and content they've downloaded and what other platforms they can add them to.

"As a customer, I've already made a choice somewhere about what I like, so I just want to port that over," Donovan said.

Asked whether this cross-platform strategy might erode all the efforts of Apple, Microsoft, Google and others to distinguish their mobile platforms through application lineups, Donovan said the most important thing is what experience the customer wants, and whoever delivers that will win. "The business models will naturally contend," he said.

In this week's World Tech Update, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer tours Asia and talks about the future of television, HTC launches the HD2 smartphone that runs Windows Mobile 6.5, Intel gets slapped with an antitrust lawsuit, Motorola's Droid gets ready to go on sale, an iPhone app from Harvard Medical School helps protect you from swine flu and new research enables 3D on a Microsoft Surface computer.

Click here to watch this week's show.

World Tech Update is a recap of the week's technology news. To learn more about the show, follow it on Twitter and Facebook.

Google showed Thursday it's getting more serious about privacy when it launched a tool called Google Dashboard that aims to give you more control over your personal data stored on Google's servers. From your Google Dashboard you can view the company's privacy policies, easily access your most recent activity for each Google service you use, and manage settings for those services. My initial impression is that Dashboard is a quick and easy way to get greater control over your Google Account activity, and even clean up any services you may have forgotten about.

Accessing the Dashboard

To get into Google Dashboard, sign into your Google Account, click on the settings link at Google.com, and select "Google Account Settings." You can also click on "My Account" from your iGoogle page. Or just follow this link. This will take you to your Google Account page where you select "View data stored with this account" under "Personal Settings." Google will then ask you to enter your Google Account password again as an extra security measure before redirecting you to your Dashboard.

It should also be noted that from your Google Account page you can also see a list of all the Google services you use, but Dashboard gives you more information about what kind of data you have stored on each Google service.

Dashboard

When you land on Dashboard you will see a list of your Google services on the left-hand side. This list contains information about the Google services you use including your recent activity and basic statistics. Under Gmail, for example, you can see you how many messages you've sent, how many conversations are in your inbox, the number of Gmail chats you have saved, and even how many items are in your trash.

The statistics feature in Dashboard was particularly useful for me allowing me to take control of various services I hadn't used for a long time. For example, I'd completely forgotten that I'd signed up to use the social features on a few Websites using Google Friend Connect. But since I don't really visit those sites, or use Friend Connect, I was able to quickly navigate to my settings for this service and "unjoin" my Friend Connect Websites. I also noticed that Google Latitude had access to my Google Account information, but since I don't really use Latitude I easily revoked access for that application as well.

On the left side of Dashboard, you will see several links for managing your settings for each service and links to Google's privacy and help pages. Gmail in Dashboard, for example, lets you navigate directly to controls for your chat, security and general settings.

What's Missing?

While Google Dashboard looks like a handy tool, there are some services still missing. You can find information for Gmail, Google Docs, Calendar, Contacts, Blogger and more. But other popular services absent from Dashboard include Maps, Wave, Chrome Bookmark Sync, Google News, and business-related services like Google Analytics and AdSense. Google says it plans on integrating all Google services into Dashboard in the future. A company spokesperson told me that Google Video and Checkout should show up on your Dashboard in the next few days, and other services will begin to appear after that. Google also plans to integrate future products into Dashboard as they are released.

Dashboard for all?

Dashboard is an informative way to see what kind of data you have spread across Google's Web services. It also got me thinking that other online service providers should consider releasing a Dashboard-like product. Microsoft, for example, has similar services to Google including Bing Search, the beta version of MSN.com, Hotmail, Windows Live Sync, the upcoming Microsoft Office Web Apps and more. Windows Live does have an "all services" list that you can see, but it lacks the statistical overview that Google Dashboard has.

On the other hand some social networks already offer similar functionality to Google Dashboard. Facebook, for example, lets you edit which sites have access to your social networking account on the Applications Settings page (select "authorized" from the drop-down menu). Twitter also lets you see what services you are using under "Connections" on your account's Settings page.

Dashboard and Privacy

It will be interesting to see what privacy advocates have to say about Dashboard considering past criticisms leveled against Google involving Google Maps Street View, Google Latitude and Google Books.

One possible problem I found, for example, was the ability to tell my browser to save my account password for future visits to Google Dashboard. This means anyone could view my Dashboard if they hacked into or stole my computer. This is very different from Yahoo, which requires you to sign in every time you want to access your Yahoo Account information.

That being said, Dashboard does have some handy features that will help you maintain greater control over you data across Google's wide variety of services.

Connect with Ian Paul on Twitter (@ianpaul).

An announcement earlier this week that seemed to indicate that China's Baidu would start linking to licensed music downloads may not have been the major step it first appeared to be for the search company.

Qtrax, an ad-supported music download service, said on Monday that Baidu would direct some users performing music searches to Qtrax. The statement appeared to mark a big shift for Baidu, which has been criticized for years for allowing its music search results to link to pirated copies of songs on third-party Web sites.

But comments from a Baidu representative on Wednesday did not seem to confirm that it would direct any users to Qtrax. "The partnership with Qtrax regards text-based information, such as singer backgrounds; it has nothing to do with the music itself," the Baidu representative said via e-mail.

No links to Qtrax appear to be showing up yet in Baidu's music search section or on its entertainment portal.

Qtrax, which runs what it calls a global music download service, says it has support from the major music labels and that its service will launch in China next month.

Baidu earlier this year said it was considering revenue splitting or another form of cooperation with music labels. The company said it was working with multiple labels to find a mutually beneficial form for its music search.

Baidu is by far the dominant search engine in China. It handles about two-thirds of online searches performed in the country, with Google in a distant but clear second place, according to local consultancies.

The popularity of Baidu's free music download search helped lead Google to launch its own competing service. Google this year expanded its ad-supported music search, offered only in China, after reaching deals with major music labels. Baidu has followed Google by moving toward a music search based on such deals.

Baidu and Google continue to unroll other services as well to win users from each other. Most recently, Google has enabled search by voice in Mandarin Chinese for Nokia S60 series phones, letting users input search terms by speaking them, the company said this week on its blog. Phones in that series, including the Nokia E71, are popular among well-off Chinese users. Google voice search in Chinese will later be offered for the iPhone and Android-based handsets, the state-run China Daily said, citing a Google engineering vice president.