Paul Mooney

The Google Bubble

I read the news today and can only shake my head....5% of AOL for a Billion Dollars, so Google thinks AOL is worth 20 Billion Dollars? If all those CD's that Time Warner slipped into our mail boxes were stacked on top of one another they would reach to the Moon, is this going to be Google's space ladder?

Google earned $385 million dollars in clicks from AOL Users in the past year, so how is that worth an investment of a Billion Dollars?

Fron the WSJ: On Sept. 16, Google CEO Eric Schmidt called AOL's Mr. Miller on his cellphone. "I'm in New York," he said. "Can we meet?" They sat down later that day to discuss a deeper partnership, including how AOL could sell ads through the searches that Google provides on AOL properties. Currently, advertisers must buy search ads from Google. AOL wanted to sell them itself, boosting its revenue.

Their conversations continued during the first week of October at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. At the same time, Time Warner and Microsoft restarted their own discussions.

I was at Web 2.0 and so was AOL's Jonathan Miller, MSN's Yusuf Mehdi and the Googler Sergey Brin, lots of talks went on in back rooms; you could smell the money.

I met Dave Girouard, General Manager, Google Enterprise at Interop on Wednsday and I was at Microsoft's NYC office on Thursday, but the action was over on Columbus Circle at the Time Warner Building. Christmas came early at Time Warner this year, they lost money for 11.5 months in 2005, maybe they will be able to write-off the Billion Dollars. LOL

NUnit 2.2.4

NUnit 2.2.4 for VS2005 and .NET 2.0 Released

By Sam Gentile

NUnit 2.2.4 was announced in the newsgroups today - “the first production release of NUnit since 2.2 was released in August 2004. That means it's the release we recommend you use now - as opposed to all the warnings we give with our development releases. * NUnit 2.2.4 runs under .Net 2.0 and works with VS2005. If you work exclusively with .Net 2.0, you can download a version that is actually built with that framework version, which eliminates dealing with the config file.“ We will switch over right away as NUnit still remains our TDD tool of choice even in VSTS Team. Program with ASP.NET - Create richer apps with ASP.NET 2.0 Get free online training. Deploy secure Smart Client apps. Learn how on MSDN's Smart Client Virtual Labs. Preview the new Visual Studio 2005. Step into the Visual Studio 2005 Virtual Labs for Free.

Remember Visto?

I used to visit Visto ten times a day back in the late '90's for email, storage and sharing files, a free service that many of use grew to depend on. Spam in my inbox became a major chore deleting about a hundred messages everyday, that was before we had sophisticated span filters. One day Visto sent me a message I couldn't delete telling me that they were discontinuing their free email and file storage service and becoming a mobile phone software service provider.

Visto is in the news today as the latest company to sue for infringement on patented technology in the wireless e-mail market. They are claming that Microsoft's Windows Mobile 5.0 is infringing on their  intellectual property, but Windows CE 5.0 has been around since June '04.

The lawsuit challenges three Microsoft patents and tries to stop Microsoft's yet to be released wireless e-mail product, Windows Mobile Direct Push Technology.

It looks like a Texas Judge will be determining what the concept of a wireless e-mail system is.

XBOX 360 Videos

At last some videos from the XBOX 360 Zero Hour Launch;

Zero Hour Interview Video

By John Porcaro on Xbox

A few weeks back, I wrote about an interview Peter Moore and J Allard gave to members of the Xbox online community, including gamers from the PMS Clan, several Xbox MVPs, Dave and Rob from Geek Speak Radio, Gamer Andy, CyberAthlete from GamerTag Radio, and Shin Asura from the TeamXbox forums.  Matt Gerlach let me know that "Neda", one of the Xbox MVPs who was there, posted videos he took on his blog.  He also includes a shaky-cam capture of the only public showing of "Shoot Out."  Take a look!

Xbox 360 Dashboard Preview  - Amanda Murphy does a MSDN Webcast style video without the eval-uation form at the end.

I've had my Xbox 360 for about 2 weeks now and I love it more and more each day. To help share some of the reasons why, I have decided to capture some video of the various elements of the Xbox 360 including things such as the new and improved dashboard as well as some of my favorite games.

Preview Video 1 - The Xbox 360 Dashboard

In my opinion, one of the greatest enhancements of the new Xbox is the vastly improved and interactive dashboard system. In this short video, I go through some of my favorite aspects of the dashboard including Xbox Live Arcade and the Windows Media Connect functionality that lets you connect to a PC running either Windows XP or Windows Media Center Edition.

Xbox 360 Video - Dashboard Preview (Low Quality)

Xbox 360 Video - Dashboard Preview (High Quality)