Treeduck

Terremark is offering SAP customers the chance to run their business applications online.

The move by Terremark beats SAP to the punch in terms of offering its applications online. SAP is still beta-testing its own cloud computing offering – known as Business ByDesign.

Terremark claims that it can use its data centres to provide SAP customers with a new platform, where they can access their SAP applications from a pool of resources, reports CBR.

'Our partnership with Terremark will provide customers the ability to experience significant cost savings, while not having to sacrifice the reliability of their hosted SAP applications,' said Michael Ressemann, global head of BPO solution delivery and partner enablement at SAP.

Austin-based Versata Software, Inc., was awarded $138 million in a jury verdict against software provider SAP America (NYSE: SAP - News) and its German-based parent company SAP AG for infringement of two Versata patents related to pricing technology.

Following a seven-day trial, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, made the award following six hours of deliberation. The jury found that SAP infringed upon two Versata software product patents used to organize multi-level pricing tables. Created in 1995, the revolutionary Versata technology enables complex pricing structures to be processed faster and more efficiently.

“Versata has always focused on innovation, resulting in market-leading solutions that drive customer success,” said Randy Jacops, CEO and President of Versata Software, Inc. “Our patented technology enables Versata customers to deploy best-in-class solutions that competitors simply cannot match. We cherish and defend the mutually successful, multi-decade relationships resulting from our innovation investment.”

“Versata has maintained a long and consistent practice of filing for patents on new and valuable inventions,” said Lance Jones, Sr. VP and General Counsel. “The jury’s verdict in this case was an extremely important validation of our trust in the patent system as a crucial partner in Versata’s commitment to innovation.”

The jury found that SAP infringed on U.S. Patent No. 6,553,350 B2, issued in 2003, and U.S. Patent No. 5,878,400, issued in 1999 by selling and distributing SAP’s CRM and ERP solutions.

“We had a brilliant team of litigators and technical consultants who worked extremely hard on this case,” Jones said. “Our team was remarkable in its professionalism and execution.”

Versata was represented in the case by Sam Baxter, Ted Stevenson, Scott Cole and Steve Pollinger of McKool Smith. The technical consultants on the trial team were from iRunway India Private Limited and Ntrack, LLC.

Versata has announced that it intends to seek a permanent injunction preventing any further infringing activities by SAP, including the sale or distribution of infringing technology.

About Versata

With a global presence covering 45 countries, Versata Enterprises solves the most complex business problems for the world’s largest organizations. Versata Enterprises comprises a number of leading enterprise solution providers, including Versata Software, Inc. Versata, Inc., Artemis International Solutions Corporation, Nextance, Inc., Gensym Corporation, Clear Technology, Inc., Tenfold Corporation, eCora Software, Inc., Evolutionary Technologies, Inc. and AlterPoint, Inc. Versata distinguishes itself in the software industry by focusing on customer priorities as driven by value delivered.

One of the largest behind-the-scenes updates to Google's search technology in three years is under way, as the company reworks its computing muscle.

On Monday evening, Google quietly began soliciting feedback for "Caffeine," a new system for Web searches that is being tested completely separately from the live search results currently found through Google.com.
Google makes almost constant changes to its search algorithms and infrastructure, but it hasn't made an update of this magnitude since 2006, said Matt Cutts, a principal engineer at Google who is considered one of the driving forces behind its approach to search.
Think of Caffeine as a redeployment of the computing network that Google uses to connect searchers and results. "We want to make a system that is more robust, that can do more--and do more faster," Cutts said.
Google said it is not changing the user interface as part of the Caffeine update, nor does the update affect the ranking of ads on the search engine. So the average user trying to find a new digital camera or directions to the restaurant likely won't be surprised by how the results are presented.
But they might notice that things have gotten a little faster: speed is a side benefit of the decision to focus on improving how documents are indexed with the new update, Cutts said.
Those responsible for search engine optimization at their companies or clients, however, are just starting to get busy. The changes to Google's indexing methods will likely have an impact on the way Web sites are presented on the extremely important first page of search results, hence the need for testing and feedback.
For example, search blogs such as SearchEngineWatch.com noted that Wikipedia results seem to have been pushed a little further down the page in the sandboxed search system.
That's not necessarily indicative of how the results would be presented, once Caffeine goes live, but it is evidence that the update will require those dependent on Google to drive traffic to their sites to study the changes. For now, Google is not sharing many details regarding how it reworked its back-end architecture and indexing process with Caffeine.
Cutts said the changes that are coming along with Caffeine have been in the works for months, implying that the launch of Microsoft's Bing and Yahoo's subsequent decision to finally pull the plug on its own search efforts had little to do with the planning for Caffeine. But it does illustrate that while search is a constantly evolving product, serious infrastructure updates are needed to keep the trains running on time. This was perhaps what Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz had in mind as she reviewed what it would cost to just maintain Yahoo's current search commitment, let alone a renewed effort to gain share: Yahoo expects to save a ton in capital expenditures as a result of the outsourcing deal.
Google designs much of its own infrastructure, developing its own servers and piling them together in modular shipping containers. It's not clear whether any changes are being made to the basic Google server itself, but Cutts observed on his own blog that "Caffeine is a radical revamp (more like a complete rewrite) of large parts of our system," which may entail more than just updating the search index.
The Caffeine preview can be found here, and feedback is encouraged, both to Google, and right on this page.

When it comes to Wikipedia, the "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit," any kind of structural change is a very big deal.
That's why the current plan for a new rule that would require an editor's approval before any edits to articles about living persons go live is a very big deal. As reported in The New York Times on Monday, that new system is expected to be implemented sometime soon, though it will most likely initially be a trial that will affect only a limited number of articles.

This week, much of the movers and shakers in the Wikipedia community are in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for the annual Wikimedia conference. There, the breaking news is that the Omidyar Network has agreed to donate $2 million to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia, in exchange for a seat on the foundation's board of trustees.
But surely, the real question being asked in Buenos Aires is: can Wikipedia survive changes to its fundamental nature as a user-generated site that grants nearly unfettered rights to just about anyone? The quick answer? Almost certainly.
The move to require editors' approval before edits go live was hatched three years ago, as CNET News reported first at the time. Back then, the idea was one that was going to be tested out on the German Wikipedia site as a way of seeing how to fix problems with vandalism that were increasingly creeping up. It was thought that if the test was successful in Germany, the same system could then be rolled out on the English version.
One of the ideas behind that proposal, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said at the time, was to theoretically make it possible for the English site's front page to be opened up to the public for the first time in years. It had long been locked to public editing because of the danger of vandalism that would be extremely public.
Subsequently, the changes, known as "flagged revisions," have been implemented on the German site, and now all article edits must be approved before going live. According to Andrew Lih, the author of "The Wikipedia Revolution," the German experiment has proved successful, giving proponents of rolling the system out for the much larger English site a lot of ammunition.
BLP articles
Perhaps as a way of managing the utter freak-out that would likely occur if German-style changes were made to the English site, the only proposal on the table being taken seriously right now is one that would mandate editors' approval for changes made to articles about living persons--articles known as "BLP," or "biographies of living persons."
Still, according to Lih, BLP articles have "been a real pain in the neck for Wikipedians to patrol and control," and have resulted in some of the worst scandals involving the free encyclopedia, particularly vandalized articles about Sens. Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, and the entertainer Sinbad, all of whom were purported to have died.
Unlike the originally proposed "flagged revisions" changes, the "flagged protection and patrolled revisions" modifications would only apply to BLP articles.
Will this be enough to satisfy many of Wikipedia's critics--those who, like Eric Goldman, an associate professor at Santa Clara University's law school, think that the encyclopedia faces self-destruction without a much stricter way to control what the public can do on the site.
That's not known yet. But those critics definitely feel strongly that Wikipedia has outgrown its initial mandate, that of being a site that anyone can edit anytime they want.

Amazon's Video on Demand is a cross-platform, video delivery service. Users can download videos from Amazon and watch them on a number of devices. Also, certain televisions and set-top boxes allow users to browse, purchase, and watch the videos without ever visiting Amazon.com.
Amazon's Video on Demand has both movies and television shows that can be purchased outright, or rented. Rentals only last 24 hours, but are usually less than a third the cost of purchasing the content.

Ask.com is currently the fifth most popular search engine on the Web. It lets users search the Web for links, images, videos, driving directions, and news, along with local city listings and shopping links for products.
One thing it does that no other major search engines do, is display results from these other search types on the same page. This lets you see a wide gamut of results, all at once. It also differs from other search engines in allowing users to customize and skin various elements of the engine from a large catalog, which changes the look and feel of the site entirely.

Microsoft’s ad blitz for Bing is still going strong, and it’s starting to hone in on a new target: your wallet. Bing’s latest TV ad, which aired for the first time last night, is focused on Bing Cashback, the program that allows users to save money when they purchase items found using Bing search. Cashback has been around for a while, most people probably had never even heard of the program until now. This is the first time Microsoft has ever aired an ad for Cashback, and you can be sure that it’s going to strike a chord with plenty of viewers.

Microsoft launched Cashback on its old search engine, Live Search, in May 2008, when we called it a “desperate and brilliant move” to trade search revenue for market share. As it turned out, Cashback failed to do much to improve Live Search’s market share last year, but it did result in a significant increase in advertising revenue. Now that Bing is picking up some steam, CashBack may turn in to the traffic driver Microsoft originally envisioned.

To help drive more interest to Cashback, Microsoft launched a limited promotion on August 10th called Double Cashback, during which Microsoft would match the amount of the rebates being offered by retailers (e.g. if Nike normally offered a $10 discount rebate, the promotion would give them $20). That special turned out to be too successful — it drove so many sales that Microsoft wound up ending it three days early, after distributing the maximum amount of money Bing had allocated for the promotion

Earlier today, Nokia announced that it was launching Nokia Money, a new payment service powered by Obopay that allows users to send money to friends, merchants, and service companies simply by using their phone numbers. The service will be showcased in early September at the Nokia World conference, with plans to roll it out to select markets in 2010.

As we wrote when news broke of Obopay’s $70 million funding round (of which Nokia was a major participant in), one of the biggest markets for this technology is in regions like India, where many people have phones with pre-paid SIM cards but don’t have bank accounts. And judging by Nokia’s press release, which emphasizes that there are “4 billion mobile phone users and only 1.6 billion bank accounts”, the company seems to agree. From the release:

“Rural consumers will particularly benefit from money transfers and, for urban consumers used to online services, we are enabling services such as payment of utility bills, purchase of train and movie tickets, top-ups, all through their mobile phones. Nokia Money is simple to use, secure and available across different operator networks and on virtually any mobile phone. This means millions of new consumers will soon be able to manage all their financial needs from their mobile phone”

Nokia will hardly be the only player in these emerging markets — other competitors include mChek and Paymate. We’ve also seen some alternative payment models like Aryty, which allows users in the US to remotely charge up the mobile accounts of family and friends in India and the Philippines.

Stateside, the technology will also likely see some success, though it will be competing with a variety of other payment methods, and US users haven’t been nearly as quick at adopting mobile payments as customers in other regions have been. Nokia’s release notes that while the technology will be based on Obopay, it will be making a number of improvements and will allow the payment service to interoperate with competing services.

It’s as though Google doesn’t want you to use its new Chrome browser. If you try to install the Google Toolbar on Chrome, it practically suggests that you switch browsers. Chrome users are greeted with this message:

We’re sorry, but Google Toolbar 5 is only available for Internet Explorer and Firefox

Of course, Chrome is like a giant Google Toolbar that takes up the whole screen, so you don’t really need it. (The Toolbar offers Google search, bookmarks, search suggestions, Web history, and shortcuts to Google apps). But still that’s not the message Google wants to be sending to curious Chrome users.

Mobile browser Opera Mini has clocked up more than 25 million downloads via GetJar, the mobile app market backed by Accel Partners. That makes it GetJar’s most popular app ever. The latest version of Opera Mini (v4.2) has been downloaded 7.5 million times since the beginning of the year, which is not too shabby.

Opera Mini is also making Firefox eat dust in the mobile world. Firefox has been promising a full-blown mobile browser for a year, but Mozilla users are still waiting, although Mozilla has released Fennec 3, a beta version of its open-source touch mobile browser. Meanwhile, Opera Mini users are enjoying a pretty advanced browser which also runs Flash. Its popularity shows that mobile users are clearly not satisfied with the standard browser they tend to get thrown in with their cellphone.