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IBM is enhancing its VMControl software for managing data centers to give enterprise users a single point of control across multiple types of IT systems and virtualization technologies. Combined with IBM’s Tivoli software, VMControl allows for combinations of physical and virtual IBM servers to be managed as a single entity, called “system pooling.” IBM says this approach optimizes virtualization by helping corporate data centers simplify management functions and better share and prioritize use of critical resources such as CPU, memory and storage. Having centralized control over virtualized environments lets companies manage large amounts of information and processing resources and then parcel them out to applications when and where they’re needed. And this efficiency also brings with it lower capital, operational and energy costs for businesses. IBM also claims that the new and improved VMControl will help with the deployment of cloud computing applications. To compliment VMControl, there’s a new version of Tivoli Provisioning Manager that is being released that provides enhanced automation of the manual tasks of provisioning and configuring servers, operating systems, middleware, software applications, storage and network devices. The combination of Tivoli and VMControl allows for speedier deployments, gives users the ability to downsize management tools into an efficient platform, and provides for additional monitoring and management features. IBM’s vice president of technical sales for systems and technology group, David Gelardi, tells us that the upgrade of these software represents the company’s larger strategy of investment on systems software for the enterprise vs. hardware. In fact, IBM’s recent strong earnings reflects this shift in focus.

During Apple’s Q4 earnings call today, a question was asked about how Apple viewed its increased competition for the iPhone in the coming holiday season. In particular, it was asked how Apple views all the new Android phones coming out. Apple COO Tim Cook made Apple’s stance very clear: They’re still catching up with the first iPhone. Yes, Apple views the smartphone market as still being behind the first phone they released over two years ago. “We’ve moved beyond that,” Cook noted. Certainly, compared to some smartphones out there, the first iPhone still compares very well. The iPhone 3G compares even better — as we’ve written before, it’s kind of like James Bond, while a lot of others at the same price are Joe Schmoe. But to say the original iPhone is ahead of phones like the Palm Pre and the myTouch 3G seems a bit disingenuous. That said, the iPhone 3GS is, in my view, still absolutely ahead of the competiton, including the aforementioned phones. By many accounts, the upcoming Verizon Droid phone could be first real challenger to the current leading iPhone. Verizon obviously feels the same way, given its advertising campaign.

Microsoft is making a significant announcement for developers today, upgrading and adding functionality to Visual Studio 2010 to make the product more cloud-friendly in anticipation of Microsoft’s release of its commercial cloud platform Azure. Visual Studio is Microsoft’s a development environment that can be used to develop web applications, sites and services based on Microsoft’s technology platforms. Visual Studio 2010 will have additional testing options for developers to ensure quality code. Microsoft has included built-in tools for Windows 7 and Microsoft SharePoint 2010, and new drag and drop bindings for Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation. This is the first time that Microsoft has offered specific tools for building applications off of SharePoint. And with Visual Studio, developers can also build applications that cut across both Microsoft’s cloud computing platform Azure and on-premises databases. Microsoft is making it much easier for developers to build on the Azure cloud with these new tools. The specific Windows Azure tools for Visual Studio let developers build ASP.NET web applications and services that are hosted in Azure’s cloud services operating system. The tools also includes a SDK environment, and a simulated cloud environment that runs on the developer’s machine, so developers can test and debug their applications locally. Microsoft is also upgrading its .NET Framework 4, which will let developers experience smaller deployments with an 81 percent reduction in the framework size when using the Client Profile. Other benefits include additional support for industry standards, inclusion of the Dynamic Language Runtime for more language choice, new support for high-performance middle-tier applications (including parallel programming, workflow and service-oriented applications) and backward compatibility through side-by-side installation with .NET Framework 3.5. Visual Studio is being restructured in terms of the product lineup, with customers now being able to choose from three main versions of Visual Studio 2010: Professional (which includes essential tools), Premium, and Ultimate (a comprehensive package of life-cycle management tools). Microsoft has also redesigned the UI of the MSDN developer website, including a faster version of the MSDN Library and additional community resources for programmers and developers. Although we all know that Microsoft has strong ambitions in the cloud, it appears that part of its strategy involves providing developers with the best tools possible to build high-class applications off of Azure. Microsoft knows it must engage developers to help build momentum for the much-hyped Azure.

Google is going to make a lot of frequent flyers, and Virgin America, happy this holiday season. As a gift to people who fly on Virgin America’s WiFi-equipped planes, Google will be footing the bill for everybody on board between November 10, 2009, and January 15, 2010. For Google, this is a smart marketing move because it generates tons of good will among everyone who flies Virgin America. But Google is really giving a gift to Virgin America in the form of yet one more incentive to fly its planes over competitors’. Will American Airlines and others with WiFi on board have to respond with their own freebie giveaways? I hope so. Not that I mind paying the $13 per flight to use WiFi on Virgin America flights. In fact, I go out of my way to try to fly on Virgin America, just so that I don’t waste 6 hours going from coast to coast. But giving it away free makes it even more appealing. In fact, as I’ve suggested in the past, I wonder if Virgin America would be better off giving the WiFi away for “free” to everyone on board regularly, but charging more per flight. I’d certainly be willing to pay $25 to $50 more per flight if I knew there was WiFi. But that’s just me. The only thing that worries me is whether the in-flight WiFi system can handle everyone on board surfing the Web at the same time. At least with the $13 fee, there is a natural cap to how many people use it at once.

YouTube is on the path to profitability in the “not-too-distant future,” Google reiterated today during its third quarter earnings call. And while that may sounds all well and good, they actually had some more specific impressive numbers to back it up. One is that YouTube is now monetizing over a billion video views a week. Last week, YouTube announced that it was serving over 1 billion video views a day, so if you do the math there, it means that YouTube is monetizing one every seven video views. The company also noted that 90% of the top 50 advertisers according to AdAge have now run ads on YouTube. And of its homepage ad inventory, 90% of it sold out for the quarter in the U.S., with lower, but still impressive sale rates for the rest of the world. Google also noted that YouTube was just starting to unleash its pre-roll inventory and let its salesforce have a go at selling that to advertisers, which should bring in more money. And with Warner Music Group back in the mix, they now have the four major music labels playing ball again. As a one-stop shop for many music videos, YouTube will also be able to sell ads against those, as well as make some money off of affiliate sales from iTunes and Amazon’s MP3 store. Earlier this month, CNET uncovered that Google CEO Eric Schmidt admitted under oath that the company paid a $1 billion premium when it bought YouTube in 2006 (for $1.65 billion). The thought was always that the site was growing so quickly that they would scoop it up and figure out how to monetize it later. It would appear that they’re getting close to doing just that — albeit three years later.

Looks like Google Street View is in the news again today, but for all the wrong reasons. A Swiss agency has threatened to sue Google because it hasn’t taken to proper privacy considerations into effect, saying that “many images are problematic and insufficiently anonymous.” A few weeks ago, the same Swiss organization asked Google, officially, but knock it off with the Street View, but Google offered to change it enough to placate the organization’s demands. The main issue has to do with when Street View shows private roads, or when someone’s car’s license plate is visible. Basically, it’s just trying to maintain some semblance of privacy. I don’t think this Swiss organization is against the idea of maps or anything, but when you’re able to make out someone’s face as he’s walking down the strasse, well, there’s no reason for that. What purpose does that serve?. Google, for its part, maintains that Street View is 100 percent legal in Switzerland, and will work to ensure its survival there. How many of you have actually used Street View for anything other than saying, “Oh, hey, we were kicked out of that bar once?” Maybe if you’re visiting New York for the first time, and want to see what the area around your hotel looks like?.

We’ve been reporting a lot about Chrome OS the past few days. Possible features, screenshots, early builds — lots of good stuff. And tomorrow was promising to bring even more as yes, there’s an event partially dealing with Chrome OS scheduled to take place on Google’s Mountain View campus. But sadly, we’ve been banned from the event.Truth be told, all press is now banned from the event, we were told this evening. And that sucks because just yesterday we were confirmed as attendees and had planned to report on what we saw and heard. But then PC World and The Next Web spilled the beans on the event, and Google decided to ban the press.However, before they banned us and closed down registrations, we did manage to get the confirmation email about the event.The event, dubbed Front End Engineering Open House will feature “presentations on Google Maps and Chrome OS, YouTube will be unveiling their new look and showcasing YouTube 3-D”. While the presentation on Chrome OS is obviously the thing that first caught our eye, the “new look” for YouTube certainly sounds interesting. As does the showcase of YouTube 3D, something we covered a bit of this summer.

Last March, Hitwise highlighted how Google News UK picks up more traffic from searches for celebrities than any other type of news, ensuring that the news search engine largely remains the greater source of traffic for News and Media websites. Now Hitwise has released some stats that clearly depict this trend, with thanks to the uptick of news related to a variety of celebrities that took the Internet by storm the past week. According to Hitwise, Google News UK was the second biggest recipient of searches by UK-based Internet users for ‘patrick swayze’ and ‘kanye west’ (picking up 8.25% and 8.26% of traffic respectively), third for ‘katie price’ (9.29%) and fourth for ‘keith floyd’ (5.28%). As a result, visits to the regional news search engine increased a whopping 71% last week, with the site’s ranking reaching the one of 28th most popular overall (up from 46th the previous week).In other words: last week was Google News UK’s busiest ever, and they have celebrities to thank for it.

Generally you can trust the ads on Google to at least be safe. But that’s not the case right now for the top ad being served on the query “Firefox.” The top ad says it is linking to “Firefox ® OfficiaI Sit?” at the URL www.mozilla.com/firefox/. And that is indeed the official Mozilla Firefox site. But the link actually goes to the much more sinister firefox.mozilla-now.com, a site that dishonestly tries to get users to pay up to $2.50/month for an ongoing subscription to “24/7 Expert Customer Support” (a screenshot of the landing page is below). The credit card provider is based in the Netherlands.Even advanced users who hover over the link won’t know what’s up before they click, due to Google’s ad redirect URL.Most savvy Internet users will know this is a con as soon as visiting the site, but a all those middle-America Yahoo users may not know any better, particularly since they were just told it was the Firefox official site. It just goes to show that not even the stuff Google publishes can always be completely trusted.

Privacy bugs at Facebook are nothing new, but that doesn’t make them any easier to stomach. Last week we caught wind of a new one that was relatively benign, but could have been a field day for mischief makers and spammers. Don’t worry, it didn’t give anyone access to your personal information — but it did let you post to the Wall of any Facebook Page you wanted, which can’t be welcome news to the major brands on Facebook, or politicians who go to great lengths to maintain a pristine public image. We spoke with Facebook about the problem last week and held this post until it issued a fix this evening.
This latest bug stemmed from Facebook’s impressive new iPhone app, which was released just over a week ago. The new app reproduces much of the functionality found on the Facebook homepage, including the ability to browse through News Feeds and Facebook Pages, and to post to these feeds. Unfortunately, the app failed to pay attention to some of the privacy settings involved with these actions.
On Facebook, Page administrators are given control over who can post to their walls — if you want to keep your page clean and display only your updates, you can block users from posting their comments. Alternatively, you can let users comment into an area that’s “Just for fans”, or you can show both fan comments and the Page’s updates in the same feed. Most brands use the first or second option, so that new visitors to their Pages only see content that they control by default (e.g. shared links and status updates).
The iPhone application ignored these settings, allowing you to post to a Page even if it was only supposed to be displaying posts from the Page Administrator. So, for example, you could visit President Obama’s Page, which understandably doesn’t allow for any comments, and write whatever you wanted to his feed. Granted, this wouldn’t get syndicated out to other users like his updates would, but anyone who visited Facebook.com/BarackObama would see your message nestled between President Obama’s shared links.