What the heck? Pc business is growing, not too fast, but there are more and more PCs sold each year. Whatever product you come up with for post-PC era, PC kills it from the price standpoint. Network computer, dedicated e-mail devices, Internet-enabled frames, image viewers you hook up to a PC - all crushed by the PC.
The real problem with browser branding is that currently people fail to see the browser as something which should be branded. It's a utility product that allows you to view sites, and that's about it. Who cares what's beneath?
By establishing IE as a client-run COM control, Microsoft only further implemented that idea. You can hardly brand something that people view as a tool.
For example, what sports cars do you have in your garage? Ferrari or Porsche I'd assume. And what's the brand of your kitchen sink? Eeeh, who cares, some crap made in China and purchased at Home Depot. The same with the browser - when the sites are more or less the same, and it's the sites you care about, who cares what brand the browser is.
Branding Mozilla: Towards Mozilla 2.0
Recommendations for the branding and visual identity of the Mozilla Foundations product and project line - by Steven Garrity
Summary
This document is intended to offer suggestions to the Mozilla Foundation for the future of the Mozilla brand and visual identity. It is not intended to replace or redo the good work that has already been done in this area. Any suggestions made here that contradict, conflict, or replace guidelines, recommendation, or other work that has already been done reflects more my ignorance as the author than my opinion of what has been done.
As the Mozilla project moves towards an end-user focus from a developer and platform focus, the branding and visual identity of the organization and its software will need to be revisited. With the recent separation from Netscape and AOL, the need for the Mozilla project to have a brand of its own is all the more necessary.
Keep What Works
First, the Mozilla project has a lot going for it. It has a long heritage, reaching back to the early Netscape web browsers. The Mozilla name was an apt choice as a nod to the roots of the project. It is also unique (free of trademark issues), memorable, and relatively easy to spell and pronounce. Mozilla is a good name.
Lose What Doesnt Work
The Mozilla project is lacking a strong visual identity. The Mozilla lizard is widely recognized by developers and early-adopters on the web, but does not reach far beyond these groups. It is also used inconsistently across projects and products.
Any good visual identity builds on what is already established, while improving on the weaknesses of past. So too should the visual identity of the Mozilla project and products. A unified, consistent, but flexible brand and visual identity would be a great compliment to the technology developed under the Mozilla project.
Products, Projects, and the Foundation
The broad scope of the Mozilla project has lead to confusion among end users. The term Mozilla is used to describe a web browser, a suite of applications, a platform, and an entire collection of software projects.
The recently formed Mozilla Foundation has already started the work of clarifying the terminology. The name of the Mozilla Foundation itself is a good and clear name that obviously defines the official organization that manages the Mozilla project.
They have also clarified the eventual naming of key Mozilla products; the current Mozilla Firebird project is the temporary development name for what will eventually be called Mozilla Browser; the current Mozilla Thunderbird project is the temporary development name for what will eventually be called Mozilla Mail. This is clear, simple, and smart.
Seemingly simple and obvious declarations like this are important for the success of the Mozilla project. People cant use software that they dont know how to ask for. People cant tell others about software that they dont know what to call.
The Mozilla Browser and Mozilla Mail names are clear, simple, and strong names for what will become the flagship products of the Mozilla project.
Version Numbers
The Mozilla application suite is approaching version 2.0 (version 1.5 at the time of this writing) and the independent applications are approaching 1.0 (Mozilla Firebird is at 0.71 and Mozilla Thunderbird is at a humble 0.3 at the time of this writing). Many have speculated that the official replacement of the application suite with the independent applications would be appropriate time to declare them version 2.0.
The change in focus and new independent applications certain does warrant a new version number.
I work as a lead Enterprise Software Architect for a major Fortune 500 company, which through re-organization and prudent management managed to streamline operations, provide the best value and quality of service to its customers and excel in the field.
We use a big txt file with write permissions stored on the server that everyone has access to. Whenever the developer or manager completes the project, they are adding a line to that.txt file with description of what was done.
Microsoft also hasn't picked up on the concept yet
They have. MSN Messenger 6.0 supports SIP, can make and accept SIP calls and connect to the appropriate directories. Microsoft rarely ventures into hardware business, with mice, keyboard, and wireless stuff the only exception.
It says a lot about the future of internet telephony that two of the most successful bad boys of the internet - Kazaas Niklas Zenstrom and MP3.coms Michael Robertson - have turned their attention to promoting the growth of Voice over IP.
Both Zenstrom and Robertson incurred the ire of the music industry and the Recording Institute Association of America because the technologies they helped establish made it much easier to download copyrighted music over the net. Robertson came first by helping to make the MP3 compression format the ubiquitous standard for audio on the net. Zenstrom followed by releasing Kazaa, which quickly became the most popular P2P program used by music sharers around the world.
Now the pair are slashing away at a whole different breed of industry titan: the giant telephone companies. But, though they share a common adversary, they have chosen to fight their new battles in entirely different ways.
Zenstrom is hoping to bring the telephone giants to their knees with Skype, an IP-to-IP VoIP software program that currently works only in Microsoft Windows and utilizes a proprietary protocol to establish voice connections between its users. Banking on the popularity of Kazaa, Zenstrom says more than 1.2 million users worldwide have downloaded Skype.
Robertson, on the other hand, has chosen a totally different route. His SIPPhone.com provides users with two telephones for less than $130. The SIPPhones, manufactured by Grandstream, connect to an Ethernet port and utilize the SIP protocol, which is quickly becoming the de facto standard for IP-to-IP voice communications.
Robertson is hoping that SIP becomes as widespread as MP3, and believes SIPPhone will help carry it a large portion of the way there.
In a way, Robertson is trying to do with SIP what he did for MP3 and later with Linux with his still-kicking Lindows operating system: Take a technology that works well but is understood only by the geekiest of computer users, simplify it to its most basic form, and market it to typical consumers directly.
Robertson still does not know how his new company will ever make a profit. His goal is to make it available to millions of users and go from there. Having sold MP3.com to Vivendi for more than $370 million in 2001, he can probably take his time to get there.
We caught up with Robertson during VON 2003 in Boston last month. Heres our conversation:
Voxilla: The SIPPhone has been out for nearly two months. So whos signing up?
Michael Robertson: I would say that probably the number 1 feedback we get is that its from international users. Theyll get two phones, theyll try them out and then theyll email us with Hey, Im ordering two more because I have a friend, or a co-worker, or an office in, fill in the foreign country here, India, China, Mexico. Thats one of the key uses were seeing initially.
V: Do you see international use as the major driving force behind VoIP growth?
MR: Yes. Thats where people pay huge phone rates. They want to avoid those huge phone bills. Thats where the phone bills get the biggest because you have private and government monopolies that own a lot of these companies. So it makes economic sense.
V: SIPPhone has announced an interconnectivity agreement with Packet8. Are you interested in doing the same with others, such as
The important thing is that FastTrack--the underlying network behind Kazaa and Morpheus--is not controlled by Sharman Networks.
Yes, it is. That's why Morpheus 1.0 got a boot.
You've got to learn to give back to the community man. That paper from New Zealand, they're not a charity, you know. Advertisers pay them and this way they pay their authors and editors to cover the costs, including the bandwidth costs that suddenly surged up.
So by including the page in entirety, (1) you are not violating Copyright Law, (2) help to offload their bandwidth, (3) help the ad message to go through, (4) point slashdotters to other interesting publications.
Advertisement:
Nokia mobiles Home > Technology > IT News > Article
Kazaa backs plan that could spell an end to the days of free music
By Sue Lowe
October 10, 2003
Print this article
Email to a friend
The world's most popular song-swapping network, Kazaa, has thrown its weight behind a plan to start billing song swappers for their music downloads.
The proposal, which could finally end the days of the free lunch for millions of music fans, has been put to big US record labels at the same time as a new legitimate version of the former file-swapping giant Napster is launched in the US.
The idea is to phase in a billing mechanism for peer to peer networks, such as Kazaa and Morpheus, that allow users to copy music directly from each other's hard drives.
Initially payments would be by credit card, but in the future downloads would be automatically detected and a charge added to the monthly internet service provider bill.
With the success of Apple's iTunes and the launch of the new legal Napster in the US this week, the five big record labels are finally getting behind online music distribution. But they are still turning their backs on the peer to peers seen to support widespread music piracy.
Kazaa now hopes the music industry will forget past grievances and tap into the cleaned up versions of the networks that already have millions of users, rather than build their own networks from scratch.
"The whole effort here is to go where the consumers are, to convert all that energy to selling licensed music," said Marty Lafferty, president of the Distributed Computing Industry Association.
Nikki Hemming, the Sydney-based chief executive of Sharman Networks, which runs Kazaa, said the business model offered "great hope for the entertainment industry".
Kazaa says about 5 million simultaneous users are logged into its network at any time.
Mr Lafferty predicted that within four years of the big record labels adopting the plan, online music sales would outperform traditional offline sales.
By that time, he forecast, 1.8 billion licensed tracks would be downloaded a month, worth more than $1 billion a month in revenue.
The five big record labels are yet to respond to the proposal.
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Slashdot Mirror
Ha-ha, got ya!
Well, to be fair, my agency is not that top and I am not really a top analyst in it.
"beat to it" is overstatement, this was registered a week ago.
/.'s user conversion ratios are not that great
Uh oh, looks like
I work as a top analyst for herewithal unnamed top research company.
Should've posted with his username, not as AC, so that /. knows its heroes.
...traditional PC languishes
What the heck? Pc business is growing, not too fast, but there are more and more PCs sold each year. Whatever product you come up with for post-PC era, PC kills it from the price standpoint. Network computer, dedicated e-mail devices, Internet-enabled frames, image viewers you hook up to a PC - all crushed by the PC.
The real problem with browser branding is that currently people fail to see the browser as something which should be branded. It's a utility product that allows you to view sites, and that's about it. Who cares what's beneath?
By establishing IE as a client-run COM control, Microsoft only further implemented that idea. You can hardly brand something that people view as a tool.
For example, what sports cars do you have in your garage? Ferrari or Porsche I'd assume. And what's the brand of your kitchen sink? Eeeh, who cares, some crap made in China and purchased at Home Depot. The same with the browser - when the sites are more or less the same, and it's the sites you care about, who cares what brand the browser is.
Mod him down!
The poster has goatse in URL field.
Should've submitted as AC, like people usually do for mirrors.
Mod him down!
Should've submitted as AC.
This document is intended to offer suggestions to the Mozilla Foundation for the future of the Mozilla brand and visual identity. It is not intended to replace or redo the good work that has already been done in this area. Any suggestions made here that contradict, conflict, or replace guidelines, recommendation, or other work that has already been done reflects more my ignorance as the author than my opinion of what has been done.
As the Mozilla project moves towards an end-user focus from a developer and platform focus, the branding and visual identity of the organization and its software will need to be revisited. With the recent separation from Netscape and AOL, the need for the Mozilla project to have a brand of its own is all the more necessary.
Keep What Works
First, the Mozilla project has a lot going for it. It has a long heritage, reaching back to the early Netscape web browsers. The Mozilla name was an apt choice as a nod to the roots of the project. It is also unique (free of trademark issues), memorable, and relatively easy to spell and pronounce. Mozilla is a good name.
Lose What Doesnt Work
The Mozilla project is lacking a strong visual identity. The Mozilla lizard is widely recognized by developers and early-adopters on the web, but does not reach far beyond these groups. It is also used inconsistently across projects and products.
Any good visual identity builds on what is already established, while improving on the weaknesses of past. So too should the visual identity of the Mozilla project and products. A unified, consistent, but flexible brand and visual identity would be a great compliment to the technology developed under the Mozilla project.
Products, Projects, and the Foundation
The broad scope of the Mozilla project has lead to confusion among end users. The term Mozilla is used to describe a web browser, a suite of applications, a platform, and an entire collection of software projects.
The recently formed Mozilla Foundation has already started the work of clarifying the terminology. The name of the Mozilla Foundation itself is a good and clear name that obviously defines the official organization that manages the Mozilla project.
They have also clarified the eventual naming of key Mozilla products; the current Mozilla Firebird project is the temporary development name for what will eventually be called Mozilla Browser; the current Mozilla Thunderbird project is the temporary development name for what will eventually be called Mozilla Mail. This is clear, simple, and smart.
Seemingly simple and obvious declarations like this are important for the success of the Mozilla project. People cant use software that they dont know how to ask for. People cant tell others about software that they dont know what to call.
The Mozilla Browser and Mozilla Mail names are clear, simple, and strong names for what will become the flagship products of the Mozilla project.
Version Numbers
The Mozilla application suite is approaching version 2.0 (version 1.5 at the time of this writing) and the independent applications are approaching 1.0 (Mozilla Firebird is at 0.71 and Mozilla Thunderbird is at a humble 0.3 at the time of this writing). Many have speculated that the official replacement of the application suite with the independent applications would be appropriate time to declare them version 2.0.
The change in focus and new independent applications certain does warrant a new version number.
The Mozilla Suite ver. 2.0:
I work as a lead Enterprise Software Architect for a major Fortune 500 company, which through re-organization and prudent management managed to streamline operations, provide the best value and quality of service to its customers and excel in the field. We use a big txt file with write permissions stored on the server that everyone has access to. Whenever the developer or manager completes the project, they are adding a line to that .txt file with description of what was done.
Microsoft also hasn't picked up on the concept yet They have. MSN Messenger 6.0 supports SIP, can make and accept SIP calls and connect to the appropriate directories. Microsoft rarely ventures into hardware business, with mice, keyboard, and wireless stuff the only exception.
VOXILLA.COM Staff Report
It says a lot about the future of internet telephony that two of the most successful bad boys of the internet - Kazaas Niklas Zenstrom and MP3.coms Michael Robertson - have turned their attention to promoting the growth of Voice over IP.
Both Zenstrom and Robertson incurred the ire of the music industry and the Recording Institute Association of America because the technologies they helped establish made it much easier to download copyrighted music over the net. Robertson came first by helping to make the MP3 compression format the ubiquitous standard for audio on the net. Zenstrom followed by releasing Kazaa, which quickly became the most popular P2P program used by music sharers around the world.
Now the pair are slashing away at a whole different breed of industry titan: the giant telephone companies. But, though they share a common adversary, they have chosen to fight their new battles in entirely different ways.
Zenstrom is hoping to bring the telephone giants to their knees with Skype, an IP-to-IP VoIP software program that currently works only in Microsoft Windows and utilizes a proprietary protocol to establish voice connections between its users. Banking on the popularity of Kazaa, Zenstrom says more than 1.2 million users worldwide have downloaded Skype.
Robertson, on the other hand, has chosen a totally different route. His SIPPhone.com provides users with two telephones for less than $130. The SIPPhones, manufactured by Grandstream, connect to an Ethernet port and utilize the SIP protocol, which is quickly becoming the de facto standard for IP-to-IP voice communications.
Robertson is hoping that SIP becomes as widespread as MP3, and believes SIPPhone will help carry it a large portion of the way there.
In a way, Robertson is trying to do with SIP what he did for MP3 and later with Linux with his still-kicking Lindows operating system: Take a technology that works well but is understood only by the geekiest of computer users, simplify it to its most basic form, and market it to typical consumers directly.
Robertson still does not know how his new company will ever make a profit. His goal is to make it available to millions of users and go from there. Having sold MP3.com to Vivendi for more than $370 million in 2001, he can probably take his time to get there.
We caught up with Robertson during VON 2003 in Boston last month. Heres our conversation:
Voxilla: The SIPPhone has been out for nearly two months. So whos signing up?
Michael Robertson: I would say that probably the number 1 feedback we get is that its from international users. Theyll get two phones, theyll try them out and then theyll email us with Hey, Im ordering two more because I have a friend, or a co-worker, or an office in, fill in the foreign country here, India, China, Mexico. Thats one of the key uses were seeing initially.
V: Do you see international use as the major driving force behind VoIP growth?
MR: Yes. Thats where people pay huge phone rates. They want to avoid those huge phone bills. Thats where the phone bills get the biggest because you have private and government monopolies that own a lot of these companies. So it makes economic sense.
V: SIPPhone has announced an interconnectivity agreement with Packet8. Are you interested in doing the same with others, such as
The important thing is that FastTrack--the underlying network behind Kazaa and Morpheus--is not controlled by Sharman Networks. Yes, it is. That's why Morpheus 1.0 got a boot.
You've got to learn to give back to the community man. That paper from New Zealand, they're not a charity, you know. Advertisers pay them and this way they pay their authors and editors to cover the costs, including the bandwidth costs that suddenly surged up. So by including the page in entirety, (1) you are not violating Copyright Law, (2) help to offload their bandwidth, (3) help the ad message to go through, (4) point slashdotters to other interesting publications.
freenet is good bittorrent is a cool linux app I use
Advertisement: Nokia mobiles Home > Technology > IT News > Article Kazaa backs plan that could spell an end to the days of free music By Sue Lowe October 10, 2003 Print this article Email to a friend The world's most popular song-swapping network, Kazaa, has thrown its weight behind a plan to start billing song swappers for their music downloads. The proposal, which could finally end the days of the free lunch for millions of music fans, has been put to big US record labels at the same time as a new legitimate version of the former file-swapping giant Napster is launched in the US. The idea is to phase in a billing mechanism for peer to peer networks, such as Kazaa and Morpheus, that allow users to copy music directly from each other's hard drives. Initially payments would be by credit card, but in the future downloads would be automatically detected and a charge added to the monthly internet service provider bill. With the success of Apple's iTunes and the launch of the new legal Napster in the US this week, the five big record labels are finally getting behind online music distribution. But they are still turning their backs on the peer to peers seen to support widespread music piracy. Kazaa now hopes the music industry will forget past grievances and tap into the cleaned up versions of the networks that already have millions of users, rather than build their own networks from scratch. "The whole effort here is to go where the consumers are, to convert all that energy to selling licensed music," said Marty Lafferty, president of the Distributed Computing Industry Association. Nikki Hemming, the Sydney-based chief executive of Sharman Networks, which runs Kazaa, said the business model offered "great hope for the entertainment industry". Kazaa says about 5 million simultaneous users are logged into its network at any time. Mr Lafferty predicted that within four years of the big record labels adopting the plan, online music sales would outperform traditional offline sales. By that time, he forecast, 1.8 billion licensed tracks would be downloaded a month, worth more than $1 billion a month in revenue. The five big record labels are yet to respond to the proposal. Print this article Email to a friend React to this article Submit a news tip Top Search all Fairfax archives (*Fee for full article) Advertisement Want to pay less credit card interest? 10.99% p.a.* ANZ Low Rate MasterCard Simply low interest. *Interest rate current as at 1 October 2003 and is subject to change Terms and conditions available on application. Fees and charges apply. Advertisement It news | Opinion | Reviews Technology * Microsoft pledge to improve security * Crackdown on immigrant visa lottery websites * Net pedophile jailed for five years National * G-G backs first strikes on dictators * Family judge warns MPs on custody * Qantas queries role of air marshals World * It's cultural genocide, says Dalai Lama * Plan to rename airport sparks controversy * Spotlight on vow to balance party politics and the books Opinion * Depression cuts a broad swathe * A reform only the PM wants * . . . but there is a better way Business * Ansell applies handmade solution to Sara Lee * Dollar surge hits finance giants * Perseverance leads Victoria's gold renaissance Sport * Murphy stakes early claim * India rocks New Zealand * Paulin takes long journey back to Melbourne marathon Entertainment * Where fashion reigns * Not your average frocks * Lady and gentlemen text | handheld (how to) membership | conditions | privacy Copyright (C) 2003. The Age Company Ltd advertise | contact us