Oracle is hosting a powwow in New York to tout the launch of its 11g database Wednesday, but it’s unclear how fast folks will upgrade.

The question for Oracle is just how fast will users upgrade. And that’s no small issue considering 11g is Oracle’s first database update in four years. The MO for software customers these days has been to check out the goods and then wait and wait. And then after waiting a while take some time to mull over the upgrade. It happening now with Vista and it may happen with Oracle 11g too.

Ari Kaplan, president of the Independent Oracle Users Group is more optimistic. His group, which consists of 20,000 users of Oracle’s core technology–database and middleware, but not apps–says there are a few items notably security to boost uptake.

In an April survey, Kaplan found that 35 percent of users will upgrade to 11G in its first year and 53 percent said the next several years. Most users expect the upgrade to take 12 months. The big reason for the upgrade appears to be better security features and compliance management.

But unless you have a solid business reason to upgrade customers may hold off on 11g.

According to Kaplan there are two features that may get customers moving on an upgrade:

• Audit vault: Kaplan notes that today the database admins have all privileges. That’s a lot of power that enables a wayward DBA to cover tracks. On 11g there’s a trail no matter who is in the database. Great for CFOs and auditors. Not so hot for a DBA. These and other security enhancements may be a selling point. Richard Stiennon has more on the DBA security issue.
• Information lifecycle management: It’s very easy to have a few terabytes of data lying around. 11g has ways to match the important data with the most mission critical storage channels. The rest can go on cheap drives. Oracle has also lumped better compression technology into 11g.

Will these features get folks to upgrade? That remains to be seen, but don’t be surprised if enterprise managers take their time.

Notable headlines:

Robin Harris: Who makes the best hard drives?

Ryan Naraine: Ex-Softies launch anti-malware start-up.

George Ou: Why 2.4 GHz is a dead end for Wi-Fi.

Ryan Naraine: Microsoft drops 6 bulletins, fixing 11 vulnerabilities. Microsoft bulletin.

Command injection flaw found in IE–or is it Firefox? Richard Stiennon: Your DBA has his/her hand in the till.

Mary Jo Foley: Microsoft’s CRM Live coming–but not until 2008. Screenshots: Microsoft CRM Live. Phil Wainewright: Microsoft CRM Live: still a lot to learn.

Joshua Greenbaum: Microsoft CRM to Salesforce.com: It’s Lunchtime.

Microsoft to its hosting partners: Get ready. Here we come.

David Berlind: Panasonic to ZDNet: Your camera failure was not our fault. But was it?

Microsoft: Microsoft Reader for now optimized for Origami. Kevin Rose: Digg iPhone beta live.

Paul Murphy: How “Wintel thinking” reduces productivity.

Russell Shaw: Consumer watchdog agency: Sprint’s terminations are “outrageous treatment,” and customers should be paid.

Techmeme: New rules could rock wireless world.

Dana Blankenhorn: What is the true value of open source? Linus vs. the GPLv3.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes: Dual-booting XP and Linux - It’s really easy.

Compiler: The $300 Linux-Powered ‘iPhone Killer’ Arrives.

Michael Dell: Anti-crapware poster CEO? Dell talks OLPC, green IT, Vista uptake and Dell 2.0.

Dell rolls out SMB notebooks dubbed Vostro sans ‘Trialware.’

Life without Google: ChaCha bets on people power. Gallery (right).

Mary Jo Foley: Ballmer: Caught between a software rock and a services hard place. February 27, 2008: Microsoft plans a triple-play launch.

Ballmer hints at Microsoft’s future in the ‘cloud.’

News.com: Mac desktops are smarter money, says CIO.

Michael Capellas has landed.

Dan Farber: Marc Canter to Ning: help social networks open-up.

TiVo, Amazon to sell movies straight to TV sets.

Jason O’Grady: iPhone Diary Day 12: Keeping your screen clean.

Vietnam: The next offshoring hot spot?

Cisco, Microsoft, EMC form government-data alliance.

Phil Wainewright: Putting the SaaS back into SOA.

Review: Fujitsu LifeBook T4220 (Core 2 Duo 2GHz, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, Windows XP Tablet Edition).

Day 10 of the old coffee-in-the-keyboard trick.

DMW Analysis: Nielsen Swaps One Problematic Metric For Another. Ryan Stewart: “Time Spent” is a better metric for Rich Internet Applications.

Has McDonald’s found the networked kitchen of the future?

My friend Steve Gillmor buries the Gillmor Gang and resurfaces with “Bad Sinatra,” his own version of Silicon Valley cinema verite, in which I play myself, accompanied by other cast members, including Doc Searls, Mike Arrington, Marc Benioff and Robert Scoble. “Bad Sinatra” is vintage Gillmor, with debate, argument, randomness, a few expletives and some real nuggets scattered in the 38:30 minute episode. I’m not exactly sure what “bad” Sinatra means, but you could think of it as an unscripted, loosely patched together Seinfeld-like episode with a cast of tech industry characters in search of a theme or the meaning of iPhone, or for the more theatrically minded, an updated version of Luigi Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of an Author.” I look forward to the next show…or gestures.

McDonald’s is networking its kitchen equipment to save energy, use powerlines more effectively and save some dough.

Using gear from a company called Echelon McDonald’s plans to network its kitchen equipment to manage energy use and cut maintenance costs through networked powerlines.

In a statement, Echelon noted that McDonald’s kitchen equipment will communicate “over existing power lines, making for easy installation and retrofitting of equipment while enabling McDonald’s to install the equipment without tearing out walls. McDonald’s tested various alternative technologies, including radio frequency (RF), but found Echelon’s power line technology to be the most reliable and cost-effective solution.”

Data from all of this kitchen equipment will be collected on Echelon servers and analyzed to improve processes and manage costs. Echelon also notes that its platform will also connect to heating and air conditioning systems and lighting setups.

The Wall Street Journal reported that McDonald’s is hoping to shave 10 percent of its $1 billion energy budget. Echelon notes that some office buildings have cut energy use by 20 percent.  If those savings pan out a little networking may be coming to a kitchen near you.

Related reading:

• Broadband over powerlines: It may take awhile.
• Gallery: How broadband over powerlines works.
• Microsoft preps Windows kitchen client.
• All kitchen technology items (I’m a bit surprised we have this much lying around).

In Michael Dell’s talk to customers and the media in New York social issues–such as the OLPC project and green IT–were front and center. Of course, Vista uptake and Dell 2.0 were also topics.  Here are excerpts from Dell’s chat:

Dell was asked by a small business owner about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project and the hubbub over the debate whether Nicholas Negroponte or the PC industry’s efforts were best. Here’s what Dell had to say:

“It’s not a question of what it costs, but what does it do,” said Dell.

From there, he talked about the possibility of recycling PCs to meet the same goal. “125 million computers come out of circulation every year. Those 125 million computers are about as powerful as the $100 computer. Would be a better idea to reuse those computers? The challenge nobody wants them since they don’t do very much. Could governments distribute?. And do the people getting those need those computers more than they need other things.”

“It’s not quite as simple as just sell them all for $100.”

Dell’s impact on green IT: “We’ve spent a lot of time on this topic. We’re looking at everything. No part of the company is spared from the analysis of what makes this a more environmentally friendly company. The biggest impact we can have is to reduce the power consumption of our products. That’s a dramatic impact. We took the energy consumption of highest volume product down 80 percent. Power supply efficiency wasn’t the main thing. It was software changes.”

Emerging markets: “Just in the last 90 days our unit volume became larger outside the U.S. than inside,” said Dell.

Vista’s uptake (Dell tread very lightly here): “We are seeing Vista penetration increase in businesses. We’re certainly going to offer XP and Vista for quite some time as customers ask for it,” said Dell.

However, he was also sure to note that folks will move to Vista–for the support from Microsoft if anything. “While you’re not going to go to Vista today you might want to think about when you’re going to Vista,” said Dell. He added that Dell keeps track of the split between Vista and XP as a customer choice. Naturally, Dell wouldn’t disclose figures.

On Dell 2.0:

“We’ve made a little bit of progress, but have a long way to go. We set out to transform the company. There are things working well. A bunch of areas to improve and new things to do to reignite our growth. You’ll see some additional partnerships and acquisitions.”

On product design: “We’re kind of in the fashion business. We’ve been putting quite a bit more energy into this. It will be reflected in future products,” said Dell. He was also asked if he had an iPhone in the pipeline. The answer: No.

Also see:

• Dell rolls out Vostro SMB products.
• Michael Dell: Anti-crapware poster CEO?

Dell CEO Michael Dell, speaking in New York City at its Vostro launch, sounded like a man almost ready to rid the world of trialware, which we call crapware. And there’s a good reason for that: Crapware costs Dell money on customer support.

“Customers really hated trialware,” said Dell, who is speaking live at the time of this post.

Dell also made an interesting point regarding trialware–it’s part of the reason customer service has taken a hit.

On customer service, Dell said “we have seen significant improvements last six to 12 months.” “We want to do a lot more. We’re putting a lot more technology in products to prevent problems,” said Dell.

He also noted that “trialware is a support issue. “You click on it, it’s not working and you call. Just take it all away and you don’t have those problems.”

That comment brings an interesting point in terms of costs. Can we quantify the costs to Dell based on trialware? And does that match what Dell gets paid to put this junk on a PC in the first place?

On the small business side, it appears the figures don’t line up in Dell’s favor. It removed trialware because it’s one more reason for a small business to call support–and that costs Dell money. Remember Vostro is about buying a PC and services.

On the consumer side, perhaps the dollars Dell gets from trialware surpasses the customer support costs.

Frank Muehleman, vice president and general manager of Dell’s small and medium business division, said that trialware had been on home/small business PCs, but not corporate ones. On the consumer side, Muehleman noted that “some customers want trialware.”

We’ll see if that pans out over time. Updates to follow as Dell speaks.

On today’s podcast:

1. The Life without Google experiment continues with ChaCha. Gallery.
2. What’s on Oracle’s shopping list.
3. And how do you secure Firefox?

At least one venture capitalist is seeing gold in the Facebook Platform. Bay Partners created a new funding program, AppFactory, for Facebook Platform developers. This is venture capital with a small “v”–focusing on investments of $25,000 to $250,000 with an expedited approval process.

The goldmine for developers and Bay Partners to exploit is the 29 million or so members of the Facebook community and the development platform, which already has more than 1,400 applications. Among the top applications are iLike, which lets you personalize music selections based on your Facebook music and friends, and Slide, which lets you integrate slide shows within Facebook. At this point, monetization of Facebook apps is lagging, but Bay Partners hopes to stimulate the Facebook micro-economy.

Salil Deshpande, a partner at Bay Partners dubbed Facebook the “Social Operating System,” and said that it can lead to a “a new economy which includes a marketplace of applications that are optimally designed for that platform and its user base.” He is also betting that Facebook’s rapid growth and success will force other social networks to align their APIs with Facebook’s.

The entrance exam for AppFactory candidates is straightforward. Bay Partners asked for a two-page or less disposition of the following items:

• A brief bio of you and your team (if applicable)
• Your vision for your Facebook Application
• How your idea adds value to the user
• Your competitive advantage
• Why it’s more appropriate for your app to leverage Facebook’s platform, rather than take a destination-site approach
• Your ideas for how your app could potentially be monetized
• Your ideas for how your app will become viral
• Your capital requirements and use of proceeds

See also the blogosphere swarm on the AppFactory announcement

At the other end of the spectrum Marc Andreessen announced that after funding his social networking company Ning personally and through friends, he took in a series C round of $44 million. Ning offers a white label solution for people to build their own social networks, and so far more than 70,000 have done so. Ning makes its money selling ads on the sites. Banking $44 million in new money, Andreessen and his co-founder Gina Bianchini must has something up their sleeves that they haven’t disclosed yet.
See the blogosphere swarm on this one as well on TechMeme.

Michael Capellas, former CEO of Compaq and MCI (formerly Worldcom), has landed at First Data Corp.

First Data Corp. is an e-commerce payment company that you probably run into every day via services as the STAR ATM network, TeleCheck and various back-end commerce systems. The company is also being bought out by private equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.

Capellas will succeed Henry C. Duques who has been First Data CEO since November 2005.

With the move First Data lands a first-rate CEO and Capellas gets a plum private equity gig. Let’s chart Capellas’ career quickly:

• Capellas runs Compaq then sells to Hewlett-Packard;
• Capellas takes the reins at MCI does a bang-up job of fixing the Worldcom disaster and then sells to Verizon for a nice premium.

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out the next moves. It’ll look like this:

• Capellas becomes CEO at First Data and gets hooked up with a sweet compensation package (there are not griping shareholders in private equity);
• First Data goes public again (after all that’s how KKR will cash out);
• Capellas stays CEO and perhaps sells First Data to another firm.

That’s not a bad blueprint at all for a guy that used to be a chief information officer.

In a statement Capellas said:

“I look forward to joining First Data at this pivotal time and believe the company is uniquely positioned to pioneer innovative technologies for the next-generation of electronic and mobile commerce around the world.”

First Data’s track record backs his statement up. First Data is likely to be Capellas’ best gig when it comes to assets to manage.

Updated below: Dell has rolled out notebooks and desktops designed to reach small businesses. The brand name: Vostro. The pitch: Vostro PCs are “trialware” free (some of us would say crapware) and have tailored services attached.

The line appears to be rolled out at an event in Times Square later today. Michael Dell will be fielding questions from customers and reporters. I plan on attending. There is also a Webcast Dell announced.

How do I know all about Dell’s plans when the company is so mum about its upcoming announcement? Well, there is the scheduled event targeted toward small businesses. And Dell has put some tech press under embargo on an announcement–I was offered one but couldn’t make the timing work and it didn’t seem like a must-have for me anyway.

So knowing all of this in advance–and how reporters are all under embargo until about noon–I found it comical that Dell spilled the beans in two print ads in the Wall Street Journal. Page A11 to be specific. Dell also mentioned Vostro in another ad noting that it is also sponsoring the WSJ.com freebie. And given the Journal didn’t have the story perhaps the reporters are under embargo too. Dell’s bet seems to be that the tech press doesn’t read the print Journal (woops).

Update: Dell spills more beans in a New York Times ad (a full spread on C6 and C7). Dell claims “Dell Vostro is a new idea. A suite of systems and services designed just for small business. With Vostro , you get more than off-the-shelf PCs.)

Here are other details found in the ads:

• Vostro notebooks start at $599 $499 with desktops at $319.
• These Vostro systems have “no trialware” and “come only with the software you specify.” Just as an aside I applaud Dell for this anti-crapware move. Ed Bott has more. George Ou walks you through getting rid of crapware.
• Dell is offering services tailored for small businesses, “including a 1 year PCTuneup designed to help keep your system running efficiently.” Dell also notes that “technicians trained specifically in small business are available to assist 24×7x365.
• Dell includes a 30-day money back guarantee.

Dell also sends folks to Dell.com/webelieve where the Vostro is mentioned again.

Update 2: Frank Muehleman, vice president and general manager of Dell’s small and medium business division, said that trialware had been on home/small business PCs, but not corporate ones. Dell decided to create a crapware-free brand based on customer surveys. I asked whether the Vostro brand would influence Dell’s moves on the consumer side and Muehleman sounded doubtful. “Some customers want trialware,” said Muehleman. That answer should take care of this talkback question a bit.

Other points:

• Dell’s PC tune service has the potential to be a standard offering.
• Vostro targets companies with 1-25 employees.
• Vostro doesn’t come with the Ubuntu option yet, but Muehleman said he’s considering it.
• Dell’s Vostro line includes printers and projectors also.
• Other services include network assistant to set up wireless and wired networks.
• An application for centralized support with Dell. This application comes with real-time health scans and upgrades.

Can human aided searches be a differentiator? A lot of search firms–including ChaCha–sure hope so.

Just to be upfront–I’m skeptical about people powered search. Despite that perspective, I decided to give ChaCha a whirl as part of my Life without Google series (see gallery right).

I discovered ChaCha courtesy of Webware, a sister blog that recently named its 100 best Web companies by category. ChaCha was in the data category along with other search giants like Google and Yahoo.

On the surface ChaCha is nothing more than a metasearch engine compiling results from the big players–the usual suspects like Google and windows Live Search.

So what’s going to make ChaCha different? People. If you’re looking for something specific you can click for a live chat with a ChaCha guide. I tried it a few times and found it moderately helpful. Keep in mind these were just tests. I’ll have to try ChaCha when I’m trying to source a story or find some IT middle manager’s resume in 5 minutes for the site to really win me over.

Overall, here’s how ChaCha stands relative to other search sites I’ve tried.

Guide experience. ChaCha is the first people powered search I’ve tried. Overall, the experience went well and the guides were helpful. I’d give it an A.

User experience. I found the interface lacking compared to other search engines. Ask.com has the UI down and other search alternatives like Quintura were better. I’d rate it a C.

Search results. Since ChaCha combs other search engines, the results were standard issue. I did find sponsored links mixed in here and there, which I thought was annoying. One news result got top billing with a note that it was sponsored by Fox News. Audio results were interesting and I was able to find video without any issues. I’d rate it a C–nothing terrible, but nothing outstanding either.

Searchbar ease of use. As you know I’m big on adding search engines to my browser search box. ChaCha may have been the easiest on this front. When I visited the home page it was sitting there in my browser to be added with just a click. Let’s call that an A.

Overall, ChaCha is solid even though I didn’t get the impression that the site was pushing the envelope. If you value help from real people it may be handy. If not–ChaCha is nothing more than a short detour.

There’s no question that Oracle will continue its rapid-fire acquisition pace. The only question: Who’s next?

One amusing exchange on Oracle’s fourth quarter conference call went like this:

Analyst to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison: 30 acquisitions over the last three years, five in just Q4, can you just talk in a very high level in terms of your pace? Do you expect it to slow or continue?

Ellison: I expect that the pace to continue.

That response isn’t too surprising given that Oracle executives said “acquisition” 15 times on the conference call.

Oracle (see all related content) didn’t provide many hints about its acquisition hit list, but that didn’t stop Cowen & Co. analyst Peter Goldmacher from compiling a handy list of targets. He also compiled companies he doesn’t see as Oracle targets.

Goldmacher’s list includes 48 publicly held vertical app vendors with annual sales between $50 million and $1 billion. These companies would give Oracle more depth and potential distribution. Here’s the recap from Goldmacher’s report:

• Expect Oracle to bolster its position in financial services and communications. These verticals have the biggest IT budgets.

• Oracle is likely to steer clear of Business Objects, Cognos and BEA Systems. The PeopleSoft, Hyperion and Siebel acquisitions make business intelligence companies like Business Objects and Cognos unlikely targets. BEA just doesn’t add anything to Oracle, says Goldmacher.

And here’s the list, which includes a lot of companies that could fill gaps for Oracle. Many aren’t household names and the asterisks refer to analyst coverage. Goldmacher’s report includes the complete financial analysis of the companies on the list.

Notable headlines:

Larry Dignan: Who’s on Oracle’s shopping list?

Ryan Naraine: Securing Firefox: How to avoid hacker attacks on Mozilla’s browser. Gallery (right). Securing IE and Safari galleries.

Samba will move to GPLv3.

Google addresses Google Apps security with Postini buy. Podcast: Google & Postini execs discuss specifics of Google’s Postini acquisition. Techmeme on the deal.

George Ou: FiOS - Verizon’s long-term vision to the 10+ gigabit home.

Matthew Miller: Apple seems to have forgotten the phone in the iPhone.

Christopher Dawson on Linux: What if I get hit by a bus? Paul Murphy: Staffing for Linux, not distribution X.

China blames Internet for rise in teen pregnancies.

Computerworld: 40 Under 40: 40 Innovative IT People to Watch, Under the Age of 40.

Marc Andreessen:  Ning news: new investment round

AP: Nielsen scraps Web page view rankings.

Wired News: Open-Source Journalism: It’s a Lot Tougher Than You Think.

Jason O’Grady: iPhone Diary Day 11: Cases and holsters. Larry Dignan: Analyst: Touchscreen, OSX-based iPods en route.

Printer ink price war may be underway.

Mary Jo Foley: Report: Microsoft customers more leery of Software Assurance.

VMware sets IPO price range; lands Intel Capital as investor.

Top 10 apps from iPhoneDevCamp (right).

TechCrunch: Mosh, Yahoo’s New Social Network Initiative.

Dana Gardner: SOA and SaaS convergence points to new market demand for ‘integration-as-a-service’

Your next generation iPod is going to look a lot like the iPhone.

That’s the conclusion from Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who is quickly becoming a favorite among bloggers due to his Apple reports.

In his latest missive Munster notes the following:

“What’s Next for the iPod: An iPod that looks like an iPhone (see blog focus). We believe the iPhone reveals much of what the iPod will soon be. Specifically, we expect Apple to release high capacity iPods based on OSX sometime during or before MacWorld ‘08 in January. These iPods will likely have touchscreen media features similar to the iPhone, but will not have the wireless phone or internet features.”

My take: This makes complete sense for Apple. People will get used to navigating music with the touchscreen on the iPhone in short order and wind up preferring it. And iPhone-ish iPods are sure to spark an upgrade cycle.

“We have factored in iPod cannibalization as a result of the iPhone. OSX-based iPods with some of the touchscreen features of the iPhone should lessen the impact of the cannibalization. We believe iPhone buyers are looking for a better mobile phone, and the iPod features are an added bonus.”

My take: This point remains to be seen. Could a touchscreen iPod cannibalize the iPhone? It’s possible. How many folks bought the iPhone for the touchscreen and interface? How many bought the iPhone for the data access? I’d bet it’s the former.

“New iPods Could Improve iPhone Margins. If future iPods use similar parts and software, the OSX-based iPods will add economies of scale to the iPhone business.”

My take: An OSX that’s written once (we assume) and used everywhere could indeed boost Apple’s profit margins.

Bottom line: Munster is touching on the touchscreen halo effect noted by UBS a few months ago. Rest assured many of Apple’s products will look iPhone-ish. Can the Macs be too far behind?

Only one week remains until the fourth Mashup Camp and Mashup University are set to start at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. Over the last year and a half, Mashup Camp has grown to be the unofficial official social and technical gathering for everyone with an interest in the mashup community: developers, technology providers, venture capitalists, the press, researchers, and other observers. Are you on the who’s coming list? If not, there’s still room. We’ve got a great event planned, chock full of great content (part unconference, part hands-on training), ample time to hack, several contests (the grand prize for the overall Best Mashup is a brand spankin’ new 17″ MacBook Pro worth $2799), and at least two parties one of which will include entertainment by mashup DJs Adrian and the Mysterious D.

When Doug Gold and I announced the first Mashup Camp in December 2005, we dubbed it the unconference for the uncomputer. Since then, I remain ever more convinced that the mashup ecosystem of software development will grow to be the largest software ecosystem, ever. Bigger than any operating system (Windows, Linux, Mac, etc.), bigger than any gaming platform, and bigger than any middleware platform. There are two reasons for this (largely explained here).

First, thanks to tools out there like Andrew Bidochko’s mapbuilder.net and Ning, developing software is something that no longer requires the skills of a rocket scientist. Now, grandma and/or her five-year old grandchildren can get in on the action just as easily as a professional developer can. When mortals get the opportunity to do what was once the domain of rocket scientists, suddenly, it’s only a matter of time before everyone dives in. Think of how blogging sucked tens of millions of people into Web publishing (once a black art). Mashups are to software development what blogging is to Web publishing.

Second, there are no gatekeepers to the underlying platform for mashups (aka: the Internet). With all the other platforms upon which developers build their software, someone is in charge of how easy it is for developers to build something. “Easy” comes in the form of the built-in utilities that do a lot of the heavy lifting for software developers. To add a new utility (often called an “API” or application programming interface) to an existing platform like Windows or even Linux in a way that it’s generally available to everybody, someone has to approve it. For Windows, maybe that someone is Bill Gates. For Linux, maybe its Linus Torvalds. But for the Internet, it’s nobody.

The result is that hundreds of these utilities (again, APIs) are being added to the Internet at breakneck pace (thanks to John Musser, here the most complete list), many of which do things (eg: mapping) that we’ve never seen done as a standard part of one of the traditional platforms. Now, with large and small organizations alike (from giants like eBay to smaller outfits like Eventful) flooding the Internet with these highly functional and often transactional APIs (from maps to credit card charging), the Internet is now unrivaled (vs. the traditional platforms) in terms of facilities available to software developers. It’s not even a contest which is why developers are flocking to develop the type of software that draws on those facilities: mashups.

Starting on Monday, July 16th, Mashup University is a two-day crash course on developing mashups. The lead-off presenter is John Herren who is probably best known in developer circles as the developer of TagCloud. John will be giving an introduction to mashup development. In other words, no experience is necessary (although it will help to have a notebook computer with you).  John’s presentation will be followed by a parade of sponsoring technology providers who will teach attendees how to use their technologies and APIs when “mashing up” software.

Then, on Tuesday night (the 17th) — the night before Camp starts — there will be a meetup/warmup social gathering at the Hotel Avante in Mountain View. This meetup usually includes some demos and hacking. Mashup Camp, the unconference portion of the event, kicks off on Wednesday morning (the 18th) and then Wednesday night, will be the big party followed by another day of Camp.

As has been the case with previous Mashup Camps, we’ll be doing something called SpeedGeeking where mashup developers (or should we call them artists?) get to show off their wares to all event attendees and then, after all the demos are complete, everyone votes for their favorite mashup. For the closing ceremonies on Thursday afternoon, we’ll award a 17″ MacBook Pro (2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo-based) to the first place winner, a pair of Bose Quiet Comfort 3 noise-cancelling headphones to the second place winner (my wife gave me a pair of these for Christmas), and a Garmin handheld GPS unit (looks like it will be the eTrex Venture).

It’s always a great time to be had by all (plus, you get fed).  Hope to see you there.

Last week, Mike Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services, penned the final post on the Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog (PFL blog)–a blog sponsored by HHS. The blog consisted of over 100 posts from contributors in the healthcare, faith-based, business and community sectors. The blog is a great resource for current thinking on how the US can respond to the threat of pandemic flu.

The blog is not ongoing, but rather was active for five weeks (May 22 - June 27, 2007). Each week featured a theme and half way through there was a leadership forum with people live blogging the event.

The problem with any high profile government blog is that the media isn’t about to let high-level government officials speak transparently without trying to nail them to the wall for any perceived negative nuance they can pluck from the prose. Consequently most government sponsored blogs don’t really read like blogs.

The PFL blog is an exception to that rule. Sure, it’s probably more polished than most, but the writing feels conversational and while I’m sure much of it was edited, it doesn’t sound at all like a press release. This is a real blog with multiple authors making substantial contributions.

Another problem with high-profile government blogs is that they’re magnets for comment spam and off topic rants. The PFL blog allowed comments for the five weeks the blogs was active. Comments were moderated according to a published moderation policy. The moderator even posted an entry on the blog about how moderation was going and pleading for patience. That’s real blogging, not fake PR stuff.

I think the blog is a noteworthy example of how blogs can be used as a tool in eGovernment to raise awareness, start conversations, and encourage public participation. The blog is well done and deftly avoids the pitfalls of official government blogs. Hats off to HHS.

The following is a guest post from Andrew Mager, who attended the iPhoneDev Camp over the weekend. His original post can be found on Andrewmager.com. Mager is a technical producer at ZDNet.

Here’s his dispatch.

Hundreds of web developers, designers, and ordinary geeks gathered this weekend to build usable applications for the iPhone. The barcamp.org event was hosted at Adobe Town Hall and featured dozens of sponsors. The hack-a-thon began on Saturday morning at 9:00 a.m. and culminated Sunday at 2:00 p.m., when each team had a chance to present their app.

Some teams included Yahoo! developers, and others included complete strangers who had just met the day before. I give credit to all teams who participated, but here are the ten most memorable creations. (Ed note: We broke the ranking out in a gallery). The short version ranking is below with links to Andrew’s take and blown-up image.)

10. iPhoneVote.

9. AppMarks.

8. PickleView.

7. Fluther.

6. The Pool.

5. TeleMoose.

4. iTunes Remote-o-Matic.

3. Tilt.

2. moPhaic.

1. Liquid Navigation Hack.

On today’s podcast:

• Vista SP1: The beta. The strategy.
• Google buys Postini.
• Intel Capital buys into VMware.

Google is adding another company to its stable as it increasingly targets the enterprise. With Postini, Google is looking to remove security as a roadblock to Google Apps adoption in the enterprise.

Google said Monday it will acquire Postini, an on-demand communications security and compliance company, for $625 million in cash. Google’s goal: Secure Google Apps and make sure security isn’t a big drag on its Google Apps “revolution.”

Dan Farber reported Friday that Dave Girouard, general manager of Google Enterprise noted that security and compliance was a roadblock to Google Apps adoption.

“You could use whatever compliance system with Google Apps. The [revolution] will go faster when it’s brain-dead easy to [adopt hosted apps] and you don’t have to worry about getting fired for doing it. Archiving, compliance and legal discovery will be taken care of in the simplest fashion. We are very focused on that,” Girouard said.

Indeed, Postini provides services–encryption, policy enforcement and archiving–to secure Web-based communication such as instant messaging and email. In other words, Postini complements Google as it tries to get enterprises to use Google Apps.

Here’s how Google assessed the Postini purchase in a statement:

The response to Google Apps has been tremendous, with more than 1,000 small businesses signing up for the service every day. At the same time, large businesses have been reluctant to move to hosted applications due to issues of security and corporate compliance. By adding Postini products to Google’s technology, businesses no longer have to choose — employees get the intuitive products they want, and the company achieves the security and assurance it needs,” said Girouard.

With Postini, as well as its recent partnership with Salesforce, it’s clear that Google sees itself as an on-demand enterprise applications provider. The big question is whether enterprises will see Google that way.

Postini could give Google an entry to a wider customer base. Postini servers 35,000 businesses and 10 million users. The Postini purchase is expected to close in the third quarter.

Intel Capital said it will invest $218.5 million in VMware and ultimately own 2.5 percent of the virtualization company’s outstanding common stock as it goes public.

Separately, VMware said in a regulatory filing that it will offer 33 million shares priced between $23 and $25 a share. VMware, which will trade under the ticker “VMW,” will raise net proceeds of $741.4 million.

With the Intel deal, VMware grabs a significant investor–one that is increasingly important to the virtualization software maker.

Intel noted that VMware primarily virtualizes the chip giant’s architecture so it makes sense to make the investment. Intel will have less than 1 percent in voting power.

For VMware the relationship with Intel comes as it’s likely to face competition from Microsoft, which is plotting virtualization software, and open source companies like Red Hat.

Bottom line: It’s not going to hurt VMware to have Intel in its corner as virtualization competition heats up. In a statement, the two companies said:

Intel’s investment is intended to foster strengthened inter-company collaboration towards accelerating VMware virtualization product adoption on Intel architecture and reinforcing the value of virtualization technology for customers.  In addition, VMware and Intel have entered into a routine and customary collaboration partnering agreement that expresses their intent to continue to expand their cooperative efforts around joint development, marketing and industry initiatives.

 For more virtualization news and opinion see Dan Kusnetzky’s virtualization blog.