Bids are expected to be received for social networking site MySpace by the end of the week, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. News Corp, which acquired the site in 2005 for $580 billion, is said to be seeking bids of at least $100 billion for the site.
At least a half-dozen companies are said to be considering bids, including several equity firms and Criterion Capital Partners LLC, owners of social networking site Bebo. The structures of the deals are not known although it is said that some include News Corp retaining a small stake.
The news confirms comments made in January by CEO Mike Jones that the company was considering a sale. What interested parties plan to do with the site is unknown: it may continue to operate as it currently has or be merged into an existing property.
Video site Vevo has also been rumored to have shown interest although it is believed to have backed away from making a deal, the WSJ reports. Either way, it appears that News Corp is set to take a major hit on its now six-year-old investment -- a victim of the meteoric rise of Facebook.
As usage of that social networking site exploded, interest among consumers in MySpace waned. Last month it had 36.1 million unique visitors, half of what it had just a year before and its lowest traffic total since shortly after the merger occurred. Even an attempted refocus was not the solution to MySpace's woes.
That effort, announced in October, switched the focus away from social networking among friends and turned MySpace into an entertainment hub. So far, there has been little evidence that the change has stopped the site's slide into irrelevancy, unfortunately.
In related news, another social networking site is also exiting the business. Friendster announced this week that it would delete most profile information after May 31, as it looks to transition into a gaming site. The company was one of the pioneers in the social networking space when it first launched in 2002, but found itself first trumped by the rise of MySpace and then later by Facebook.
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May 5, 2011
OpenERP launches latest version of its open enterprise resource planning suite
Belgium-based commercial open source software vendor OpenERP today announced the availability of OpenERP v6, the latest version of the company's enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite. OpenERP v6 includes updates to almost all of the components in the suite, including its CRM, Purchase Management, Manufacturing, Warehouse Management, Project Management, Accounting, Marketing, Human Resources, and Point of Sale modules.
OpenERP Web Interface
OpenERP says this version has more than a hundred new features in total, which are the result of thousands of customer and community suggestions and more than a year's worth of development from its community of 800 individual developers.
For those who have never experienced OpenERP, the company has set up a demo server where you can play around with examples of the different software modules. The idea is that customers can build a comprehensive ERP system one module at a time, eventually growing it into an end to end solution, contained within a single piece of software.
OpenERP v6 costs $39 per user per month and comes with a 1GB per user data limitation. Like previous versions, it can be deployed on site, and this version brings with it an SaaS on-demand version.
"We believe that SaaS and Open Source are an interesting combination. The customers always have an option if for any reason the SaaS platform no longer meets their needs. It is their insurance policy, and it is in line with our no lock-in policy," Mark Laporte, OpenERP's Chief Operations Officer said in a statement today. "Our competitors will never offer such flexibility".
OpenERP Web Interface
OpenERP says this version has more than a hundred new features in total, which are the result of thousands of customer and community suggestions and more than a year's worth of development from its community of 800 individual developers.
For those who have never experienced OpenERP, the company has set up a demo server where you can play around with examples of the different software modules. The idea is that customers can build a comprehensive ERP system one module at a time, eventually growing it into an end to end solution, contained within a single piece of software.
OpenERP v6 costs $39 per user per month and comes with a 1GB per user data limitation. Like previous versions, it can be deployed on site, and this version brings with it an SaaS on-demand version.
"We believe that SaaS and Open Source are an interesting combination. The customers always have an option if for any reason the SaaS platform no longer meets their needs. It is their insurance policy, and it is in line with our no lock-in policy," Mark Laporte, OpenERP's Chief Operations Officer said in a statement today. "Our competitors will never offer such flexibility".
May 4, 2011
New Wi-Fi gear aims to wipe out Ethernet edge switches
A third new service is a patent-pending technology called Orthogonal Array Beam Forming (OABF). WLAN vendors over the past two years have been adding support for various optional parts of the 11n standard, (see from May 2010, "Major Wi-Fi changes ahead") including transmit beam forming (sometimes "beamforming"). The same waveform is sent over 11n's multiple antennas, with the magnitude and phase adjusted at each transmitter to focus the beam direction toward a particular receiver. This increases the signal's gain so it's more stable, and can be "steered around" interferers so it's more reliable.
[Ruckus Wireless in 2009 was the first to introduce beam forming for 11n products, exploiting its unique multi-component antenna design. Wireless blogger Craig Mathias used that introduction to explore the topic.]
Meru has created what it says is a more fine-grained alternative. Each Wi-Fi signal is made up of about 60 sub-carriers over a wide swath of spectrum, says Graham Melville, Meru's director of product management. Meru's code can optimize each of the sub-carriers and the result, he says, is an improvement in gain, or sensitivity, on the order of 8-10 dB.
The result of the improved gain is a higher signal quality and higher data rates: where Meru saw 36Mbps before applying its beamforming technology, it saw 54Mbps after, for example. "It stays at the high data rates because the signal is stronger, and better quality," Melville says.
The new access points also can use the optional Meru Proactive Spectrum Analysis as part of another service, called Air Traffic Services. One of the AP400 radios can be assigned the job of continually monitoring the Wi-Fi radio frequencies for unauthorized radios, analyzing the spectrum usage and interference, and running Meru's integrated wireless intrusion prevention system.
Another network service is called Mobile Application Segregation: administrators can create a dedicated channel for individual applications or groups of them, high definition video, or wireless VoIP.
John Cox covers wireless networking and mobile computing for "Network World."
[Ruckus Wireless in 2009 was the first to introduce beam forming for 11n products, exploiting its unique multi-component antenna design. Wireless blogger Craig Mathias used that introduction to explore the topic.]
Meru has created what it says is a more fine-grained alternative. Each Wi-Fi signal is made up of about 60 sub-carriers over a wide swath of spectrum, says Graham Melville, Meru's director of product management. Meru's code can optimize each of the sub-carriers and the result, he says, is an improvement in gain, or sensitivity, on the order of 8-10 dB.
The result of the improved gain is a higher signal quality and higher data rates: where Meru saw 36Mbps before applying its beamforming technology, it saw 54Mbps after, for example. "It stays at the high data rates because the signal is stronger, and better quality," Melville says.
The new access points also can use the optional Meru Proactive Spectrum Analysis as part of another service, called Air Traffic Services. One of the AP400 radios can be assigned the job of continually monitoring the Wi-Fi radio frequencies for unauthorized radios, analyzing the spectrum usage and interference, and running Meru's integrated wireless intrusion prevention system.
Another network service is called Mobile Application Segregation: administrators can create a dedicated channel for individual applications or groups of them, high definition video, or wireless VoIP.
John Cox covers wireless networking and mobile computing for "Network World."
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