No app store for make-or-break ZuneHD

Microsoft's ZuneHD, set to go on sale Tuesday, will not feature an open application store like its competitor the iPod Touch. Those capabilities will determine whether the ZuneHD sells well - and whether Microsoft decides to keep selling its own music player, said Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft. It will come with some unique features, though, like an HD radio tuner, and with software that has been well-received by users.

After observers noticed a Marketplace folder during earlier demos of the ZuneHD, many had hoped the new device would feature an open application store like the one accessible from the iPhone and the iPod Touch. But the Zune Marketplace will be a closed store, meaning third-party developers won't be able to easily build applications for it. Marketplace is the name of the open app store that will be available on Windows Mobile 6.5 phones, to be released in early October. The new device will include the same casual games that came with earlier Zunes, plus a few other applications like an MSN weather application and a calculator, said Brian Seitz, group marketing manager for Zune. Zune customers will be able to download the applications they like for free. In November, Twitter and Facebook applications will become available, as well as a "Project Gotham" racing game, he added.

Seitz said the timing wasn't right to include the Windows Mobile Marketplace application, which isn't due out until next month, with the ZuneHD, but he also said it's not certain that a similar open Marketplace will come to the Zune in the future. "Down the line, if there's an opportunity for us to snap into what they're doing from a mobile application perspective, I'm sure it's something we'll look at," he said. He acknowledged that people are likely to criticize the decision. "I'm not saying we won't get dinged for that because I know we will," he said. However, Microsoft may decide it makes more sense to limit the applications in the Zune market and offer them all free, he said. That's for good reason, Rosoff said. "When you look at it as a head-to-head comparison with the iPod Touch, people will see it as a shortcoming," he said. It will feature the "smart DJ," which allows the user to pick an artist and then automatically creates a playlist of similar songs.

Microsoft will also debut new Zune software on Tuesday that customers use on their PCs to manage their music. Microsoft will also start offering people who subscribe to Zune Pass a way to access the Zune music collection from a browser. A Zune Pass subscription lets users stream any song from the entire Zune catalog and download 10 songs each month. That means subscribers will be able to listen to music from the entire catalog from any PC, including one at work, rather than only from a PC running the Zune software. Microsoft also revealed a few more details about a Zune feature that will start showing up in Xbox Live later this year.

That's part of a strategy to move the Zune software experience into other products from Microsoft, Seitz said. "Going forward, we hope more people think of a 'holistic Zune business,' as opposed to how many of these things we sell," he said, pointing to the Zune hardware. Xbox users will be able to buy or rent movies from a new Zune store that will be featured in Xbox Live. The most important upcoming product that will include Zune software will be Windows Mobile phones, Rosoff said. "The Zune interface will show up in Windows Mobile," he said. Rosoff suspects that Microsoft will eventually get out of the MP3 player market altogether. "We'll just see the Zune as a consumer component of Windows Mobile," he said. "This is sort of the last [Zune], if it doesn't sell." Even Zune hardware elements, like the touch screen and the form factor of the device, will likely make it into Windows Mobile phones, he said.

Lotus user wary of social networking tool rollout

As IBM moves to upgrade its cache of social networking tools, some users are taking a cautious approach to the technology while figuring out where it will apply and how to measure its effectiveness. The new 2.5 version software includes micro-blogging, file sharing and new mobile capabilities. Where IT pros do their social networking IBM Tuesday unveiled Lotus Connections 2.5, its upgraded lineup of social networking tools that are a major expansion to the company's suite of collaboration software. But some of the features are expanding faster than users' plans to utilize the software.

The company's manager of messaging and collaboration asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record. One Connections 2.5 beta tester, a global consumer product corporation, is taking a deliberately slow approach to rolling out the social collaboration tools. The company started slow with a few hundred users who were only allowed to communicate with each other. At that point, the manager says, the number of users exploded by 650% to a few thousand. The group's size was eventually doubled and then the tools were opened up companywide. Despite the growth, the company is still "seeding the environment," said the manager, but a broader rollout is planned.

We will likely "wind up doing it anecdotally," said the manager. "The things we're struggling with there is that this doesn't match the ROI [metrics that executives] are used to looking at. The harder part to plan is the expected results because the company has yet to figure out how to measure its return on investment. How do you measure, 'we recruited this person because of the [collaboration tool]?'" While results are hard to gauge, the broader, anticipated benefits are being defined in the context of capturing and recording corporate knowledge. The worker could develop a how-to guide for use by others, he said. For example, a certain administrative assistant may routinely be tasked with booking a certain type of event, said the manager. The manager said it is a good time to ramp up internal communities and knowledge-sharing because as the economy and job markets rebound, workers who may have suffered pay or benefit cuts amid the recession will be looking to move on. "Now is the time to get people to put information in, so you're not losing it on the back of a Post-it note." Follow John on Twitter. -Kanaracus is with the IDG News Service Follow Chris on Twitter.

Macs retake reliability ranking top spot

Apple reclaimed the top spot in the computer-reliability ranking of Rescuecom, a Syracuse, N.Y.-based technical support franchise, as netbook maker Asus' rating plummeted, Rescuecom's CEO said Saturday. But Apple recaptured the top ranking for the third quarter with a reliability score of 374. Behind Apple were Lenovo and Asus with 320 and 166, respectively, followed by Toshiba and Hewlett-Packard in fourth and fifth place. Apple's Macs, which led all rivals in Rescuecom's rankings during 2007 and 2008, ceded first place to PCs sold by Asustek Computer (better known as Asus) in the first half of 2009, falling as low as third in the first quarter, behind both Asus and Lenovo. Rescuecom produces its scores by comparing the percentage of support calls represented by each vendor with each computer maker's U.S. market share.

For example, although Apple's U.S. market share was 9% - according to research firm IDC, whose data Rescuecom used to calculate its ratings - Macs accounted for just 2.4% of the calls to Rescuecom. The greater the difference between the two, the higher the score. According to Rescuecom's reasoning, the higher scores indicate more reliable hardware and better support from the computer makers. But Asus' decline was the big story. Apple's third-quarter rating was actually 5% lower than the 394 Rescuecom gave the company's computers for 2009's second quarter.

The Asian computer maker, which led Rescuecom's rankings for the first six months of the year, has seen its reliability rating plunge from a first-quarter high of 972 to 166 in the third quarter. That, in turn, meant that Asus machines had been in users' hands for just several months, which could translate into fewer support calls. "It will be interesting to see in the coming quarters if Asus will start coming down to the level of the other vendors, or can sustain it," Kaplan said at the time. Asus' nose-dive was hardly a surprise, said David Milman, Rescuecom's CEO. "This is what we were waiting for on Asus, whether or not their reliability score would be maintained," said Milman in an e-mail. "Now that many of the netbooks by Asus have been out for a while, there is obviously a higher need for service." Last March, when Asus first jumped to the top spot on Rescuecom's list, company president Josh Kaplan said Asus' ranking should be taken with a grain of salt, since it was based on a huge bump in sales during the last few months of 2008, when Asus' netbook sales took off. Apparently, it couldn't sustain its record rating, which in the first quarter Rescuecom measured as 972, nearly six times higher than its score in the third quarter. Toshiba's reliability score was 165 in the third quarter, down 24%, while HP's third-quarter score of 134 was off 6% from the previous quarter. Asus' second-quarter rating was 416. Toshiba's and HP's scores also fell from the second quarter, although less dramatically than Asus.

DOJ requires AT&T to sell some assets in acquisition

The U.S. Department of Justice will require telecom giant AT&T to sell off pieces of its mobile network in parts of Louisiana and Mississippi in order to continue with its US$944 million acquisition of Centennial Communications, the agency said Tuesday. The area covered includes parts of southwestern and central Louisiana and southwestern Mississippi. If AT&T did not divest its assets in the two states, the acquisition would "substantially lessen" competition for mobile telecom services and would likely result in higher prices, lower quality and reduced network investments, the DOJ said.

The DOJ's Antitrust Division, along with the attorney general of Louisiana, filed a civil lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to block the proposed acquisition of Centennial by AT&T. At the same time, the DOJ and the Louisiana attorney general filed a proposed settlement that, if approved by the court, would resolve the competitive concerns in the lawsuit. The complaint alleges that the proposed transaction would substantially reduce competition for mobile wireless telecommunications services in each of the areas. According to the complaint, AT&T and Centennial are each other's closest competitors for a significant number of customers in eight cellular marketing areas (CMAs), as defined by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. AT&T is the second-largest mobile telecom provider in the U.S. by number of subscribers, serving nearly 80 million subscribers throughout all 50 states, the DOJ said. Centennial is the eighth-largest mobile telecom provider in the U.S., with about 1.1 million subscribers in six states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

In 2008, AT&T earned mobile revenues of about $44 billion.

CA looks to ease encryption key management

CA today unveiled key-management software that helps automate the storage and distribution of encryption keys for multi-vendor tape encryption purposes. According to CA's director of storage product marketing Stefan Kochishan, CA intends to add support for other vendor tape-encryption methods in the future. "This product will manage the keys," Kochishan says. "If there's a call for centralization of management of either public or private keys, that can be done. Cool new products of the week CA Encryption Key Manager is z/OS-based software (it also runs on Linux, Unix, Windows and Solaris platforms) that can support the IBM TS1120 and TS 1130 tape encryption devices as well as the CA Tape Encryption subsystems from the same interface.

You can also set up key stores in various sites and those sites will be updated when there's a change. CA Encryption Manager allows tracking and monitoring of encryption keys and digital certificates as well as deletion once a key is no longer used, Kochishan notes. It's full life cycle key management." CA Encryption Key Manager will also interface with security systems that include IBM RACF, CA ACF2 for z/OS, and CA Top Secret for z/OS for public/private key and digital certificate storage. Changes are propagated via SSL-encrypted TCP/IP. The goal is to let IT managers more easily share encryption keys across business units or with outside business partners. Mark Depathy, senior infrastructure engineer there, indicated it has simplified key distribution for business-to-business tapes and other uses. "It's something that gives you real-time key distribution," Depathy says, adding it allows for a common database related to keys. Peoples United Bank in Bridgeport, Conn., has been beta-testing the CA Encryption Key Manager for the past month.

CA Encryption Key Manager, available now, starts at $16,000.