Microsoft makes inroads into European mobile phone markets


By Junko Yoshida

EE Times
18 February 2003 (9:20 a.m. GMT)



Cannes -- In announcing affiliations with two major European mobile operators -- T-Mobile and Orange -- at 3GSM World Congress here today, Microsoft Corp. escalated its steady incursion into the international mobile phone market.

T-Mobile made public its intention to launch Microsoft's Smartphone-based handsets, manufactured by High Tech Computer Corp., across its major markets in the summer of 2003.

Separately, Orange announced plans to become the first mobile operator to distribute mobile applications through the Microsoft Mobile2Market program. Microsoft has developed a process for testing, certification and marketing of network-ready wireless applications for the Smartphone software platform - which Microsoft calls "Mobile2Market." Under this framework, the computer software giant hopes to help developers bring mobile applications to market more simply and efficiently. Further, Microsoft hopes to insure network reliability for new Smartphone applications so that it will be easy for mobile operators to catalog network-ready mobile applications, and for consumers to find and purchase them, according to Microsoft.

Juha Christensen, corporate vice president of the mobile devices marketing group at Microsoft, sought to assuage operators' fears Microsoft giantism, by noting, "We are all about putting mobile operators at the focal point."

Christensen predicted that Microsoft sees, three years from now, 39 percent of mobile phone market "will be addressed by smart phone devices."

Microsoft is hardly alone in establishing a certification program for mobile applications developed for their own mobile platform. Similarly, Nokia and Sony Ericsson, together with Symbian, are evaluating a common certification program for Symbian OS applications, said Philip Vanhoutte, corporate vice president, marketing, at Sony Ericsson. Their goal is to enable application developers to assure their application's quality, while allowing networking operators to control application installation. Meanwhile, users will be sure of the source, quality and integrity of Symbian OS applications, he added. However, exactly who would be responsible - among the three companies - for that certification program has not been determined, according to Vanhoutte.

Microsoft also unveiled at the 3GSM World Congress the first joint Microsoft and Intel Smartphone concept design. Winstron Corp., known as a high volume manufacturer of Dell computers, has become the first ODM to sign up for the reference design, said Microsoft's Christensen. Winstron plans to launch the device, based on the Microsoft/Intel concept design, later this year.

The Microsoft/Intel Smartphone design comes with Microsoft's Smartphone software, stack memory and microprocessor design based on Intel's PXA262 processor to enable a 176 x 220 pixel color screen, and an integrated camera by TransChip. The design assures up to five hours of talk time.

While Microsoft is claiming steady inroads into the Smartphone market, a battle over mobile phone operating systems is intensifying. Symbian CEO David Levin called Symbian's operating system "a platform that allows handset vendors and operators to choose and innovate their own [mobile handset] vision." With Symbian OS, for example, Levin said that one can choose two very different user interface platforms: UIQ interface, used in Sony Ericsson's smart phones, based on a large screen user interface for small pen-based phones; and Series 60 platform, deployed and licensed by Nokia to other mobile handset manufacturers, based on "an ear-to-mouth" user interface. In contrast, Microsoft's Smartphone platform offers "a very limited design," he said.

fyi

Microsoft preps P2P app for "Net generation"
by Geoff "Dissonance" Gasior - 05:38 am, February 18, 2003

Microsoft's new Seattle-based NetGen division is about to release a beta of 3, a new peer-to-peer social interaction tool geared towards 13-24 year olds that have grown up with Internet technology. What's 3? C|Net has the scoop:
Core to threedegrees is the group instant messaging, for which there is no restriction on the number of groups. While each group is limited to 10 members, one person could participate in a dozen different groups or more, instant messaging or participating in activities in any or all of them.
Another feature, known as Winks, lets one user send animations to everyone in the group. "Winks is an activity where they can basically wink at someone across the room, but (you) do it virtually. Flirt with them," Savage said.

Group members also can share photos and, more importantly, listen to music available in a common play list. Savage sees this as one of threedegrees' most important features. "Music a lot of times is the background for the fun that you have."

I'm not sure that even members of the "Net generation" need another way to virtually flirt with each other, but 3 is an intriguing twist on the instant messaging paradigm, especially since it allows at least the limited sharing of music between group members.
As interesting as 3 sounds, and as tempted as I am to sign up to be notified when the beta is released, I have to wonder if we shouldn't be encouraging this "Net generation" to interact socially in the real world rather than online. Then again, I just barely qualify as a member of this "Net generation," so maybe I'm a square.

fyi

Messaging Makes Its Way to Nokia Phones

Oracle and IBM will both offer e-mail and calendar applications for business users on certain cell phones.

Joris Evers, IDG News Service
Tuesday, February 18, 2003

Oracle and IBM will both work with Nokia to bring corporate e-mail and calendar applications to a user's pocket, Oracle and IBM announced independently at the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, France.

Oracle and Nokia launched a joint initiative to extend Oracle's Collaboration Suite messaging application to Nokia phones, while IBM and Nokia said they plan to make Nokia handsets work with IBM's WebSphere middleware and its new Wireless Enterprise Delivery Environment.


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Nokia's handsets, including the 6800 messaging device, the 9210 communicator, and several phones running Symbian's operating system, will support both Oracle's and IBM's applications. Initially, both Oracle of Redwood Shores, California, and IBM of Armonk, New York, will focus on e-mail, calendars, and related features, they said.

Going Mobile
Both Oracle and IBM plan to bundle their products with Nokia handsets and offer complete mobility packages together with the Espoo, Finland, leader in the mobile phone market, the U.S. IT vendors said.

"The first thing customers want to do is e-mail and then they roll around and work with their employees to give them access to applications such as sales force automation and field automation," said Ozzie Osborne, vice president of alliances and operations for IBM's Pervasive Computing unit.

Oracle does not expect service providers to offer mobile services based on Collaboration Suite to the masses. The product is meant for enterprise users who want to go mobile, said Rene Bonvanie, vice president of Oracle 9i marketing.

"The first opportunity that we will pursue is to go to service providers to deliver this to their enterprise customers," he said. An enterprise user could run the service in-house, but "playing mobile phone operator really is not their business," Bonvanie said. "Users are looking at operators to solve the problems."

Tough Task
Making phones part of a corporate IT network is not a simple task, said IBM's Osborne.

"Integrating phones into the system is still not as easy as it should be because each phone uses a different system. Where we want to get to is the ability to have any handset being able to connect to any server," he said.

Oracle launched Collaboration Suite, its answer to Microsoft's Exchange, in July last year. By October, the company said it had about 300 Collaboration Suite customers. The first customer pilots with mobile devices are planned for the second quarter in the U.K., according to Oracle.

Oracle and IBM aren't married to Nokia, however, as both are also looking at other handset makers. Oracle is in talks with Siemens and Motorola, while IBM on Monday unveiled a deal with Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications.

Both Oracle and IBM also announced deals with mobile phone network vendor Alcatel for mobile access to back office applications over mobile data networks, including General Packet Radio Service and 3G networks. For Oracle, the alliance with Alcatel is about the Mobile Field Services part of its 11i E-Business Suite of applications. IBM worked with Alcatel on making WebSphere and Lotus software accessible on pocket and laptop computers.

www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/02/18/1045330583148.html

The company and Hewlett-Packard in September pledged $US50 million ($A84.1 million) to develop and promote .NET on HP systems.

But there's a bigger fish in the web-services pond - the legions of software developers that will write these programs in the future. The big players are aggressively going after this group, with Microsoft offering low-priced tools such as Visual Basic .NET to help them build applications.

Microsoft has 20,000 developers and IBM has 10,000 working to make their products web-services-compatible, according to a recent report by Forrester Research. Smaller companies will have a hard time keeping up with these two giants in this field, Forrester concluded.

Tadpole-Cartesia Now Shipping Its ESRI-based GeoSync Software Empowering
Simplified and Secure Field GIS Currency

Tadpole's data synchronization and secure peer-to-peer technologies enable
utilities to securely distribute pockets of GIS updates to authenticated
mobile users

###

Carlsbad (California) and Edinburgh (UK), February 19, 2003 -
Tadpole-Cartesia, the field mapping software subsidiary of Tadpole
Technology (LSE:TAD), today announces GA of its ESRI-based GeoSync (View)
8.3 geospatial synchronization technology for worldwide utilities. The
technology is being integrated into the software products of such GIS
leaders as Miner & Miner.

Showcased this month at Miner & Miner's User Group, Tadpole-Cartesia's new
solution automates and secures the delivery of geospatial data from central
servers to the field. Instead of streaming gigabyte-heavy maps to regional
offices or mobile work teams that connect occasionally to the Web, only
packets of new mapping data will now be delivered to authenticated users.
Maps stored on local desktops and laptops are automatically updated.

"Tadpole-Cartesia's GeoSync technology opens a new era in the enterprise
distribution of ESRI-based geospatial data," says Noam Arbel, director of
software architecture at Miner & Miner. "It simplifies and automates the
distribution of mapping data to authorized users at the periphery of a
network, and ensures currency in data used by field engineers."

"Tadpole-Cartesia's GeoSync software is a remarkable technology that
addresses a utility's need for maintaining up to date GIS in the field
without the overheads of costly manual update process," adds Ted Wadzinski,
Alliant Energy's team leader, GIS Systems and Services. "By incrementally
providing small change packets to users when on-line, GeoSync eliminates the
need to cut CDs, reduces overhead and bandwidth usage, and most importantly
supports operational crews needing near real time updates. Ultimately,
GeoSync provides a means to deliver a higher quality of service from our GIS
department to the field. "

Tadpole-Cartesia's GeoSync technology extends a utility's existing
investments in GIS, data and applications, allowing users to natively view
and manipulate data in multiple formats without need for intermediary third
party software. By incrementally synchronizing data in small packets of
changes, it allows mapping updates to be distributed via WANs, wireless
LAN, or the Internet. The practice of burning CDs and then sending them out
to the field is eliminated.

GeoSync is also the guardian of corporate knowledge, and addresses growing
security concerns in the utility world of distributing key data over the
Internet. With Tadpole's Magi peer-to-peer technology, utilities have a
truly secure and reliable mechanism to verify that only authenticated users
receive corporate knowledge and data.

Jason Linley, director of Tadpole-Cartesia's North American operations,
comments: "Tadpole-Cartesia's GeoSync software is all about bringing
currency to legacy GIS systems and operations. By automating and securing
the business of sending business-centric maps to the field, GeoSync enables
worldwide utilities to achieve higher levels of productivity in off-site
operations, and ultimately deliver better service to end-customers."

About Miner & Miner
Miner & Miner is a world leader in the development and implementation of
geographic information system (GIS) software for utilities. M&M's ArcFM
Solution and extended services assist electric, gas, water and wastewater
utilities in increasing productivity, lowering costs, and improving services
by allowing them to effectively manage spatial information. Founded in 1946
as a full-service electrical engineering firm, M&M has been a business
partner of ESRI since 1987. This partnership has enabled M&M to become the
world's leading developer of ArcGIS applications for the utility industry.
M&M services include implementation and customization of software to fit the
needs of individual utilities. For more information, please visit
www.miner.com.

About ESRI
For more than 30 years, ESRI has been the leading developer of GIS software
with more than 300,000 clients worldwide. ESRI also provides consulting,
implementation, and technical support services. Headquartered in California,
ESRI has regional offices throughout the United States, international
distributors in more than 90 countries, and more than 1,200 business
partners. ESRI's goal is to provide users with comprehensive tools to help
them quickly and efficiently manage and use geographic information to make a
real difference in the world around them. ESRI can be found on the Web at
www.esri.com.

About Tadpole-Cartesia
Tadpole-Cartesia, a software business unit of Tadpole Technology plc
(www.tadpole.com), is the leader in the deployment of enterprise-class
mobile information systems in the world's utilities, telecommunications and
public service industries, and is the premier field solutions provider for
ESRI-based technology. In addition to ESRI-based solutions, the company
offers a unique range of mobile business solutions known under the Conic
brand that support both Windows and Java platforms and open new vistas for
better management and productivity of field workers, improve customer
service, reduce operational costs, and enable user industries to fully
capitalize their investments in corporate GIS and CAD data. Further
information on Tadpole's businesses on 760-929-0992, +44 (0)1223 428200
(UK), or by email sales@tadpole.com.

ends

Despite the fact AFN has banned you I notice your aliases are still going strong ainsoph.

If anybody still wonders whether ainsoph uses multiple aliases to ramp his stocks to unsuspecting investors, check out these two posts including the times they were posted, the second post is from the AFN TAD thread, where he continually denies any aliases:


ainsoph - 19 Feb'03 - 16:27 - 192 of 198


200k down the middle ..... has to be GEM imho


ains

.............................................................................

Rodspoty - 19 Feb'03 - 16:26 - 32052 of 32089


200K trade down the middle, looks like GEM.

Rodders



I wonder how many aliases you have already used on this BB ?
I did notice another thread saying your KDC alias had been used again on this BB and had already been banned! Whether it was being used by you I don't know.

I have no wish to converse with you ainsoph, but I will continue to post on the TAD threads here to warn people about you and your multiple aliases.

rodspoty and ainsoph one and the same? get real then get lost.
i suspect they are timed similarly because i WAS IN A YAHOO CHAT ROOM with the two of them plus many other ainsoph aliases. eg gold coast and tris at the time of the trade.

Gdub maybe you are as stupid as the real gdubya but i will offer you the same deal as ive offered others on advfn.

prove that ainsoph and rodders are one and the same and you can have all my tads, my house, my car.EVERYTHING
what you offering?
an apology would be enough for me

Perhaps you're telling the truth, other posters have accused you before of being ains & that post does looks suspicious, 'IF' I'm wrong my apologies to you.
....but would you deny he uses multiple aliases ??

IE: Runwiththebulls, LSimpson, Jason Nichole, colowe....etc...

As this is a new BB, with novice investors joining from 'Shares magazine', I think they have a right to know about ainsoph and his deceitful ploys to ramp his shares to the unwary....

....don't you ?

It is an amazing coincidence that you've suddenly appeared on this site superrod !!

I can only assume ains has asked you to post to distract people from his deceitful games.

I'll leave it there for now, let's see what develops.

no point in posting the same reply on all the threads i visit

Just for the sake of fairness.
I was not entirely happy about this, but there you go!

M

RNS Number:7286H
Tadpole Technology PLC
19 February 2003

Tadpole Technology plc ( "Company")

Issue of Equity - Additional Listing


The Company today announced the issue of 10,193,680 New Ordinary Shares at a
price of 4.905p to GEM Global Yield Fund Limited, pursuant to the equity line of
credit provided to the Company by GEM Global Yield Fund Limited and GEM Advisors
Inc., details of which were contained in a circular to shareholders dated 31
January 2002.

This current draw down takes the total of Ordinary Shares issued by the Company
to GEM Global Yield Fund Limited pursuant to the Subscription Agreement, as
varied by the Supplemental Agreements, to 14.34 per cent of the issued share
capital of the Company as at 18 February 2003 (the latest practicable date prior
to the issue of this announcement) and as such necessitates the production of
Listing Particulars. The Company has today therefore issued an Issue Note which,
together with the Shelf Document published on the UK Listing Authority's website
on 4 April 2002, will constitute Listing Particulars.

Application has been made to the UK Listing Authority for the 10,193,680 New
Ordinary Shares to be admitted to the Official List of the UK Listing Authority,
and to the London Stock Exchange for these shares to be admitted to trading.
These shares will rank pari passu with the existing ordinary shares of the
Company and dealings are expected to commence on 24 February 2003.

The draw down is consistent with Tadpole's stated strategy, as indicated in the
preliminary announcement, that it will use the GEM facility to support business
progress in its software companies.

Terms and definitions included in this announcement have the same meaning as in
the Issue Note dated 19 February 2003. Copies of the Shelf Document and the
Issue Note are available free of charge at the registered office of the Company
at Trinity House, Cowley Road, Cambridge CB4 0WZ and at the offices of Denton
Wilde Sapte at One Fleet Place, London EC4M 7WS during normal business hours on
any weekday (Saturday, Sundays and public holidays excepted) following the date
of this announcement. In addition to this the Shelf Document is available on the
UK Listing Authority website at http://www.fsa.gov.uk/ukla.

19 February 2003

ML.. at least its out the way now and I expect the news flow to restart.
Gem is there to be used as and whenstill the question of why only 500k?.all will be revealed no doubt.
Tris

maybe all they need, Maybe enough to get them to a news release that will hike the price up hence less dilution when called on later, time will tell my little 1

Posted by nk156 on 3i's


From a Gartner Paper on ODADS (Sept 2002)

[Square brackets are my comments]

[The Gartner report is generic on the subject of ODADS and makes reference to a couple of our competitors (only because the report was written back in September. No doubt this will change after our recent seminar). However it does give a very positive insight into the potential of this technology.]


[Gartner some good early user experience]
...For example, a large financial services company uses an ODADS platform to allow its customers to access their primary trading application. Without ODADS, users had to download the entire Java applet (almost 2MB) every time they needed to use the application. This approach was impractical for remote use, and unusable during peak trading hours when simultaneous access saturated network bandwidth. More than 3,000 investors currently use the trading application with the ODADS, streaming bits of runtime code to local cache over 50K dial-up without any performance issues. Prior to using the ODADS, the application download took three to five minutes or longer during non-peak hours. The installation and deployment was quick and relatively painless, as the pilot took only four weeks. Another example is a service company with a large reservations system that has a Java-based front-end application (with a feature-rich graphical user interface; the applet is more than 3 MB). The company expects the number of users to grow to more than 100,000 during the next two years. The application is updated frequently. Deployment of the ODADS has resulted in positive user satisfaction and reduction of help desk calls, and has freed up network bandwidth for other applications. The agents are satisfied because they can work from home over slow networks with the same rich user interface to which they are accustomed. IS organization management is satisfied because no changes to the software were needed, and new features and enhancements are streamed to users automatically the next time they connect to the network...
[100,000 users now that would be nice]


..Softricity and Microsoft announced a three-year joint marketing agreement in May 2002. There are no licensing or financial terms. This agreement is purely a marketing agreement to promote .NET solutions. It is not a product development agreement and does not involve Microsoft product groups...
[ETI and Microsoft agreement is different. MS is paying ETI to move to .NET framework. Microsoft is also helping in product development access to MS labs and technicians]

...- Vendor viability: AppStream and Softricity are small startups with no guarantee of survival beyond the next 12 to 18 months. Enterprises will not invest in ODADS technology for large production rollouts until they feel the vendors are viable and can support them on a 24x7, quick-response-time basis...
[Could it be that we have a major potential clients that require 24x7 support hence the GEM drawdown to expand this area?]

...- ODADS platforms must have proven scalability to support enterprises with 30,000 to 50,000 desktops...
[AppExpress scales to 100,000 users]

...Through 2007, provided that they are acquired by or actively promoted and supported by some major vendors, more than 40 percent of enterprises will use ODADSs for targeted applications (0.6 probability)...
[ETI is being actively promoted and supported by MS and HP]

Tadpole's new web page is here.

http://www.tadpole.com/html/

M

YOL = Yawning out loud.

F

Fugitive
How long did it take to work that one out?
Have you been working on it all day?
Well worth the wait.
Guru

Oz link!

Must be revenue producing, that we didnt know about.

http://www.geis.com.au/browsers/ie/

M

IM Needs to Build a Community
February 25, 2003
By Colin C. Haley



BOSTON -- Despite their enormous clout, the Big 3 of instant messaging service providers (Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo!) can't make the technology a success among enterprise customers on their own.

Systems integrators, software developers and consultants, need to help convince corporate decision makers that the technology is compelling and workable.

"Currently, there is no ecosystem to take existing enterprise infrastructure and integrate it with IM infrastructure," Microsoft executive David Gurle said in his keynote address here at Instant Messaging Planet Conference and Expo this morning.

Another key is investment. Unlike some technology giants, Microsoft does not have a dedicated investment fund, prefering to get involved with companies later in their development, Gurle said. For example, Microsoft recently pumped $51 million into peer-to-peer player Groove Networks.

The Redmond, Wash., firm does, however, regularly consult with venture capitalists to express what applications they would like to see used in conjuction with its new enterprise IM product, Greenwich, due out later this year.

"Startups have agility that a company the size of Microsoft or IBM doesn't have," said Gurle, whose group is readying Microsoft's Enterprise IM offering, Greenwich, for later this year. AOL and Yahoo are working on their own enterprise products.

Jeff Crown, former head of Lycos' venture arm, and currently managing parter of Aqueduct Partners, said the IM space is similar to the Internet in 1995.

"It's still wide open, it's still the wild wild West," said Crown, now managing partner at Aqueduct Partners, a Wellesley, Mass., consulting firm serving small and medium businesses.

So far, the flow of capital hasn't come anywhere near the amount pumped into the Internet space in its early days. This is due partially because some funds have eschewed technology investments after being burned by the Internet bubble as well as a more anemic economy in general.

Crown thinks investors would also like to see some harder numbers about the market potential and ROI of enterprise IM.

To be sure, there are other impediments to the ubiquitous adoption of IM in the enterprise, including a business model that will allow users of the Big 3 to communicate with each other. Gurle, a former executive with a French telecom, said the fear is customer churn, a problem experience by European wireless carriers where interoperability reigns.

A consistent name space, enhanced security protections and standards for authenticating users, are other problems that have been repeatedly voiced at the show.

An encouraging sign, Gurle believes, is that large customers, like pharmaceutical companies to financial services firms, are starting to ask some hard questions about the practical integration of IM.

If these growing pains are overcome, then IM's potential is enormous. The Big 3 know it will go faster and smoother if they don't have to go it alone.

Unite and Federate!
February 26, 2003
By Christopher Saunders


If it isn't already clear by now, there's little standing in the way of a technical impediment to interoperability (despite what some major players in the space have indicated.) Instead, it's all a matter of hammering out a serviceable business model for cross-network consumer IM.

Of course, this isn't necessarily an easy pill to swallow. Microsoft's David Gurle pointed out quite rightly that his coworkers over in the MSN group, as well as their rivals at AOL and Yahoo!, fear the user churn that will result if interoperability is established among the consumer networks.

Still, it's not a problem if the common service -- that is, presence -- is wide enough to accommodate a variety of add-on applications. Instead, it then becomes an issue of which provider has the best presence-leveraging applications.

That's going to be essential, since presence -- as speaker after speaker attested -- is the most important feature to emerge from instant messaging: for one thing, as Gurle noted, IM-based presence will finally realize the decades-old dream of "intelligent" telephone networks. And, of course, a whole lot more.

Fortunately, we're reasonably close to achieving interconnecting networks in the enterprise market.

"Interoperability is not as dire as it seems," said Lotus' Jeremy Dies during a panel discussion. "IBM and Microsoft own 90 percent of the enterprise application market and both are building platforms on SIP/SIMPLE."

What then? Here we touch on "federation" -- the show's third-most common concept, and the glue tying enterprise IM interoperability to those meaty, presence-based applications.

Of course, that's "federated" as in federated authorization and authentication, which seems a necessity once (if?) interoperability is achieved among business-class IM networks. After all, as IMLogic's Francis deSouza said, it's not hard to consider the myriad problems with which a business has to contend should one of their employees be using the public IM handle "Biceps2Big" to interact with clients.

Indeed, Gurle contended that interoperability "will impact the shift of power in the IM market" by giving the authority for administering their users' identities to businesses. As a result, IT managers and compliance officers will dictate how employees represent and conduct themselves online, while at the same time, can safely assume that their clients and colleagues on other networks are who they claim to be.

This shift may make the opening up of consumer IM easier to swallow, as the major networks are or will soon roll out enterprise-class products to handle namespaces and federated authentication. That's one way Boom said Yahoo! has already been preparing for interoperability.

Gurle said a third-party would have to serve as a "clearinghouse" for networks' presence information, enabling businesses to connect and share information from their presence-based communications networks with each other. (He declined to discuss Microsoft's plans during his talk, but it should go without saying that Microsoft's .NET Service is a likely contender for the role.)

In any case, federated authentication also carries a number of crucial auxiliary benefits. For one thing, Gurle noted that unlike in the current e-mail space, instant messaging "cannot have spam by definition ... with an end-to-end authorization and authentication model." In other words, you still can get unwanted messages -- but only from identifiable, blockable senders and domains; or not at all, if you block messages from users not on your contacts list.

But most importantly, the establishment of local nodes where users are authenticated sets the foundation for enterprises' more comprehensive use of presence -- in VoIP, videoconferencing, collaborative software development, and so on.

"IM created a connection infrastructure -- IM connects people, and it's hard to stop there ... to not escalate that scenario to other communication modes," Gurle said. "If we get all this right, the sky is our limit. A whole new telecom network -- that's going to be the nirvana. There are going to be opportunities for companies to make money off of it."

Which means that we can't rule out the public network giants' commitment to interoperability. After all, income from selling advanced presence-based services -- nesting on top of the authentication services they also plan to sell -- would be a considerable improvement for the IM networks over the current state of free public messaging.

This fact, of course, isn't lost on them. During the show, Boom hinted that Yahoo! is quite aware of the potential to be had in presence-enabled services for businesses.

"We have a big presence network," he said. "The development of presence and how that's used by the enterprise is going to be one of the key focuses for us."