James Williams

The iPhone GPS app market unleashed by the release of the iPhone 3.0 software update is getting more interesting by the day, with several developers in an arms race to add new features to their initial offerings. My own in-car navigation box doesn't even speak street names (other than numbered freeways), and it sure makes a big difference. Taking the lead in the GPS app race is Navigon MobileNavigator, which recently added support for spoken street names-a major failing in the three apps that I previewed in a Macworld Video last month.

Last week, I got to spend a little bit of time with Navigon's Johan-Till Broer, who showed me the next version of MobileNavigator, due as a free App Store update sometime in October. The traffic update also does a better job of estimating the speeds of various roads without live traffic data. It adds live traffic to the party, downloading traffic updates over the digital cell network and rerouting you around slow spots. The end result should be that MobileNavigator will do a better job of suggesting the fastest route you should take to your destination, based on both current conditions and the time of day you're traveling. I've found Sygic Mobile Maps to be a solid app, although it feels more like a port of a standalone GPS device than a native iPhone app. Sygic, maker of the Sygic Mobile Maps GPS navigation app, recently updated its app to support spoken street names, as well as catching up with the other apps by integrating the addresses of the contacts in your iPhone's address book.

However, you can't beat the price-Sygic is trying to drive sales of its updated app by reducing the price (temporarily, at least) to $40 for an app containing only United States maps and $60 for the app containing maps of all of North America. TomTom's promised car kit for the iPhone, which promises a mount, speaker, and improved GPS reception, has yet to arrive here in the States. (Our friends at Macworld UK are reporting that the car kit is available for order on that side of the Atlantic, with shipping times listed as "two to three weeks.") As for the TomTom app, the company promises "several updates by the end of 2009," but hasn't given details. While Navigon and Sygic are not familiar names to most Americans, TomTom is a strong brand and its iPhone app has sparked a lot of interest, although the iTunes charts would suggest that it may have fallen behind Navigon in terms of sales. Presumably spoken street names and live traffic are high on the agenda. Look for a comprehensive comparison of iPhone GPS apps from Macworld in the near future.

Reviewing these apps is hard, requiring a lot of driving (and a dedicated driver so the reviewer doesn't cause an accident!), and the features of the apps keep updating at a rapid pace. In the meantime, check out my video above if you'd like to see the apps in action. From my perspective, right now Navigon MobileNavigator is the best choice available, but this game is far from over.

After a kick in the pants from the leader of the Linux driver project, Microsoft has resumed work on its historic driver code submission to the Linux kernel and avoided having the code pulled from the open source operating system. The submission was greeted with astonishment in July when Microsoft made the announcement, which included releasing the code under a GPLv2 license Microsoft had criticized in the past. Microsoft's submission includes 20,000 lines of code that once added to the Linux kernel will provide the hooks for any distribution of Linux to run on Windows Server 2008 and its Hyper-V hypervisor technology. Greg Kroah-Hartman, the Linux driver project lead who accepted the code from Microsoft in July, Wednesday called out Microsoft on the linux-kernel and driver-devel mailing lists saying the company was not actively developing its hv drivers.

If they do not show back up to claim this driver soon, it will be removed in the 2.6.33 [kernel] release. HV refers to Microsoft Hyper-V. He also posted the message to his blog. "Unfortunately the Microsoft developers seem to have disappeared, and no one is answering my emails. So sad...," he wrote. They are not the only company." Also new: Microsoft forms, funds open source foundation Kroah-Hartman said calling out specific projects on the mailing list is a technique he uses all the time to jump start those that are falling behind. Thursday, however, in an interview with Network World, Kroah-Hartman said Microsoft got the message. "They have responded since I posted," he said, and Microsoft is now back at work on the code they pledged to maintain. "This is a normal part of the development process.

In all, Kroah-Hartman specifically mentioned 25 driver projects that were not being actively developed and faced being dropped from the main kernel release 2.6.33, which is due in March. On top of chiding Microsoft for not keeping up with code development, Kroah-Hartman took the company to task for the state of its original code submission. "Over 200 patches make up the massive cleanup effort needed to just get this code into a semi-sane kernel coding style (someone owes me a big bottle of rum for that work!)," he wrote. He said the driver project was not a "dumping ground for dead code." However, the nearly 40 projects Kroah-Hartman detailed in his mailing list submission, including the Microsoft drivers, will all be included in the 2.6.32 main kernel release slated for December. Kroah-Hartman says there are coding style guidelines and that Microsoft's code did not match those. "That's normal and not a big deal. But the large number of patches did turn out to be quite a bit of work, he noted. It happens with a lot of companies," he said.

He said Thursday that Microsoft still has not contributed any patches around the drivers. "They say they are going to contribute, but all they have submitted is changes to update the to-do list." Kroah-Hartman says he has seen this all before and seemed to chalk it up to the ebbs and flows of the development process. The submission was greeted with astonishment in July when Microsoft made the announcement, which included releasing the code under a GPLv2 license Microsoft had criticized in the past. Microsoft's submission includes 20,000 lines of code that once added to the Linux kernel will provide the hooks for any distribution of Linux to run on Windows Server 2008 and its Hyper-V hypervisor technology. Follow John on Twitter

IBM on Monday will announce a BI (business intelligence) and planning suite aimed at midsized companies that need more insight into their business than a spreadsheet can provide, but not the complexity of an enterprise-level product. The suite consists of three modules that can be bought separately or as a unit. Dubbed Cognos Express, the applications are meant for businesses with between 100 and 999 workers, said Ben Plummer, general manager of the IBM Cognos midmarket business unit. A reporting tool offers drag-and-drop-style report creation and ad hoc querying; an "Advisor" module is used for forecasting and "what-if" scenario analysis; and a product called Xcelerator allows users to crunch and visualize data with an in-memory analytics engine through the Microsoft Excel interface.

When [midsize customers] open it up, it pops out and scares them." Pricing for Cognos Express starts as low as US$12,000 for one module and five users. IBM claims the package can be deployed in "a matter of hours." It is managed through a Web-based console that reduces dependency on help from IT staffers, according to IBM. Enterprise-class BI systems are much more complex, given factors such as the need to juggle and integrate various data assets from acquired companies, Plummer said. "It's not that they want it to be complicated, it's complicated by default." Meanwhile, BI vendors have historically sold medium-size companies repackaged versions of enterprise-grade software, he said. "They try to cram an enterprise-size package into a midmarket-size box," he said. "It's like a Jack-in -the-box. IBM is not ruling out delivering Cognos Express as a SaaS (software as a solution) offering in the future, but for now is sticking with on-premises deployments, according to Plummer. "Companies of this size, they say, 'can you just bring it in and put it on the server I have?'" he said. Wood Ranch is investing in about 25 Cognos Express licenses due to business growth and a desire to gain better insight into its finances amid a bleak economy, according to Mark Quandt, vice president of finance. An initial Cognos Express customer is Wood Ranch BBQ & Grill, a California restaurant chain with 13 locations. Margins in restaurants are thin to begin with, and eating out is a discretionary expense for consumers, he said. "To the extent you've got more visibility into the business, you're going to come out ahead," Quandt added. "We felt this is the way we needed to go." Wood Ranch has been working with all three modules for about two weeks, and will use the software to analyze data from its point-of-sale system.

If you wanted to work with the data, the only option was to export into Excel," Quandt said. "Excel is a great personal tool ... [but] with 13 restaurants we got to a point where we wanted to get a little more sophisticated in your analysis." However, IBM's decision to employ the Excel interface in the Xcelerator module is a plus, given the familiarity Wood Ranch's workers have with it, Quandt said. The POS system generates reports that do "a good job of overall sales, and your sales mix, but you're stuck into their templates. Under Wood Ranch's corporate structure, each restaurant is considered an independent company from a legal standpoint, and consequently each has its own database, Quandt said. Wood Ranch has only two IT workers, but Quandt does not expect he'll need to bring on additional resources to run Cognos Express. The Cognos Express suite will help the chain pull together all the data and conduct modeling and forecasting, he said.

Along with e-learning and content management software, midmarket companies are expected to invest heavily in BI as the economy improves and IT budgets recover, said Forrester Research analyst Tim Harmon. But IBM may have an edge given its strong channel, according to Harmon. "The additional margins and incentives that are available [to partners] with this product are not insignificant," he said. He praised Cognos Express on its technical merits, but said competing midmarket offerings from Tibco and Qliktech are of comparable quality. Partners will also be able to fine-tune the product for verticals, a job that becomes more granular as companies get smaller, according to Harmon.

IBM Thursday announced upgrades to and a roadmap for its 15-month-old Lotus Symphony suite of productivity tools, emphasizing it indeed offers an alternative to Microsoft Office.

The move comes after Microsoft recently said that a court order to remove Office from store shelves next month could leave consumers and businesses "stranded without an alternative set of software."

Microsoft is battling a patent infringement case brought by Toronto-based i4i over XML file formats. The 2007 case resulted in a $290 million judgment against Microsoft and an injunction that bars it from selling Word 2003 and Word 2007 after Oct. 10 unless the offending technology is removed.

"What we are trying to do with Symphony is establish that there is an option in the market and companies don't have to spend the money they spend for productivity suites," says Ed Brill, director of product management for Lotus Software.

Slideshow: Products of the Week

Along with Symphony, Google Docs and OpenOffice are other productivity suite alternatives to Microsoft's Office, which dominates market share and is a revenue gold mine for the company.

"Symphony is not a product that we just threw out there," said Brill. "We have been investing in an on-going basis."

IBM plans to release Symphony 2.0 in 2010, the same timeframe Microsoft plans the next version of Office. Code named Vienna, the Symphony 2.0 software will be based on the most recent version of OpenOffice.

But for now IBM, which offers Symphony as a free download and the default productivity software in Notes/Domino 8, is adding a new set of drag-and-drop widgets that include integration with popular Microsoft backend software such as the SharePoint Server. The software also integrates with Google Gadgets and Lotus's own Sametime and Connections platforms.Part of the widget package is the OrgChart Widget, which integrates with profiles in Lotus Connections so users can be added into meetings that convene online with a single click.

Other widgets include the Learning Widget, which combines local and Web-based information; a Team Workspace Widget that provides access to documents stored in Lotus Quickr or Microsoft SharePoint; the Symphony 2 Wiki Widgets provide conversion of documents for publishing on wikis; the Treasure Box Widget keeps a "favorites list" inside Symphony of frequently used documents, graphics and applications; and the Export Graphic Widget supports export of common formats such as .gif, .jpeg, .png, .bmp.

In addition, the ChartShare Widget provides screen sharing for up to 20 people with support for co-creation and editing of presentations. It also supports integration with Lotus Sametime Unyte Live's meeting capability. The ChartShare Widget also gives presence information on every contributor to the presentation and a link to instant messaging.

The widgets work with Symphony 1.3, which features support for Microsoft Office 2007 file formats such as .docx, xlsx, and .pptx. The .docx format is part of the ongoing i4i patent infringement suit against Microsoft.

Symphony is available for Mac, Windows, Ubuntu Linux, Red Hat Linux and Suse Linux. Symphony is available for free from the IBM Web site.

IBM offers flat-fee support contracts to large corporate users for $26,000 per year.

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