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Instead, it’s the chipset that will likely be the centerpiece of AMD’s pitch to notebook makers and their customers. The company is looking to cash in on its purchase of ATI Technologies’ graphics business in 2006 by beefing up the performance of the integrated graphics that ship with the Puma platform.

It’s refreshing to see AMD deliver on a product release after the horrible year the company endured in 2007. The delay in Intel’s Montevina platform might also give it a chance to squeeze a few more orders out of PC makers looking to get their system configurations locked down for the July, which is quite the reversal of fortune for a company that had no answer when Intel’s server division snapped up design wins that were supposed to belong to Barcelona.

The vast majority of notebooks sold to the general public use integrated graphics, which are graphics transistors that are welded onto the chipset, rather than coming in separate, powerful cards from companies like ATI and Nvidia. To this point, those graphics from both Intel and AMD could be aptly described as “good enough graphics,” meaning they can easily handle simple Web surfing tasks but probably feel the strain when it comes to things like high-definition video.

AMD’s new Turion X2 Ultra processor is the first designed-for-mobile processor that AMD has ever produced; the earlier versions of its Turion processor were essentially the same design as its Opteron design with a more power-friendly implementation. But the PC market is shifting dramatically in favor of the notebook over the desktop as mobility becomes all the rage, and Intel has enjoyed a strong position in this market with its Centrino notebook products and ad campaigns.

For example, if you’re playing a game at home with the laptop plugged in, go ahead and turn on the discrete graphics card. But if you’re on the road in the airport with the same system and just need to check your e-mail with the last remaining bit of your battery, turn the discrete card off to extend battery life.

Assuming those notebooks ship without incident, Puma arrives in far better shape than Barcelona, the quad-core server processor that was a year late after running into major technical glitches. Puma also arrives at a time when Intel has suffered a rare–at least over the last two years–gaffe inside its notebook group: the company’s Montevina notebook platform will be delayed several weeks with chipset problems, which could affect Intel’s performance during the important back-to-school shopping season.

This time around, AMD has changed the way it supplies power to the processor, as well as how the processor’s memory controller talks to the rest of the system. It’s taking advantage of the split power-plane design unveiled with Barcelona that allows the processor cores to run at variable speeds, Mahony said. The memory controller, which handles the vital link between the processor and memory, has also been tweaked for a mobile environment.

AMD thinks it has dramatically improved the graphics performance of its basic chipsets without killing their power consumption, and that it has an edge over Intel’s graphics division, which has struggled in recent years. AMD is also bringing the hybrid graphics technology from its desktop products to the notebook. This allows PC makers to ship notebooks with both the integrated graphics and a discrete graphics card in their systems, giving users the option of tweaking their graphics performance based on their needs.

But Griffin is not the wholesale redesign of AMD’s chip blueprint that Barcelona was, meaning AMD could avoid many of the technical glitches that arose as the company overhauled parts of its Opteron design to produce Barcelona.

AMD is still in a tenuous position, with Barcelona revenue just starting to inflate its coffers. But if Puma can be rolled out without incident to AMD’s partners, the company will have gone a long way to refurbishing its image inside the PC industry.

This time around, AMD is ready with a major product launch on schedule, and is enjoying a bit of good fortune as well.

Notebook makers of all stripes are getting ready to launch systems based on AMD’s Puma notebook technology, which consists of a new processor, a mobile chipset, and wireless chips from AMD’s partners. The official announcement is expected to come later Wednesday at the Computex trade show in Taiwan, and notebooks with the chips will be arriving over the next several weeks from companies like Acer, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Toshiba, said Bahr Mahony, director of AMD’s mobile business.

Bruce Sewell, general counsel for Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel, criticized the ruling, and told the Wall Street Journal that the company is likely to appeal the KFTC’s decision. “The conduct they’re seeking to attack is the conduct at the heart of competition. It is offering lower prices in order to sell your products,” he said.

The KFTC charged Intel with violating South Korean antitrust laws last year after completing a two-year probe.

The Korea Fair Trade Commission said in a statement that the chip giant had offered rebates to two PC makers in South Korea in return for not buying processors from rival Advanced Micro Devices. Regulators also ordered Intel to stop offering the rebates.

South Korea’s antitrust regulators announced Wednesday that they would fine Intel 26 billion won ($25.4 million) for allegedly abusing its dominant position in the local chip market.

The charges mirror those Intel faces from the European Commission, which also alleges that the chipmaker violated antitrust laws by abusing its dominant market position.

You cannot control the online/offline state of Google Docs, as you can in Google’s RSS reader. That’s not a major loss, since there’s no advantage to working offline. The offline site is no faster than the online site, for example.

Furthermore, offline edit reconciliation isn’t quite what I was told it would be. I fired up a shared Docs file, pulled the Ethernet plug on my machine, and started to make changes. Meanwhile, I asked Josh, still online, to edit the same block of text I was working on. When I plugged my machine back into the Net, Josh’s changes overwrote mine with no warning. The revision history kept a record of all edits, but unlike the real-time collaborative editing that occurs when all parties are online, Josh did not have a chance to see the changes I was making; his text just took precedence.

Don’t get me wrong: offline access to Google Docs is a necessary addition to the app, and I am sure it will improve over time. Google’s Ken Norton was clear that document creation is coming to the offline version of Docs. But at the moment it’s really just a nice insurance policy if you work on a wonky connection, or if you want to edit–but not create–documents when you’re in an offline environment like an airplane.

I finally got access to Google Docs offline, the launch of which I covered yesterday. I understand why Google is pitching it as a safety net for a flaky online connection, as opposed to an honest-to-goodness offline application. As we noted yesterday, you cannot yet create a new document when offline. And something we weren’t told: when working offline, you can’t insert a picture into a file nor review its revision history.

Cues that Google is working offline: one, the connection icon in the upper-right is grey, not green; and two, it tells you.

“The primary focus for the new group is internal,” Balogh said. “But much like Amazon and Google, when you have something at scale and integrated, there are opportunities to
offer services.” Microsoft is also expected to go down a similar path.

Yahoo has been building massive scale infrastructure (now known as cloud computing) for years, but the intent of the new organization is to streamline development by bringing the various people and teams working on the core technologies into a single group, according to Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh, who reports to CEO Jerry Yang.

News.com Poll Reshaping Yahoo
The new reorg makes some big changes, but how much will it help the company?

(Credit:
Yahoo Research)

View results

(Credit:
Dan Farber)

As part of its latest reorganization, Yahoo created a Cloud Computing & Data Infrastructure Group, which is chartered with developing computing infrastructure that balances scalability with cost effectiveness, according to the press release. It could also lead to Yahoo getting into the business of selling pay-as-you-go cloud infrastructure to developers and companies.

Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh

It’s just what the doctor ordered.
It’s helpful, but Jerry Yang is still CEO.
They’re reshuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Balogh mentioned open source, such as Hadoop (software for scalable, distributed computing), and new ways to implement data abstraction as differentiators, as well as “loosening ACID requirements (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability, which are a set of properties that guarantee reliable database transactions).

Balogh thinks that Yahoo can leapfrog Google and Amazon with its cloud-based, infrastructure services for internal or external use.

Balogh said that Yahoo’s global fabric foundation will have self-healing capabilities that allow it to “operate at a higher level of availability with fewer people than we understand others have.”

Besting Microsoft, Google and Amazon in optimizing cloud computing would be a major and unanticipated win. Raghu Ramakrishnan, one of Yahoo’s chief scientists, is working on Yahoo’s cloud computing research efforts. Below are the principles guiding Yahoo’s platform from a presentation (PDF) Ramakrishnan gave earlier this year.

“There are some more recent innovations around the cloud and grid. It’s a
hot topic in research,” he said, maintaining that Yahoo is applying newer technology concepts from 2005 to 2007, than competitors.

Psystar's Open Computer has arrived.

And now that the lingering doubts appear to have been satisfied, we can start to focus on the real question: What sort of legal issues is Psystar going to encounter down the road, and how exactly is Apple going to handle that?

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Click here for an unboxing video, or here for a slideshow. Rich Brown of CNET Reviews says he’ll have a formal review of the Open Computer up this evening, so make sure to check back for that as well.

I ordered an Open Computer as just a regular customer, not as a reviewer, and received a call this morning from Psystar that my order is ready to ship if I was willing to switch to a black case. Apparently the white cases are in heavy demand; there would have been a 10-day back order if I wanted to keep the white case.

All sorts of questions about Psystar’s legitimacy arose about the company after it was inundated with orders, forcing its Web site offline and causing its initial payment provider to cut ties with the company. But the kinks appear to have been worked out.

The Open Computer has landed at CNET Networks.

My colleagues over at CNET Reviews in New York have managed to get their hands on a review unit of Psystar’s Open Computer, and they’ve got all sorts of pictures to share. For those of you who just woke up, Psystar is selling computers with Mac OS X Leopard as a preinstallation option, which is not part of an official program run by Apple and involves the use of some trickeration in order to get things up and running.

Also worth noting is that the company hasn’t spent a dime on advertising, and doesn’t plan to until it raises its first round of funding. In the meantime, it’s expanding into other areas of New York, including Brooklyn and Queens, before launching in two more major cities later this year.

Related stories:
Deal of the day: Free same-day gadget delivery (SF only)

Seattle gets groceries from the Amazon(.com)

Unlike online grocery stores of yore, Wakozi’s not doing any of the stocking or infrastructure necessary to get products out on its own; instead it’s just acting as the middle man to get hungry people (or those in need of the spare roll of toilet paper at the most inopportune times) the means to get items delivered fast, and with just a few clicks.

Since launching less than two months ago, creator Robert Rizzo says the site’s user base has increased weekly by more than 100 percent. He also says that one of the things that makes his system so potentially powerful is that it tracks what items are selling for each retailer, so they can stock up on items that are popular with the home delivery crowd.

The system works by matching you up with businesses that deliver within a certain geographical threshold. After plugging in your address, you can view an entire listing of these businesses, as well as their menus, delivery charges, hours of business, and estimated time of food arrival. Many promise delivery within half an hour, although others simply list the nebulous “ASAP.”

With services like Wakozi around, the movie Half Baked likely would have been about 15 minutes long. The home delivery service has been designed with people of leisure in mind, linking up New Yorkers with local eateries and convenience stores that get solid and liquid nutritional goodness to their doors within the hour.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

New Yorkers can order all the essentials on Wakozi, a service that links people up to local shops that deliver at all hours of the day. (click to enlarge)

Remember Brightkite, the social network meets microblogging tool we wrote about last week? The creators have been nice enough to grace us with 100 invites to give away to Webware readers. Just fill in the Wufoo form after the break and we’ll get one your way as soon as we can. Invites will be sent out once all 100 spots have been taken.

Update: All gone. Sending them out to folks now–check your spam boxes.

(Credit:
Matt Asay)

I emailed a media friend today to ask if he’d have time to meet when I’m in New York next month. The reply? Classic.

Mindless sheep that I am, I’m now on his blog.

commentary

Web page archiving tool Iterasi is getting a small but important update Tuesday morning. Users can now share their stream of archived pages with others as an RSS feed, letting anyone view their saved items either directly in their browser or in a feed-capturing tool like Google Reader or desktop e-mail clients.

I’ve embedded an example of the new widget after the break. It’ll continue to update as more pages are saved.

Also being introduced is a new widget that can be tacked onto your blog or favorite start page like iGoogle or My Yahoo. It will display a reverse chronological stream of the latest pages you’ve tucked away. Each item is just a thumbnail, but when users click on it they’ll be taken to the fully archived version of the page, complete with working links. It’s the same basic experience seen when the service launched its sharing feature.

He also expects more people to jump onboard as the platform expands to include
Mac users, which should be happening in the next few weeks–right around the time the long-awaited auto-archiving feature makes its way into users hands. “We’re close to having it ready,” Grillo said “and RSS is going to make it far more useful than we originally intended.” Once in place users, will be able to schedule when they want the service to take snapshots of their favorite pages. It will continue to do so as long as the computer where the extension is installed is running.

“What’s surprising is how many of our users were asking for RSS feeds,” Iterasi CEO Pete Grillo told me. Grillo acknowledged that the current Iterasi user base is a bit on the early-adopter side, and he thinks the widgets will help open the service up to a wider audience.

According to both the OC Weekly and L.A. Times pieces, three years apart, Nicholas spoke virtually nonstop, jumping from topic to topic, for hours and hours. Was he bored and just enjoying the company? Was he craving the attention? Was he on drugs at the time? Or was that just his personality, ADD and all?

As if that wasn’t enough, Henry’s mom later kicked her alcoholic husband out of their Cincinnati home, grabbed Henry and his sister, and fled to California, according to the OC Weekly story.

Broadcom issues

In 2003, Nicholas left Broadcom, ostensibly to try to work things out with his wife. But in light of these latest allegations, he appeared to be in a state of denial regarding the double life he’d been leading.

Bottom line

Long before the latest allegations came to light, Nicholas’ wife Stacey filed for divorce. Besides years of neglect by her fiercely competitive, workaholic husband, it didn’t help that–according to a 2007 L.A. Times story–she allegedly caught him with a prostitute in one of his not-so-secret lairs.

Family issues

In case you’ve been in a sensory deprivation tank for the past few days and missed the news, Henry T. Nicholas III, founder and former chief executive officer of chipmaker Broadcom, was indicted on securities fraud, conspiracy, and federal narcotics charges on Thursday.

Were folks constantly forced to cover up for Nicholas? Was the old adage: “What goes on the road, stays on the road” in play? Why didn’t anybody blow the whistle? Perhaps they did and the board knew about it. I mean, you’d think Samueli - Nicholas’ former professor, Broadcom co-founder, and a member of the board - might have had some clue, right? And that raises corporate governance questions.

And one can’t help but wonder what it was like working for Nicholas. According to dozens of reports, he was well-known as a party animal with a mercurial temper. You’d think some of his more raucous alleged behavior would have been visible to employees and executives, perhaps at trade shows, conferences, press tours, or on customer trips.

Rarely does a billionaire and technology industry legend self-destruct in such dramatic and flamboyant style. But there’s more to this human tragedy than meets the eye, and it almost surely extends beyond Nicholas.

The real tragedy, however, is that the problems don’t end with Nicholas. His three young children will likely be affected, just as Nicholas must have been by his own childhood chaos.

In Walden, the famous writer-philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Well, Nicholas was almost certainly desperate. And the more I study dysfunctional corporate behavior, the more I believe that “the mass of men” applies equally to executives.

How about life at Broadcom? First there’s the effect of the $2.2 billion charge on shareholders. Then there’s the SEC’s fraud charges–also related to the same options backdating Nicholas is accused of–against former CFO William Ruehle, general counsel David Dull, and chairman and CTO Henry Samueli.

Unfortunately, all those questions will likely remain unanswered.

Childhood issues

According to a 2004 interview in OC Weekly, “To me, it has always seemed that things move too slow,” Nicholas said. “Nowadays, a kid like me, they’d say he had ADD [Attention Deficit Disorder], but they didn’t call it that then. I’m dyslexic, too, but they didn’t know that right away, either. I spent six months in the retarded kids’ class, and they were the happiest days of my life. I got candy bars for not acting out!”

Updated at 2:50 p.m. PDT to clarify sources.

I’m no shrink, but you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to see that Nicholas’ addictive and self-destructive tendencies may be the result of childhood trauma and psychological issues.

From early childhood, Henry seems to have been plagued with a number of issues that may have led to his bizarre adult behavior.

If you read the indictment (PDF), you’ll understand why one report said, “You can’t make this kind of stuff up,” .

One of the indictments was related to options backdating, the cause of a $2.2 billion charge Broadcom took last year. But it was the sex and drug-related indictment that captured the media’s attention.

But the word “quiet” implies that these unfortunate souls suffer alone. With respect to Henry T. Nicholas III, that simply was not the case. The tragedy affected many, and at least with respect to his children, may continue well beyond this generation.

During the 2004 interview, Nicholas portrayed his post-Broadcom family life like this: “I have a wife and three young children. Ask any good husband and father if that isn’t a project big and important enough to fill a life. I’m not bored. My problem when I wake up every morning is figuring out how to squeeze in all the things I want to do that day. If you want to call that a problem, it’s the same one I’ve always had.”

Henry T. Nicholas III

And the Orange County Register reported that Nicholas’ sister was murdered by an ex-boyfriend in 1983.