Jim Clark, co-founder of both Silicon Graphics and Netscape, has quit as chairman of Shutterfly, the digital photography web site, complaining about the restrictions Sarbanes-Oxley regulations impose. In a letter to Shutterfly management released with an SEC filing, Clark said, 'Sarbox dictates that I not chair any committee due to the size of my holdings, not be on the compensation committee because of the loan I once made to the company, not be on the governance committee. It even dictates that some other board member must carry out the perfunctory duties of the chairman. What's left is liability and constraints on stock transactions, neither of which excite me.'

Even though I write for SYS-CON, I've never publicly complimented them. But this time they really deserve a credit. SYS-CON will present the AJAXWorld 2007 Conference & Expo 2007 East in March. Usually, attendees have very limited access to speakers during conferences, and SYS-CON Events came out with a simple but smart idea - yesterday they have created an Ask The Faculty Forum, where anyone can post questions to the conference speakers and faculty. And you do not even have to attend the conference to participate in this forum. It's a very nice idea, or rather 'Idea 2.0' Speakers should visit the forum and answer the questions to promote their sessions, and software developers will have a chance to correspond with well known people in the industry. Yours truly will run Adobe Flex Hands-on Workshop during this event, so feel free to post relevant questions - it does not matter if you are planning to be there or not. I'm sure, other event organizers will start copycatting SYS-CON, which is a win-win situation for everyone.

BroadRelay Holdings today announced its shareholders approved a name change for the corporate entity to SIVOO, Inc. The company, which has centered efforts on expanding and enhancing its SIVOO(TM) property, the first Internet TV network of multicultural on-demand entertainment programming, feels the new name better reflects its business strategy as well as recent financial and marketplace growth, fueled largely by its flagship products SIVOO-TV(TM) and SIVOO(TM) branded IPTV Channels. The name change is effective immediately.

GameZnFlix, Inc. (OTCBB: GZFX), an onlineprovider of video games and DVD movies for rent or purchase, announcedtoday that it has chosen VitalStream, Inc. (NASDAQ: VSTH), a world leaderin rich media delivery, as its content delivery provider for offering moviedownloads.

Just as 2006 was the year of streaming video and the birth of 'Internet TV,' 2007 is going to be the move beyond infancy toward the long-awaited and complete convergence of television and the Internet. Now that broadband is available to more than100 million households worldwide, every corporate Website and every media company will now provide video content, not to mention live and interactive video Webinars and on-demand Webcasts, in order to remain competitive.

NaviSite,Inc. (NASDAQ: NAVI), a leading provider of application management,professional services and secure content delivery solutions forenterprises, today announced that Baeble Music, Inc. (www.baeblemusic.com)has selected NaviSite's Managed Services andContent Delivery and AccelerationServices to deliver professional-grade Indie rock videos to fans aroundthe world. By utilizing NaviSite's flexible, scalable and reliable ContentDelivery and Acceleration Services, Baeble gives Indie music lovers areal-time front row seat in the intimate venues where their favorite bandsplay. Baeble's online music community is designed to inspire theindividuality and creativity that define the Independent Music Movement.

At the end of each year, when SYS-CON informally polls its globe-girdling network of software developers, industry executives, commentators, investors, writers, and editors, our question is always the same: where's the industry going next year?

Google is going to try to make itself stickier as far as employee recruitment and retention goes. It is currently hiring or trying to hire a reported 1,500 people a quarter. Anyway, beginning in April it will have an internal market where its non-executive staff can auction off their vested stock options. They call these things transferable stock options or TSOs and unidentified financial institutions are supposed to buy the options presumably at a premium to the spread - even if they're underwater - as a hedge - or as a short.

Global Source Directory, a Hong Kong based Internet start-up, is launching a new business-to- business information platform in December. Using the latest Web technology, the site will connect product suppliers and service providers to customers both locally and internationally. The site is being designed to significantly reduce the time spent by busy professionals searching for business contacts.

xFX JumpStart announced the release of DHTML menu builder 4.20. This major upgrade is the web site navigation solution that allows the design and implementation of all kinds of web menus in a completely visual and friendly way. Web site designers and developers are now able to enrich their web sites with astonishing javascript-based navigation menus without ever having to write a single line of code.

HitTail, a new product that reveals the least utilized, most promising keyword suggestions to boost search traffic, has added a feature, Your HitTail. Your HitTail provides an AJAX-based graph showing how writing about the topics recommended by HitTail increases the head and lengthens the tail of search traffic over time. A slider function within this tool marks each month's progress and shows whether the head and tail are continuously growing-the sign of healthy search traffic.

Money-starved Israeli start-up iROWS, a browser-based spreadsheet that kicked off in January, is going to shut down on December 31 because Google has sucked up its two founders to beef up the internally developed Spreadsheets widgetry that Google is using to frighten Microsoft.

In the first joint and open initiative to improve the Web crawl process for search engines, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, have announced support for Sitemaps 0.90 (www.sitemaps.org), a free and easy way for webmasters to notify search engines about their websites and be indexed more comprehensively and efficiently, resulting in better representation in search indices. For users, Sitemaps enables higher quality, fresher search results. An initiative initially driven by Yahoo and Google, Sitemaps builds upon the pioneering Sitemaps 0.84, released by Google in June of 2005, which is now being adopted by Yahoo and Microsoft to offer a single protocol to enhance Web crawling efforts.

AOL has announced that it has acquired financial news and information search technology company, The Relegence Corporation of New York, NY. AOL's acquisition agreement with privately-held Relegence was signed and closed on Monday, November 6th, 2006. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Relegence and its 60 employees will continue to be headquartered in New York, with offices in London and Tel Aviv.

Microsoft has announced U.S. availability of Virtual Earth 3D, a new online mapping interface that is part of the Live Search offering, providing consumers with a three-dimensional experience to search, browse and explore the real world online.

Google has announced the release of an innovative new mobile client, Gmail for mobile devices. This freely downloadable Java application delivers Gmail users the look and feel of Gmail through a fast, feature-rich interface that's optimized for handheld devices. With the release of this client, Google is taking one more step toward its goal of providing users with quick and easy access to the information they need, when they need it.

Google has launched the Google Custom Search Engine, a new way to bring tailored search to websites and blogs. In just minutes, anyone can use the Google search platform to create a search engine focused on any content they like - from Hollywood heartthrobs, to favorite sports team, to personal hobbies, and more.

Google has Released the 2006 Google Earth Election Guide. Conceived by Google Earth engineers who found it difficult to find aggregated election information online about races country-wide, the 2006 Google Earth Election Guide serves as an easily accessible resource for users to find information about candidates, voter registration, and campaign financing for the November 7th elections.

Google barely had time to give Microsoft the finger between it's chomping down on YouTube and spitting out an Office-wannabe version of its Writely web-based collaborative word processor bundled with its software-as-a-service Google Spreadsheets. The Writely brand, which Google acquired in March when it bought the Upstartle start-up on undisclosed terms, has disappeared.

Specializing in 'Total Solutions Hosting' Apollo Hosting provides everything their customers need to build, sell and market their websites. Their web servers were processing over half a million unsolicited spam emails on a daily basis. Apollo's Vice President of Operations, Don McLeman was I.T. Manager at the time and oversaw the switch to CanIt-PRO. ?We were fairly happy with our anti-spam filter at the time, but they wanted to renegotiate the contract,? McLeman explains, ?this would have been expensive for us and bad for our clients.?

SYS-CON Events (www.events.sys-con.com) announced today that the first international 'AJAXWorld(TM) Conference & Expo' (www.ajaxworldexpo.com), taking place on October 3-4, 2006, at theSanta Clara Convention Center, California, will offer AJAXWorld University - Developer Bootcamp program. The AJAX Developer Bootcamp will take placeon Monday, October 2, 2006, one day before the conference opens.

MSN has announced the U.S. beta release of Soapbox on MSN Video, a user-uploaded video service that makes it easy for people to express themselves by uploading, discovering and sharing personal videos with the Soapbox community and others around the world. Soapbox will be available on MSN Video and will be deeply integrated throughout Microsoft?s portfolio of online services, including Windows Live Spaces and Windows Live Messenger.

Google on Monday started the second phase of its push into Microsoft's desktop turf. It's wrapped up its Gmail e-mail, Google Talk instant messaging, Google Calendar and WYSIWYG Google Page Creator web page publisher in a free, ad-based, highly scalable, software-as-a-service package it calls Google Apps for Your Domain. It calls the package a beta and an expansion on the Gmail for Your Domain that it released in February that captured hundreds of thousands of users.

A new social web service based on audio records, bookmarks, news and notes - folkd.com - has been launched. Available as a a browser plug-in for Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft IE, Folkd allows users to save content, record audio comments, rank, recommend web pages, and look into topic-related content of other community members - all while during the actual surfing process.

TransMedia Group said today that it has secured what ir hopes will become the second tier's leading search engine, Kahzam.com.

BEA Systems has been recognized by its solution-provider partners and readers of CMP Technology's VARBusiness for the outstanding satisfaction levels that it provides to them and has been lauded in the Annual Report Card (ARC) award program. The company received top honors for Product Innovation in the Web/SOA Infrastructure and Integration Software Category from the biweekly magazine that provides strategic insight to technology integrators, at an awards ceremony held on Aug. 15, at the XChange '06 Conference in St. Louis.

BEA Systems invites the world to register for its flagship global forums, BEAWorld 2006. The EMEA event one of three planned worldwide events is scheduled to take place at the Hilton Prague, Oct. 10-11. The destination for Service-Oriented Architecture thought leaders and Liquid Thinkers, the annual BEAWorld Forums are where executives, architects, developers, and IT can meet to discuss, network and share best practices for ways to optimize and transform businesses.

A few days into the experiment 'complete with the usual start-up hiccups like trouble moving projects off Sourceforge and doubts about the efficacy of the site's production use' Google's new project has attracted upwards of 2,000 projects already.

digital-telepathy, Inc., a San Diego digital marketing agency has joined SEMPO, Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, to contribute to the awareness of search engine marketing best practices and to highlight the benefits of integrating search into your overall digital marketing strategy.

Web CEO, is the vendor of one of the flagship products in the SEO software market, Web CEO. Like its competitors, Web CEO can analyze an HTML page to discover how it can be improved for better rankings in the search engines. Unlike its competitors, Web CEO grounds its advice upon the unique in-depth research of the search engines' algorithms - and this research has been finally disclosed for public review, as per the company.

'We worked closely with Google during their initial development and testing of Google Checkout,' said Ken Powell, chief executive officer, Marketworks. 'As a result of this collaboration, we are able to offer a comprehensive integration of Google Checkout into our multi-channel ecommerce offering. Marketworks continues to focus on being the world's best at presenting our customers products to buyers, facilitating the attraction, interaction and ultimately the transaction of goods online. With this new offering, I believe Google will become a very important partner for the company and our customers.'

Yahoo and 3 Group have announced a global agreement in which Yahoo will provide its portfolio of rich mobile services to 3 worldwide. Under the terms of the agreement, the two companies will work together to offer key Internet services such as Yahoo Search, Yahoo Mobile Web, Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Mail, and Yahoo Go for Mobile on 3?s networks around the world. The companies also plan to make additional Yahoo services available to 3 subscribers in the future.

Google has announced the launch of Google Checkout (http://checkout.google.c om), a checkout process that makes online shopping faster, more convenient and more secure for Google users. Google Checkout offers an easy and trusted checkout option that enables shoppers to purchase from participating stores with a single Google login. It also works with Google's search advertising program, AdWords, to help merchants acquire new customers and process all or a portion of their Checkout sales for free.

Unisys has announced the powerful and open models ever in its ClearPath line of mainframe systems, as well as software that enables customers to transform and modernize their application environments by creating Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs).

WSO2, a new start-up creating open source platforms for Web services, launched its premier product, Tungsten, and announced that the company has received an investment from Intel Capital, the venture capital arm of Intel. Founded by technology pioneers, the WSO2 team is comprised of individuals instrumental in establishing Web services and SOAP standards, and longtime contributors to the Apache open source project.

BEA Systems has announced continued momentum in the public sector with new state and local government customers selecting the BEA AquaLogic User Interaction products for its collaborative and service-oriented platform. As the public sector strives to manage the myriad of transactions between citizens and their government to effectively serve the people, they can no longer justify unnecessary duplication of infrastructure that could otherwise be shared and can turn to BEA technology to aid in their adoption of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).

BEA Systems has announced new results demonstrating that customers using BEA's JRockit, the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), on servers powered by new Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors (formerly code-named Woodcrest), demonstrated approximately a 2X performance gain over competing JVMs running on similar hardware. This increase can help provide customers with a better price-performance ratio and improved energy efficiency from the new Dual-Core Intel Xeon based servers.

Google has announced the availability of several mobile services that further demonstrate its commitment to making the mobile phone a more convenient and dependable device for accessing useful and relevant information while on the go. Already available in U.S. and U.K. English, mobile phone users will now have access to Google's mobile services in a range of languages including French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Chinese and Turkish.

Yahoo and FIFA have announced that fans are visiting FIFAworldcup.com, the official Web site of the 2006 FIFA World CUP, in record numbers. FIFAworldcup.com is jointly hosted, produced and marketed by Yahoo and FIFA.

Oracle has announced that Oracle Portal 10g, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, has been positioned in the Leaders Quadrant of the 2006 Gartner Horizontal Portal Products Magic Quadrant. According to Gartner, demand for horizontal portal products remains strong, driving most enterprise portal deployments.