Well you may notice the new headline. Trying to find 10 stories that were really interesting was sometimes a challenge. And sometimes it made it hard to then find one or two others to give a little more perspective on. So I’m shrinking the list.  Here we go:

1. I’m not sure why I’m so riveted by the patent fights between Oracle and Google over Java and Apple v. Samsung and HTC. Well maybe it’s because they may have industry-altering implications. Nobody covers it better than Florian Mueller. This latest post on Google’s flawed stance on patents is gold.
2. I love visualizations. I think that they can be very powerful. Here’s a new app that provides a visual interpretation of your Facebook friends social graph. It’s not 100% perfect, but it does a nice job of clustering real social circles. Automatically creating or suggesting to add friends to ‘circles’ in this way would be a cool, easy to use, feature for Facebook and operate much closer to real life than G+ Circles (IMO)
3. AirBnB, fresh off their big fundraising round has a PR disaster (aka #Ransackgate) as a “host” house is trashed. CEO Chesky quickly pens an article about safety for TechCrunch, but it’s easy to look concerned in retrospect. The apology that came on Monday doesn’t make me feel much better either. But this is what creeps me out about their model.
4. HP joins OpenStack along with Dell. Big, big win for the open source PaaS, which now seems destined to be the leading private/hybrid cloud stack.
5. Google launches Hotel Finder, a new “experiment” to help users find the perfect hotel. What I like about the tool is the more exact, visual way you can create a search area that’s not simply a radius around a particular location. I’m not so sure that the rate discount comparison feature is something that hotels will appreciate however.
6. Cloud Computing and SOA: 2 great tastes that taste great together. JP Morgenthal pens a nice article about what Cloud can learn from SOA and vice versa.
7. Lastly, I’m sorta sad to see Borders go (not that I ever bought books there; but the idea of fewer bookstores in general), but this is a great article written from a branding point of view.

Image courtesy of Kevin Dooley via Creative Commons.

As an NY Islander’s fan I’ll always remember legendary NY sportcaster Bill Mazer saying “7:11, lucky numbers for the good guys”, in a sports special about the Islanders winning their first Stanley Cup over the Philadelphia Flyers on an overtime goal by Bobby Nystrom (assists by Lorne Henning and Wayne Merrick).  But on to the new from the week of July 11th, 2011.

1. Aliph, the company behind the Jawbone noise cancelling Bluetooth headsets, just raised $70M. I love their products. I just got my second Jawbone, the new Era, last week. Maybe they’ll invest all that money in making better earbuds.
2. Citrix buys Cloud.com to enhance the virtualization giant’s cloud infrastructure offering. Cloud.com is already a major player in the market and has a very high-profile client in Zynga. CloudAve’s Krishnan Subramanian provides great analysis of the impact of the deal on Citrix’s business and their competitors.
3. Google beats Wall Street EPS estimates by almost $1 and shares are up.
4. The concerns around Google’s use of Java in Android seem to keep escalating, especially with Oracle asking for Google CEO Larry Page to testify and Judge Alsup’s recent notice which references ‘willful infringement’ and could result in treble damages. If you’re interested in this story, you’ve got to be reading Mueller’s blog.
5. Tom Friedman writes that you need to be thinking like a tech startup when looking for a job in today’s market.
6. Building great applications is important, but it’s wasted effort if they can’t be deployed easily. F5’s Lori MacVittie introduces the application deployment lifecycle and says the enterprise needs to focus more effort on improving the application deployment process.
7. Is Microsoft moving to a single OS unifying the desktop, phone, gaming and home media platforms? Apparently those were the hints dropped at last week’s Worldwide Partner Conference. But I don’t quite buy it unless Microsoft moves to a lighter weight Chrome-y style OS.  And it’s harder to comprehend under a Ballmer-led Microsoft. Time will tell.
8. Citrix isn’t the only virtualization technology provider working on enhancing their cloud infrastructure play, as VMWare introduces its Comprehensive Cloud Infrastructure Suite.
9. With all the hype around Google+, that just adds to the complexity of managing social profiles and across tools in the enterprise. Enter OpenSocial 2.0.
10. On Friday July 15, the ITC handed down an initial determination in Apple’s favor saying that HTC’s Android products infringed 2 Apple patents. If this determination is upheld, it can have a major impact on not just HTC, but other Android licensees. Fantastic analysis by Florian Mueller.

Apple’s announcements at WWDC are easy to get excited about, but be sure to check out the pieces by James Kobielus on big data and Florian Mueller on the latest in the Oracle-Google battle over Java.

1. The event of the week was Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference and Steve Jobs’ keynote.   The major announcements were iCloud, iOS5 and Mac OSX Lion. I would say that only those that felt a new iPhone announcement was required (i.e. Henry Blodget) were disappointed.
2. eBay keeps up their eCommerce acquisition spree, this time buying Magneto, an open source eCommerce platform and rolling it into a newly formed X.Commerce unit along with GSI Commerce (the deal just closed) and other pieces. eBay originally bought PayPal to reduce purchase friction, but now has built a broad eCommerce and Payments platform that is driving most of the growth and about 40% of the revenues for the company.
3. Choice Hotels rolled out a new cloud-based PMS system which could help induce hoteliers to switch flags. The cloud based offering eliminates OpEx costs and dramatically lowers implementation costs. The system is being used by 4,000 hotels worldwide.
4. I don’t know anyone who seems to know more about databases than Forrester’s James Kobielus. So listen to him when he says that Hadoop is the future of enterprise data warehouses. But fear not: “All of your investments in pre-Hadoop EDWs, data marts, data hubs, operational data stores, and the like are reasonably safe from obsolescence”. That’s comforting J.
5. Brilliant analysis by Florian Mueller on Oracle’s case against Google with respect to Java and Android. I’ve written about this before and it looked more like posturing then. Google’s own admission that they rejected a license offer from Sun and willfully went forward is pretty damning. This looks like real trouble.
6. Some feel the GDSs are “evil” and are limiting innovation in the travel sector, while others see that the GDS still plays a vital role in travel distribution and deliver a higher average yield while offering a completely variable distribution cost. Who doesn’t like healthy debate…or a cookie.
7. TIMN’s Nilay Patel writes that phone numbers are “…a relic of an outmoded system that both wireless and wireline carriers use to keep people trapped on their services — a false technological prison built of nothing but laziness and hostility to consumers”, yet provides some hope for the future.
8. JavaScript has made an amazing evolution from niche technology to a foundational element of the modern web.
9. Room77 closed an oversubscribed Series B round of $10.5M led by General Catalyst Partners. The financing will go toward expanding the company’s core search technology and its global index of hotel rooms.
10. Fusion-io builds more momentum for technology IPOs and investments with a successful IPO and a $2B valuation. Fusion-io, the Utah-based startup that uses flash memory to make ordinary servers run faster, technology plays an integral role in the recent mega-datacenters built by Facebook and Apple. Incidentally, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is Fusion-io’s Chief Scientist.

HP Cloud plans unveiled, OTA earnings reports and more:

1. At HP’s analyst day last month, CEO Leo Apotheker laid out HP’s plans to remake the company with three main legs to the stool: Cloud, Mobile & Big Data. Well it looks like a fourth trend – social – is how HP’s cloud plans got leaked before a formal announcement. I will say this is a more aggressive push to remake HP as a cloud platform provider than I expected. If we can believe the LinkedIn posts.
2. A recent darling of the travel industry and the pages of TechCrunch, Gogobot, the social travel recommendation engine, have now added content from Foursquare and Facebook Places. This will not only add a ton of content to Gogobot, enhancing the quality of their recommendations, but may also provide users a good reason to check in…something that has been missing since the novelty of the check-in has worn off. If you’re interested in this story, you may also want to read Joe Buehler’s PhoCusWright report entitled “Social Media in Travel Planning” [subscription required].
3. For some reason it seems I’m hearing a lot about loyalty programs recently. Here’s a study that shows that travel & hospitality gave out $17B in rewards points & miles and is the 2^nd largest industry in the $48B loyalty sector, behind retail.
4. Mobile is continuing to impact just about every part of business. Oracle announced enhancements to their BI platform that provides iPhone and iPad users with the software’s full range of capabilities, with no need to rewrite existing dashboards and reports.
5. Mobile apps in travel are only hitting the tip of the iceberg in terms of potential. Sabre Holdings Director of Mobile strategy expects that in five years “…mobile will account for the bulk of travel changes and in some cases travel bookings too”. I think he’s not aggressive enough.
6. Priceline released very strong Q1 earnings with revenues increasing by 38% and net income nearly doubling compared to the same period a year ago. International saw the strongest results with 80% revenue growth. In other Priceline news there was some executive re-shuffling, ostensibly as part of a planned succession plan.
7. Unfortunately, the news is not as positive for Orbitz who saw its quarterly loss double to $10.8M from a year ago.
8. Keeping with the OTA trend, Expedia continues its international gains with a partnership with South African Airlines to distribute hotel inventory, displacing GTA.
9. When an Open Source version of .NET known as Mono appeared on the scene in 2004, some expected Microsoft to crush the project swiftly and definitively. They did not. However, seven years later, it looks like Attachmate, Mono’s new owners, may have done just that.
10. Has the cost-benefit story behind public cloud supporters been de-bunked? Is it even the right question? Be sure to read Forrester analyst James Staten’s blog post on cloud economics too.

Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving (at least in the US). Thanks to everyone in all the other countries who I hoped worked extra hard to make up for the fact that we were in a turkey coma for a few days.

Here’s what I thought was interesting from last week, along with my usual commentary:

1. How much is Kayak worth? You can interpolate a value of $857M based on some of the information in their registration statement. But are you a believer? For a company who’s net income was just a hair over $6M through the first three quarters of 2010, it feels a little dot-commy. But they have perhaps the best iPad travel app and some great ads, so who knows. I guess as long as they don’t break out a sock puppet, they’ll probably be OK.
2. Do you remember when Novell was THE network operating system company? NetWare was king as was the 5-1/4” floppy disk. They squandered opportunities in office productivity (WordPerfect), groupware (GroupWise), network management (ZenWorks). And in tryin got reinvent itself as a Linux house with the acquisition of SUSE didn’t really work as they are a distant third to RedHat and Oracle (Sun). But hell, they did fetch $2.2B and that’s still a lotof money by any measure. But there is a measure of synergy with Attachmate and particularly NetIQ’s product lines.
3. Yay! iOS 4.2 drops and the iPhone and iPad operating systems are brought back into balance. Even better, I’ve now got multi-tasking, printing and streaming on my iPad.
4. Jury awards Oracle a $1.3B judgment against SAP in the TomorrowNow case.  This is a major blow to SAP and will also have implications in the war with HP (where Leo Apotheker, now HP CEO, but was SAP’s CEO) and in Oracle’s litigation against Google with respect to Android’s alleged infringement of Java intellectual property. Interesting times.
5. The war between airlines and the GDSs continues to escalate. So far the only winners are the lawyers.
6. As a marketer, I’m always interested in understanding buyer psychology and how it needs to play into your marketing and product development plans. So the guest post on Tnooz on the subject was of interest to me. However, I’m not totally in agreement with with everything in the article.  I agree that different segments of the market have different expectations and may require different experiences to move them to action and develop brand loyalty. But I think the point about social proof was only partially addressed. Social proof only matters if I believe that the people reviewing, commenting or contributing in some way have similar interests and desires as I do. And this is an area that I think many travel companies are missing out on really integrating with users’ social graph
7. This one made me laugh. In Japan they actually NTT DOCOMO had to invoke Darth Vader to promote the Android-based Samsung Galaxy S against the iPhone. The iPhone has about two-thirds of the market in Japan.  Could they do more to further position Google as the Evil Empire?
8. Timothy O’Neill-Dunne has a great article on the dynamic pricing conundrum (once you get past the romance novel graphic…TOD is such a softie). The cost and response time implications are particularly interesting. I would love to see some of the data behind his assumptions.
9. It looks like the release of Google ChromeOS is growing closer.  But I’m almost surprised that so much interest seems to be invested in what amounts to a netbook OS. I mean there’s not even that much interest in netbooks anymore as the momentum is behind tablets…even ones that won’t ship for months like the RIM Playbook. And even within Google there seems to be conflicting points of view as to the future of the Chrome OS.
10. Mobissimo becomes the first company to offer a travel search engine within Facebook.  It’s interesting, but I’m not quite sure if it’s differentiating or defensible just yet. But I am sure that Dennis got the Tom & Jerry analogy wrong vis-à-vis Kayak. Jerry Mouse is the cute one who outsmarts Tom Cat. And it seems Kayak, led by the handsome Steve Hafner, who has massively outraised Mobissimo and is on the cusp of an IPO, looks more the part of Jerry in my estimation.

Sorry for the delay, but I was traveling to Phoenix for the PhoCusWright Conference on Monday and then time sort of got away from me. But enough with the “dog ate my homework” excuses and on with the items I hope you didn’t miss last week:

1. A major shift in the technology analyst world as Ray Wang leads a “constellation” of star analysts to form Constellation Research Group. Ray leaves analyst supergroup Altimeter Group and is the second major defection in the past 2 months (mobile guru Michael Gartenberg left to join Gartner). Ray is joined by industry luminaries Phil Fersht, Sameer Patel, Vinnie Mirchandani, Frank Scavo and Oliver Marks among others.
2. Airbnb raises $7.2M from Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners to accelerate product development and accelerate global expansion.
3. The standoff between Orbitz and American Airlines escalates. Travelport raises one lawsuit and the war of words continues.
4. HP continues to move away from being a travel services provider to being a direct technology provider with the licensing of RezView NG hotel distribution platform from Pegasus Solutions. Certainly a shot in the arm to Pegasus, but technology companies who have viewed HP/EDS as a reliable implementation partner should now be wary and begin to view them as a competitor. And perhaps clients should wonder whether they’re being offered the best in class solution or just the HP one. Anyone have a view?
5. On a related note, 2 days later, Amadues launches their new SaaS hotel platform. Let me use acronyms to shortcut the story: AHP = CRS + PMS + GDS. The question is whether it will equal new business and help Amadeus create a beachhead in the hotel sector in the US.
6. Oracle and Apple team up to bring Java to Mac OSX. While this will play well to many developers, I believe the real target of the announcement was Google, who is increasingly being cast as the only major tech company who is not abiding by Oracle’s rules regarding Java. Of course in the same week Google ratchets up the stakes with their latest response to Oracle’s lawsuit.
7. Norm Rose tries to cut through the rhetoric in the direct connect v. GDS ‘discussion’. Unfortunately, the truth is that both sides seem as likely to propose a compromise as the Democrats and Republicans.
8. The Silicon Valley talent shortage redux.  So far no free Porsche Boxters.
9. The money is starting to flow into tech startups again and competition for top tech talent is rising again and as a result so are salaries. Now for many these are signs of optimism and excitement. But star-VC Fred Wilson urges people not to get too excited.
10. There was a lot of buzz about Rockmelt, the new social-savvy browser, backed by Netscape wunderkind, and Silicon Valley VC savant, Marc Andreessen, but as I read what was written in the blogosphere, I didn’t see what the big deal was about. Neither did ZDNet’s Phil Wainwright.

As a Tennessee Titans fan I’m still trying to decide whether to be happy or concerned at the acquisition of Randy Moss. Thoughts?

Anyway, on to the best of the week that was:

1. The vacation rental market is heating up and while Google hopes to get a piece with their investment in Homeaway, Pegasus and the VMRA have other ideas.  Even better is this piece by OpenTravel Alliance’s Valyn Perini.
2. Facebook enhances their platform for mobile with single-click sign on using Facebook Connect for mobile apps and opening up their Places API. With over 200M mobile Facebook users already (40% penetration) they don’t need to develop their own phone. They’re already available on every smartphone and many modestly intelligent feature phones. From a travel perspective, the important news is that they’re expanding their support for businesses to provide local deals as a reward for check-ins.
3. It’s always more fun to watch a good game of chicken from the sidelines. This one’s a doozy. American Airlines has threatened to remove all AA flights from Orbitz as of December 1. If it in fact happens, who do you think gets hurt worse?  J.P. Morgan Airlines analyst, Jamie Baker adds some insight into the financial implications.
4. Dell buys SaaS integration house Boomi. Kudos and great exit to Bob Moul, Rick Nucci and the other folks at Boomi. At first I didn’t see this as a great fit for Dell, but CloudAve’s Krishnan a reasonable explanation when he puts it in context with Dell’s acquisition of Perot Systems and their attempt to remake themselves as a services company like IBM and HP before them.  However, I’m still not convinced and think that Phil Wainwright may have the right perspective.
5. Robert Cole goes inside the numbers of Amadeus’ recent Travel Gold Rush 2020 report.
6. Is this the beginning of the social graph cold war? Facebook, which has been chastised for their sometimes lackadaisical position regarding the security/sharing of their members’ personal information, has become very much like the Hotel California – allowing data from third-party sources to come in, but it…or any other personal information…can never leave. Well I guess Google finally said “enough” and has stopped Facebook from allowing users to invite more friends to join by importing their Gmail contacts.
7. Everbread, a relatively new entrant to the flight search engine game announced 3 new clients for their Haystack product (almost a perfect product name, eh?). No disrespect to fellow Tnooz nodes, Stephen Ekbergh and Timothy O’Neill-Dunne, but while nice wins, Everbread still has yet to break through with any premier clients. But I guess at this point positive trends, not raw revenues are the best measure.
8. Good article talking about the value of multi-tenancy from a business alignment perspective, not merely a cost of operations point of view.
9. I think that we can all agree that Farelogix’s Jim Davidson is “not a witch”, but he is nothing if not combative. Another volley in his was with the GDS’ as he responds to Sabre’s 20 Questions.
10. What’s another billion to Larry? Oracle buys eCommerce player ATG to enhance m-Commerce play. Analysis from Forrester’s Brian Walker.

A lot of big news last week from Microsoft, Oracle and IBM agree on the future of Java, the iPad is coming to Verizon and notes from Amadeus Horizons 2010 in San Francisco.

1. Oracle and IBM team up to provide a unified future for Java. Should be good for the developer community for sure. But maybe not so much for Google with respect to the Java patent infringement suit concerning the Android mobile OS. Altimeter Group’s Ray Wang breaks it down.
2. Bing search goes social with Facebook integration.  Microsoft and Facebook announced a new partnership that brings Facebook “Like” and OpenGraph profile search to Bing using “Instant Personalization”.  I expect this will have a big impact for travel, especially for hotel, restaurant and tour/activity search and portends a big challenge for companies like TripAdvisor. And not for nothing, it’s definitely another shot across the bow at Google from both Microsoft and Facebook.
3. Microsoft “Launches” Windows Phone 7…phones to actually follow in a few weeks. While many seem to like the Metro UI, few seem to think it has a chance to succeed. Scoble says all WP7 has going for it is Office integration and that’s not enough. Mary-Jo Foley says Microsoft’s real target for WP7 is feature phone owners. But most feature phones are free or close to it. The initial price with contract for the WP7 devices is $199. This will be a tough road to hoe.
4. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Spirit Airlines’ “edgy” marketing sure gets results.
5. The iPad is coming to Verizon and the iPhone won’t be far behind. Only a few more months and I’m free of my Pre!
6. Amadeus completed its bi-annual Airline IT conference, Horizons 2010. Tnooz’s Dennis Schaal recaps the first day. On the second day the highlight was a terrific talk about the future of technology in travel by Forrester analyst Henry Harteveldt.
7. The worst kept secret is out: Amadeus officially puts Opodo up for sale…er, is “evaluating strategic alternatives” with JP Morgan.
8. A terrific look at the private sale model by Matt Zito.
9. Is there such a thing as too much Cloud Security? Cisco’s Christopher Hoff poses the question.
10. IDC Staranalyst Michael Fauscette keeps the great posts coming. This time he suggests a couple of important fixes to remove barriers to creating a collaborative, social enterprise

Well Google has responded to Oracle’s patent infringement suit over the alleged improper use of Java in the Android operating system. While they actually do make a legal argument, the rhetoric around their positionreminds me of something that you’d hear at an elementary school playground (from TechCrunch):

“It’s disappointing that after years of supporting open source, Oracle turned around to attack not just Android, but the entire open source Java community with vague software patent claims. Open platforms like Android are essential to innovation, and we will continue to support the open source community to make the mobile experience better for consumers and developers alike.”

Well boo-freaking-hoo.

First of all this ain’t a vague patent claim and it’s not about silly stuff like who came up with a button to complete a transaction in one click. It’s not fringe use of technology is the core underpinnings of the Android OS.

And the cries of attacking “the entire open source Java community” and how “Open platforms like Android are essential to innovation” are disingenuous and weak with the sole purpose to engender a false sense of sympathy.  Where was all this feeling of openness in their joint “proposal” with Verizon to crush Net Neutrality and create a tiered Internet structure, especially regarding the mobile web.

Some may wonder whether Oracle should be allowed to change their mind. The truth is that companies change their minds whenever it suits their purposes. People do it in their daily lives all the time. When circumstances change, your perspective and objectives change — and you’re supposed to adjust accordingly. Google did it regarding Net Neutrality to support it’s partner Verizon, who is almost single-handedly responsible for Android’s rise as a mobile OS. And Oracle did it after they acquired Sun and all the resulting IP (if you think they bought it just for the hardware revenues, you’re either naive or crazy — I’ll let you pick).  Some may say “It’s almost never about what’s ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, it’s what improves the stock price” and many times they may be right…but there are concepts like fiduciary duty to shareholders too.

Engadget does an excellent job of analyzing the actual legal issues, so I’ll just refer you to their article to learn more.

What’s your POV? Who’s right and who’s wrong? Do you even care?

Interesting week. AA continues playing a game of chicken with the GDSs, AngelGate, Oracle Open World and more:

1. The game of chicken between American Airlines and the GDSs continue.
2. And in a related note, Open AXIS Group – who’s founding members include American Airlines and Farelogix –  denies the GDSs a dedicated seat on the board.
3. Another day, another billion dollar software acquisition. This time IBM buys Netezza for $1.7B to bring “analytics to the masses”. That brings IBMs BI and analytics software buying spree to over $3.5B in just over a year. You tell me when it feels like they have a cohesive offering.
4. Intrigue and Money – what a great combination. And it was all on display one evening at Bin 38 in San Francisco in what became known as AngelGate, first reported on by TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington. Then the smoke turned into a conflagration with dueling outed emails from some of Silicon Valley’s premier Angels and further commentary by Robert Scoble.
5. A cast of thousands descended upon San Francisco for this year’s Oracle Open World. While keynotes were less than compelling (to be kind) and kabuki theatre starring Larry and Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff, there was a lot of important announcements with Fusion apps taking center stage.
6. Just goes to show the expected value of search in travel as SNCF Voyages purchases French metasearch startup Liligo gets acquired for somewhere north of €20M.
7. Google-ITA gets its first “win” with an expansion of the relationship with US Airways. Unfortunately flight search can’t impact in-flight customer service and comfort.
8. Virgin to enter the hotel business with $500M burning a hole in their wallets. Should create an interesting challenge to Starwood’s W brand and other boutique hotels.
9. Startup TruPrice provides a total car rental cost calculator that juggles more than 10,000 different fees. I think this is great, especially since adds-ons, airport fees and taxes make up a greater percentage of the total cost than any other aspect of travel.
10. Gartner released a new report on Measuring and Managing IT Debt (the amount of money needed to clear out backlogged projects and deferred maintenance) now estimated at $500 billion globally, and is expected to double over the next five years. Enterprise Irregular Dennis Moore explains what “IT Debt” is and explores how SaaS can help you reduce, although not eliminate it.