Gates’ era ends Friday

It has been expected for years, but on June 27, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates will transition out of his day-to-day role in the company to spend more time on his global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Microsoft announced a two-year transition process to ensure that there is a smooth and orderly transfer of Gates’ daily responsibilities, and said that after July 2008 Gates would continue to serve as the company’s chairman and an adviser on key development projects.

Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie will immediately assume the title of chief software architect and begin working side by side with Gates on all technical architecture and product oversight responsibilities. Similarly, Chief Technical Officer Craig Mundie will immediately take the new title of chief research and strategy officer and will work closely with Gates to assume his responsibility for the company’s research and incubation efforts; Mundie also will partner with general counsel Brad Smith to guide Microsoft’s intellectual property and technology policy efforts.

“Our business and technical leadership has never been stronger, and Microsoft is well-positioned for success in the years ahead,” Gates said. “This was a hard decision for me. I’m very lucky to have two passions that I feel are so important and so challenging. As I prepare for this change, I firmly believe the road ahead for Microsoft is as bright as ever.”

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Gates noted that Microsoft has been steadily expanding its senior leadership in recent years, and this announcement continues a transition process that has been underway for several years. In January 2000, Gates assumed the role of chief software architect and Ballmer took over the role of CEO, responsible for all day-to-day operations and company business strategy.

Gates, 50, started Microsoft in 1975 with childhood friend Paul Allen. He took Microsoft public in 1986 and was the company’s chairman and CEO until 2000. For the past six years Gates has focused on Microsoft’s software development as the company’s chairman and chief software architect. In 2000, with his wife, he formed the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, whose assets now are $29.1 billion.

New Yahoo mail

Yahoo has decided to try to gain more users and that’s great for consumers. The company has made globally available two new e-mail domains that will give users the chance to register for the e-mail address or Yahoo! ID they have always wanted. The domains are ymail.com and rocketmail.com. E-mail addresses at the new domains will have the same Yahoo! Mail features as addresses at the yahoo.com domain and Yahoo! will help users transfer their e-mail and contacts to their new address and notify friends of their new e-mail address.

According to the company, most of the desirable e-mail addresses are long gone for the yahoo.com domain, as well as for localized versions of the namespace in countries around the world. With the two new e-mail domain choices, Yahoo! will make millions of new e-mail addresses available to the online community. The company may have made this move in part due to the results of research showing that for adults not currently using their first choice e-mail address, about half would be at least somewhat likely to change addresses should their preferred choice become available.

IT eliminates road congestion

According to the Abu Dhabi Department of Planning and Economy, road congestion is costing the UAE economy around 5 billion dirhams ($1.36 billion) a year. Other nations may not have to face the same situation now that Kyoto University and IBM's Tokyo Research Laboratory have jointly developed a system that can simulate a broad range of urban transport situations to predict what will happen if a new office building, sports arena or other major facility is built and to improve the planning of roads and public transportation.

The IBM Mega Traffic Simulator is intended to simulate transport on a large scale using drivers with a variety of driving characteristics and human intentions. The application is already being used in Japan to address the growing congestion problem with an aim to drive transport improvement remedies, such as changing mass-transit to provide more trains or buses, optimizing traffic lights route planning to reduce jams and other long-term solutions for the entire Kyoto metropolitan area.

The system simulates large-scale traffic situations involving millions of vehicles and shows the impact change will have. For example, the simulator can validate what the opening of a new shopping mall or the implementation of a traffic regulation will have on wide-area traffic.

The system provides current status of traffic and the alignment of roads to drivers, including current speed and positions of vehicles, the distance between cars, the curvature and gradient of road on which the specific vehicle is running.

City planners can use this data to model how each driver will react. In addition, by adding a variety of attributes to the model, the system can simulate traffic conditions with an eye to reducing carbon dioxide and potential accidents.

Major change at ProCurve

HP has appointed Marius Haas as senior vice president and general manager of the ProCurve Networking business as a replacement for John McHugh, who led ProCurve to second place in the networking space. Haas will oversee the group’s worldwide operations, with a focus on expanding its position as a leading networking supplier in the market. He will report to Shane Robison, executive vice president, chief strategy and technology officer at HP.

Haas previously served as HP’s senior vice president of strategy and corporate development. Now, Brian Humphries will replace Haas in that position, reporting to Robison. Humphries will be responsible for leading HP’s corporate strategic initiatives and merger and acquisition activities.

The replacement at the top of ProCurve has surprised the global networking community, particularly ProCurve’s customers. McHugh had featured on the Network World List as one of the 50 most powerful people in networking. Through his able leadership, ProCurve grew from number eleven in networking to number two in the market, based on worldwide port shipments. McHugh led ProCurve in every way, from advising on the creation of the division’s networking solutions and services to strategizing on business and market development. The depth and breadth of his knowledge in the networking space was impressive.

The only comment HP would make about McHugh’s departure was that he had “left the company.” Blogs speculate that HP’s acquisition of EDS was behind McHugh’s leaving. EDS is an alliance partner with Cisco — the company at the top of the networking world.

It was only in the last couple of years that ProCurve expanded into the Kingdom, offering a lifetime warranty on all their products and providing much needed competition in the Saudi networking arena.

GPS revenues rising

Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite technology is becoming more important as it is being embedded in an ever-wider range of mobile consumer devices to enable navigation and Location Based Services. While GPS handsets and in-vehicle navigation systems will remain the most lucrative markets, industrial applications such as network timing, land surveying and machine control are quickly gaining momentum. By 2013 Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) end-user devices and systems will generate yearly revenues of $240 billion.

“The implementation of GPS technology in mobile consumer devices such as handsets and digital cameras, and its indoor use, pose some important challenges,” said ABI Research principal analyst Dominique Bonte. “GPS technology was designed for outdoor use and specific military applications, and its weak signals and long fix times (calculation of position) are not well-suited to indoor environments and mobile devices such as digital cameras with their low power consumption and always-on requirements.”

Innovative workaround solutions based on the post-processing of the GPS signal are being developed, as is the use of assisted-GPS technology to provide location and satellite data to connected devices for faster fixes and better coverage. For deep indoor environments GPS will have to be complemented with alternative positioning technologies such as Wi-Fi, motion sensors or even TV broadcast signals. At the same time, satellite positioning technology itself is improving with the upgrade of the existing GPS system and the rollout of new GNSS systems.