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Out of the rubble emerged a new generation of start-ups that went on to operate under the Web 2.0 rubric. And since 2002, the innovation in consumer and social-network services has been the more interesting story in tech.

But this latest market upset takes place at a very inconvenient time. (When is it not inconvenient?) It’s hard to know exactly, but most of these start-ups aren’t swimming in cash. Before it’s over, this may become a particularly hard transition for companies that depend on Internet advertising to pay the bills. Especially companies that operate according to the “freemium” model.

(Credit:
CNET News)

Give your service away for free, possibly ad-supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc., then offer premium-priced, value-added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base.

The deflating of the Internet bubble, which began in 2000, wasn’t a one-day blowup. Instead, the pain was spread over months and only ended after dozens of one-time high-flying technology companies got obliterated.

George Carlin said that when you live in the United States, you’re guaranteed a front row seat to the freak show. Events of the last few weeks only reconfirm how right he was.

If past is prologue, the technology business may emerge changed, and ready for the next big challenge. But that’s the longer-term perspective. In the meantime, there’s that matter of meeting payroll. “Freemium” was a grand experiment but its practitioners don’t have the luxury of time any more.

But first, think back a few years.

The idea is predicated on the assumption that you’ll be around long enough to collect. In normal times, that might work. Does anyone believe we’re living in normal times? Even if Bush convinces congressional renegades in his party who opposed the Wall Street bailout, this economy’s getting worse by the week.

What’s “freemium”? Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures nicely defines how the model is supposed to work.

Today, Sharpcast is launching the public beta of its new file synchronization product, SugarSync (download it from Download.com). Like other sync tools (FolderShare [recently updated] and BeInSync), it performs the useful service of automatically keeping the data on one PC the same as on another. This is a great service for people who use more than one PC — a laptop and a desktop, for example. It can also be used as a crude workgroup file system (see Groove). I got a tour of the product recently from Sharpcast CEO Gibu Thomas and took some time to experiment with it afterwards.

SugarSync has another advantage not related to its architecture: It’s incredibly easy and straightforward to set up. By default it creates a “Magic Briefcase” folder on each of your systems that’s kept in sync among your devices, but you can also point the product at any other directories you like.

With your data stored on a server, though, there’s a security concern. All SugarSync data is encrypted both on the servers and in transit, but guess who holds the encryption keys? SugarSync. While they are stored separately, there’s no way an individual can protect the company from accessing his or her data. Thomas told me Sharpcast may offer users the capability to set their own encryption keys in the future.

SugarSync can make hosted online photo galleries that are synchronized to your PC or Mac hard disk.

Setup and configuration really couldn't be easier.

There are advantages: Since files are stored online, SugarSync is a viable online backup product. It’s a bit feature-light in that regard (there’s no version tracking of files, and no system rebuild function), but still workable. Also, the product’s servers can transcode files for display or playback on other devices: If you try to view a synced picture on a mobile device, SugarSync only displays the small version of it, and your PC doesn’t have to be on to serve or upload the file. And with server-based sync, not only do you not have to make sure your multiple PCs are on at the same time to make the sync work, you also get Web access to your files even when all your personal PCs are off. You can also share files from the Web service directly, and SugarSync has a nice utility for making sharable photo galleries (example).

SugarSync is very different from computer-to-computer sync tools like FolderShare and BeInSync. These systems allow multiple PCs to update each other directly. But they can only transfer files when both PCs are online at the same time. SugarSync uses a Web-based clearinghouse for files: Everything you want to sync goes up to a server in the sky, and when another computer you’re keeping in sync comes online, it connects to the server to get and send the latest file updates.

It is, however, expensive, unless it’s used only to store a small subset of a users’ files. That’s counter to the product’s philosophy: you have to think about what you’re going to sync and what not. Until the price comes down to a real-world level at realistic storage capacities, SugarSync won’t reasonably do for many people what it would actually be best at.

SugarSync also has a strong mobile component. Not only can you view your synced files on your smartphone, but there’s a mobile app that hooks into your phone’s camera and will automatically upload new pictures to a directory on your PCs. The Windows smartphone app I tried was fast and easy to use, unlike many other mobile media access products I’ve seen that are Web-based and a little clunky.

SugarSync is a unique product. Properly configured, it can give its users access to all their data from anywhere — any computer they own or any Web-connected device. It can completely free users from caring where their data is stored, and that’s a powerful thing. And while it’s a great “hard drive in the sky,” it doesn’t force you to change your work habits and rely solely on online storage.

Despite its middleman architecture, when both sender and receiver are online, SugarSync is incredibly fast — faster than FolderShare, which I’ve been using for years. However, there is quite literally a price for server-moderated sync: Someone’s got to pay for the storage and the bandwidth on the SugarSync servers. P2P sync products that simply connect users’ PCs together can more realistically be run as free or flat-rate services, but SugarSync will cost $49 a year for 10GB of storage; $149 a year for 100GB.

There's a good mobile site as well as a dedicated smartphone app.

There’s also a
Mac client.

(Credit:
Rafe Needleman)

Also, be sure to check back next week when we’ll have a full Prizefight between the
iPhone 3G and T-Mobile G1–five furious rounds of battle, judging everything from navigation to multimedia to call quality.

In this quick Prizefight, CNET TV’s Brian Tong and I pit the two against each other in a 3G speed test, clocking the time it takes for each device to load CNET News from start to finish. Now, there are a couple of things to remember. Both smartphones use different Web browsers, and there are a number of factors that might affect 3G speeds, such as the area you live in and how many people are on the network at one time. However, in the spirit of friendly competition and out of pure curiosity, we decided to go for it. Check out the video to see who comes out on top.

The T-Mobile G1 is officially on sale now, but maybe you’re still on the fence about it. What’s Google Android all about? What’s up with the design? Is it better than the iPhone 3G? Perhaps you’re wondering which of these 3G smartphones is faster? Well, glad you asked.

Viacom-owned MTV Networks has built in community features through its Flux technology, so that members can comment on videos, rate them (not surprisingly, Rick Astley’s 1988 song “Never Gonna Give You Up,” which has experienced a wild surge of Internet-meme popularity in the past year, is near the top of the chart), and share them on Facebook, MySpace, and blogs.

So I leave you with Weezer’s “Buddy Holly,” one of my favorite videos of the ’90s, back when we all thought they’d turn out to be a dweeby, one-hit-wonder novelty act:

It seems like the only complaint that the cranky digital-media press can come up with for MTVMusic.com, the legendary pop-culture brand’s new music video hub, is, “Why wasn’t this here years ago?”

Yeah, yeah, we know. There are licensing issues, especially for all those campy ’80s videos that haven’t seen the light of day in years. And launching a product prematurely could have led to bad press, as opposed to the “wow, we like this” response that MTV Music seems to have gotten thus far.

There are a couple of ads for Rhapsody, MTV’s music retail partner, but I haven’t seen any actual “Buy This Song” links accompanying videos. That’d be a good move for MTV.

The issue, of course, is that most music videos are already available on YouTube, and it’s not clear yet whether people will change their browsing habits and actually go over to MTV Music for videos now.

Deneb and Shanghai are essentially shrunken versions of the integrated quad-core Phenom and Barcelona processors introduced last year. AMD is well behind Intel in introducing 45-nanometer processors, as Intel’s first models shipped in November, and has set an ambitious goal of switching from 65nm chipmaking technology to 45nm technology in 18 months; it usually takes 2 years.

The support for Microsoft’s DirectX 10 technology allows more sophisticated games designed using the technology to run on AMD-based PCs, said Niles Burbank, a product manager in AMD’s graphics division. Perhaps not nearly as well as those games would on a more expensive gaming system, but at least they will work.

PCs using the chipsets will start arriving in the second quarter from all of AMD’s current partners, including the big guys like Hewlett-Packard and Dell. There will be two varieties, the 780G with more performance and the 780V for the truly cost-conscious buyer.

AMD is also using CeBit, held in Hannover, Germany, to make a manufacturing announcement related to its chip-making factories in Dresden. The company will formally announce that it has begun shipping samples of “Deneb” and “Shanghai,” its first 45-nanometer processors for desktops and servers, respectively.

AMD is looking to put a troubled 2007 behind it with a pair of announcements Tuesday highlighting its desktop chipsets and manufacturing advances.

AMD was a little late to the party when it comes to delivering a standardized CPU and chipset combination, but its acquisition of ATI Technologies allowed it to catch up to Intel. Intel’s integrated graphics division has struggled over the past few years, and AMD has tried to seize upon that weakness as a competitive balance to Intel’s current advantage in just about every other part of the market.

The company plans on Tuesday at the CeBit conference to unveil its most up-to-date integrated graphics products for low- to mid-range desktop PCs in the new 780 series chipsets. The chipsets allow moderately priced PC buyers to run games based on the DirectX10 technology and to get additional performance out of discrete graphics cards if they need more juice.

Integrated graphics chipsets are used in the majority of PCs sold in the world. They’re designed to provide PC users with basic graphics technology at a lower cost than adding a discrete graphics chip from a company like Nvidia or ATI.

And if customers of a 780-series PC decide they’d like a little more performance, they can use AMD’s Hybrid Graphics technology to add in a discrete graphics card and get the combined benefit of both the integrated graphics and the discrete card. According to AMD, most times the integrated graphics technology in a generic chipset is disabled when a PC owner adds a discrete card to the mix.

(Credit:
New York Times)

The New York Times, for example, has created an application with AIR that will enable people to transfer content, such as Web links and maps, from their desktops to mobile devices.

A version of AIR for Linux is expected later this year, he said. Adobe will also create versions that run on mobile devices in the future.

The Mozilla Foundation, makers of the
Firefox Web browser, launched a project called Prism that brings offline access to Web applications.

Developers can use any Web development kit, such as Ajax frameworks, to write applications that will run on AIR or they can use Flex.

At the company’s Engage event in San Francisco on rich Internet application design, executives will announce the availability of AIR 1.0, a free download for Windows and Macintosh.

AIR is software for making Web applications appear like more like desktop programs. Applications can run offline, access data on a person’s hard drive, have a desktop icon, and run without the need of a browser.

These Web-native desktop applications have become an active area of software development–Adobe says that there are over 100 AIR applications–and alternatives to AIR are starting to appear.

Adobe has been working on AIR for at least two years, when Kevin Lynch, now Adobe’s chief technology officer, first publicly spoke about it. The company plans to build AIR versions of many of its Web applications, including photo-imaging application Photoshop Express and Premier Express for editing video, he said.

Salesforce.com on Monday will release a free toolkit that will allow developers to write applications on its Force.com hosted development platform using Flex and AIR. The main driver for bringing offline access to Web applications is mobility, said Adam Gross, vice president of developer marketing at Salesforce.com.

“We’re just getting back the lost treasures of the desktop that we lost when we went to the Web,” Lynch said.

Adobe made the low-end edition of Flex open source to lure developers who prefer open-source and standards-based software because it does not tie them to one proprietary technology or vendor.

The New York Times is releasing a beta of an AIR application called ShifD (seen here on an iPhone), which enables users to move content–including Web links, notes, and Web maps–from their desktop computer to a mobile device.

Also on Monday, Adobe will release Flex 3.0, its application development tool that is now free and open-source. Another development tool, called BlazeDS, for linking Flex applications to back-end business applications, will also be released into open source as planned.

Adobe Systems on Monday is set to finally release Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) software, which is on the leading edge of a movement to make Web applications act more like traditional desktop applications.

“This is a very, very important time in Adobe’s history. We’ve made some big shifts–Postscript, multimedia, the Web,” he said. “Rich Internet applications is one of those important transitions.”

Lynch said that AIR is far ahead of what Prism offers but he expects many other platforms that bridge the Web with desktops to emerge.

Lynch said that Adobe intends to use open-source software and practices more. He noted that many pieces of its development products are already open-source, including the scripting engine in Flash, which was donated to the Mozilla Foundation for inclusion in the Firefox Web browser.

Lynch, who was named chief technology officer of Adobe earlier this month, said Adobe’s different product teams are changing to embrace rich Internet applications, AIR, and online services to complement its existing products.

He said AIR is not competitive with Microsoft Windows or other operating systems; it’s a layer above operating systems that enables people to use Web development techniques and toolkits.

“Our customers want offline access because they have users in mobile contexts like people in hospitals with tablet PCs or retail settings like supermarkets,” Gross said. “I think we’re going to see a variety of new technologies around how to effectively create offline Web applications.”

(Credit:
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft)

(Credit:
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft)

Fraunhofer is showing off its innovation using a bicycle guide as an example.

Researchers from Fraunhofer Institutes for Software and Systems Engineering and Integrated Circuits will present the technology at the CeBit trade show in Hanover, Germany, using bicycle guides as an example. The show runs March 4 through 9.

The Respisens system fits into a T-shirt.

In addition to monitoring respiration, the sample PDA can act as a navigation device, suggesting bike routes and places of interest with the aid of video clips.

In addition to serving as a health aid for athletes, the battery-charged PDA can be used in the remote care of patients, allowing a doctor to check the data and gauge how a patient is progressing. If necessary, for example, the physician can adjust the medication dosage on the basis of the data obtained.

Ever found yourself peddling along madly and forgetting to breathe? If you have a respiratory illness, that can cause more than a minor glitch on the bike path. To monitor patients’ inhalations and exhalations, scientists at Germany’s Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft research institute have conceived of a digital assistant that behaves something like a pulmonary specialist along for the ride.

The Respisens system registers the pace and strength of the wearer’s breathing. Measurements are taken with the aid of respiration straps–conductors integrated into a T-shirt across the patient’s chest and stomach that emit an electric signal when expanded. The raw data is transmitted to a matchbook-size module that records and processes it, then transmits the information to a cell phone or a PDA. If the value fails to reach a predefined level, the system sets off an alarm.

Jonathan’s post is a fascinating read. Here’s just one of the sections I found revealing, coming on the heels of his suggestion that there are no “cost synergies” in the deal (Sun isn’t going to save money by marrying salesforces, for example):

commentary

Jonathan doesn’t say, but the answer is clear: Marten wanted to build an IPO-able, independent MySQL. He eventually sold because it made sense (and, I suspect, because the prospect of living in the glare of Wall Street’s impatient eye was not looking as appealing as it once had, but that’s just Matt Asay personal conjecture).

In addition, the single biggest impediment to MySQL’s growth wasn’t the feature set of their technology - which is perfectly married to planetary scale in the on-line/web world. The biggest impediment was that some traditional enterprises wanted a Fortune 500 vendor (”someone in a Gartner magic quadrant”) to provide enterprise support. Good news, we can augment MySQL’s great service team with an extraordinary set of service professionals across the planet - and provide global mission critical support to the biggest businesses on earth.

Because of this, it’s very, very good for open source. I’ve noted before that well over half of Alfresco’s customers both evaluate and deploy on MySQL, including for mission-critical applications. (We manage a slew of major websites that account for billions of dollars a year in business, among other things.) I’d be ecstatic to see the other half of our customers transitioning from proprietary databases to open-source and open standards databases.

This deal makes sense. It makes sense for MySQL and it makes sense for Sun. It doesn’t necessarily make sense because it’s going to push a gazillion more Sun servers, despite some complaints that Sun keeps “forgetting that it’s a hardware company.” It makes sense because it enables Sun to renew its standing as the “dot” in “dot-com,” and helps to take MySQL beyond its dot-com beachhead into the Global 2000.

Where are the revenue synergies?

I was surprised that Sun could go from idea to acquisition on MySQL in just five weeks. What turns out to be more surprising, however, is that Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s CEO, had been talking with Marten Mickos of MySQL for over five years on precisely that topic, as Jonathan reveals on his blog. The real question, then, is why did it take so long?

The more interesting question is “where aren’t the synergies?” Wherever MySQL is deployed, whether the user is paying for software support or not, a server will be purchased, along with a storage device, networking infrastructure - and over time, support services on high value open platforms. Last I checked, we have products in almost all those categories.

Sun will help accelerate MySQL’s relevance for Global 2000 customers and, hence, for my customers. I’m a fan of this deal because it’s good for me, it’s good for SugarCRM, it’s good for MuleSource, etc. etc. etc. It’s good for the commercial open source ecosystem.

Disclosure: CNET News is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.

“There are a tremendous number of first-time voters who will be crucial in this election, and Youth Vote ‘08 will provide direct insight into the issues they are facing along with their mindset,” Ben French, vice president and general manager of UWIRE, said in a press release.

In partnership with CBS News and Washingtonpost.com, UWIRE has selected 50 young journalists–including columnists, editorial cartoonists, photographers and news reporters–to cover the presidential election from the perspective of young voters.

UWire, an aggregator of student-generated content, on Wednesday launched its election blog Youth Vote ‘08.

“Pollsters are saying the youth vote will decide this election,” contributor Alvin Chang, a senior at New York University, wrote on Youth Vote ‘08 Wednesday.