US and China at war??

InformationWeek's David Berlind posed a provocative question on Government Blogs this past Friday. He compares the recent hacking of U.S. businesses by government-sponsored criminals to an act of war...

If the attacks were indeed backed by the Chinese government, then what China did was an act of war against the US.
-- David Berlind, InformationWeek

The article is worth reading in its entirety, regardless of whether you agree with Mr. Berlind or not. You'll find it at the link below.

Is The US Afraid To Admit That China Declared War On It?

The search engine wars are over

Someone needs to break the news to Microsoft, Yahoo!, Ask, and even the venerable Yellow Pages. No one out there says they need to "Bing" something or other. Google has become a verb in our lexicon. And even though Yahoo! has been around longer, and even though Bing is getting decent reviews, more users Google topics on the web than all of the other search engines ... combined!.

Yesterday, Neilsen Reported December Search Rankings for the United States. Google was the search engine of choice for more than 67% of all internet queries, with over 6.6 million uses during December. Yahoo! came in a distant second, with about 1.4 million uses, accounting for just over 14% share. Bing and Live Search combined for just under a million searches. But that doesn't seem to justify the millions that Microsoft has invested in promoting the service. Especially when you consider that, back in June, Google's share was actually less than it was in December. Sharon Gaudin, a contributor over at ComputerWorld reports that Google's search engine market share was only 61% in Neilsen's June report.

The takeaway for me is that, when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), don't bother with trying to improve results on any search engine besides Google. The war is over. Google wins. If the web is an important lead source for your business, then focus your energy and get your Google results right. And any SEO expert that wants to do otherwise is wasting your money.

Get ready for mass market Touchscreens

On the eve of the International Consumer Electronics Show, HP has unveiled a new netbook equipped with a Touchscreen. The HP Mini 5102 enables users to navigate through Windows applications and web pages with the touch of their fingers, and ... here's the big news ... it has a starting list price of only $399.

Lenovo is in the mix, too, having introduced the IdeaPad S10-3t convertible netbook, complete with which has a 10.1-inch screen that can swivel 180 degrees and fold over to be used as touch tablet. The Lenovo has a starting price of about $550.

This means that touchscreen technology is going to explode in the coming year. IT managers will be hard-pressed to justify saying no to an executive who wants to spend what is essentially a rounding error for a machine that is exponentially easier to use than today's portable, mouse-bound, devices.

These developments will also force Dell to bring down their tablet prices or risk losing significant market share over the next three years. This is going to happen very, very quickly.

The next big question is ... will the wireless carriers be permitted to keep up with demand?

Credit where credit is due ...
Read the article at Information Week: HP Unveils Touchscreen Mini PC