I don’t know how many of you know this, but Google has always had an unofficial corporate motto: Don’t be evil. It was pronounced in 2001 by Paul Buchheit, creator of Google’s Gmail (but who has now left to found his own Internet venture). At that time, Google was still this idealistic group of young engineers and entrepreneurs who dreamed of changing the world. In other words, they were not such a major player yet.

Today, the world’s #1 search engine (among other things) is a multibillion-dollar company with well over 16,000 employees. It has become the single biggest item on everyone’s mind when using the Internet. In other words, Google is now constantly under close scrutiny by critics and regular users alike.

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Probably the hottest news abuzz this year is the looming merger — some say hostile takeover — between Microsoft and Yahoo. Earlier, it was about the resistance on the part of Yahoo to capitulate to the software giant. Lately, the focus has shifted to Redmond and the perceived motive behind their bid to acquire the second largest search engine.

Very recently, two analysts from Gartner, a research services firm, asserted that Microsoft is now on shaky ground due to the state of Windows Vista, which they described as “collapsing”. The analysts, Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald, practically assessed the latest version of the Windows OS as a failure due to disappointingly low market acceptance. According to a rival firm, Forrester Research, by the end of 2007, only a little more than 6% of enterprise-level PC users had migrated to Vista.

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DURING THE TIME I was organizing the 1st Mindanao Bloggers Summit late last year, I came to meet quite a number of interesting people. One of them is Ted Padova. Since I’ve never really delved very deeply into the world of creatives and graphics design, Mr. Padova was, to me then, just another blogger who had something of substance to say in his blog. Later I was made to realize by my contacts in the world of computer graphics that this fellow happens to be a heavyweight in their field.

Ted, as everyone calls him here, is an accomplished and well-respected author and lecturer. He is invited all over the globe for seminars and conferences at which he speaks. His expertise lies in the area of Adobe Creative Suite programs, particularly in Adobe Acrobat. He has published over a dozen technical books on that piece of software and on PDF (portable document format). My friend and colleague, Christopher Cubos, brought me up to speed when he informed me that Ted is in the business of producing educational content covering Adobe programs. •••Read on»

VeriSign, the company that globally manages the two most popular top-level domains (TLDs), has announced that it will raise the wholesale rates of .com and .net domain names this 15th of October 2007. Domain names ending in .com, from $6.00, will be increased to $6.42; and .net domains, from $3.50 to $3.85.

This rather huge increase will necessarily mean that domain registrars and resellers will have to increase the retail prices of these domain names. I use ctcd.com, and they currently sell domain names for $8.94 per year. This rate is indeed a far cry from the time when Internet addresses sold for $35 per year, but — in Internet time — that was ages ago when Network Solutions held the monopoly. •••Read on»

Infinit-O is a leading BPO company in the Philippines providing back office support primarily for the financial services and healthcare sectors. It is currently expanding its range of Mortgage Loan Processing Outsource services to help mortgage companies across the United States through their current turmoil.

Despite the negative news and forecasts for the U.S. mortgage industry, Infinit-O sees this period as an opportunity to build new relationships and partnerships. In the process, Infinit-O has gone full force in developing existing and defining new verticals in mortgage outsourcing. The formula is simple: provide high quality services at typically only 50% of the price in the US. It may sound simplistic and straightforward, but these are exactly what mortgage industry players need to retain their edge and remain competitive in a tumultuous market. •••Read on»

In the last few years, industry watchers have seen the increased adoption of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software systems — especially from SAP, Oracle and Microsoft — by Davao-based companies. And I’m not referring to multinational companies, but to homegrown, medium-sized corporations that software providers call their “mid-market”.

In the past, Davao companies relied on either internally-developed systems (making use of off-the-shelf software products), or systems created by third-party providers in the city. Smaller operations entrusted their internal data processing requirements to freelance programmers — even today.

But with the increasing trend of globalization, and the shrinking of the international marketplace, Filipinos have begun to realize the need for more robust and sophisticated software systems. Such systems would have to address management’s demand for up-to-the-minute information, which the latter needs for making informed decisions. •••Read on»

OK, so now I know what that huge rambutan-filled speech bubble in SM City was! It looked a lot like the symbol for blogging (and I wasn’t very far off the mark). Apparently, many such mysterious “crop circles” have appeared all over the country, from Baguio to Davao: shapes of TVs, envelopes, magnifying glasses, musical notes…. Well, it was all the promotional gimmick of Globe.

Today, telephony and data companies Globe Telecom and Innove have merged into one Globe team. A source tells me that this major move is aimed at synergizing the strengths of these two telecommunications giants. •••Read on»