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Sun Microsystems Inc.  today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire open-source software maker MySQL AB for $1 billion, beefing up the server maker’s database offerings with a company whose technology is used by some of the world’s biggest Web sites.

With millions of global deployments including Facebook, Google, Nokia, Baidu and China Mobile, MySQL will bring synergies to Sun that will change the landscape of the software industry by driving new adoption of MySQL’s open source database in more traditional applications and enterprises. The integration with Sun will greatly extend the commercial appeal of MySQL’s offerings and improve its value proposition with the addition of Sun’s global services organization. MySQL will also gain new distribution through Sun’s channels including its OEM relationships with Intel, IBM and Dell.

Who said the free software was not profitable?

BitTorrent is working hard to become a good boy and, even more, the savior of the media industry applying its wide-spread technology and client for legal purposes.

Since last February, BitTorrent has been reaching agreements with major media companies like Fox, Paramount, MGM and Warner Bros. for legal delivery of their contents. Now, BitTorrent has just launched a new service called Delivery Network Accelerator (DNA) which is intended to speed up downloading and streaming video content extending the open BitTorrent protocol into a managed platform for commercial-grade content delivery.

Particularly interesting and innovative is the streaming side of this service as it is supposed to help the industry in developing band-width efficient TV over the Internet services providing P2P cost-savings in delivering richer content. The first one is already online, Brightcove is using BitTorrent DNA technology for streaming video content in a P2P way.

Using this technology it is now easier for any industry player to build up TV services to compete with Joost or Babelgum as as cost-effectiveness competitive advantage has been made available for all of them taking advantage of the over 150 million of clients already downloaded from the very first moment. What comes next? Time will tell.

In late 2005 eBay acquired Skype, the number one internet-calling company, for $2.6 billion. Today Skype’s price is half that one.

Yesterday, eBay confirmed that it overpaid for Skype showing once more that value never is equal to price. About half billion of the charge were to pay Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, Skype’s founders, and other early Skype’s investors. Although it looks like big money, they could have earnt up to $1.7 billion if Skype would have met targets for users.

At the same time, eBay announced that Zennström and Friis will leave the company but while the former is leaving CEO post for a nonexecutive chairman post in board of directors, the latter will no longer play a role in the company. This situation leave both them more time to spend on Joost!

First, Google purchased DoubleClick, next it was Microsoft that bought aQuantive and now it’s Yahoo’s time to get its own online advertising company.

Yahoo has just acquired BlueLithium, the #6 ad network in the US, for $300 million, far from $3.1 billion Google paid for DoubleClick and just 5% of the amount of money Microsoft spent on aQuantive.

Latest edition of BRANDZ ranking has been released recently. Brandz is top 100 ranking of  “Most Powerful Brands” on Earth published by Millward Brown Optimor in cooperation with the Financial Times.

In this year’s edition Google has risen to the top, previously dedicated to Microsoft, with Coca-Cola in 4th position. According to Millward Brown, Google’s brand value is $66.4bn (almost doubling its last year’s value) while Coca-Cola’s brand value is $44bn.

In the other hand, according to Interbrand’s Best Global Brands ranking released last summer, Coca-Cola is the most valuable brand with an estimated value of $67bn while Google is ranked 24th with $12.3bn.

This criteria disparity is accentuated by the fact that only five brands are part of the top10 in both rankings (but, of course, neither in the same position nor the same value). The only brand that is valuated aproximately the same is Microsoft!!

BRANDZ ($bn):

1. Google: 66
2. GE: 61
3. Microsoft: 55
4. Coca-Cola: 44
5. China Mobile: 41
6. Marlboro: 39
7. Wal-Mart: 37
8. Citi: 34
9. IBM: 33.5
10. Toyota: 33.4

Interbrand ($bn):

1. Coca-Cola: 67
2. Microsoft: 57
3. IBM: 56
4. GE: 49
5. Intel: 32
6. Nokia: 30
7. Toyota: 28
8. Disney: 27.8
9. McDonald’s: 27.5
10. Mercedes: 22

Valuating brands seems to be a misterious science. What comes next? Only time will tell.

Microsoft’s top technical executive, Ray Ozzie, has recently said that Google success in finding in advertising revenue “was a wake-up call within Microsoft”. But he said Microsoft plans to do more than simply mimic Google by rolling out Web-based versions of desktop programs or following its particular search and advertising model.

Instead of jumping belatedly into the fray with Web-only programs, he said Microsoft will pursue a mix of software loaded on PCs and Internet services that also work with the growing array of mobile devices, a strategy he called ‘’software-plus-service'’.

He said he sees free, Web-based, ad-supported software as a way to extend Microsoft Office’s reach, but gave no specifics. ‘’Advertisers do want a targeted audience,'’ he said. If Microsoft can deliver it, ‘’I don’t see a reason why advertisers won’t move'’. What comes next? Only time will tell.

BitTorrent is planning to use its widely used file-sharing software to launch a legal download site, called the BitTorrent Entertainment Network, that will distribute more than 5,000 titles including digital movies, TV shows, games and other media.

Considering that BitTorrent have got a well-deserved reputation for quickly file distribuition and an existing user based of 135 million, they could be a serious competitor for the increasing online video market, which current heavy players as YouTube, Joost, Babelgum, Brightcove among others.

The battle’s just begun and another important issue is to reach agreements with content owners. Joost has just partnered with Viacom so has BitTorrent with Hollywood studios like 20th Century Fox, Lions Gate and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. What comes next? Only time will tell.

Just a few days from being launched and Yahoo Pipes is putting lots of minds to work:

- five cool ways to use Yahoo! Pipes

- New York Times thru flickr

- del.icio.us flavored web search

- YMI Podcasting MegaFeed

- Amazon price watch

- eBay price watch

- Google Blog Search

- Cricket on YouTube

Lots else. What comes next? Only time will tell.

Yahoo! has just launched a new service called Yahoo Pipes which offers users the ability to easily create data mashups from remixing popular feed types, including Yahoo! Search, Google Base, Flickr photos and any RSS feed on the web. Yahoo! describes it as an interactive feed aggregator and manipulator that allows you to create feeds that are more powerful, useful and relevant.

Pipes also provides a set of functional modules to let users manipulate and transform data in oder to get the desired output. This set includes a powerful content analyzer, several data formatters, sorting modules and even translating services using BabelFish translating engine.

All these modules are integrated in an easy-to-use visual drag and drop editor that simplifies the job of building a mashup without writing a single line of code. The resulting feed can be for private use or shared with the Internet community. As Tim O’Reilly has defined it:

Yahoo!’s new Pipes service is a milestone in the history of the internet. It’s a service that generalizes the idea of the mashup, providing a drag and drop editor that allows you to connect internet data sources, process them, and redirect the output.

According to Google, their mission is to organize the information. In this case Yahoo! has won a battle letting the users create more organized, filtered and useful information by theirselves. Could it be a step towards Web3.0 in which users not only contribute but can take advantage of the rest of information their own way and share it? What comes next? Only time will tell.

According to Wikipedia, a firewall is an information technology security device whose basic task is to control traffic between computer networks with different zones of trust.

By definition, network traffic is bidirectional which means that your personal firewall should protect your private home network from both, inbound traffic and outbound traffic. Whereas the former type of traffic has been generally thought to be a potential danger since the Internet was born, the latter one had not been considered a real danger until the proliferation of malware during the last few years. Right now outbound traffic have become a real danger.

Nevertheless while this seems obvious for everybody it looks like Microsoft disagrees. Windows XP’s built-in firewall, the current most-extended personal firewall, has no protection at all for outbound traffic giving users a false sense of security.

It was expected to be solved in brand-new Windows Vista as Microsoft states that new Vista’s firewall is now two-way. And it is true, but a closer look at the way it works reveals a particular way to understand security. By default, most firewalls, the good ones, allow no outbound connection unless explicitly authorized by the user, usually presenting a convenient wizard to program a particular rule the first time an application tries to connect to the Internet.

On the other hand, Windows Vista’s firewall by default allows all outbound connection until a rule is explicitly created to deny it by the user. Even worse, configuring these rules is no piece of cake at all. What does Microsoft say about this decision? Well, according to Matt Parreta, a spokesperson for Microsoft’s PR agency, they think that having to walk through the many wizard-driven pop-ups that would occur shortly after the first time Vista gets installed would be a poor out-of-the-box experience.

A false sense of security again, this time in the name of a “better user experience”. What comes next? Only time will tell.