After years of chilly relations between Apple (the
Mac maker) and Apple Corps (The Beatles’ publishing company) over their very similar company names and then the Mac maker’s successful foray into music delivery, there were rumors of a thaw last year that would lead to the band’s songs being made available on iTunes. However, as much as music fans hoped The Beatles would let it be, that was not to be the case.

Updated 6:40 p.m. to clarify difference between publishing rights and rights to recordings.

The deal for the Fab Four’s songs could be worth $600 million, some papers estimated.

Apple representatives were not immediately available to comment Sunday.

Word is that McCartney has given his approval to make The Beatles’ song catalog available on Apple’s iTunes in the coming months, according to reports in several British newspapers.

The timing of the move seems odd to some observers who note that McCartney’s divorce from Heather Mills–which may cost him about $60 million–is expected to have its final court hearing in the coming weeks.

In addition, it’s unclear which songs might be offered to iTunes if such a deal were to occur. Publishing rights to many of The Beatles’ songs belong to Sony/ATV, which acquired them in a deal with Michael Jackson. (In 1985, Jackson outbid former pal McCartney and Yoko Ono for the catalog.) However, Apple Corps owns the rights to the actual music/recordings to most of The Beatles’ songs, which would be the determining factor in this reported deal.

But amid all of this number crunching, you also need to consider the fact that Google should be able to increase DoubleClick’s revenue by a good amount. From 2004 to 2007, DoubleClick’s revenue grew by about $75 million, representing a 25 percent growth over that period. That said, Google has enjoyed extraordinary growth over the past few years and actually witnessed a 67 percent growth in ad revenue in 2006 and slightly less in 2007.

The Google-DoubleClick deal was a mistake from a financial perspective. It’s as simple as that.

Now that the Google-DoubleClick deal has been approved by European lawmakers, the online giant has finally taken control over one of the most important display advertising firms in the world. And while some are calling this a great day for Google, I’m not so quick to agree.

Why, you ask? As it stands, DoubleClick’s latest revenue figures for 2007 were estimated at $365 million and it has been operating at an approximate profit margin of 10 percent to 20 percent over the past decade.

Google decided it would pay DoubleClick $3.1 billion for the rights to the DoubleClick name and all of its accounts. In essence, it was a full acquisition. On paper, $3.1 billion certainly doesn’t look like a major amount of cash, especially when you’re Google, but consider the fact that that figure is the most the company ever paid for another firm and the chances of it recouping it anytime soon are slim to none.

I simply don’t know how anyone can say the Google-DoubleClick deal was good for Sergey, Larry, and Eric. And if you look at the numbers and what Google is actually adding in this deal, it looks even worse.

Sounds better, right? If so, consider the fact that even at that point, the company wouldn’t see a profitable return on its investment for about 15 years. Still not too great.

And it’s for that reason that Google will not only rue the day it acquired DoubleClick for that price, but will need to find a way to turn the tide and somehow increase its business by an astounding level to make shareholders happy.

Taking all of those numbers together, who can possibly say Google made a good deal with DoubleClick? Sure, the possibilities of controlling online advertising are enormous, but the company most certainly made a mistake in its valuation.

Assuming those figures, I think it would be fair to say that we can take an average of both companies’ revenue growth and project that forward, creating a 50 percent (for ease of math) growth in revenue each year in DoubleClick’s revenue.

Assuming outstanding corporate synergy and proper management of the details, there’s no reason to suggest Google can’t reduce operating expenses by about 50 percent to 75 percent (an average figure for many combined efforts) and thus increase its profit margin on the new division by the same factor. If it can do just that, the profit margin could increase to well over 60 percent, thus allowing Google to enjoy an annual profit of about $200 million.

Assuming that, the profitable return on investment could be reduced by about 7 years, making it possible for Google to recoup its money by 2016 or slightly later.

If you ask me, Google made a mistake.

Sure, that may sound counterintuitive considering almost every Wall Street analyst and tech pundit is doing all they can to pump up this deal and make it look better than it is, but I think that’s not only ridiculous, but extremely foolhardy.

Let’s consult the numbers:

What, exactly, makes this such a great day for Google? Is it because it can solidify its position as the world’s premier online ad firm? If so, I thought it already was: Google’s total share of online advertising revenue before the DoubleClick deal was over 60 percent and no company was even close. If it wasn’t that, was it because Google finally had a leg up in the display ad business where it has floundered for years? Possibly. But considering that DoubleClick only generated about $365 million in revenue last year, I just don’t think this is a major step forward for the company.

Earlier this year, I gave Microsoft some flak for its decision to stop issuing DRM licenses for MSN Music downloads in Aug. 31 2008. That would have meant that consumers who’d purchased downloads from MSN Music before it became defunct–Microsoft is putting its focus on
Zune–would no longer be able to transfer their songs to new computers after that date.

No matter how this story ends, it will have a big impact on all Web users. If Microsoft takes control of Yahoo, for example, many of Redmond’s Web properties will likely get scuttled while Yahoo’s become even bigger. If Google and Yahoo do a deal, the price of Internet advertising will go up (since the combined network would control the majority of keyword advertising), and so on. For the full rundown of what could change, what’s likely to happen, and all the latest news, check out News.com’s complete coverage of Yahoo and its suitors.

Spinscape intrigued me, since I’ve never used a Web-based tool like it. A quick bit of research on the Web and Twitter, and a timely news release, yielded four interesting competitors to this application. Despite the fact that they share a design point–creating graphical representations of networks of ideas–they have very different capabilities.

MeadMap is a mind mapper designed for students, and probably the best of these applications for people who think in outlines. It creates networks left-to-right, not from the center out (in Rafe terminology, the sun-and-planets view). It’s fast and easy to use. It also allows real-time collaboration and supports live chat with collaborators, which is very useful. Its downside is a limited feature set: You can’t import pictures, for example.

After the conference, a little alone time with Spinscape did not change my opinion. This is an application that lends itself to a great demo. It looks great and it’s got a lot of capability, but I found if you’re using it to capture ideas, or maybe map out the ideas that pop up during a meeting, the interface slows you down, at least at first. On the other hand, if you want to annotate a map with notes, links, and pictures, and you have the time and gumption to create the map in the first place, Spinscape will handle it. It also does some useful automatic lookup in Wikipedia and other sources to fill out nodes if you’re gathering data and ideas on a topic.

Mindomo is the mind mapper for
Microsoft Office junkies. Its interface mirrors Office 2007’s look and feel, and it has a crazy number of little options you’ll never use (just like Office). It also lets you change the overall layout of your map; it doesn’t force you to use the sun-and-planet view.

Microsoft Office junkies will feel at home in Mindomo.

Webware's pick of the mind mappers, Mindmesiter has both a clean interface and strong capabilities.

MindMeister is a clear mind mapper if you’re fond of the traditional view. It supports attachments and notes on each node so you can annotate your thought bubbles as you go. It has a useful wiki-like revision view, and it will color-code your collaborators’ changes in the main map. I found it both intuitive to use and capable. It’s the most well-rounded Web-based mind mapper in this roundup.

At the Web 2.0 Expo, I was pushed hard to cover the new Web-based mind-mapping tool, Spinscape. The pitch I got was half demo, half introduction to the topic. I’m a big fan of outliner applications (I miss Grandview and Ecco) but the free-form mind mappers never appealed to me. I prefer a bit more structure.

If in your mind’s eye your ideas and plans look like molecular models, Spinscape might work for you. But if they look like outlines or Gantt charts, steer clear.

MeadMap, from the makers of the Trapper Keeper, is a good mapper for students.

I did not find that Spinscape helped me think more clearly.

There are plenty of installable mind mapping tools, like MindJet, MindMap, and The Brain. There’s also an open-source application, Freemind. The commercial software applications have advantages in flexibility and speed, but the Web-based applications are less expensive (all are either free or available for a low monthly fee), and most offer much stronger collaboration features. In this category, as in many others, the Web is best the place to get started, and for many users, a Web application will offer all they need. Especially Mindmeister. It’s really worth trying.

And then there’s Bubbl.us, the cute little pony of mind mappers. With and extremely limited feature set, it’s very easy to learn and use. But anyone serious about mapping their thoughts will run out of gas with it rather quickly, I believe.

Then there was Ted Southern’s sidewalk sound show.

At the recent Dumbo Art Under The Bridge Festival in Brooklyn, N.Y., I heard two rather amazing sound installations.

I’ll let Ted provide the details, “I was interested in placing sound in reference to the human body in an interesting way, and developed the idea of a series of speakers which a user could manipulate. The flat layout was a compromise, as the original intention was to have the piece in an elevator, so that the speakers could surround the user. The sound producing circuits, two theremin-like devices using photocells to manipulate pitch, were fortuitous and interesting ‘accidents.’ I was obviously interested in aesthetics, and tried to give the work a visual, horizontal feel…also, most of my work ends up being interactive, so a robust platform for user interaction was key.”

Check Southern’s Web site to learn more about his art.

(Credit:
OrganicInterfaces)

At the DUMBO show, Mocean was located in a small warehouse garage, open to the street. Flat stones were placed in the pool to serve as a path for people to walk over. The organ pipes hanging from the ceiling were tuned to different pitches and their sounds were complex and surprisingly musical. I listened for quite a while and found the sound absolutely mesmerizing.

Actually, the best part was watching how different people reacted to the sound as they walked over the stones. Some realized their movements changed the sound, and they “played” the organ pipes by swaying their arms and moving about. Little children were the best; they were totally uninhibited about making weird sounds.

I diddled the controls, and it really was fun to hear the sound change, but it was even better when I stood back and heard the speakers from five or six feet away. The sound had a very spatial, phasey quality, very interesting stuff.

OrganicInterfaces is a collective of artists, scientists, engineers, and musicians and their installation, Mocean was a truly enveloping sound experience. Their Web Site describes it this way, Mocean is a site-specific sculptural sound environment. It consists of a large water tank and a forest of antique organ pipes…digital technology translates the (water’s) ripple patterns into sounds played by the repurposed organ pipes, establishing a relationship between water and sound. For the DUMBO Art Festival, we used a 12-foot diameter swimming pool and some new technologies, expanding the range of possible interactions and sculptural interventions…”

Mocean's organ pipes at a different installation.

The Audiophiliac checks out the sounds.

The lone moderate patch affects Windows Office and could enable information disclosure if exploited.

Among the critical patches one each affects Windows, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Host Integration Server, and Microsoft Excel. All four could enable remote code execution if exploited.

On Thursday, Microsoft announced four security bulletins for next week. The announcement is intended as a heads-up for IT departments before Patch Tuesday. Four fixes are considered critical, six important, and one is moderate as ranked by the software giant.

Of the important patches, all six affect Windows, and could enable remote code execution or elevation of privilege if exploited.

Starting this month, Microsoft is sharing the technical details of new vulnerabilities to give software developers a catch to update affected products before the public announcement. And on Tuesday, Microsoft is expected to provide with each bulletin an “exploitability index” to help system administrators prioritize the patches.

The rest of the Pearl 8110’s features are pretty much in line with the latest models. There’s Bluetooth 2.0, a 2-megapixel camera with video recording capabilities, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a microSD/SDHC expansion slot. The smartphone is also compatible with AT&T’s push-to-talk service and AT&T Mobile Music. If this sounds like your cup of tea, the BlackBerry Pearl 8110 can be yours for $149.99 with a two-year contract and after discounts and rebates, and you have a choice of a red or a titanium model.

A new BlackBerry Pearl has found its way to AT&T’s doorstep this morning. Available starting today, the RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8110 has integrated GPS and support for the carrier’s AT&T Navigator service, which provides voice-guided turn-by-turn directions, 3D colors maps, traffic alerts, and more. Of course, if you want this luxury, you’ll have to pay an additional $9.99 per month. While the GPS is great, you lose the Wi-Fi found on the recently released RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8120. (Is it asking too much to have both?)

RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8110

The standard, which geographic information system (GIS) software specialist Galdos Systems helped bring to the standardization process, is based on KML 2.2. The official KML standard can be downloaded from the OGC Web site.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

And he expects to see a new era blossom of personal map publishing, all powered by KML. “We’re just starting to see the birth of map publishing,” he said.

File formats may sound mundane, but they can give strategic value to those who control them as a gateway to the data held by people and companies. In one high-profile example, open-source allies launched an attack on Microsoft’s Office stronghold with the OpenOffice.org software, which could mostly read Microsoft’s file formats.

Google hopes standardizing KML will help mean broader use for the map description language, but already, even rivals such as Microsoft have embraced it. This view shows Microsoft's Live Maps with a KML overly describing Glenn Canyon National Recreation Area.

One front in that war was an effort to set OpenOffice’s file formats as an industry standard called ODF (OpenDocument Format), a move Microsoft countered with its own OOMXL effort, which Google opposed.

KML stands for Keyhole Markup Language. It initially was developed by Keyhole, the satellite imagery company Google acquired in 2004. Keyhole’s technology was built into the Google Maps site and the Google Earth software.

“What OGC brings to the table is…everyone has confidence we won’t take advantage of the format or change it in a way that will harm anyone,” said Michael Weiss-Malik, Google’s KML product manager. “The goal is to prevent market fragmentation,” in which different technology uses different standards.

It didn’t seem like there was powerful reluctance to use KML. For example, the latest Virtual Earth and Live Maps technology from Google rival Microsoft can use KML to let users export user information to navigation devices. And the Microsoft site can overlay KML files from the Internet onto its Live Maps–here’s a (slow-loading) link to one from the National Resources Defense Council that describes expected effects from global warming to various national parks, along with the park boundaries.

Members of an industry group called the Open Geospatial Consortium have approved Google’s KML technology as an open standard for describing some geographic data.

Google already shared its KML format openly, and others had used it in software products, but Google now hopes that its status as an official standard will decrease barriers to further adoption.

But standardization will make KML more palatable, Weiss-Malik said. “Governments like to say they can publish to OGC KML instead of Google KML,” he said.

That’s because I assumed that EA might provide some new piece of information that would materially enhance details of the game maker’s Sunday bid announcement.

(Credit:
Take-Two’s Rockstar Games division)

“The Activision-Vivendi transaction provides some competitive incentive
for EA to add scale and bolster its product portfolio,” Colin Sebastian, a video game industry analyst with Lazard Capital Markets, said in an e-mail to me shortly after the EA call, “though it also appears in this case that EA and Take-Two had discussions long before the Activision announcement.”

Jenson added that on February 6, EA made a formal proposal of $25 a share, which Take-Two officially rejected on February 15.

He echoed Riccitiello in saying EA and Take-Two had had conversations for about a year, and that in January, Take-Two said it would decline to negotiate a deal.

My mistake.

He pointed out that he had been in discussions with Take-Two management last year and that he had been interested in making a deal like this happen as early as last spring but decided to wait to make any kind of offer until the completion of the EA reorganization it announced last June, in which it split the company into four distinct labels: The Sims, EA Sports, EA Games, and EA Casual Entertainment.

EA’s chief financial officer, Warren Jenson, also gave a little more specific insight into the timing of EA’s actual acquisition bid.

Fair enough.

Riccitiello expanded on that thought a little later in the call.

In reality, the EA conference call, which lasted nearly an hour, was largely a rehashing of the information the company published in its Sunday press release, accentuated by some more detail on the financial aspects of the deal–in particular the $26 a share it is offering Take-Two shareholders–as well as some thoughts by EA’s CEO, John Riccitiello, on timing.

If true, that would be an interesting piece of information.

Riccitiello did make one comment as to the timing of the acquisition offer that, on its face, would suggest that EA’s interest in Take-Two, publishers of the hugely popular Grand Theft Auto franchise, was not strictly based on the need to maintain the No. 1 position.

And in fact, one of the most interesting things Riccitiello said on the call had a lot to do with the specific tenor of the content in the GTA franchise.

“The longer we wait, the value will disappear,” Jenson said.

Electronic Arts’ conference call explained just a bit more about its takeover bid for Take-Two Interactive Software, maker of the Grand Theft Auto game franchise.

That certainly makes sense, since that game, the first major follow-up to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, one of the best-selling console games of all time, is very likely to be a huge financial success.

Those games are rated “M” by the Entertainment Software Rating Board, meaning that they are limited to being sold to those ages 17 and older. Never mind the “Hot Coffee” scandal of 2005, in which Take-Two was accused of hiding sexual content in its code, which ultimately made the game “AO,” or adults-only.

“It is our intention to make this a friendly deal,” Jenson said. “Our next step is to sit down with Take-Two’s management and get a deal done.”

I’m not usually one to get up for something happening at 5 a.m. PT, but in the case of this morning’s Electronic Arts conference call to discuss its proposed $2 billion takeover bid of Take-Two Interactive Software, I made an exception.

“We…wanted to give a wide berth to GTA,” Riccitiello said. “We didn’t want, in any way, shape, or form, to get in the way…We wanted to see it come out on time so we get our shot at it.”

Most notably, though, EA did not address the question I was most curious about: the necessity of making some big acquisition to maintain its top-dog spot in the video game-publishing industry after Vivendi’s announced mammoth purchase of Activision in December.

But he also made it clear that the company’s wallet will have only $2 billion in it to offer Take-Two for a short time.

The EA chief executive also said he wanted to make sure, in his company’s timing of its Take-Two bid, that it didn’t mess with the creative process surrounding Take-Two’s most valuable asset, the forthcoming Grand Theft Auto IV, which is scheduled to ship April 29.

The deal would “advance us particularly in our (market) segment shares,” Riccitiello said at one point in the call. “We’re notably (unpositioned) in M-rated content. This (would) give us the best M-rated content” in the business.

Riccitiello talked a little bit about the timing of the actual offer, saying he and Take-Two Chairman Strauss Zelnick had had discussions about a potential merger, but that in January, Take-Two rejected EA’s interest.

And while all the questions asked on the call were by financial analysts interested more in the bottom-line reasoning for the takeover bid, I was a little surprised that none asked the Activision question. I would have asked it myself, but reporters are never allowed–in my experience–to ask questions on this kind of conference call.

“We actually think this is a depreciating asset from this point forward,” Riccitiello said, alluding to the theory that once GTA IV is published, Take-Two will have to get by on the sales of its weaker games and that EA won’t be there to rescue it if Take-Two doesn’t play ball.