Cisco Expands in the DataCenter and Consumer Electronics (Jaideep Venkatesan)

Cisco was in the news last week for two ambitious but seemingly disconnected expansions from its core of dominating electronic equipment.

Cisco first announced its entry into server market, offering its first blade servers for Datacenters, many of whom already use Cisco's networking equipment. The server will be part of Cisco's Unified Computing System, which would include a Cisco Switch and third party software, and is offered to reduce DataCenter costs. It is widely seen as a threat to IBM and HP, who have traditionally partnered with Cisco in offering complementary products to its networking equipment, including servers. It has also provoked a Youtube video response from Mike Klayko, CEO of Brocade Communications Systems, another Blade server provider threatened by Cisco's new foray. Klayko argues that customers will not want to buy into Cisco's propietary system, as that risks higher costs and lock-in.

Cisco also announced its acquisition of Pure Digital , maker of Flip digital camcorders, signaling a foray into consumer electronics and inspiring immediate speculation that it would challenge other consumer electronics firms or companies such as Apple with a presence in several markets.

Curiously, no one has really linked the two developments or explained how they fit into Cisco's overall strategy.

Atari video games (Jaideep Venkatesan)

Slate Senior Editor Michael Agger has an interesting article about the Atari 2600, Montfort based on a new book by Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost, Racing the Beam. Montfort and Bogost are professors in Media Studies who have written the first book in what is to be a series on technology platforms. Reading about Atari certainly brought back memories of playing Combat, Yars Revenge, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. It is amazing how Atari started the home video game industry, was seemingly successful in the early 1980's, only to fizzle out and then watch Nintendo flourish and take over the industry.

Agger doesn't really explain how Atari failed, other than to say:

"A lot of us started playing games on home computers. A bunch of big-time cartridges, like the infamous E.T., were huge busts, and retailers became gun-shy about ordering more titles and sent the ones they had on the shelves back. The returns bankrupted third-party game developers and fueled an industry consensus that video games were a fad—a toy whose time had passed. In two years, Nintendo would prove everyone very wrong."

It would be intriguing if Atari suffered, at least in part, because of the availability of home computers, a general purpose technology that allowed access to some interesting games but nothing like was available on single purpose devices such as Atari or Nintendo. The video game industry eventually evolved to use both general purpose PCs or Apples and single purpose devices such as the Xbox or the Wii. So I suspect that the availability of home computers wasn't really what did Atari in, but further investigation is needed.

Windows 7 Allows Disabling of Several Features (Jaideep Venkatesan)

CNET and PC Magazine report that the Windows 7 operating system will allow users to turn off several Microsoft features. PC Magazine leads with the Internet Explorer's disabling option. This represents a departure from Windows Vista, and could have ramifications in the popularity of Microsoft products beyond IE, including Windows Media, Windows Search, and XPS Viewer.

Microsoft: Lots to turn off in Windows 7

Internet Explorer Will be Optional in Windows 7