Internet BROWSER MADNESS

It was such a seller's market that the sellers wouldn't sell, not just yet. Trading of 5 million shares in the long-awaited initial public offering of the upstart Netscape Communications Corp. was supposed to begin last Wednesday at 9:30 a.m., when the NASDAQ whistle blew. But here it was 90 minutes later, and the institutions and portfolio managers who had received huge blocks of shares still hadn't sold any of their stock. Investors were bidding up the price so fast that the ground floor had yet to be set. What the investment banks had valued a few weeks ago at a modest $14 was soaring to $30...$45 ...$55 and into the wild blue-chip yonder. Finally, as stunned brokers nationwide sat with phones glued to both ears--buyers on one, sellers on the other--the opening price was reached: $71 a share. Only then did profiteers start cashing in: Sell, sell, sell!

Not bad for a 16-month-old company that has never earned a profit and has given away most of the software it has created. Not bad for Netscape co-founder Jim Clark, who, by day's end--when the stock price finally settled at a more reasonable $58.25--was worth $565 million. And not bad for fellow co-founder Marc Andreessen, the 24-year-old programming tyro, whose stake made him a millionaire 58.25 times over.

So what exactly was America buying into with such enthusiasm last week? The Internet, of course, that boomtown of the wired world. "The Internet has gone to Main Street," said analyst Kathleen Smith of Renaissance Capital, a Connecticut firm that evaluates initial public offerings for institutional investors. Netscape was "the hottest deal we've ever seen. Friends we never thought we had were calling us, asking us how they could buy shares."

Netscape, based in Mountain View, California, makes an essential piece of Internet software known as a browser, which can be thought of as the 3-D glasses your computer wears to pick up images, sounds and text on the World Wide Web, the multimedia portion of the Internet. Netscape controls a cozy 70% of the market for browsing software.

Investors are increasingly keen to buy into Internet-related companies, but have had few opportunities. Four such companies have gone public: Internet-access providers Netcom On-line Communications Services, Performance Systems International and UUNet Technologies; and another Web-browser maker, Spyglass. All are performing extremely well because the Internet is regarded as the next stage of the information revolution. Now that computers are being linked around the globe, techno-happy investors are trying to stay ahead of that curve and find the next big company. Netscape, says Lise Buyer, technology analyst at T. Rowe Price, "has the potential to be as important to the Internet as Microsoft's dos was to the personal computer."

One reason Netscape's Navigator dominates the browser market is that the company gave it away to home and school users, which in turn attracted Web-based businesses. Commercial users pay for the Netscape software that makes them accessible to browsers-another market that Netscape controls, for now. But here comes Microsoft, which has its own designs on the Internet. The software giant learned last week that the Justice Department's antitrust investigation would not delay the Microsoft Network, its ambitious online service. The network software comes bundled inside Windows 95, Microsoft's new operating system, which is supposed to be shipped to dealers on Aug. 24. Anyone who installs it will find a Microsoft Network icon on the computer-screen desktop. Click on the icon, and, assuming the computer is attached to a modem and a phone line, voile!, you're on the Microsoft Network.

That's where the potential monopoly problems lie. By one estimate, as many as 30 million people will upgrade to Windows 95 by year's end. If only 10% of them subscribe to the network, Microsoft's service will rival that of America Online, the largest of the commercial providers of online services. Justice Department antitrust lawyers say they have yet to decide whether to take action against Microsoft; they are still in the discovery process and plan to seek more Microsoft documents.

The more sobering news, though, for anyone who bought Netscape stock is that Windows 95 comes with its own browser, the Internet Explorer, a piece of software that, like other Microsoft programs, may smother all competitors. Microsoft's browser allows users to see anything on the Web that a Netscape user can see. But Netscape users won't be able to sample the library of multimedia offerings that is expected to be stored on the Microsoft Network, which has its own proprietary design. "Netscape's millions of browsers won't be a threat to us for very long,"predicted Naveen Jain, a Microsoft spokesman.

Yet the battle will be hard fought. Netscape has as many as 7 million users on the Internet. Most of them get online through independent access providers and schools, rather than large commercial services and are drawn to the Net precisely because it's neither owned nor controlled by anyone. To many of these users, the notion that Microsoft chairman Bill Gates wants to dominate the Internet is blasphemy. Netscape also benefits from being smaller and more nimble than the Redmond, Washington, colossus. Netscape's management team is led by Clark, a former Stanford University professor who founded, then resigned from, the successful firm Silicon Graphics. Backing him up is James Barksdale, Netscape's ceo, who has held top jobs at AT&T, McCaw Cellular Communications and Federal Express.

But the best thing Netscape has going for it is its techies, most notably Andreessen, who, as a 22-year-old undergraduate at the University of Illinois, conceived the first graphical Web browser, Mosaic, at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in the fall of 1992. That bit of software transformed the drab, black-and-white, hard-to-get-around-in world of the Internet into a colorful place and stimulated an explosion in new kinds of content, from Web-based magazines to online casinos. Mosaic, which is licensed by the university to customers, was also given away and gained an estimated 2 million users in a single year, doing as much to popularize the Internet as anything else in online history, with the possible exception of E-mail. Buyer says Netscape has "corporate vision, technology vision and proven operating vision. In terms of management, they've got everything you can ask for." They also have a company that when NASDAQ closed on Friday afternoon was valued at $2 billion.

curtsy to time

Those Crazy Internet Security Questions

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Think carefully before you answer. The question is from the password retrieval system for Virgin America's Elevate frequent-flyer program, one of several a user may be prompted to answer in order to verify his or her identity. But it's not just Richard Branson's own quirky take on the standard "What's your mother's maiden name?" query, widely used for verification purposes by many banks and e-mail services. These days, security questions are getting more creative because they have to. As we make more and more personal information freely available online via our blogs, Facebook profiles, Flickr photos and Twitter, security questions based on biographical data are becoming less and less secure.

Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin discovered that last week when someone hacked into her Yahoo! e-mail account, gov.palin@yahoo.com, after typing her username into Yahoo! and clicking "Forgot your ID or password?" According to an account of the breach by someone claiming to be the perpetrator, here's what happened next:

it took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info, Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes (thanks online postal service!)...the second was somewhat harder, the question was "where did you meet your spouse?" did some research, and apparently she had eloped with mister palin after college...I found out later though more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on "Wasilla high"

Bingo. The hacker read Palin's e-mails and, soon, after, screen shots appeared on Wikileaks, a website dedicated to posting leaked government and corporate documents.

"This is an attack that any 17-year-old in America could have mounted," says Ariel Rabkin, a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied and written about online security, including a paper subtitled "Security Questions in the Era of Facebook." Rabkin adds, "You could do it in your living room drunk on the spur of the moment."

Hence, the growing trend toward more arcane and occasionally bizarre password retrieval questions. Sign up for an MSN/Hotmail account and you can choose from "Who was your best childhood friend?" "What was your grandfather's occupation?" or "Who is your favorite historical person?" The questions for a Citibank MasterCard account are even odder, bordering on the absurd: "Who was your archrival growing up?" "If you needed a new first name, what would it be?" and "If you could control your height, how tall would you be?" Even if a person can answer those questions, there's no guarantee the answer will be the same the next time around. (One Citibank query, for example, is "Which foreign country would you like to visit?" But the answer might well change a year later, after you've made that trip to New Zealand.)

Last year, the Federal Communications Commission passed a rule prohibiting landline and cellular phone companies from asking biographical questions for password retrieval, following the disclosure that computer company Hewlett-Packard was using the information to gain access to industry journalists' phone records — a technique known as "pretexting." Still, e-mail providers like Yahoo! and many online banking services haven't stopped using biographical questions, even as much of this information is finding its way online.

Coming up with a fail-safe system is not easy. "A good question for me might be an inexplicable question for you," says Rabkin. "It's hard to find ones that are good for everybody." Security answers have to be obscure enough that they're unguessable, while still familiar enough to the user that they won't be forgotten. And they can't be information that is easily obtainable. "Who did you buy your house from?" used to be a great question used by some banks. Although real estate sales information is public, says Rabkin, "it used to be public in the sense that you had to go down to the deeds office and look it up." Now, often all it takes is a few mouse clicks.

For that reason, fact-based questions are declining in popularity vs. those that relate to the user's preferences. But even preference questions aren't foolproof. Your favorite book? Fine, unless it's the Bible, in which case it's easily guessable. Your favorite album? Fine, unless it happens to be mentioned on your Facebook page.

Palin's security questions, it turns out, were some of the most commonly used online. "You could argue that she was dumb for picking these questions and providing her correct information," says Markus Jakobsson, a principal scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center, a subsidiary of Xerox. "But we shouldn't judge her on her ability to make security-related decisions ... This is not about Yahoo! This is about industry failure." (Jakobsson is currently developing a security system that prompts users to answer a battery of preference questions when they establish an account. If they forget their password, users must answer a certain percentage of their preference questions correctly to retrieve it.)

For now, some Internet security consultants advise choosing answers that are correct, but with a twist, which could be as simple as a few numbers at the end of a maiden name, or a pet's name spelled backward.

So next time you set up an online account and are asked your pet's name, don't just say it's Max — one of the most popular dog names in the U.S. and one that a motivated hacker might guess. Say it's Xam2008.

Internet older than average person using it

Diksha Kamra, TNN

There are many people out there bemoaning the fact that we spend a large part of our lives surrounded by technology in this wired age. And it’s also true that we spend more time with the internet and the mouse than some of our closest friends. Therefore, it's only fair that we bring out the cake and the candles when they celebrate their anniversaries!

Cell phones turn 36



Date of birth: October 17, 1973

Father: Researcher Martin Cooper

From being a luxury for the rich to an absolute necessity even for the common man, the cell phone’s come a long way – it’s almost an extension of the human body now.

Martin Cooper made the first call on a hand-held mobile phone on April 3, 1973. The first mobile phone was approved by the Federal Communications Commission in the United States in 1983.

The Mouse turns 40



Year of birth: 1968

Father: Douglas Engelbart

This is one birthday boy that’s really clicked. The new-fangled , upstart touchpads in laptops never quite feel the same as the audible click of the mouse.

Douglas Engelbart created the early prototypes of the now-familiar device in 1963 at Stanford Research Institute, but he first displayed his creation to the public only in 1968. Which makes this reliable little feller older than most of the people who use it.



The Net turns 40


Date of birth: September 2, 1969

For something that you can’t feel or see, the World Wide Web has changed our thoughts and our lives in ways we’re only just beginning to realise.

The internet truly shrunk the world, being the harbinger of an information revolution . This mode of connectivity was born at the University of California 40 years ago last week. And when was the first time it was attacked? In 1988, by ‘Morris’ , one of the first internet worms.

Blogs turn 10



Date of birth: April 1, 1997

Father: US web guru Dave Winer

This one’s the kid in the family. Blogs are freedom of expression on steroids – everything from Bush-bashing to your sex life can be broadcast to the world.

‘Scripting New’ was the first modern blog. Initially, it was named ‘weblog’ (meaning log of the web), and later, in 2004, it received legitimacy from the etymological elite, with the Merriam Webster dictionary making it its word of the year.

The Walkman turns 30



Date of birth: July 1, 1979

This one passed away young, but its memory lives on every time someone plugs in the earphones of an mp3 player.

Thirty years after it was born, the great-granddaddy of iPods has been relegated to obsolescence, but the snazzy gadget revolutionised the way people listened to music, and it still inspires fond nostalgia from the parent types.

Microsoft IIS Servers Vulnerable to FTP Attack

A critical flaw in the FTP component of Microsoft Internet Information Service (IIS) can allow an attacker to execute malicious commands on a server, Microsoft warned in a new security advisory.

According to a Microsoft Security Research & Defense post, if a vulnerable IIS 5.0 (Windows 2000), 5.1 (XP) or 6.0 (Server 2003) FTP service attempts to list a "long, specially-crafted directory name," a stack overflow will occur that can allow for remote code execution. IIS 7.0 (Vista, Server 2008) is not vulnerable, according to the post.

To be hit, "an FTP server would need to grant untrusted users access to log into and create that long, specially-drafted directory."

There is not yet any patch available, and Microsoft says it has seen "detailed exploit code" available online, though it hasn't yet seen any active attacks. Microsoft's post lists workarounds for the time being, including how to prevent anonymous FTP users from being able to create directories.

How to Make Money on Twitter: Do Commercials!

Yes, it's no secret that Twitter can be a tremendous time-suck. But imagine getting paid for wasting those precious minutes of your day. Thanks to companies that are desperate to reach consumers in the social-media crowd, it's now possible to make a buck or two — or much more — on Twitter. A company called IZEA, which made its name connecting bloggers with companies willing to compensate them for plugs on their sites, has set up a similar service for the Twittersphere. At the appropriately named site Sponsored Tweets, Twitter users can sign in, set the price they want companies to pay them for the privilege of tweeting an ad on their behalf, and wait for the offers to come in. "I'm a stay-at-home mom who uses Twitter while the kids are napping," says Jocelyn French, mother of a 2-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter. Through Sponsored Tweets, she has tweeted on behalf of Kmart, a parenting website and a college-information site, among others, each for $1 a pop. "I figure, hey, why not get paid at the same time?" French says.

Ted Murphy, founder and CEO of IZEA, says more than 7,000 Twitter users have signed up for Sponsored Tweets in its first month. Murphy says about 500 advertisers, mostly small- to medium-size businesses, plus a handful of Fortune 500 companies, are using the platform. Marketers have access to the entire database of tweeters and can select whom they want to pay and how much they're willing to dish out. Compensation is based on a user's expertise or passion, how many followers that person has and other metrics, like how often the tweeter's followers click to links posted on his or her Twitter page. Murphy says he has paid more than $100,000 to Twitter users in his site's first month of operation. As commission, he charges companies 15% to 50% of their payments to the microbloggers.

For users like French, sponsored Twitter messages are a way to pocket spare change on the side. But for many others, this movement of marketers into the Twittersphere could be another reason to despise the whole Twitter craze. It's painful enough to get regular updates on your neighbor's dinner plans. What if he started littering your inbox with product pitches? "Sponsored Tweets is controversial," acknowledges Robin Dance, a part-time fundraiser and blogger from Chattanooga, Tenn., who has amassed an impressive 2,800-plus-strong Twitter following and has also tweeted for Kmart. "I've had good friends and fellow bloggers say they have no use for Sponsored Tweets, and will un-follow me if I use it. They say I'm selling out, that it's Twitter blasphemy." If anything, Twitter is supposed to be real — at times, perhaps too real (no, I did not need to know the details of your stomach virus). That could be lost if it gets commercialized. "How do you preserve the authenticity of the conversation?" asks Pete Blackshaw, a brand strategist and social-media expert for Nielsen Online. "That's what everyone is struggling with."

For example, tweets that are sponsored raise the messy issue of disclosure. If someone speaks highly about a product on Twitter, don't followers have a right to know if that messenger is a compensated mouthpiece? Murphy insists that all tweets that flow through his site will carry some form of disclosure. For example, French's Kmart tweet reads: "Bluelight Special Alert: This Saturday at Kmart all patio furniture is 70% off! For more deals follow http://bit.ly/tupjE (sponsored)." Others include signposts like "#ad." But within a 140-character limit for all tweets, is there truly enough room to clearly spell out the relationship between Kmart and the Twitter user? It's all too easy for a reader to gloss over the "sponsored" tag at the end of the message, or not fully comprehend what it signifies. "I don't think we've cracked the code on disclosure," says Blackshaw.

Even with full disclosure, paid tweets carry risks for brands. If it's clear that a company is paying a Twitter user to put in a good word for them, will the message ring true — or reek of desperation? "Oh no," says Tom Aiello, spokesman for Sears Holdings Corp., Kmart's parent company. "A lot of brands have had successful campaigns go through the paid side." Still, brand strategists recommend that companies tread into the Twittersphere lightly. Real word of mouth is much more valuable. "I have urged clients to be very cautious about pay-to-say on Twitter," says Blackshaw. "Get the word out naturally. There's lots of love on the organic side; go for that first."

Tweeters must be careful too. Stuffing your Twitter feed with advertisements is a good way to lose followers — and even real friends. "I do understand the arguments against Sponsored Tweets," says Dance, the Tennessee blogger who plans to use the service (she won't disclose her price). "But I'm not going to be flooding someone's Twitter stream. There's nothing subversive about it. It's just a little payback for the four years of my life I've invested in my blog."

YouTube in talks for streaming movies on rental basis: Report

NEW YORK: Google's video sharing site, YouTube is in talks with major hollywood studios for streaming movies on a rental basis, says a 

media report. 

Streaming movies are generally those where the user does not have to download the file and the content over the internet which is displayed in real time. 

"Google's YouTube is in discussions with movie major studios for streaming movies on a rental basis, a test of whether the online video giant can persuade millions of users to pay for premium content," The Wall Street Journal said. 

For Hollywood, the move could represent a bold attempt to offset its dwindling DVD sales with online revenue. 

If YouTube talks bear fruit, viewers for a fee might be able to stream hit movies, perhaps as soon as they are out on DVD. 

The report said that YouTube is talking to Lions Gate Entertainment Corp, Sony Corp, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc and Time Warner Inc's Warner Bros on charging for new titles on the existing YouTube site. In some cases, these titles might be available on the site on the same day they come out on DVD. 

Some studios already make full-length movies available on YouTube free, though they tend to be older and lesser-known films. It is unclear to what extent older movies or television shows would be a part of the new agreements, it added. 

While details vary from studio to studio, the agreements would allow consumers to stream movies on a rental basis on fee. However, in some cases, the movies could be available in way that they have been previously--free, with advertising, the report noted. 

Attributing to people familiar with the matter the daily said that negotiations are continuing and there are no guarantees the deals will be struck. Many details remain in flux, including whether users will eventually be able to download movies. 

YouTube, which had nearly 428 million global visitors in June, as per comScore, can potentially reach a much wider audience. 

The new movie rentals are likely to be around USD 3.99, the price Apple Inc's iTunes Store charges for new movie rentals. The companies hope to keep pricing on par with what consumers pay for video on demand for new titles, the report said citing these people. 

Quoting a YouTube spokesman the WSJ said, the company is always working to expand on "its great relationships with movie studios and on the selection and types of videos we offer our community." 

The report said Google was supposed to start the test service at the beginning of September for a period of three months but was pushed back as studio negotiations dragged on.

Technology roundup

Wipro, the country’s third-largest software services exporter, expects to close a clutch of big-ticket outsourcing deals — each valued upwards of $100 million — in the second quarter of 2009-10. 

The company claims it has a good funnel of potential clients who prefer end-to-end solutions in areas like IT services, consulting, remote management and BPO. 

Confirming this, Wipro ED & CFO Suresh C Senapaty said: “We expect to win some good clients this year despite the slowdown. It is true that bids are getting complex and taking longer time to conclude. 

However, we are optimistic of closing few large deals, especially in the $100-million plus range,” Mr Senapaty told ET. 

Hacker attacks on Twitter & Facebook 

Twitter and Facebook said they suffered service problems from hacker attacks on Thursday, raising speculation of a coordinated campaign against the world’s most popular online social networks. 

Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service, was knocked down by a malicious attack that prevented people from accessing its website for several hours on Thursday. 

Facebook members saw delays logging in and posting to their online profiles, which the social networking site said was related to an “apparent distributed denial of service attack.” 

Facebook was working with Twitter and Internet search company Google Inc to investigate further, said a person familiar with Facebook but who was not authorized to speak to the press. 

Dell gets notice for over pricing 

Computer major Dell India has been issued notice by a district consumer court for allegedly over pricing products and supplying a faulty laptop to a customer. 

A consumer court in Shalimar Bagh, while issuing notice to Dell India earlier this week, asked the firm to file its response by December 21. 

The court was hearing the plea of Archer Softech Pvt Ltd through its advocate Ankur Raheja, who alleged that the Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop it bought for Rs 69,164 turned out to be faulty. 

The complainant also alleged that Dell is over-pricing its products, charging consumers much more than the maximum retail price

Websites will talk to you now

BANGALORE: Websites will soon be accessible to the disabled, especially the visually-impaired, once the Union government makes it mandatory for 

all websites to go audible.

For this, websites have to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. This new standard, along with a screen reader, will make content audible through a headphone or a speaker. A visually-impaired person can use the keyboard to respond -- the tab keys will take him or her through different links. 

The project has been given to BarrierBreak Technologies and will take 10%-15% of the ordinary project cost. 

"It will not only help blind people, but also aged and illiterate people," said Javed Abidi, National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People. 

The idea came up last year on December 3, `Day for the Disabled', in Delhi. "The IT ministry was proactive about the programme. The draft, approved by the ministry, will be released soon," he said. The policy would be extended to other hardware as well -- like the ATM, television, washing machine and microwave. This will be the second phase of the project.

The journey of the internet as it turns 40

1969

On September 2, two computers at University of California, Los Angeles, exchange meaningless data in first test of Arpanet, an experimental military network. 1972 Ray Tomlinson brings email to the network, choosing @ as a way to specify email addresses belonging to other systems. 1973 Arpanet gets first international nodes, in England and Norway. 1974 Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn develop communications technique called TCP, allowing multiple networks to understand one another, creating a true internet. 1983 Domain name system is proposed. Creation of suffixes such as '.com' , '.gov' and '.edu' comes a year later. 1988 One of the first internet worms, Morris, cripples thousands of computers. 1990 Tim Berners- Lee creates the World Wide Web while developing ways to control computers remotely. 1993 Marc Andreessen and colleagues at University of Illinois create Mosaic, the first web browser to combine graphics and text on a single page. 1994 Andreessen and others on the Mosaic team form a company to develop the first commercial web browser, Netscape. Two immigration lawyers introduce the world to spam, advertising their green card lottery services. 1998 Google forms out of a project that began in Stanford dorm rooms. US government delegates oversight of domain name policies to Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. 1999 Napster popularizes music file-sharing and spawns successors that have permanently changed the recording industry. 2000 The dot-com boom of the 1990s becomes a bust as technology companies slide. 2004 Mark Zuckerberg starts Facebook at Harvard University. 2005 Launch of YouTube video-sharing site. 2007 Apple releases iPhone, introducing millions more to wireless internet access. 19

Top 10 nations using internet

China

Population using Internet: 298 million (22.4%)  (Figures in bracket denote percentage of nations' population who use internet) USA Population using Internet: 227 million (74.7%)  (Figures in bracket denote percentage of nations' population who use internet) JAPAN Population using Internet: 94 million (73.8%)  INDIA Population using Internet: 81 million (7.1%)  BRAZIL Population using Internet: 68 million (34.3%)  Germany Population using Internet: 55 million (67%)  UK Population using Internet: 48 million (72%)  FRANCE Population using Internet: 41 million (66%)  Russia Population using Internet: 38 million (27%)  S Korea Population using Internet: 37 million (76%)

Silicon Valley's 6 hottest startups

The Silicon Valley Six, made up of the hottest privately held companies with annual revenue of more than $100 million, were chosen based on informal polling by Reuters of venture capitalists and others. Here are brief descriptions of the six companies on the list.

LinkedIn, founded in 2003:

The most popular social networking site for professionals was valued by its investors last year at $1 billion and has annual revenue beyond $100 million. Subscribers provide their professional background on line as a way of meeting others in their field and as a way for companies to help hire.

The company has 43 million members, half outside the United States, and adds 1.5 to 2 million monthly. It turned profitable in 2008.

Solyndra, founded in 2005:

This clean tech company makes solar electric installations for commercial rooftops. It has a unique system using tubes that make it more efficient than standard photovoltaic systems and cheaper to install.

The company's latest round of growth capital came from the US Department of Energy, which gave it a $535 million loan guarantee in March.

It will use the money to increase its annual production capacity to 610 megawatts (MW) from 110 MW.

Image courtesy: www.solyndra.com

Zynga, established in 2007:

In less than two years, Zynga has grown to be the largest casual online gaming company in the world with 76 million users a month.

It was profitable almost from the beginning, advertising on Facebook and MySpace to tell users about how it works. Games are played between friends and there is no charge to play.

"We think this is going to be a major industry," said Chief Executive Mark Pincus. But he said he is "being careful" and "not rushing for the door" to sell the company.

Image courtesy: www.zynga.com

Silver Spring, founded in 2002:

A clean tech company that provisions "smart grid" utilities networks, Silver Spring sells smart electric and gas meters and software to conserve energy, minimize interruptions and cut carbon emissions.

The utilities that are the company's clients represent more than 20 percent of the US population, and its staff of 300 employees is growing. "We've added well over 100 people this year and are projected to add well over that," said CEO Scott Lang.

The company sees opportunities for growth in plug-in electric vehicles, which could create problems on the grid if they become widely used. It is also looking at acquisitions. Lang said a deal could come in less than two months.

Image courtesy: www.silverspringnet.com

LiveOps, founded in 2000:

LiveOps operates call centers in the cloud, connecting them with than 20,000 people who work at home as private contractors.

Chief Executive Maynard Webb came to LiveOps after being chief operating officer of eBay. He said the company's revenues are accelerating in double digits this year, despite the recession, and its revenues are above $100 million for the third year running.

Webb said he will take the company public but only when it hits internal benchmarks, because his company has no need for money beyond what it generates.

Image courtesy: www.liveops.com

Guidewire, founded in 2002:

Guidewire writes the core software for property and casualty insurance companies, replacing decades-old installations that used the old COBOL language.

Guidewire does in insurance what Oracle and SAP do for enterprise software. Guidewire's applications run on the Web, both as an intranet for internal company use and as an Internet for consumers and claims adjusters. It is designed to handle underwriting, claims and billing.

"We've just had our best year ever by far," said CEO John Raguin. He said the company, whose 70 customers include Geico, AAA and Tokio Marine Nichido Fire, grew by over 40 percent in the latest fiscal year.