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Just hours ago, Czech President Vaclav Klaus was the last to add his signature to a list of 26 others, effectively ratifying sweeping amendments to the Treaty of Lisbon — effectively, the constitution of the European Union. A new centralized executive authority will be created, dramatically expanding the roles of the EU’s President and formalizing the role of its own, continent-wide Foreign Minister. A country upon countries is born.

As the 27 member nations agree to cede more of their lawmaking authority to a centralized executive branch — whose members have yet to be elected — they continue to grapple with the subject of how they will interoperate, sharing not only information but commerce and technology, in a system where their own national laws may each be superseded. Since 2004, the EU had been looking to the open source software model as an example of free collaboration among independent entities willing to work together for the common good. And OSS proponents have shown pride in the fact that their model was directly cited by the first edition of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF), a set of formal recommendations for how countries may share public services with one another.

A draft 2.0 of the EIF has been under discussion since 2007, and has been awaiting the Lisbon Treaty amendments before starting the process of formal ratification. Now, a document that purports to be a newly proposed draft of EIF 2.0, appearing for the first time a week ago Monday on the Web site of Poland’s Internal Affairs Ministry, would actually strip those OSS references from the framework, in the interest of what it calls, among other things, “administrative simplification.”

The Ministry explicitly states that the document is not an actual draft. So contrary to numerous reports, the document in question is not official EU business. It does not actually contain text that may appear in the final draft, says the Ministry, beating around the bush a little bit instead of admitting that it’s a mockup.

Indeed, the text of the Polish Ministry document differs substantially in both content and size (it’s 56 pages shorter) than the Draft for Public Comments on version 2.0 (PDF available here), published in July 2008. But the Ministry is seeking public comment on the document, ahead of a meeting scheduled for November 12 in Malmo, Sweden, where the Ministry says the actual latest text of EIF 2.0 will be unveiled.

The fact that the Ministry’s document was not titled in sync with the actual EU project name (”European Public Services” as opposed to “pan-European Public Services”) should have sent up some red flags. It would appear this document is actually a kind of “floater” or “dipstick” — a test of alternative language just to ascertain the depths of public sentiment or apathy to a change in course. The Ministry does state the document was submitted by the European Commission; however, the document itself does not carry any EC authoritative marks. Betanews has been in contact with the Delegation of the European Commission in Washington today, in an effort to ascertain the origin of the document, and will report further as we hear more. One possibility is that the origin is a legitimate commissioner seeking public input on alternative language.

That alternative language would be a radical shift from the current EIF 2.0, which not only uses OSS as a model around which to base cooperative services, but states the EU’s preference for open source software as more likely to adhere to standards, and more likely to change with the needs of customers as opposed to making customers change to suit the software. The Polish Ministry version would strike that language entirely, replacing it with a suggested “Eleventh Principle” in a list of twelve. Under Principle 11, quite literally, public services would be urged to wait until the last possible moment before choosing any kind of technology investment, and then simply make whatever choice appears most adaptable at the time.

“When establishing European Public Services, public administrations should focus on functional needs and defer decisions on technology as long as possible in order to avoid imposing specific technologies or products on their partners and to be able to adapt to the rapidly evolving technological environment,” reads the Polish Interior Ministry draft language. “Public administrations should render access to public services independent of any specific technology or product.”

Open source software is nice because it’s typically reusable, meaning it’s licensed under less constrained terms than commercial products. But that’s about it for OSS under the Polish suggested language. Rather than model principles of openness in government on openness in software, as does EIF 1.0, the Polish version suggests that since some software is more open than others, some governments are more open than others.

In short, the Polish version would substitute the OSS principles with something right out of science fiction, literally called the openness continuum.

“Interoperability involves the sharing of information and knowledge between organizations, hence implies a certain degree of openness. There are varying degrees of openness,” the English-language text reads. “Specifications, software and software development methods that promote collaboration and the results of which can freely be accessed, reused and shared are considered open and lie at one end of the spectrum while non-documented, proprietary specifications, proprietary software and the reluctance or resistance to reuse solutions, i.e. the ‘not invented here’ syndrome, lie at the other end. The spectrum of approaches that lies between these two extremes can be called the openness continuum.”

Governments should decide how open they should be or need to be on a case-by-case basis, the document goes on, taking into account factors such as how much they can actually afford. And it’s here that the Polish document would blast the EIF’s embrace of open source to kingdom come: “While there is a correlation between openness and interoperability, it is also true that interoperability can be obtained without openness, for example via homogeneity of the ICT [information and communications technology] systems, which implies that all partners use, or agree to use, the same solution to implement a European Public Service.”

As the Polish Interior Ministry advises citizens, according to English translation, “We encourage all community organizations interested in interoperability topics electronically to submit comments and suggestions to the document, which can be used by the Polish delegation at the meeting on November 12.”

Some of us missed the boat and never got in the Google Voice beta test group. With all the controversy the service stirred up among the media, the public, telecommunications companies, and the FCC, there’s a distinct possibility that Google Voice as we know it could end up in regulatory limbo after being politicized and thrown into the “net neutrality” conflict.

Today, a beta of an alternative has opened up: Ribbit Mobile from Ribbit, an independent British Telecom subsidiary often billed as “Silicon Valley’s first telephone company.”

In short, Ribbit Mobile is a cloud-based communications hub. Using that simple description, it becomes very easy to compare Ribbit Mobile to Google Voice because they both address the “many numbers, one identity” problem. That is, they both try to give people with multiple phone numbers an option to have all those lines equally accessible at all times. For example, you can answer calls coming into your work phone on your mobile phone like you can with Google Voice, but Ribbit goes a step further and lets you also answer incoming calls through a desktop VoIP client like MSN or Skype. The value here is that you can route your mobile number through VoIP and save airtime, or ensure a connection despite a poor or unavailable signal.

The platform is also integrated with Web services, letting Ribbit offer what it calls “Caller ID 2.0.” This feature pulls up a caller’s LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr data when you’re speaking to them. It’s like an instant background check, which Ribbit likened to a personal CRM (customer relationship management) platform. Though it seems almost intrusive, it does only grab publicly disclosed information.

Ribbit Mobile also has a strong speech-to-text transcription element. It can transcribe voice mail into text and then send it as an SMS or e-mail, or it can be used as an immediate dictation service to take down text memos through your mobile device.

Because Ribbit Mobile is built on an open platform, developers can harness Ribbit’s APIs to come up with new apps, widgets, and ways to work the platform’s architecture. Unlike many developer programs, Ribbit pays developers based on how much their apps are actually used. The most used apps earn the most money for developers, not just the most downloaded or most installed.

This beta program gives users access to all of Ribbit Mobile’s functionality, also known as the “Pro” package, which will eventually be unveiled as a $30 monthly subscription service with two lower tiers, including one for free.

It was a short couple of weeks ago that Best Buy announced it had partnered with Netflix to equip its in-house brand of Insignia connected Blu-Ray players with support for Netflix Instant streaming like Sony, LG, and Samsung all had done to their own players.

Now, Best Buy is following the lead of companies like TiVo, LG, and, Pioneer by partnering with Sonic Solutions to include CinemaNow streaming in more devices. The company says CinemaNow will become a standard feature in “connected consumer electronics devices sold throughout US Best Buy retail stores,” and online.

CinemaNow’s business model differs from Netflix Instant, in that it is not subscription-based. Rather, it offers titles in pay-per-view for $2.99-$3.99 per 24-hour viewing window, and it lets users download movies to keep for unlimited viewing on up to three devices. CinemaNow’s downloadable titles cost between $9.99 and $19.99 and include movies, TV shows, and music videos. The two services can complement each other on the same device without too much redundancy, similar to the way Netflix Instant and Amazon On Demand successfully coexist on devices like the Roku set top box.

Blockbuster On Demand is powered by Roxio CinemaNow, and Sonic Solutions yesterday said that their partnership increased video-on-demand attach rates by more than 50% over other CinemaNow powered services thanks to the familiar Blockbuster brand name.

Neither Best Buy nor Sonic Solutions went into great depth about which devices will be included in the multi-year deal announced today, but Sonic Solutions is holding a conference this afternoon to go over the specifics of the agreement with Best Buy.

Over the last several weeks, but especially with the last round of Patch Tuesday updates, we’ve been noticing a severely downward trend in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer performance — a trend we were able to confirm in our most recent tests. It seems that with each security update, IE8’s performance was cut in half.

This morning, Microsoft issued what its engineers describe (though without using the term directly) as a bug fix for one of last Tuesday’s updates: a patch that addresses two newly discovered issues. One of those issues is a type mismatch error that would appear to become a potential security threat. If it’s not a threat yet, then it could at least partly explain some of the severe performance issues we’d been seeing in recent days — or at least so we thought.

This morning’s support bulletin from Microsoft links to a patch for the patch, which Microsoft warns should not be applied unless the first patch has already been installed. This may be one reason why the new fix is not yet available on Microsoft Update and must be applied manually. We verified that the original 974455 patch was installed before applying patch 976749, and we hoped to see some verification of our theory that something bad was going on and that Microsoft was remedying it.

But the remedy may be worse than the problem, at least from a performance standpoint. After applying Microsoft’s latest fix, we were shocked to find that IE8 performance on Windows 7 was only marginally faster overall than the performance of IE7 — by most accounts, the slowest browser ever made — on Windows Vista — by most accounts, one of the slower platforms Microsoft ever produced (relative to the speed of hardware, Windows Me was probably slower). However, this was before we applied the new fix to IE7 on Vista — yes, there are versions of the fix that go all the way back to IE 5.01.

Compared to the unpatched IE7 on Vista SP2, IE8 on Windows 7 was only 8% faster at rendering complex pages using DOM, 78% faster at rendering a non-CSS Web page ordinary HTML (at one time it was better than triple IE7’s speed here), and 28% faster at managing complex page elements using JavaScript libraries and CSS selectors. The patched IE8 on Windows 7 was also 2% slower at rendering large tables, and 31% slower at rendering simple geometry.

In all, performance from Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7 was 42% slower after applying the bug fix, than before the fix just last Friday. This estimate was made using Betanews’ Comprehensive Relative Performance Index benchmark collection, which rates 69 different data points with respect to IE7 on Vista, which we use as our index browser.

Windows XP SP3 should be the fastest of Microsoft’s three most recent Windows platforms, due mainly to the fact that the many additions that have greatly improved Windows security since the XP era did come with a speed cost. But our tests this morning after applying the 976749 patch showed IE8 was only 2% faster than IE7 on Vista SP2 at rendering pages using DOM, 48% faster in executing classic benchmark algorithmic tests, and 28% faster in executing common JavaScript instructions and methods. But it proved to be 26% slower at rendering simple geometry, and 16% slower at generating and manipulating large HTML tables.

Click here for a comprehensive explanation of the Betanews CRPI index version 2.2.

Betanews tests show IE8 performance on Windows XP SP3 to be 38% slower after the bug fix was applied, than before.

Vista, ironically, was the least suffering platform of the three, with overall IE8 performance slipping only 15% after the bug fix was applied. In fact, many of IE8’s best scores now show up on Vista rather than Windows 7. If we were to omit the bug patch for IE7, IE8 on Vista would score a 1.20 in our tests versus 1.17 on Win7. And our overall CRPI score, taking all three platforms into account, would be a 1.17 for IE8 today versus a 1.54 just last Friday — a decline of nearly 25%.

However, we now expect that the same bug fix applied to IE7 to slow that browser down as well. As a result, our final adjusted scores may turn out somewhat similar to last week’s since IE7 is our index browser — they wouldn’t reflect the degree to which IE7 slowed down. But the numbers for all the major independent browsers — Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera — would probably rise. At least that’s our expectation, and we’ll be testing that theory next.

2:15 pm EST November 3, 2009 · As we suspected, Internet Explorer 7 performance is now somewhat lower as a result of implementing Microsoft’s bug fix published today. But the performance gap between IE7 and IE8 was not restored by as much as we expected:

Prior to the bug fix, we measured the performance gap at about 17% overall. With the fix in place and with IE7 slowed down even more, the gap is now 35%. Vista is now the fastest platform for IE7, but not by much: about 2% over Windows 7, which is itself about 2% over Windows XP. It’s completely counter-intuitive, but it’s the new reality.

The other new reality is that the CRPI scores for all the other browsers scale up. They didn’t all get faster all of a sudden; and the proportions between them remain the same. When you’re figuring out which one is faster than the other, that’s most important. But now Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 posts a CRPI score above 15, at 15.02, whereas it was only 11.73 relative to IE7 in Vista just last Friday. Meanwhile, Google Chrome 3’s score rises to a 26.48, again in proportion with the rest of the field.

Early this morning, Sony Ericsson took the wraps off of its first Android-based handset, the 1 GHz Snapdragon-powered Xperia X10. With a huge 4″ touchscreen, an 8.1 megapixel camera and the elegant custom user interface named “Rachael,” Sony Ericsson moves the Android platform a step further by giving it almost no mention in announcements and commercials.

Sony Ericsson mentions the Android Market, and notes in the spec sheet that the operating system is Android Donut 1.6, but otherwise it does not ride the point, and strives to make the device stand out as a distinct product.

This is where Android is headed, and it’s a good thing.

As anyone with a zealous interest in technology is sure to tell you, most people don’t give a damn what version of which operating system their phone is running. They only care if it works and their signals are strong. So rather than try to start an “I’m an Android / I’m an iPhone” battle like Verizon did with its Motorola Droid “iDon’t” advertising campaign, Sony Ericsson avoids even mentioning Android and the X10 in the same breath.

Instead, it gives its custom Android build its own name (UX Platform “built on top of the Open OS”) and talks about the uniquely Sony Ericsson experience it can provide with it.

It’s owning the Android experience, and in doing so, it’s giving the user less to think about and more to drool over.

Like Motorola did with MotoBLUR, Sony Ericsson has developed a new face for its Android devices which attempts to closely integrate the user’s mobile device with his various social networks and media sharing sites. Sony Ericsson calls the two applications Timescape and Mediascape, and we first had a glimpse of them back in January when a video runthrough of Rachael leaked. Timescape takes all communications with another person — be they through SMS, voice calls, e-mails, IMs, or social network wall postings — and ties them with that person’s contact information in your phone. If you hit the “infinite” button, you can pull up a chronological view of a contact’s online activity, something like an in-phone Friendfeed.

Mediascape is a highly visual media manager which integrates content stored on the phone with content on media Web sites. If you are listening to music, for example, pressing the “Infinite” button here would pull up relevant and related online content such as artist information, videos, downloads, and so forth.

As Sony Ericsson’s Head of Application Planning, Erika Kato Marcus, said in the joint venture’s new blog, “It’s about quick access to your music, videos and photos in one application…What we try to do…is to blur the boundaries between what is online and local.”

One of the few areas where the X10 is similar to other Android devices is in application acquisition, as its primary app store is the Android Market. However, Sony Ericsson has put its stamp here as well, and includes PlayNow Arena into the mix for additional games, applications, themes, wallpaper, ringtones, and music.

Like the company’s whole Xperia line, the X10 is a luxurious device. It has a 4″ (480 x 854) scratch resistant capacitive touchscreen, a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon (QSD8250) processor, 1 GB of onboard memory with 8 GB microSD included, quad-band GSM, UMTS, and HSPA 900/1700/2100, Bluetooth 2.1, Wi-Fi, and A-GPS. The camera is 8.1 megapixel with 16x digital zoom, geotagging and face recognition of up to five faces simultaneously.

Though the public’s attention has been captured by the Motorola Droid and its aggressive advertising campaign, it’s a move like this which makes big strides toward Android ubiquity.

The death of Usenet has been proclaimed for well over a decade now, but the use of some derivative of the Internet’s NNTP protocol for the trafficking of messages — some of which are actually parts of legitimate conversations — continues today. In fact, it probably can’t really be stopped since, as is the case with a P2P network, no one really owns Usenet.

Since 2001, the Web’s portal to Usenet has been Google Groups, the successor to the Deja.com archiving system. Google’s plans to make something of Google Groups stretch as far back as 2004, with promises to make the experience more personalized and exciting. For the most part, Google Groups provides organizations with an expense-free system for broadcasting memberships to select groups on an opt-in basis.

Whether one considers Google Groups dead depends on where one stands, especially whether it’s up- or downwind. In another indication that the ties of friendship binding Google with Mozilla are fraying in the wake of Google’s efforts to upstage Mozilla in the browser market, Mozilla engineer John Resig — the co-creator of the jQuery library that is revolutionizing JavaScript — pronounced Google Groups dead from his vantage point, in a blog post that could carry some real weight.

As Resig wrote last Tuesday, “The primary problem with Google Groups boils down to a systemic failure to contain and manage spam. Only a bottom-up overhaul of the Google Groups system would be able to fix the problems that every Google Group faces.”

Spam is systemic on Usenet newsgroup systems, appearing at times to be a self-sustaining entity independent of any human influence whatsoever. It’s adopted a language that is almost speakable, but that doesn’t conform completely to any one country’s or people’s real grammar, and that’s usually laced with sexual or otherwise gratuitous innuendo intentionally misspelled so as to foil the most basic filters.

Resig, who has co-moderated the jQuery Google Group, described a situation where Usenet spam has evolved to such a point that it bypasses Google’s (optional) moderation system, eventually generating messages that appear to be from group members themselves. (Surprisingly, that’s not unlike the experience our Carmi Levy has been having with Facebook.) As it stands now, the moderation process Resig describes — part of that 2004 features improvement test that’s still ongoing — makes it the moderator’s duty to shuffle individual spam elements, often numbering in the thousands, to a deletion column. There, because of outdated layout, a moderator can actually find himself deleting a member from the service along with the spam, in an incident Resig actually describes.

“Nothing quite like insulting, confusing, and scaring your users, due to a poorly-designed user interface and abysmal spam detection,” he wrote. “This is the reality that Google Group owners have to live with on a daily basis.” Mozilla is in a position to host its own moderated forum, and will be doing so shortly. Building one’s own forum software is nothing like re-inventing the wheel. The problem is, once the wheel’s already invented, fewer folks are interested in the idea of building one — a bit like sending men to the moon once they’ve already been there. Although free moderated forum hosting alternatives do exist, such as the well-reviewed Invision Plus, there appears to be little incentive these days for a major player like Google to invest too much of its resources in traffic between free agents and other free agents.

The most recent indication from Google itself that Google Groups such as Resig has come to know it truly is dying — or at least morphing — came last August, when an associate product manager for the project referred to it not as a platform for Usenet conversation, but rather as a free method for gathering multiple mail addresses together as recipients for Google Docs Web apps…a sort of poor person’s Active Directory.

“We recently rolled out improvements to the way Google Groups interacts with several of our applications,” wrote Google’s Jeffrey Chang, referring to it as an impersonal platform rather than a personal meeting place. “Now, sharing calendars, sites and documents with multiple people is easy — instead of adding people one at a time, you can simply share with an entire Google Group.”

Those who have mourned the “death” of Google Groups as an interactive forum, and who continue to mourn the “death” of Usenet, may find it is within their power to continue their conversations and friendships elsewhere. You don’t just stop being friends with someone because the restaurant where you met burned down, and though one may mourn the loss of the restaurant, it’s not being able to associate a living memory with a living place that people tend to miss most. As a friend suggested to me once, when the monkeys take over the asylum, why not move to another asylum already?

Here in the US, excitement has been high over Verizon’s first Android handset, the Motorola Droid; so high, in fact, that it has actually begun to make an appreciable dent in iPhone favoritism.

This is partially due to the fact that a large number of iPhone users were Verizon customers before they got the iPhone, and still consider Verizon’s wireless network to be superior to AT&T’s. Verizon’s “There’s a map for that” advertising campaign has also added to the company’s reputation for having a more robust network than AT&T.

Verizon seems to be welcoming huge consumers of mobile bandwidth with the Droid.

Now the Droid has been spotted in Germany, equipped with UMTS/GSM radios under the name Motorola Milestone on Telefonica’s O2 network.

Germany’s O2 network is not viewed nearly as favorably as Verizon is here in the United States; it’s actually the nation’s fourth largest mobile carrier behind T-Mobile, Vodafone, and KPN’s E-Plus. However, the carrier has made some serious strides toward becoming a bigger competitor in the market.

Part of this is by similarly preparing for higher mobile data traffic.

In late September, O2 completed the “largest ever live network upgrade in Germany,” by adding 5,199 new dual-mode 2G/3G base stations to help carry more data traffic.

The new base stations all came from Chinese wireless manufacturer Huawei Technologies, and Walter Haas, CTO Huawei Germany said, “Our advanced SingleRAN solution enables the operator to simplify the radio access network unifying both GSM and UMTS functionalities. This state-of-the-art network will be significantly enhanced in coverage quality and able to meet the operator’ s demands for increased data traffic.”

O2’s most recent string of network upgrades started at the beginning of 2009, when the company predicted that its subscribers would consume triple the amount of mobile broadband bandwidth they did in 2008.

Over the last 10 days, Microsoft has opened two retail stores, in Arizona and California, and a café in France. Bloggers and journalists largely dismissed the retail outlets as Apple Store knock-offs, which is surprising considering reports of 1,000 or more people lined up for the second opening in Mission Viejo, Calif. That said, the numbers aren’t confirmed and a free music concert likely bolstered them.

Over the weekend, ifoAppleStore chronicled the Mission Viejo-store opening — albeit with some pro-Apple, anti-Microsoft commentary — and large gallery of photos. From the text and pics, Microsoft Store similarities to Apple Store are obvious.

But striking physical similarities to Apple Store is no reason to dismiss Microsoft’s retail efforts. Microsoft is getting into the retail business for pretty much the same reasons Apple did in May 2001. To succeed, Microsoft will need to make at least the same kind of commitment Apple did early days. Microsoft must open many stores quickly and be prepared to take losses — even large ones — to reap greater marketing benefits.

Microsoft must also advance its retail strategy for the right reasons, and none of them is about competing with Apple. My prediction: Microsoft’s retail strategy will fail, if the only — even primary — objective is competing with Apple Store.

Shared Apple and Microsoft Problems

Common problems Microsoft in 2009 shares with Apple circa 2001:

1. Distribution: In 2001, Apple depended on major computer retailers and Mac dealers to sell its goods. But Windows PCs dwarfed Macs in most stores to near invisibility. In 2009, Microsoft relies on fewer chains, like Best Buy or Walmart; major computer retail partners — Circuit City and CompUSA, among them — are gone. TVs and consumer electronics dwarf Windows PCs in most stores.

2. Retail experience: In 2001, the Mac buying experience usually ended with a computer store employee recommending a Windows PC. Most employees either weren’t trained to sell Macs or pushed what they knew — Windows. In 2009, many electronics store employees don’t know how to sell Windows in context of capabilities tied to TVs and other devices.

3. Digital lifestyle: In 2001, Apple wanted to position the Mac as a digital hub for photos, music, movies, the Web and other digital activities. Apple Store presented a place to showcase the Mac’s capabilities — something not happening in regular retail. In 2009, Microsoft wants to advance Windows as hub for three screens — the phone, the PC and TV — but retailers aren’t effectively selling it.

4. Brand building: In 2001, Apple had a marginally resurgent brand. There was yet no iPod, and Mac market share was but a few percent. Apple Store created permanent presence where people could see Apple’s brand and experience the Mac lifestyle. In 2009, Microsoft’s brand is tarnished for many reasons. Among them: Ineffective retail experience, Window Vista debacle and security perceptions. Microsoft Store establishes a permanent presence exposing masses of people to the brand and Microsoft lifestyle.

5. Customer service: In 2001, Mac dealers and PC retailers determined the extent of Apple customer service. The Apple Store Genius Bar reclaimed the customer experience, by providing a place where Mac customers could get free technical support and even product replacement. Satisfaction endears customers. In 2009, Microsoft has little to no control over customer satisfaction, as retailers or hardware manufacturers provide most support services. By providing in-store training and technical support, Microsoft Store increases customer satisfaction by solving problems and, perhaps more importantly, by helping people get the most value from their products.

Commitment is the Only Way to Success

Microsoft probably should have opened retail stores three years ago. Perhaps negative Windows Vista perceptions would have been less. Timing is OK, with Windows 7 launching to more positive reception. But timing would be much, much better if concurrent with Windows Mobile 6.5 and Windows 7 launches Microsoft opened a dozen retail stores in the United States and one each in another dozen countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, South Africa, South Korea and United Kingdom.

International stores risk more problems with existing dealers and retailers (what Microsoft calls “channel conflict”) but they’re necessary for revitalizing the company’s brand, fighting piracy and offering localized shopping experiences. I’ve long advocated Microsoft retail stores as one of the most effective tools for combating software piracy, particularly in BRIC — Brazil, Russia, India, China — countries.

But Microsoft can only be effective enough, achieve the needed retail reach, by jumping in the lake rather than sticking in a couple of toes. Two stores is a losing tip-toe-in-the-water strategy. Microsoft must make the big splash, with the willingness to loose tens of millions of dollars. If the stores are viewed as marketing investment, top executives can justify early retail losses.

Microsoft launched Xbox knowing the console would lose money for years before achieving sustainable profits or gaining market share against Sony PlayStation. More recently, Microsoft has invested billions of dollars building out datacenter infrastructure or building up Web search. Microsoft’s retail strategy needs this kind of commitment, otherwise it will fail.

Apple Store Double Vision

Is imitating Apple Store Microsoft’s best strategy? The ifoAppleStore photos certainly show many striking similarities in terms of layout and design but not materials or colors. The browns and dark wood colors are particularly unsettling, unless Microsoft is trying to achieve some kind of collegiate feeling. It turns out that the Mission Viejo Microsoft Store is only 70 miles north of San Diego. I’ll drive up there this week, take some photos and write up a real first impression blog post.

But, for today, based on the ifoAppleStore photos, I must express misgivings about where the California store appears to be too much a bad imitation of Apple Store layout and design.

Four years ago, for Betanews, I wrote commentary,” iPod Shuffle: Apple Understated.” I explained how Apple used understated design to emphasize product features and benefits. The approach applies to Apple Store. I wrote:

Apple retail stores are remarkably understated. The only bright colors are found on marketing material placed throughout the store. Otherwise, the tasteful stores are quite stark, so that the shoppers’ eyes are drawn either to the colorful marketing posters and signs or to the products on sale.

By comparison, many retail stores are overly cluttered, with Walmart being one of the obvious examples. Shoppers’ eyes are wildly drawn here, there and everywhere. There is confusion, which can leave shoppers feeling unsettled.

Apple Store is inviting for the good feeling its understated design generates. This essence is more than just layout, but in the quality of materials, too. Then, there are those low tables, which give shoppers a clear view of the whole store, draw their eyes downward to products and create a cheery feeling of breadth and openness.

Can Microsoft do as well or better with its retail stores? My initial reaction is alarm, after reviewing the ifoAppleStore photos. Perhaps I will feel better after spending time in Microsoft Store. But I will say that a bad Appe Store imitation is better than nothing. Microsoft should have opened retail stores years ago. The branding and marketing benefits outweigh risks of channel conflict.

By waiting, there is some advantage in timing. In the United States, the commercial real estate market is in early stages collapse, like the homeowner market in late 2007 and early 2008. Commercial foreclosures and otherwise higher-than-normal store closings will give hard negotiator Microsoft chance to get good locations under favorable leasing terms. I say, “Go for it, Microsoft.” Do you agree or perhaps have opinion about Microsoft Store similarities to Apple Store? Comments await you.

Clearwire and Sprint have been working hard to complete the planned WiMAX network deployment for 2009, and with the addition of a handful of new major markets this week, the project has nearly fulfilled its promises for the year.

Today, Sprint announced it has launched WiMAX services in the North Carolina cities Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, High Point and Cary; in Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas; and in Chicago, Illinois.

Todd Rowley, Vice President of Sprint 4G said, “Our aggressive expansion of Sprint 4G will include many new devices and capabilities that create increased performance and productivity while enhancing personal lifestyles on the go.”

This statement of course was not a recent one, and was also used last week when the long-anticipated 4G network in Philadelphia was launched.

The final cities Iexpected to get Sprint/Clearwire WiMAX networks this year are Seattle/Tacoma Washington, and Honolulu/Maui Hawaii. By the end of 2010, more than 80 networks are expected nationwide including New York City, Boston, San Francisco, Houston, and the District of Columbia.

With this latest expansion, WiMAX services from either Clear, Sprint 4G, Comcast, or Time Warner (all investors in the Clear WiMAX network) are available in:

• Oregon — Portland, Salem
• Georgia — Atlanta, Milledgeville
• Nevada — Las Vegas
• Illinois — Chicago
• California — San Francisco bay area (not yet public)
• Pennsylvania — Philadelphia
• Maryland — Baltimore
• Texas —- Dallas, Fort Worth, Abilene, Amarillo, Corpus Christi, Lubbock, Midland/Odessa, Killeen/Temple, Waco, Wichita Falls
• North Carolina —- Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, High Point, Cary
• Idaho —- Boise
• Washington — Bellingham