Microsoft promoted several executives to fill the departures. Bill Veghte moves from VP to senior vice president and adds responsibility for the business strategy for Windows, Windows Live, MSN, and search. Satya Nadella gets a similar title bump and adds programming and engineering oversight for MSN to his search-related responsibilities. Collectively, Vegthe, Nadella and former Aquantive CEO Brian McAndrews will take over Berkowitz’s duties.

Filling Knook’s role is Andy Lees, who becomes senior vice president of the mobile communications business. The move represents Lees’ first mobile-related duties during his long tenure at Microsoft.

Microsoft made its leadership changes official on Thursday, promoting more than a dozen executives and confirming the departure or pending departure of three top executives.

A Microsoft representative would not offer any further details, but ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley notes that Ho has been leading a project known as Pink and Purple aimed at bringing
Zune experiences over to Windows Mobile.

Developer unit head S. Somasegar and Office executives Chris Capossela, Kurt DelBene, and Antoine Leblond each become senior VPs, but maintain largely their same responsibilities, with four other executives adding the VP title.

As expected, Windows VP Mike Sievert, online services senior VP Steven Berkowitz, and Windows Mobile head Pieter Knook are all leaving the company. Knook is heading to a new post at Vodafone, Sievert plans to start his own company, and Berkowitz will stay at Microsoft through August, as his duties transition to other executives.

Roz Ho, former head of Microsoft’s
Mac unit, will become a corporate VP and lead the Danger team once Microsoft completes that acquisition. Microsoft’s press release also notes that Ho will continue in her stealth role leading “various consumer-focused premium mobile offerings in mobile communications.”

Brad Brooks, formerly a general manager in the Windows unit, will take over as head of consumer marketing for the operating system, assuming Sievert’s responsibilities.

Neal asked me if I would comment on the markets for sustainable energy stocks in the last week. It’s an area I follow closely so he hopes I will occasionally stumble across some nuggets.

What did I learn this week? Apparently growth constraints are still a factor in the high growth solar sector. I also relearned that unexpected risks occur when broader markets are having problems. Are there more surprises from the credit markets waiting to be revealed in sustainable energy companies?

Mark is the founder of Camino Energy, a information provider specializing in globally traded sustainable energy stocks. He also is an investor in sustainable energy stocks.

In the Renewable Electricity sector Solar Millenium (S2M.DE) declined 10.1% . The company announced a rights issue on Feb 19 that may have triggered concerns about dilution. Overall 8 stocks advanced and 11 declined resulting in relatively modest decline of 1.1% in the index.

In Biofuels Aventine (AVR) was off 17.4% after it reported Thursday it had liquidity issues stemming from its $211.5 million invested in auction-rate securities. This issue may delay plant development. I expect analysts are reviewing the balance sheets of other sustainable energy companies to see if they have “cash equivalents” that aren’t exactly equivalent to cash. If you don’t understand what you’re investing in don’t invest in it.

In Fuel Cells all of our companies reported price declines with Fuel Cell Energy (FCEL) falling the most at -6.3%. The company presented at the PiperJaffray conference on February 20, 2008 and didn’t highlight any items of concern that I noted.

The Solar index, comprised of 33 companies, suffered the largest decline with a 5.3% drop bringing the YTD decline for the sector to -35.5%. Suntech (STP) was hardest hit with a 20.3% price decline after it reported earnings and revenue below expectations, driven in part by silicon supply issues. If other producers report similar problems I would expect to see further declines in the sector as prices adjust to lower growth expectations.

Let me start by saying I believe there is potential for good returns in sustainable energy stocks over time. In the short term though, it was a tough week. Sustainable energy stocks in all four of Camino’s sectors declined. In contrast, broader indicators such as the S&P, EAFA, and emerging markets were all positive for the week.

It must be an odd thing to run a company in the midst of a debate around the idea of nationalizing your core technology. In a Venezuelan moment, the Gillmor Gang considers the idea that Twitter has become so important that our national security requires nationalizing its technical infrastructure. In a two-part discussion about an open mesh / cross-service dashboard mashups and the roll of Twitter as a sort of fundamental glue, the question surfaced of breaking up the centralized Twitter monopoly.” (Thanks to Dave Winer for pointing this out.) Later on, Echovar finishes with this kicker:

This is starting to become a really interesting topic. For the folks over at Twitter, it’s time to get out ahead of the discussion.

Consider me second to none in embracing Twitter for all that it’s worth. But the service’s publicized brown-outs naturally raise questions about backup plans in case of further outages. The Gillmor Gang, in particular, has into this question, but the most searching critique I’ve come across comes from Echovar. It’s worth reading the entire post. Here are a couple of excerpts:

The idea of building competitors to Twitter on the same platform, or redistributing Twitter to multiple players reminds me of the idea that New York City should be rebuilt in Ohio because it would be cheaper. Or perhaps we could distribute a little of New York City in every state of the Union. New York City is what it is because of the people who live and visit there. Building another New York City in Las Vegas doesn’t result in the phenomenon that is New York City.

Apple will get four things for sure:

People– PA Semi has a medium-size team that knows how to work together and produce chips.
Processes– PA Semi has design tools and procedures that can be used to design new chips.
Patents– PA Semi did some unique innovative design work for its chips, and there must be some interesting patents on this work.
A product– the PWRficient 1682M, which has found a few design wins in military electronics and other systems.

And perhaps a couple more:

A PowerPC architectural license– which would allow Apple to make PowerPC processors
Protection against litigation– if Apple made promises to PA Semi or its investors, PA Semi’s inevitable failure as a standalone company might have resulted in legal action against Apple.

Okay, let’s take these one at a time.

PA Semi’s people are chip designers. Apple is not a chip company. It used to make chipsets for its PowerPC-based systems, but now that Apple is getting processors and chipsets from Intel, it has much less need for chip designers.

On top of that, PA Semi’s people are designers of high-complexity, medium-power microprocessors with unusual custom I/O interfaces. These skills are even less useful to Apple, at least for its current product line.

The same reasoning applies to PA Semi’s design processes. They just aren’t what Apple needs right now.

Whatever patents PA Semi might have (I haven’t looked into this) are probably not very useful to Apple, since it doesn’t make processors and doesn’t need this kind of legal leverage over its processor vendors. If the deal was primarily about patents, the purchase price would be completely unreasonable; no untested patent portfolio is worth anywhere near $278 million.

PA Semi’s one product isn’t selling in high volume and never will. I assume the company was working on future products but there’s no reason to assume these would be any more successful.

The PowerPC license would only be valuable to Apple if it planned to make PowerPC processors. It has no particular reason to do that, and we don’t even know if PA Semi’s license is transferable to Apple.

Apple just doesn’t need PowerPC chips. It moved the
Mac line away from PowerPC. Intel is doing a reasonably good job of providing both low-power and high-performance x86 chips. PowerPC chips– especially those like PA Semi’s– aren’t a good fit in cellphones like the
iPhone.

And that leaves us with litigation protection. Apple knows just what’s at stake here. Apple invested in a previous PowerPC design firm, Exponential Technologies, and after Exponential went under, it slapped Apple with a lawsuit alleging that Apple deliberately sabotaged its efforts to sell chips to both Apple and Mac clone makers.

Could PA Semi possibly have a basis for a complaint against Apple? To me, this is nigh-impossible. How could Apple have made the same mistake with the Exponential situation so fresh in its institutional memory? The most generous thing I can say about this theory is that it isn’t impossible.

But all of this leaves me with three choices:

Apple is getting into the microprocessor business. That would be crazy.
Apple made unwise promises to PA Semi. That’s also crazy, but maybe slightly less crazy since Apple’s done it before.
I’m missing something. I have a pretty good idea what kinds of value are generated by a startup chip company… but it’s possible.

And I’ll throw in one bonus possibility raised by a friend of mine:

Steve Jobs felt guilty that PA Semi didn’t work out. No comment.

Jonah Staw, co-founder and CEO of LittleMissMatched, heads-up a lifestyle brand that is based on “innovative and creative mixing and mismatching.” LittleMissMatched launched in 2004 with a collection of mismatched socks sold in odd numbers to encourage girls of all ages to express themselves. The “nothing matches but anything goes” philosophy knocked people’s socks off, and sales jumped from $5 million to $25 million in just three years. Today, the LittleMissMatched product line includes everything from socks, winterwear, and sleepwear to books, bedding, and furniture for mismatched mavens of all ages. LittleMissMatched products range in retail price from $5 to $1,200 and are available at specialty boutiques and department stores nationwide. The company recently announced $17.3 million in private equity funding, expanded distribution, a new flagship store in Manhattan, and a series of new products.

How do you define innovation?

Innovation is such a broad term. I was recently on a McKinsey panel discussing innovation, and we opened by going around the room. There were more than 25 chief strategy officers from major US corporations. The moderator asked what was the most innovative product, and 90% of the audience said the
iPod. I said the Post-It Note. Why? It is so simple it’s obvious. It has become a fixture on the physical American desktop. It is useful. It invented a new category…before there were note cards, stationary, thumb tacks and more. Now we have the Post-it. Innovations are simple, elegant solutions that make things better. Better doesn’t necessarily mean more efficient…it could be more fun, easier to use, beautiful. You get the point.

What are the most important areas of innovation in your organization?

My company is 100% based on innovation. We created a company that was founded on the premise of selling three-packs of non-matching socks. Talk about a challenge — we were completely changing the way people got dressed each morning. We set out to tell the world that it was okay to not match your socks and as such, you should buy them in a novel way. Our socks are uniquely paired to look great together. What we discovered is that our socks are something that are simply FUN. They are so fun that people what to tell their friends about them. Our customers lift their pant legs and say, “Hey check out my socks!,” this is certainly innovation in the world of socks. Our challenge is to translate this innovation into other product categories so that our brand is cohesive. At LittleMissMatched we believe that simple product innovations make our success. People will talk about our products if we give them unique products that are easy to talk about. We have furniture that you can draw all over with a dry erase pen. Why have you ever done that before? We have bedding that flips and switches to make 192 combos in one bed set. For us, innovation is key to our long term success. The good news is that every product category in the world can be missmatchified.

(Credit: Boston.com)

What is your most successful innovation? How did you find it?

It depends on how we define success. I personally love our furniture. Maybe that is because I flew to China to help finalize its development. It was a brutally challenging trip so I am enamored with the end result. If we look at units sold, our socks win the award. If we look at dollars/SKU sold, then our bedding wins. Each of these innovations were found by breaking conventional norms to bring a true value proposition to our customer. Imagine a world where now one bed in a bag we sell gives you 192 combos when all of our competition only gives you one option. When we are at our best, we subvert the marketplace…in other words, we don’t talk about thread count, we talk about combos. What this means is that we don’t actually have competition. Why? Because of our version of innovation!

Which innovation “failure” did you learn the most from, and why?

I don’t ever believe in failure. I believe in learnings. Our first sock package almost disintegrated in your hand, but it was a totally unique package…it failed functionally, but it led us to where we are now. We are only four years old as a company, so each step we take is a learning. Success never happens spontaneously. As they say, “practice makes perfect.”

What lessons can you pass on to others from how your organization has changed to make itself more innovation driven?

The kind of people who are innovation seekers are what I call “yes to no” people. They are the type that says, “Hey that is a really great idea, but I think it would be even better if…” They are expansive thinkers. They are not the type that says, “Nope, that idea won’t work because xy or z.” We have worked as hard as we can to hire “yes to no” people. We want everyone to have an open mind, but ultimately, we want them to be filters/curators at the right time so that they can make the hard decisions that will grow our business. If I can pass one lesson on, it is to hire “yes-to-no” people!

In your opinion what are the biggest barriers and challenges that stand in the way of organizations becoming more innovative?

We are a small company with a short history. Our historical benchmarks are not relevant yet because we are rapidly growing. I think the biggest barriers are companies that say they want to be innovative but they don’t truly plan for innovation. They look at their historical benchmarks instead of forward at the possibilities. At the McKinsey panel I described earlier, a chief strategy officer from a Fortune 500 company said, “20% of our new products are now required to be driven by innovation.” I asked, “Is the company setting aside 20% of your time to develop innovation?” Of course the answer was no. Innovation doesn’t just happen. Organizations must understand that they must change culturally and structurally to enable innovative thinking. Ultimately, I believe the executive office suite must also be populated by innovative thinkers or innovation doesn’t have a chance of success.

Beyond your organization, who do you admire for risk-taking innovation and what do you think makes them successful?

I admire everyone trying to think differently. There are so many people innovating there isn’t just one person to name. I think ultimately innovators are successful because of their passion for success. Remember Steve Jobs failed his first time at Apple and was fired by the board. A good idea isn’t the key to success. It is execution, timing, market conditions and a whole lot more.

What innovation are you still waiting for?

If I had a list, I would be working on those innovations instead of what I am doing at LittleMissMatched! With all seriousness, I am very focused on building a brand based on creativity and innovation. I believe our brand has a broad enough foundation to explore the world!

Microsoft and the Attorney General’s office in Washington state said on Monday they have filed a handful of lawsuits over pop-up ads that scare consumers into paying for software that supposedly fixes critical errors on a PC.

The lawsuit filed by the Attorney General’s office alleges a Texas firm sent incessant pop-up ads that falsely claimed the computer had critical errors in its registry and directed people to a Web site where they could download free scanning software to find the problems.

This is an example of the pop-up that consumers received from a Texas firm sued for allegedly spreading "scareware."

(Credit:
Washington Attorney General's office)

The software then reports 43 critical problems and offers to sell a fix for $39.95. However, the software, dubbed “Registry Cleaner XP,” does nothing but lull the consumer into a false sense of security, officials said.

It’s a “blatant rip off of consumers,” Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna said in a news conference. Consumers were “duped into downloading a fake scan (of the computer) and then duped into paying for software they don’t need.”

The pop-ups take advantage of a function called Windows Messenger (not to be confused with Microsoft’s instant-messaging program Windows Live messenger) that was designed to allow network administrators to send alerts to Windows PCs on a network. The functionality was turned off in Windows XP Service Pack 2, said Richard Boscovich, senior attorney for Microsoft’s Internet Safety Enforcement Team.

The messages often would be displayed repeatedly, with one IP address receiving more than 200 in one day, the complaint alleges.

That lawsuit, which includes claims of misrepresentation, harassment, and high pressure sales, names as defendants Texas companies Alpha Red and Branch Software, and their owner James Reed McCreary. McCreary did not return a call seeking comment.

Microsoft filed five new lawsuits and amended two previous complaints against SMP Soft and Registry Update, all relating to programs that allegedly falsely alert consumers to problems on their computers and offer to sell software fixes. The programs listed include Scan & Repair, Antivirus 2009, MalwareCore, WinDefenderXPDefender.com and WinSpywareProtect. Most of the defendants are listed as “John Doe” because investigators do not yet know the identities of the people behind the programs.

The lawsuits were enabled by a broadening of Washington’s Computer Spyware Act, which was amended earlier this year to outlaw misrepresentation of the source of a message to a computer user in order to scare the person into installing software.

Consumers can file complaints on their own, officials said. Meanwhile, the defendants face penalties of up to $2,000 per violation plus restitution and attorney fees.

Microsoft has brought 17 spyware-related legal actions since the Computer Spyware Act was enacted in 2005.

To protect themselves against these and other threats, computer users should keep their operating system, antivirus, firewall and antispyware software updated, Microsoft said.

More information and a link to the complaint against McCreary is on the Washington Attorney General’s Web site.

The RegistryCleanerXP software supposedly finds 43 critical errors, even on machines that have no problems, officials say.

(Credit:
Washington Attorney General's office)

Updated 1:15 p.m. PT with more details on Microsoft lawsuits.

(Credit:
Verizon Wireless)

Previously, if you wanted access to your corporate e-mail, you needed to have a smartphone like a Palm, Windows Mobile, or BlackBerry device. Now Verizon Wireless is offering a direct push e-mail solution called RemoSync, which can be used on ordinary phones like the LG Chocolate and the Motorola Razr2 V9m. You do need to sign up for monthly access for $9.99 a month, but hopefully you can have your company expense that for you. The RemoSync application is especially configured for companies that use Microsoft Exchange Servers for e-mail, contacts, and calendars, and yes you can use it to sync up your contact and calendar information as well as your e-mails.

As for additional fees, if you are already signed up for the V Cast VPak, you are good to go. For those without a data plan, you will be charged for airtime or $1.99 per megabyte. RemoSync is currently available for these phones: LG VX9400, LG VX8700, LG Chocolate, LG enV(2), LG Venus, LG Voyager, Samsung Gleam, Samsung Flipshot, Samsung Alias, Motorola Razr Maxx VE, Motorola Razr2 V9m, Motorola Rizr Z6TV, and Motorola Z6c.

Social dating site WooMe has launched a new video service that is so amazingly hard to watch it’s bound to be a hit. It’s called WooMe.tv, and it takes recordings from the site’s speed dates and hosts them for all to see.

User ratings have been employed to weed out the good from the bad using the same five-star system that’s found on YouTube. WooMe’s creators are also highlighting especially watch-worthy videos in a special featured section. If you find something you like you can share it with friends either through a direct link or with an embed, which is what I’ve done below.

See also WooMe competitor SpeedDate.com, which has made certain member dates public for the sake of promotion.

I think you’ll agree that this has the makings of a really watch-worthy service, however, there are a few things that could make it better. For instance:

Not every video is available. Both users must opt in to have the session shared post-date, and only then does it go into the public directory. What makes it an attractive proposition is that the videos are only 60 seconds long (or less), so you can watch two or three of them in rapid succession. Better yet, each video is linked up to the members’ profiles, so if someone catches your eye you can message them, or view some of their other social interactions.

• Give me an annotation tool. I spent countless hours watching Blind Date back when it was on TV, and seeing little moving notes on the videos was wonderful. I can imagine that someone, somewhere can do as good a job as that production team, especially if they’re limited to just 60 seconds. Better yet, team up with Veeple to do it and make some cash.

• Let me filter the videos by age group and location. The current system is a good start for exploring, but not as much for meeting other people nearby.

I got a chance to talk to Alex Welch, CEO and co-founder of Photobucket about picking FotoFlexer over building out an in-house editing tool. Welch said that editing was the No. 1 user requested feature on the service, and that choosing an outside company’s technology was the better choice given the time frame they were looking at. He said building an in-house editing tool would have simply taken too long.

(Credit:
Photobucket Inc.)

Photobucket users can now edit shots without leaving the site using FotoFlexer.

In many ways this is an answer to what Flickr has done with Picnik, a move that has cross pollinated both services with new users, and given a hefty boost to Picnik’s traffic and premium service subscriptions (see more on this). FotoFlexer has a “professional” service of its own, although it’s completely free, unlike competitor Picnik, which charges $25 a year for access to advanced editing tools that later trickle down to free users.

Want to turn a picture of your girlfriend into a cat? You can now do so using FotoFlexer's editing tools right inside of Photobucket.

In regards to the company’s relationship with Adobe, going forward Welch said they’re sticking with FotoFlexer as the integrated editing tool and that the upcoming Photoshop Express looks to be more of a “finishing tool” than what users were looking for. Welch said FotoFlexer provides more of what “our demographics really want.”

The functionality is scheduled to go live early tomorrow morning. In the meantime we have a couple of screenshots of the new functionality after the break.

(Credit:
Photobucket Inc.)

The New York Post’s Keith Kelly reported on Thursday that Jossip, a small New York-based blog network that operates a number of media- and entertainment-focused titles, is up for sale.

It’s not clear what kind of value Jossip would have to a buyer. The network’s central blog has indeed broken notable stories–such as CBS Interactive’s acquisition of Wallstrip. But it’s still much smaller than chief rival Gawker, and the Jossip network is tiny, compared to Gawker Media, which operates more than a dozen titles, including some blogospheric titans like Gizmodo. Plus, the celebrity blog market is just about totally clogged.

The Post’s Kelly reported that Jossip “is believed to be making money” but that founder and editor David Hauslaib suggested that he would rather pursue a joint venture or minority investment than an outright acquisition.

Kelly wrote that Jossip has hired investment bank Sperry, Mitchell, & Co. to explore potential buyer interest, though he cited a “wild rumor” that media giant Conde Nast may already be interested.

So for the time being, this bit of Jossip is…gossip.