It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall of Cisco's executives suites after Nortel won a US$5.6-million contract from the city of San Jose to provide city hall employees with a new communications system. It's small deal but Cisco has its corporate headquarters in San Jose so you'd figure they would go with the local team. In a wonderful display of corporate cheekiness, Nortel issued a press release to rub in..er, I mean, announce the contract, including the fact its bid was US$2.5-million lower than Cisco's.

Not sure what to make of Yahoo’s new Yahoo 360 service, which will combine a new blogging tool with a variety of Yahoo’s other products such as instant messaging, radio and photo storage. As a blogger, I’m intrigued by technology that enhances how blogs look and feel, so Yahoo’s efforts should be applauded. On the other hand, I’m afraid Yahoo will overwhelm the blogosphere with millions of people churning out trivial information about their daily lives. Not to sound like a snob or anything but it’s hard enough discovering high-quality, interesting blogs without being swamped by a wave of material. Going back to a post I made earlier this week, there is a desperate and growing need for technology to separate the blog wheat from the chaff. An intriguing service is Waypath.com, which bills itself as a "blog discovery engine that lets you find new blogs you want to read". From what I can tell Waypath has a long way to go in terms of solving the quality blog issue, and creating a business model to pay the bills. Still, it’s heartening to see some interesting work being done.

After battling it out for three years, Research in Motion has finally conceded defeat in its patent dispute with NTP Inc. The price of patent freedom: US$450 million. At first blush, it appears to be a staggering number but perhaps it's a "bargain" compared to what RIM might have been forced to cough up if its legal battle ended with an embarassing defeat. You have to wonder what impact Good Technology's recent licensing agreement with NTP had on RIM's appetite to settle. RIM's lawyers may have seen the writing on the wall, and decided it was time to get a deal done before it was too late.
It is important to put the US$450 million in context: it represents 75% of RIM's sales in fiscal 2004 and about 28% of its cash and liquid investments. When you think about it, the people actually paying NTP's settlement are the institutional investors who enthusiastically bought into RIM's US$900 million equity offering last year. Then again, these investors have few complaints given how RIM shares performanced last year.
For RIM, it is now business as usual and perhaps a huge helping of humble pie. NTP's victory shows that sometimes David can beat Goliath.