Web Development Live

In New York City, in places where hard facts don’t go, rumor and speculation fill the void.

Such is the case with 43 MacDougal St., an 1846 building that has for decades sat empty and abandoned in the West Village.

“I heard that it used to be a hangout for the mafia, and there was a police shootout there, and they had to close it for Web Development Software evidence,” said Tal Kon, 22, who has lived on the picturesque block for a year.

“I’ve heard that the FBI, or the CIA, or somebody closed it down, and that there was a dead body in there,” said Ronen Grady, who for four years has operated the hip cafe 12 Chairs across the street.

What is known about 43 MacDougal is that it is in the Charlton-King-Vandam Historic District, which makes it a landmark. It was home to a group called Citizens for a Better Village, an Italian American social club, and has fallen into a state of dangerous neglect.

Makeshift curtains cover every window in the four-story house. Rats scurry out of holes in the ground floor. Graffiti adorns the Web Development Software front doors.

The older residents, the ones with longer memories who recall when the neighborhood was home to the Genovese crime family, have kept the Omerta code, years after the last of the dons have been chased out.

“For years it was a social club, a numbers spot,” said one woman who said she had lived in the area for all of her 64 years, and who most emphatically would not give her name. Vinny “the Chin” Gigante used to work out of there. They’d be in there, smoking cigarettes. People was used to it.”

Even rock poetess Patti Smith, who has lived on the block for 10 years, is tight-lipped about the mystery building.

“I don’t talk to reporters,” she said before turning into her house.

Prospective buyers routinely knock on the house’s doors and poke around the neighborhood to find out if the building is for sale.

It isn’t, although the two men listed as owners, Abraham and Arthur Blasof, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

But the building, which would surely fetch many millions of dollars on the open market, isn’t only of interest to real estate speculators.

Preservationists say 43 MacDougal is suffering from dangerous levels of neglect, and want the city to Web Development Software step in and save a historic building before it crumbles.

“The sad thing is that this is nearly 200-year old building that has clearly been taken good care of until very recently,” said Andrew Berman, president of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. “People would kill to get their hands on it and put the love and care into it that it deserves.”

Berman’s group has reached out to the Department of Buildings, the Fire Department, and the city’s Department of Housing, Preservation and Development, but said so far they have been unresponsive.

He would like the city to begin to enforce its landmark laws, preventing demolition by Web Development Software neglect.

Environmentally friendly technologies are being developed to address a myriad of global challenges, including the need for alternate fuel sources, better drinking water treatment, and air quality improvements. Investment in the cleantech space is indicative of the increased attention to green innovation venture capital investment alone in this category has been estimated at $5 billion. Therefore, the Web Development Prices advancement of these technologies is of significant interest to business and the public at large.

When the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) launched the Eco-Patent Commons, it appeared to be a win for the “green movement.” IBM, Sony, Pitney-Bowes and Nokia are among the companies who have already donated patents to the initiative, doing their part to protect the environment by aiding and promoting innovation in this sector.

For those unfamiliar with the Eco-Patent Commons, it is an initiative to build an online, searchable repository for patents that are donated by companies for royalty-free use by anyone, without need for a license or purchase. The only limitation for the donated patents is that they should provide “environmental benefit” either directly (such as an air emissions treatment technology), or indirectly (such as a more energy efficient manufacturing process). The objective is to promote technology and innovation sharing and environmental improvement through the free use of these inventions.

However, the Eco-Patent Commons itself is in need of some innovation if it truly hopes to accomplish its goal: sharing useful environmental technologies for “the Web Development Prices greater good.” The current initiative consists only of patented technologies, which, due to the lengthy patent process, are minimally several years old and may no longer be cutting edge. As an illustration, the most recent patent of the 31 currently offered in the Eco-Patent Commons is 7,251,458, from Nokia: “Systems and methods for recycling of cell phones at the end of life.” Although this patent was issued on July 31, 2007, it was actually filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on May 23, 2003. This invention, the newest of the Eco-Patent Common offerings, is almost five years old already.

How can a recently issued patent possibly be “old technology”? It is simply a result of the overwhelming number of inventions the USPTO reviews annually for patents. Statistics available on the USPTO Web site reveal that approximately 426,000 utility patent applications were submitted in 2006, representing nine percent growth over the previous year’s submittals. A patent application routinely requires at least two years to go through the examination process, and can require much longer depending on specific patent prosecution issues.

The sluggish nature of the patent system means that even the best intentions of a company that donates environmentally beneficial patents to the Eco-Patent Commons cannot compensate for the age of the invention, which likely has become less relevant with time. As a result, these patents may have little value to any company, despite their free availability through the Eco-Patent Commons. In addition, it is clear that the donating company did not find the patent to have Web Development Prices compelling competitive advantage for them, or they would not have donated it to begin with, so why would any other company necessarily find value in the donated patent?

To compensate for these drawbacks and make the Eco-Patent Commons as useful and powerful as it can be, the initiative requires expansion to offer truly recent inventions that have not spent years in the patent application process. This involves widening the scope of the initiative to include non-patented inventions that have yet to be marketed and made public.

One way to make these inventions available is through enabled invention disclosures. An enabled invention disclosure (also called “defensive publication” or “technical bulletin”) is a written description of an invention that ideally has the same degree of detail as an issued patent. Therefore a well-written invention disclosure provides sufficient information to the reader to understand and use the invention.

Many companies successfully use enabled invention disclosures as part of their intellectual property (IP) strategies. Companies frequently have inventions that they do not wish to patent because the patent process is so expensive, including invention development costs, legal preparation and patent prosecution fees. However, companies also wish to prevent competitors from patenting those same inventions.

By using enabled invention disclosures to publish the invention, companies accomplish both goals: they save the cost of patenting but they also establish a “prior art bar” to obtaining the patent and make it impossible for competitors to claim it the invention as their own. Several Web site forums exist for publishing inventions, including www.ip.com and www.researchdisclosure.com.

The Eco-Patent Commons should be expanded to include these enabled invention disclosures. Many inventions that companies deem non-strategic for patent application and instead decide to publish may be excellent candidates to be donated to the Eco-Patent Commons. These published inventions would be truly new, fresh and useful — a good first step to creating the true springboard for green innovation that the Eco-Patent Commons was meant to be.

Companies wishing to donate inventions to the Eco-Patent Commons can also do their part to move the initiative closer to its goal of widespread environmental technology sharing and innovation. The Eco-Patent Commons is a golden opportunity for companies to “give back” positively to the global community by donating environmentally beneficial inventions — and build a reputation as an eco-friendly brand in the process. To take full advantage of this opportunity, companies could add incentives to their R&D and product development processes to help increase the numbers of environmentally friendly inventions created and considered for use or donation, thus building the company brand and image among both consumers and investors/shareholders as a socially responsible organization.

And developing an environmentally driven invention process is not as difficult as it sounds. Strategies already exist to create new inventions specifically aimed toward environmental benefits, and for the past 10 years my company, ipCapital Group, has been successfully using just such a process. Our Invention on Demand (IOD) process for “directed invention” has been used across a wide variety of technology areas, including the greentech space. By implementing IOD, ipCapital’s client companies have invented unique solutions and technologies that address a myriad of problems. In fact, IOD can even be used to build and improve upon the already donated patents in the Eco-Patent Commons and bring those inventions up to date.

The creative mind has the Web Development Prices capability to develop both the ideas and processes to solve the innumerable environmental problems that threaten our planet, but only through invention-sharing initiatives like the Eco-Patent Commons can we hope to channel environmental innovation to make a lasting impact for future generations. However, the above improvements are needed if the Eco-Patent Commons hopes to have a truly meaningful impact in the greentech space.

Nancy Edwards Cronin is a Principal Partner of ipCapital Group, an intellectual property consulting firm based in Williston, Vt. With more than 15 years of consulting experience, Nancy serves as an advisor to companies that wish to maximize value using IP, optimize the use of IP in product/service development and business transactions, establish strategic IP positions against competitors, and implement intellectual asset management (IAM) programs. She focuses her efforts in industries such as energy and environmental technology, chemical manufacturing, consumer products, electronics, construction and building materials, medical devices, printing, and semiconductors.

Cisco last week released specifics of its previously announced innovation and sustainability initiative for China.

The initiative includes research and development, education, procurement, investment and training, Cisco chairman and CEO John Chambers said in an Web Development Live announcement in Beijing.

“The next stage of our strategy for China reflects the country’s importance to Cisco’s global growth strategy and to our long-term business model, built upon next-generation innovation in collaboration and Web 2.0 technologies,” said Chambers.

“Cisco’s public-private collaboration within China not only helps accelerate these business efforts, but also helps the 1.3 billion people and growing number of entrepreneurs within the country gain access to social and economic opportunities afforded by the internet.”

The move also included the appointment of Jim Sherriff, previously Cisco’s senior vice-president of global operations, to the newly created position of chairman, Cisco China.

According to a press release regarding the initiative, a memorandum between Cisco and China’s National Development and Web Development Live Reform Commission is intended to “extend cooperation in the areas of manufacturing and service outsourcing, next-generation internet, venture investment, training and development, as well as environmentally focused research and development including energy efficiency, emission reduction and network-based green urban development”.

A similar memorandum between Cisco and China’s Ministry of Commerce will see the vendor work with the ministry to help implement the Thousand-Hundred-Ten Project for China’s business process operations industry.

The program will see Cisco provide training to improve the skills of Web Development Live employees in Chinese companies.

Everyone knows the Web has come a long way since its early days, and one of the most changed areas has to be e-commerce. A landscape once dominated by boutique, Web-only shops, sparsely populated with shoppers, is now home to every major retailer and corporation on the planet. Selling goods on the Web has become huge business.

Many companies’ fortes, however, are in brick and mortar storefronts. For others, the only selling they have done is wholesale to retailers; selling direct to end-customers just wasn’t an option. They would love to take advantage of the Web Development Classes additional sales channels the Web opens up, but time and money spent building a e-commerce applications, as well as the high-availability, highly scalable environment needed to run them, is time and money that could be spent on core business processes. If only there was somebody to handle the legwork of building, managing and housing such an application …

For big companies that need enterprise-class e-commerce applications, that somebody is Demandware. Based in Woburn, Mass., Demandware offers an on-demand e-commerce application that customers use to service their consumer-facing needs.  According to Vice President of Engineering and Technology Wayne Whitcomb, the company’s platform is like licensed enterprise software that customers can customize, extend and Web Development Classes integrate as they wish, but without the burdens of development or delivery via computing resources.

As opposed to the old ASP model of hosting applications, though, where everything was individually managed and quarantined, Whitcomb says Demandware’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform allows the company to deliver new features and innovations “all the time, to all customers.” Being able to roll out these updates across the customer board is very important, too, because Demandware’s customers are large retail brands facing substantial competitive pressures. The demands of being a real-time business, finicky customers trends, aggressive competition and the need to drive customer loyalty via the Web site make for a situation where retailers not only need a high-performance, highly available solution, but also one that is constantly evolving.

“Normally in an enterprise application, for reliability, security and stability, you’d want to minimize change as much as possible,” says Whitcomb. “However, the [e-commerce] market demand and consumer demands are exactly opposite that. They push for frequent change, innovation and dealing with unpredictable consumer traffic at the Web Development Classes same time.”

Perhaps this necessary combination of both application and platform innovation is the reason Whitcomb says Demandware has little to no competition in the high-end e-commerce market. SaaS options like Amazon WebStore and eBay ProStores work for the low end, he noted, but just are not designed to handle larger companies’ needs in terms of branding, customer experience and scale.

To ensure it can deliver adequate capacity, scalability, reliability and security, Demandware chose to build a closely coupled grid computing delivery platform for its application. The platform is comprised of a series of PODs (points of delivery), which Whitcomb explains as e-commerce appliances with packaged compute capacity that Demandware deploys to tier 1 datacenters globally. The company directly manages those PODs, as well as the customer environment, sandbox development environments, integrated test environments, pre-production staging and production environments, all of which are isolated from one another within the Demandware grid. “To effectively manage all of those environments requires a lot of automation and a lot of flexibility of the delivery platform that really can only be provided through grid computing techniques,” Whitcomb says.

As for the nuts and bolts of the grid, Whitcomb says blades, each of one of which is imparted with a persona, handle the computing. Each blade’s persona determines how it will participate in the grid, and the persona model allows Demandware to envision how customer environments will utilize that capacity. Customer environments can be flexed to meet significant changes in demand (e.g, 10:1) in a matter of minutes, said Whitcomb. Computing resources within the grid are pooled using Demandware’s internally developed virtualization software.

A flexible, dedicated grid delivery platform is necessary, says Whitcomb, because the alternatives are either economically or pragmatically infeasible. Whereas Demandware can invest heavily in research and development of the platform because the company derives value from the grid across its customer base, it would be difficult for those customers to make such investments individually.

Among Demandware’s most interesting customers, in terms of use, is Bare Escentuals. A purveyor of “healthy” makeup, Bare Escentuals does a lot of marketing through print, electronic media and television (in the form of infomercials). Thanks in large part to the latter, Whitcomb says Bare Escentuals’ Web traffic varies unpredictably and at factors as high as 10x. Bare Escentuals also populates its site with a fair amount of rich media, a practice that is facilitated through Demandware’s use of Akamai’s content distribution technology.

Apparel company Timberland also utilizes Demandware to manage sites across several geographies and lines of business, all without needing to toil with infrastructure or application development. Whitcomb is especially proud that HP, a company with “all the resources in the world,” also sees tremendous value in using Demandware. Other customers include Playmobil, Sally Beauty Supply, Gardener’s Supply Co. and Playboy.com.

Although he believes that all applications that share core or common requirements will eventually find their ways into an on-demand delivery model, Whitcomb acknowledges that such models do bring with Web Development Classes them a certain degree of difficulty for the provider. These challenges include integration with legacy backend systems and third-party services, letting customers have control over the elements they want to control, and keeping the application current and reliable.

“The dimensions of that make it a real challenge to serve the enterprise,” says Whitcomb. “The enterprises certainly want it — they’re crying for it — and I think it’s up to the market to deliver against those strong needs. Demandware proves that, at least in the e-commerce market, it can be done.”

Web Development Tutorial said Thursday it released its new QuickBase Web development program in beta.

Mountain View-based Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU) said QuickBase is designed to let developers and independent software vendors “easily design, deploy and market on-demand collaborative and productivity applications to millions of small businesses.”

“We are now enlisting the help of an enormous community of talented developers to create innovative, rich Web-based solutions to important business problems,” said Bill Lucchini, vice president and general manager of Intuit QuickBase.

There is no cost to join the program during application development. Developers building on the platform will receive the QuickBase Developer SDK, which includes the toolkit for Adobe Flex, Web Development Tutorial a free QuickBase developer account and training resources.

CollabNet recently announced the launch of CollabNet OnDemand, a hosted solution of distributed development tools. This release means that the power of an enterprise-class integrated suite of development tools is now available to teams of all sizes.

Web Development Software If you’ve never heard of CollabNet, here’s the background: The company’s roots come from the land of open source as the company was founded in 1999 by Tim O’Reilly and Brian Behlendorf, gurus with ties to the early days of the open source movement. When it released Subversion in 2000 it was the result of applying open source principles to the arena of software development. Subversion is the software code control piece of the puzzle and has over 2 million current users.

CollabNet’s distributed software development platform integrates tools for version control, requirement, issue, and other things in a collaborative development environment. With 1.3 million users, it is one of the leading platforms for geographically distributed software development organizations.

Many traditional source-code-control configuration management tools are installed applications, geared toward development teams who work within the same company. They were initially designed to handle non-web-based software development projects, and many teams have simply adapted them for use within a web-based-development environment the best they could. CollabNet Subversion was designed specifically with the web-development environment and global, distributed-team model in mind.

CollabNet Enterprise Subversion took things further, adding in a full suite of distributed development technologies to the mix including issue tracking, file release, project management, reporting, and collaboration tools. Role-based access control allows different team members to have varying levels of permissions across a project.

Now virtual teams could work as effectively as a local group in a conference room because all the basics of distributed development could be managed centrally through the web. Because the suite itself is web based, it is specifically designed for the way web architecture and development software projects work. Teams could be in synch over various time zones and large distances. Leveraging the power of collaboration technologies like wikis, project information and knowledge that would normally be inaccessible while one half of the globe is asleep is now available to teammates during their peak productive hours.

According to Rob Cheng, director of product marketing at CollabNet, “OnDemand allows small startup teams to get all the advantages of an enterprise solution. The features are identical and only the service level agreement (SLA) and degree of support varies. Larger teams of 50-60 users and up will still benefit more from using the full enterprise product either hosted or onsite.”

OnDemand is basically a hosted version of the SourceForge Enterprise suite. What it means though is that even small startup teams of a few folks scattered geographically can benefit from the power of a full arsenal of development and collaboration tools usually only available to larger teams with big budgets Web Development Software.

NIU had issued a campus alert at 2:18 p.m. Thursday after receiving a bomb threat targeting the DeKalb campus Health Services building Web Development Software, which is near the intersection of Lucinda Avenue and Normal Road.

The threat was received at about 2 p.m., according to an alert posted on the school’s Web site. Pedestrian and vehicular traffic in that area was cut off until shortly after 4 p.m., when officers from the NIU Police, city of DeKalb Police and Illinois State Police Web Development Software, who had been blocking off traffic on Normal Road and Lucinda Avenue, left.

The bomb threat came more than two months after five students were shot to death on campus Web Development Software.

Shortly after 3 p.m. Feb. 14, former student Steven Kazmierczak entered a classroom in Cole Hall and opened fire, killing five students and injuring 16 others before turning the gun on himself. The incident caused the school to close down for more than a week.

The Health Services building and the adjacent Telecommunications building were the only buildings evacuated, according to the alert posted on the NIU Web site, although NIU Police asked occupants in buildings surrounding that complex not to exit the sides of their buildings that face the Health Services building.

Students or their parents who have questions about this situation can call NIU Student Affairs at 815-753-1573 or 815-753-6257. NIU’s Counseling & Student Development Center, which is in room 100 of the Campus Life Building, will be open until 8 p.m. Thursday in Campus Life Building for students who would like to speak with a counselor Web Development Softwareq.

Seeds of Hope plans to build a new 4,200-square-foot community center on Casa Grande’s west side and organizers have begun a capital campaign to raise the $600,000 needed for the project.

The campaign will be a focal point during Seeds of Hope’s annual fundraising dinner on April 25, as the nonprofit agency celebrates its history and future in Casa Grande. John Perkins, president of the John Perkins Foundation and the inspiration for Seeds of Hope in Casa Grande, will be the keynote speaker for the event.

“His message that evening will be on developing self-sufficiency in local neighborhoods,” said Mark Vanderheyden, executive director for Seeds of Hope. “He hopes to inspire pastors, churches, business leaders and individuals to become an active part in what Seeds of Hope is doing on the west side of Casa Grande.”

Seeds of Hope is a faith-based organization with a mission of breaking the cycle of poverty while strengthening communities. It started in Casa Grande in 1992 and operates out of an 1,100-square-foot, single-family house on Melrose Drive, where Web Development Software it runs an after-school program for neighborhood children between the ages of 5 and 12. Seeds of Hope also has a peer leadership program and literacy classes and provides activities and support for grandparents raising their grandchildren. It also operates a six-day-a-week hot lunch program for the homeless, disabled and working poor, serving up about 11,000 meals annually.

A new tax preparation assistance program, VITA, which started this year in partnership with United Way of Pinal County, helped 132 residents with free tax filing services. VITA resulted in an estimated savings of $13,200 in avoided tax preparation fees, according to Vanderheyden.

Through its various programs and services, Seeds of Hope impacts the lives of thousands of Casa Grande residents ranging from the homeless, school children and seniors, Vanderheyden said.

Establishing a facility in a neighborhood where it is needed is part of Seeds of Hope’s success, he added.

“The idea is go to those neighborhoods, rather than having people come to us, and have the people tell us what they need,” Vanderheyden said.

While community needs have increased over the years, Seeds of Hope’s resources have not and its current accommodations have become inadequate to efficiently serve its clients. A small kitchen at its current site makes it difficult to prepare snacks for children in the after-school program. The four bedrooms restrict the number of people who can participate in activities and an awkward layout makes it difficult for too many people to move around the house at one time. As well, being an older house, the current community center is in constant need of maintenance and repair, Vanderheyden said.

The new community center will be in Albert Cruz Park and Seeds of Hope has negotiated a 50-year agreement with the city of Casa Grande that allows the organization to pay a nominal fee to lease the land and construct the building.

It is to be designed with an open meeting area, a large kitchen with an adjoining dining area and four large classrooms, which will allow different programs to operate simultaneously. Its location in the city park will allow children at the center access to the playground and open space areas.

With those features, Web Development Software Seeds of Hope plans to add additional programs to accommodate broader community needs.

“This multigenerational facility will allow Seeds of Hope to expand and collaborate with other churches and organizations in bringing additional services to the west side,” Vanderheyden said.

The organization has raised about $100,000 toward the new building and hopes to raise another $500,000 by June. Vanderheyden knows the goal will be a tough one to achieve.

“There are other campaigns going on, other organizations trying to raise money,” he said. “We’re going along on faith.”

The theme for this year’s fundraising dinner is “Planting Seeds - Building Hope,” which Vanderheyden said illustrates Seeds of Hope’s wholistic approach to community development that not only attempts to lift people out of poverty but encourages young people to stay in the community once they have grown and to use their education and talents locally.

“Seeds of Hope is about building relationships and raising up leaders in the neighborhood,” Vanderheyden said.

To help celebrate the organization’s accomplishments, Perkins will return to Casa Grande and talk about how communities nationwide have come together in addressing community development and racial reconciliation through churches.

Perkins is an international speaker on racial reconciliation, leadership and community development. He has dedicated his life to ministering to the poor and in 1960 founded several community development projects including low-income housing, child care centers, adult education programs, cooperative farming programs, thrift stores, health centers and others. He is the founder and board chairman of the Christian Community Development Association and has written six books and many articles and has lectured at more than 150 colleges.

Vanderheyden said that the keynote speech is aimed at delivering a powerful message and encouraging cooperation in bringing about and sustaining changes in the community.

Music for the dinner will be presented by the Greater Evangelistic Temple Choir and the Seeds of Hope children’s choir directed by Mary Vandervort. Several businesses have donated door prizes for the event.

The Wicklow Man, plays Friday 2nd May Richie Halpin in Moneystown Community Centre.

Active Retirement break

Active retired outing to Ballinasloe Co.Galway from 11th-14th May. Names and €50 deposit to William Belton 2818385

Results from Outing to Druids Glen 1st Jim Doyle 37 Pts; 2nd Conor Davis 35 Pts. Class 1 1st Halo 35 Pts; 2nd Pat Timmons 35 Pts 3rd Sam Mooney 34 Pts. Class 3 George Gaffney 18 Pts. Back Nine Peter Ward. Visitor30.

The results of the whist in aid of the Senior Citizens is as follows Jenny Hill; Top Lady Lucy Molloy; Second Gent Ann Gaffney & Jimmy Molloy (shared); Second Half Mary Pierce & Mary Murphy & Longest Sitting lily.mulhall@ucd.ie or 087 2461164

Roundwood look forward to welcoming the FBD Milk Ras on Saturday May 24,Web Development Classes when for the first time the stage will stop in Roundwood. For more information watch the Roundwood Notes.

Come along to Kavanagh’s Lounge on a Thursday night from 9.30pm til 11.30pm for some Set Dancing and the bit of craic with music this week supplied by Michael, Matt and Brian. Looking forward to your continuing support and meeting you on the dance floor.

Roundwood Market re-opened on Easter Sunday, and continues every Sunday from 2pm-5pm. in the Old School, Roundwood. A selection of home baked goods, crafts, plants, etc. will be available. Hope to see you there.

Come to yoga class with Afia Monday mornings 10-12 or Tuesday evenings, 730, in the Old School. The classes alternate each week Kai Jameson, Michael Burton, Eoghan Marah and Craig Curley. U15 Wed 16 April U14s are away to Kilmacanogue, Thurs 17 Junior C are away to Fergal óg at 7pm, Sun 20 the senior team are away to Rathnew at 1130am, while the ladies are away to Kilbride and on Monday 21 the under 16s are away against Ashford.

All these and much more is available on our new web site at Web Development Classes. Web Development Classes Tie so be sure to give this site a visit and if you have any news just send it to the webmaster. Our sincere sympathy to Tom Brady and all his family on the sudden and untimely death of his brother Michael last week. May he rest in peace. There was no winner of the club lotto last week. This weeks jackpot is worth €6,800, well worth supporting.

SAN FRANCISCO Microsoft Corp.’s attempt to take over Yahoo Inc. has become so tortured it may help Internet search and advertising leader Google Inc. grow stronger, undermining Microsoft’s main reason for pursing the deal in the first place.”We find this to be a very advantageous situation for Google,” Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Derek Brown said Thursday. “The longer this gets dragged out, the better for Google.”Yahoo signaled it is bracing for a protracted battle late Wednesday when an announcement and a media leak provided a glimpse at its labyrinthine search for alternatives to Microsoft’s bid of more than $40 billion.The options include an experimental advertising alliance with Google that could lead to a broader partnership and, according to published reports, a combination with the online operations of Time Warner Inc.’s AOL. Google also owns a 5 percent stake in AOL.As part of the AOL deal, Time Warner would get a roughly 20 percent stake in the merged entity in return for a substantial sum of cash that would help Yahoo buy back some of its stock at a price well above Microsoft’s offer, which was initially valued at $31 per share.”This is the first time that we have seen real feasible alternatives that could derail the Microsoft deal,” said analyst Jeffrey Lindsay of Sanford C. Bernstein %26 Co.Other analysts doubt Yahoo will succeed in thwarting Microsoft but believe it could force the world’s largest software maker to raise its offer as high as $35 per share, or about $50 billion.For its part, Microsoft has indicated that it may lower its offer if Yahoo doesn’t accept the current bid by April 26.But Microsoft made that threat before the details about Yahoo’s alternatives with Google and AOL emerged.Although Microsoft has plenty of money to up the ante on its own, the Redmond, Wash.-based company may draw upon another deep pocket - Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.Under this reported scenario, News Corp. would contribute the Internet’s top social network, MySpace.com, and some cash in a Yahoo takeover. The proposed deal would put three of the Web’s most popular sites - Yahoo, MySpace and Microsoft’s MSN - under the same umbrella.In another ironic twist, Google could benefit if Microsoft and News Corp. buy Yahoo because it already has a long-term contract to show ads on MySpace.Microsoft, Time Warner and News Corp. all declined to comment Thursday. A Yahoo representative didn’t respond to inquiries about the AOL deal. Google and Yahoo announced their advertising test Wednesday.Yahoo directors are expected to meet Friday to discuss the company’s options.Investors seemed to welcome the latest developments. Yahoo shares rose 82 cents to $28.59 while Microsoft shares gained 22 cents to close at $29.11. The stocks of Google and Time Warner also moved up, while News Corp.’s Class A shares dipped 5 cents to $18.89.The reported negotiations to bring together some of the world’s largest Web sites underscores the Internet’s maturation as a business sector. As consumers spend more time online, the smart money is following them - and now there’s a mad scramble to latch on to the prime properties in this promised land of future profit.”The most likely outcome here is that a few players will become more and more dominant on the Internet,” said James Owers, a Georgia State University professor specializing in media and corporate finance.The stakes are so high that News Corp. and AOL might decide to join forces if their latest negotiations with Microsoft and Yahoo don’t pan out, Citigroup analyst Jason Bazinet wrote in a Thursday note to investors.Google has emerged as the Internet’s most profitable company so far, primarily by showing relevant text-based ad links alongside the billions of search results that it churns out each month.Propelled by its success in search, Google built up a vast computer network that hosts a wide range of free services - many of which threaten to make Microsoft’s software less vital to consumers and businesses.Microsoft believes Yahoo’s franchise will give it more weapons to retaliate against Google and reverse the losses that have plagued its online division.But it’s looking less likely that Microsoft will be able to realize its goal of completing the Yahoo deal by the end of this year.If Yahoo continues to resist, Microsoft probably will have to take its bid directly to shareholders - an acrimonious process that is typically settled at the target company’s annual meeting. Yahoo doesn’t have to hold its annual meeting until July 12.And a deal done that late in the year isn’t likely to emerge from antitrust regulators’ purview until 2009, according to experts.Yahoo may be able to rally support from its shareholders by pointing to the possibility of a long-term partnership with Google, which some analysts believe could boost Yahoo’s cash flow by 25 percent to 35 percent.Google, too, could make more money from the alliance. But Lindsay doubts that’s the search leader’s main incentive for the tests.”Anything that Google can do to keep Yahoo from going to Microsoft is good for Google,” Lindsay said.If Yahoo turned over all its search-driven advertising to Google, it would face intense regulatory scrutiny that would be difficult to overcome, analysts predicted. Google controls 59 percent of the U.S. search market followed by Yahoo at 22 percent and Microsoft at 10 percent, according to comScore Media Metrix.For now, Yahoo is allowing Google to show advertising links alongside no more than 3 percent of its U.S. search results and only for two weeks.Microsoft already has signaled that it will strenuously object to antitrust regulators if Google sells search ads for Yahoo on a full-time basis. But a regulatory review might hurt Microsoft more than Google, Lindsay said, because it could mean waiting even longer to own Yahoo.If Microsoft is able to pull off the Yahoo takeover, melding the two organizations will be difficult, especially if the deal is hostile or includes a third party like News Corp.”The more complicated a deal gets, the more difficult it becomes to satisfy all parties,” Brown said. “And the more complicated the (post-deal) integration gets, the more it favors Google.”