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Xbox 360

When it’s all said and done, I’m a firm believer that the Xbox 360 will win the console war. At a price that’s finally coaxing people to buy it, Asian sales rising, an unmatched online offering, and a large group of high-quality third-party titles on the way, things are looking up for Microsoft.

The biggest barrier to entry for many consumers in the video game space is price. Because of that, millions of consumers needed to decide which console they prefer based on their budget. Since the Wii was released, those choosing with their wallets picked the Wii. But now, they can pick up the more powerful console at even more affordable price.

The Wii is out in front because it’s the most innovative product on the market, it’s the cheapest, and it has the most hype. But now it clings to just two of those components and eventually those will wear off too. That hype won’t last another three or four years.

And as for the Playstation 3? Sony better find a way to reduce the price quickly or it’ll be the forgotten console of this generation.

From the beginning, the Xbox 360 had the kind of potential the other consoles simply didn’t. Sure, the
Wii is selling well and there’s no sign of it slowing down, and finally the Playstation 3 is catching up to the rest of the pack, but Microsoft has an advantage aside from online gameplay now that it has taken the pricing lead from Nintendo.

It may not be the leader in the short-term or even over the next year or two. But by the end of this generation, look for the Xbox 360 to take the lead and cement itself as the victor.

Sure, it has a Blu-ray player, which adds some value, but what else does it really offer that would justify someone paying $100 more for it than an Xbox 360? Better graphics? I don’t think so. Better third-party support? No way. A quick glance at upcoming releases tells you that Microsoft is competing just as well, if not beating Sony on the software front. Better first-party games? Eh.

The Playstation 3 is an entirely different story altogether. That console is more costly than its competitors and has the kind of third-party support Nintendo could only dream of. But when it’s compared to the Xbox 360, it strikes me as an overpriced behemoth that fails on too many levels to make it an attractive buy at the store.

It’s tough to say what the future will hold in the video game business. Everyone is under the impression that the Wii will take the prize of this generation’s console war victor, but I’m not so quick to agree. Just because it’s the leader right now by a relatively wide margin, can we expect it to perform this well indefinitely? I don’t think so.

For a while, I’ve said that Microsoft needs to find a way to attract more customers and bring more people on board. The first step, I said, was to lower the price of the
Xbox 360 all over the world to increase its value to consumers and finally make it an ideal solution for customers.

I’m not saying, though, that the Xbox 360 will be purchased instead of the Wii. In reality, I think the higher sales will be the result of Wii owners wanting to own a more powerful console with more features, but until the price cut, they simply weren’t able to.

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In other words, the Wii is for fun and the console you’ll normally play at a party. But for those times when you’re alone, you simply won’t.

Just one day after writing that here on The Digital Home, Microsoft did just that. And according to its own internal figures, Xbox 360 sales over the weekend subsequent to its announcement of the price cut were six times higher than sales over the previous weekend. Granted, these are internal Microsoft numbers and we’ll need to wait another month to see what the impact will be when NPD releases its official numbers, but I don’t doubt Microsoft’s sales numbers at all.

Let’s face it–the Wii isn’t something you play on a daily basis. I own a Wii (and the others, too) and I know all too well how most of my friends and I play: we pick up a game, play nonstop for a week or so, and never play it again. And during the time between playing games, my Wii goes largely unused. And unless a group of friends are over, I don’t see much reason to pick up some Wii games and start playing.

I’m a firm believer that the Wii really is a competitor to the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3, but I’m suspect of its long-term success. As first-party titles continue to dominate the platform and third-party games (aside from Guitar Hero) sell better on the other platforms, can we forget that online gaming is practically nonexistent on the Wii and it’s no longer the only affordable console on the market?

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

There are two ways to be successful in business: product differentiation or pricing differentiation. The way I see it, Microsoft has the advantage on both counts.

George Orwell might pay “Homage to Catalonia,” but why should Microsoft care about a tiny deal in a tiny market?

Because Microsoft, more than any other company, has built a massive distribution channel through its partners, one that is seriously threatened by the vastly more efficient open-source model: the free (as in price and is in license) download.

I’ve asked before why Microsoft, of all the enterprise software companies, stands alone in accusing open source, and specifically (though not exclusively) Linux, of stealing intellectual property. Why don’t we see Oracle, IBM, and other big software companies deriding open source?

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We talk often of open source as a development methodology, and so it is. But I agree with John: the open-source distribution model is arguably much more subversive to Microsoft’s market hegemony than its development model.

Microsoft is a distribution model. It’s certainly not an innovator. Open source challenges Microsoft because it offers an alternative distribution model, one that is more efficient.

Microsoft, in other words, is being Microsofted, and the Redmond giant doesn’t like it. Even as Microsoft has dramatically reduced the cost and complexity of computing, so, too, is open source reducing Microsoft’s price even further, beating Microsoft at its own game.

The answer came from my friend and Alfresco CTO John Newton while we were talking yesterday:

Why does Microsoft struggle with open source? Because open source is a dramatically thinner, fitter version of Microsoft’s own partner-dependent distribution model. If open source were a vendor, Microsoft could compete. It struggles, however, to compete with a phenomenon.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently struck a deal with the president of the Generalitat de Catalunya in Spain, which had earlier made a commitment to move off Microsoft and other proprietary software to open source, to get free Microsoft touch-screen PCs and other technology.

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It’s not just license costs that are lower, either. It’s the cost of entry: Microsoft software generally requires other Microsoft software to run. If you want to run SharePoint or BizTalk, for example, you’re going to need Windows, SQL Server, etc. Open-source solutions, however, work with other free and open-source databases, application servers, and operating systems.

Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu, once told me that Microsoft knows how to compete with 1 cent but fears 0 cents, and so it seeks to impose a patent tax on open-source software in order to raise its price to a level at which its highly efficient licensing model can compete. Open source, however, refuses to cooperate, continuing to spread itself through free downloads with no proprietary strings attached.

In a statement, Alcatel-Lucent said it was disappointed with the ruling.

A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that Microsoft need not pay damages to Alcatel-Lucent in a long-running patent dispute in a case that could have opened up a broad range of litigation over the MP3 music format.

While this was the most widely watched case, the two companies still have other, ongoing patent disputes in courts in Texas and California.

Updated 1:40 p.m. PDT, with comment from Alcatel-Lucent.

Microsoft was initially hit with a $1.5 billion verdict in the case. There was concern that had Alcatel-Lucent prevailed that a wide range of companies could have been impacted.

In a statement, Microsoft deputy general counsel Tom Burt said the ruling “is a victory for consumers of digital music and a triumph for common sense in the patent system.”

“We will review our options to see what steps we should take,” Alcatel-Lucent said. “It is too early to speculate on what our next steps might be.”

The appeals court, in its ruling published Thursday, agreed with a lower court that Microsoft didn’t infringe on one patent in question and that Alcatel-Lucent didn’t have standing to sue over the other patent.

The Olympic Games officially begin on Friday in Beijing–and on the Web.

One of the men later tried to lay the entire blame for the incident with another of the accused, but said, “For us, it was like a joke.”

At the conference, in one of the most anticipated talks, researcher Dan Kaminsky explained the urgency in having everyone patch their systems: virtually everything done on the Internet involves a Domain Name System request and therefore is vulnerable.

Hacks at Black Hat
Three journalists for a French security magazine were kicked out of the Black Hat security conference after they allegedly sniffed the press room computer network. Organizers required the men to leave the conference, confiscated their badges, and barred them from Defcon, a sister security conference that runs over the weekend, and from all future events.

Icahn, who owns about 5 percent of Yahoo’s shares, had tried to take over the entire board in July, but settled for seats for himself and two allies. One of Icahn’s first roles on the board will be to help pick the two allies who will join him. The new appointments are set to be announced by August 15, increasing Yahoo’s board from 9 to 11 members.

Shareholders unhappy with board members withheld their votes in the August 1 election. In Yahoo’s official voting tally, 14.6 percent of votes for Yang and 20.5 percent for Bostock were withheld. But in the corrected results, Yang’s withhold percentage rose to 33.7 percent and Bostock’s to 39.6 percent, Yahoo said.

The Wall of Sheep board has long been a fixture at Defcon, Black Hat’s sister conference. The board displays the names (with some identifying information obscured) of those connecting to the Internet in insecure ways. The idea is both meant to shame and educate users on best practices.

To be sure, Internet marketing executives were hopeful about the performance of Google rivals, even while they downplayed their importance. Marketers said that Yahoo, Ask.com, and others are performing well for search ad campaigns.

Citizens of Ethiopia and Thailand are among the international Web users who will be able to view online content from the Beijing Olympics via YouTube. While NBC holds the Olympics digital video-on-demand rights in the U.S., rights have not been sold on an exclusive basis in more than 70 countries. In those countries, people can access the specialized YouTube Olympics channel.

Also, Google’s DoubleClick technology will be used to deliver video advertising shown with Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, and it will be used for that purpose with the Olympics video that NBC Universal plans to show online using a player based on Silverlight 2.

Search engine marketers also aren’t so crazy about how the Google-Yahoo-Microsoft power struggle has played out. It’s not that they disapprove of Yahoo remaining independent of Microsoft. It’s just that Google’s search market share, at nearly 70 percent in June, has only grown stronger during its rivals’ kerfuffle.

The Olympics are a media feeding frenzy, as everyone tries to capitalize on the huge audience for the global sporting event, and now Yahoo and Google are trying to get in on the action. The Internet pioneers have launched a number of shortcuts to present Olympics-related information through Yahoo’s search engine. The shortcuts package up information such as the overall medal count, a country’s specific medal count, and information for individual athletes.

Security researchers always thought it was hard to poison DNS records, but Kaminsky said to think of the process as a race, with a good guy and bad guy each trying to get a secret number transaction ID. “You can get there first,” he said, “but you can’t cross the finish line unless you have the secret number.”

Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.

Expectations were running high as Kaminsky, director of penetration testing for IOActive, had revealed little about his DNS vulnerability up till then. That didn’t stop others from trying to figure it out. But that actually helped Kaminsky in the end; it meant during his speech, he was able to skip the what and go directly to the why.

To see what’s going across the Black Hat network, there are seats where you can plug in your own laptop and use whatever sniffer you have to see what they see. If they can see your network, they can see the clear text contents of your e-mail.

The men were seen huddled over a table in the two press rooms for much of the day and took their computer to the Wall of Sheep (a project that monitors wireless network activity), asking them to display the alleged usernames and passwords of journalists. The Wall of Sheep organizers refused to do that, saying that they do not monitor the traffic of the press room.

The customized results present content including video on the search results, blurring the lines between an Internet portal and a search engine. The results also include a link that can take users to various related Yahoo Sports Olympics coverage pages, which at least at present feature a lot of advertisements by Visa.

Also of note
A laptop with information on prescreened travelers that was reported stolen at the San Francisco airport was found in the office from which it was reported missing, and the incident may be relabeled the case of the misplaced laptop…Google has launched a free music search service in China that will give people access to free downloads of licensed songs…Delta Air Lines passengers will get Wi-Fi access on all domestic flights by the middle of next year…Facebook is reportedly ready to let current employees unload a fifth of their stock options, at the company’s internal valuation of $4 billion…A privately funded rocket suffered a launch failure, the third in as many attempts for an Internet entrepreneur who is hoping to develop private space delivery and transportation.

At least within the Wall of Sheep room you can get help on how not be posted on the display wall. For example, use encryption on your wireless connection such as WPA2. That will encrypt the signal from your mobile device to the access point. From there, the network itself should run Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).

Quantitatively, the change means nothing: “These errors did not affect the outcome of the election of directors,” Yahoo said. But qualitatively, it’s a different story, because withhold votes do send a message even if the board were still re-elected.

Google’s Silverlight ad capability, called DoubleClick In-Stream, can be used to deliver video ads using Flash, RealMedia, and Windows Media technology. In-Stream also can show static ads within video, which Microsoft and NBC concluded was the best approach for live video.

Meanwhile, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft say they are close to an agreement on a code of conduct for doing business in China and other countries that censor the Internet. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) released separate letters from the companies, stating they have “reached agreement on the core components of the principles” of the code, as Google put it.

Those components, the letters say, include principles for promoting freedom of expression and privacy, implementation guidelines, and an accountability framework. The specifics of the code are now being reviewed by the individual organizations involved. Google said the companies are working toward a “set of clear and rigorous principles, such that restrictive governments would be unable to ignore or reject these best practices on freedom of expression and the protection of individual privacy.”

The International Olympic Committee said the Olympic Broadcasting Services will produce the YouTube channel content and will include highlights, news clips, and daily videos of the international games. YouTube and parent company Google will also help remove videos that violate the IOC copyrights on Olympics content. YouTube said it would not disclose exact terms of the deal, but that the IOC “is using our industry-leading VideoID technology to manage and protect its content on the site.”

Yahoo–one big happy family?
Now the fireworks and fractiousness can officially move inside Yahoo: activist investor Carl Icahn is now part of the Internet company’s board.

But the dysfunctional family love doesn’t end there. The shareholder approval ratings plunged for Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang and Roy Bostock after Yahoo released new results that corrected a vote transmission error.

The list of recently used files is enhanced in Office 2007 by adding these entries to the right pane of the window that appears when you click the Office button. You can show as many as 50 files in this pane, though they may not fit (my version of Office 2007 defaults to showing the 17 most recently opened files).

The file names are now easier to read because they’re no longer truncated by the narrow width of Office 2003’s File menu. You’re also able to keep certain files on this list by clicking their pin icon on the right. Normally, the least recently used file would drop off the list automatically, as the maximum number of files was reached.

Tomorrow: tweak Windows XP’s list of My Recent Documents and Vista’s Recent Items.

Add more files to the recently used list in Office 2007, or reduce the number to zero to show none.

Another way to customize your list of recent documents is via a Registry tweak. Just be sure to back up your Registry by creating a restore point before you make any changes. Microsoft provides step-by-step instructions for clearing your list of recently used Office files via the Registry.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

If you find the “Recently used file list” option grayed out in Office 2003, it could be due to a setting in the Tweak UI add-on for Windows that disables this option. To enable it, double-click the Tweak UI icon in the Control Panel, choose the IE tab, and check “Add new documents to Documents on Start Menu.” Microsoft has more information about this in a Knowledge Base article.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

Since I tend to reopen files repeatedly, I like
Microsoft Office’s list of recently used files that appears at the bottom of the File menu in Office 2003 apps, and on the right side of the window that opens when you click the Office button in their 2007 counterparts. (These documents are also accessible via the My Recent Documents button on the left side of Open and Save As dialog boxes in Office 2003.)

Increase or decrease the number of recently opened files listed on Office 2003's File menu via this setting.

To change the number of files shown in your recently opened list in Office 2003 apps, click Tools > Options > General, and change the number in the “Recently used file list” up to the top limit of nine, or down to zero, if you prefer to see no files listed. (See below for a Registry tweak that disables this feature in all Office applications.) When you’re done, click O.

What I don’t like is the default of four documents that Office 2003 shows on the File menu. Since I’m likely to cycle through more than four files at a time, I reset the number to the maximum of nine. Of course, many people prefer to show no recent documents in this list. Fortunately, changing this setting is a breeze.

Offering a touch screen and a slider design that hides a full alphabetic keyboard, the Glyde is a powerful phone with a full set of features. Inside you’ll find Bluetooth, a full HTML browser, GPS, and 3G support. In many ways it rivals the iPhone and Verizon’s LG Voyager, but at the end of the day it can’t quite match those devices. We really wanted to like its touch interface but the Glyde’s small display didn’t do it or the Web browser justice. The resulting effect was not only crowded, but also clunky. Fortunately, the QWERTY keyboard fares better.

Samsung and Verizon Wireless on Thursday announced the Samsung Glyde (aka the SCH-U940), a touch-screen cell phone based on the Samsung SGH-F700. All signs originally pointed to a May 9 release date, but Samsung and Verizon had an itchy trigger finger. But no matter what the reason, sooner is always better, particularly if it involves putting a high-profile device through its paces with a review.

(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

On the upside, call quality was excellent and the 3G features performed reasonably well. We wouldn’t keep the photos from the 2-megapixel camera as keepsakes, but the Glyde’s multimedia capabilities measure up well against other Verizon 3G phones. For a full analysis, check out our Samsung Glyde review and be sure to take a look at our Samsung Glyde photo gallery.

Presenting the Samsung Glyde…

Earlier this year, Yahoo redesigned its mobile home page and announced Yahoo Go 3.0, an open platform for widgets created by outsiders. It’s also been rolling out new partnerships for mobile advertising. In addition to providing search and display advertising for AT&T, Yahoo has also won big deals with other carriers such as Vodafone and T-Mobile in Europe and Rogers in Canada.

Verizon Communications said Wednesday that it’s extending its agreement with Yahoo to provide Verizon Internet users with Yahoo’s Web portal.

Verizon Wireless hasn’t yet announced any kind of arrangement with Google, so it will be interesting to see if Yahoo can parlay its broadband deal into anything for mobile. Yahoo has a strong portfolio in mobile and it has done well so far in the mobile market. Like Google, it has adapted some of its traditional Web services, like search, for the mobile market.

The companies’ multiyear agreement replaces a similar arrangement the companies had in place since 2005. Verizon didn’t offer details about the duration or financial terms of the new deal. But it did say Yahoo’s portal will be the first choice offered to subscribers of its DSL and Fios high-speed Internet service. Verizon will also offer its own branded portal and the MSN portal from Microsoft.

The deal between Verizon and Yahoo appears to only cover Verizon’s wired broadband services. The companies made no mention of a deal that included services for Verizon Wireless, which is jointly owned by European carrier Vodafone and Verizon Communications. Recent news articles have reported that Verizon Wireless is close to striking a deal with Google on mobile search and advertising. Yahoo also offers mobile search and advertising products that Verizon Wireless could use as well. AT&T, which has a similar broadband portal arrangement with Yahoo that Verizon has, also has chosen Yahoo as one of its mobile partners.

Track one or more packages from multiple services with TrackThePack.

If you’re unregistered, you can only run a single tracking number at a time. Registered users get the added benefit of pulling in the package updates as an RSS or iCal notification feed. People who will be away from a computer can also sign up to get SMS updates, a handy feature offered by some (but not all) package carriers. This way you can get it from all of them without sharing any of your personal information.

Related: Trackthis tracks packages on Twitter

Package tracking is really one of the better inventions of the 20th century. One of my favorite tools for said activitiy is TrackThePack, a delightfully simple tool that lets you track packages from a multitude of services, and keep them together in one simple list. It also throws each shipping location the package visits onto a map, which is neat, but mostly useless.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

For heavy-duty users, the service offers a Firefox extension that lets you track a package just by right-clicking on the tracking number, which will automatically add it to your package queue.

What makes Socialcast a business product more so than FriendFeed, Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, Jaiku, or what have you, is that it offers administrative controls appropriate for a workgroup app. Admins can hook the system into an enterprise directory service, and can make sure new people joining a workgroup are automatically subscribed to others in their company who matter to them.

See also: Jive Clearspace, SelectMinds, Igloo, Socialtext.

Socialcast will also let enterprise customers “white label” the product so it carries corporate branding, and there will be capabilities to include company-specific posting types linked to an internal system. For example, when signing a new customer, the service could link to a Salesforce.com record and pull information from it. Links to wikis and bug-tracking systems are also possible.

I do have some reservations, though. There’s no client app for the service yet, for example, although I’m told an AIR app is forthcoming. I find that using a desktop app, Twhirl, to access FriendFeed and Twitter makes using the services much easier, and for Socialcast to really work, a persistent desktop experience (like on an e-mail app) will make a big difference.

It can also help capture business knowledge in a central location. And it can greatly reduce corporate spam.

The system also has different default item types than a general-purpose nanoblog or personal feed aggregator. You can enter your status, as you can with other services, or put items in the categories “ideas,” “questions,” “links,” and “worklog.” The last is especially useful to keep tabs on who’s doing what.

Sound familiar?

Socialcast is like FriendFeed, but with a business slant.

The underlying principle of Socialcast is that users enter their status messages, questions, or ideas into a simple text box. Users can also link their accounts to other services, such as Delicious, or to RSS feeds and blogs. People who subscribe to those users can see those updates and can respond to them privately or in public.

Socialcast on Tuesday is launching a revision of its group communication service. Originally released in 2007, Tuesday’s update has a much cleaner and more contemporary interface, and liberally borrows features and ideas from social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed.

I believe this tool could do several good things for a company. Most importantly, it connects its users to the pulse of what’s happening in a company or workgroup, and still gives them the control to dial back on the onslaught of information if they wish, by un-following certain users.

And speaking of external users, I’m not sure how the product manages security, so some feeds stay closed off to non-company users.

For Socialcast to add value to a company, it has to be used. Fortunately, it appears to be easy, even fun, to get into and use the app. I would be delighted to see CNET adopt the product. I think it could help us, and most other businesses too.

I was very impressed by the demo I got last week. Socialcast appears to have a solid, lightweight product for business communication that could help workers (along with customers and clients) keep up to date with each other, and could also reduce in-company e-mail spam.

The new small-business version of the application will cost $5 a month per user (after 30-day free trial). It’s a fair price, but there are no tiers of service (flat rates for groups of users), and I worry that businesses may be stingy with subscriptions and not sign up for as many user accounts as they could use. This pricing plan might also make it harder for end users to sign up people for their service who aren’t in the company proper–customers and clients, for example.

As on FriendFeed, items that are discussed a lot stay on the top of the stack of items.

We have not performed full due diligence on the Yahoo situation, and
in particular we have not given the Yahoo board a chance to defend
itself. As such we currently have no opinion as to Wilson’s performance
as a Yahoo director.

RiskMetrics, which also operates ISS Governance Services, provides proxy advice to 1,900 clients that range from pension funds to hedge funds to mutual funds. Some funds have internal policies that require its votes be cast according to an advisory service’s recommendations, whereas other funds allow their portfolio managers to make their own call.

Wilson, who is facing a proxy fight against investor activist Carl Icahn in his role as a Yahoo director, is also running as one of five members on a dissident slate against the incumbent 12-member board of railroad company CSX.

Here’s an excerpt from RiskMetrics’ recommendation report on CSX, as it relates to Wilson:

We note that Gary Wilson is currently a director at Yahoo. Yahoo of
course is currently embroiled in a high-profile proxy fight of its own with
activist investor Carl Icahn. It has been widely reported that a significant
number of Yahoo shareholders are unhappy with how the Yahoo
board handled the unsolicited overture from Microsoft. If the Yahoo fight goes to a vote on August 1, RiskMetrics will issue a recommendation
to its shareholders on whether they should support Wilson’s re-election.

“When we when evaluate a proxy fight, we look at the track record of the incumbent directors and dissident directors,” Young said.

He stressed that RiskMetrics has not yet held formal meetings with Yahoo and Icahn to formulate an opinion on the opposing slate of directors, including Wilson.

Update at 8:20 p.m. PDT, with Glass Lewis recommendation on Wilson in the CSX proxy fight

Proxy Governance, meanwhile, issued its recommendation on Monday to vote for two of the five dissident directors, which did not include Wilson.

Because Wilson is involved in another proxy fight that is pending, and one that is high profile, RiskMetrics opted to abstained from making a recommendation on whether to elect Wilson to the CSX board, said Chris Young, director of M&A research for RiskMetrics.

In the CSX case, RiskMetrics advised investors to vote for four of the five dissident director nominees.

CSX is holding its annual shareholders meeting next week on June 25. Yahoo, meanwhile, is scheduled to hold its shareholders meeting August 1, in which Wilson will be on the other side of the table, battling against dissident nominees on Icahn’s slate.

That said, given the controversy surrounding
Yahoo, we also feel it would be imprudent to endorse Wilson’s candidacy
for the CSX board just one month prior to a potential vote recommendation
against him at another company. Moreover, we believe that the
dissidents here should be able to effect positive change at CSX with the
election of four dissident directors, and as such do not absolutely require
Wilson’s services.

As a result, if RiskMetrics were to make a recommendation to seat Wilson on the CSX board, yet ask Yahoo investors to kick him off their board, it may leave investors of both companies a little perplexed that a contradictory view existed for Wilson, explained Young.

Glass Lewis & Co. issued its recommendation Wednesday on the CSX proxy fight, recommending a withhold vote for Wilson. Glass Lewis advised its clients to vote for two of the five dissident directors.

Influential institutional investor advisory service RiskMetrics Group abstained Tuesday from issuing a recommendation on Yahoo director Gary Wilson, in his “other” proxy fight.