Lately I've been chronicling Cisco's problems -- losing money, laying off workers, those kinds of things. Now there's some good news for Cisco: The company is regaining ground it lost to Juniper Networks in the Internet core router market.

Of course good news for Cisco is bad news for Juniper, a five-year-old company that lives and dies by this one, very special market. For Cisco it is just one of many, many markets to conquer. According to the Dell'Oro Group, which tracks this stuff for a living, Cisco now owns a bit more than 60 percent of the market. Meanwhile, Juniper's slice has fallen from 38 percent to 34.7.

Juniper has two problems: Cisco, which has steadily upped the speed of its core routers; and Avici, a startup, which has doubled its market share from 2 to 4. This is truly when Juniper gets put to the test. Even if Cisco merely pulls even with Juniper, Cisco, the larger company, would still have the advantage.

But Avici may end up being an even tougher foe. All along, Juniper's push has been speed, speed, speed. Avici, cleverly, has associated itself with terabit speeds, while Juniper has talked gigabits. Whether terabits are possible or not, Avici products now have a reputation for ultra-high performance. Worse than that, there are over a dozen players angling for this market, companies large and small, which Juniper will ultimately have to deal with. Will Avici be just a flash in the pan, or can Juniper become the next big thing? This coming year may tell the tale.

Be Bought

In an upcoming print editorial, I lament the lack of innovation wrought by the Wintel duopoly. OS maker Be, which was just sold for a paltry $11 million to Palm, is an excellent case in point. The BeOS, brainchild of former Apple superstar Jean Louis Gassee, was so advanced it made Windows look like a kid's toy (actually most kid's toys are more advanced, and reliable). It was designed from the get-go for multimedia and multiprocessing. It was a true gem (no, not the old Gem!). But just as Windows left no room for OS/2, there was simply not enough market for Be to justify application developer support. Palm will probably pick at the carcass of the BeOS and plug a piece or two into its handheld operating system. And that's a shame.

Can AOL Do Video Right?

I am not a fan of AOL's proprietary instant messaging, its bug-infested Internet clients or its sheer market control. But I am impressed with what AOL and Time Warner should be able to accomplish once they get their act together. Take AOL's subscriber base, add Time Warner's print and video content, toss in a few million high-speed cable subscribers, and you've got yourself a new entertainment paradigm -- one that Microsoft will have to work mightily to match.

Well, this new paradigm might finally be coming together. AOL Time Warner just announced the creation of an interactive video division that will start off delivering video on demand. Unfortunately, this strategy is a real klunker, as DirectTV already has about a million and half movies it annoyingly tries to sell each day. But once AOL Time Warner figures out how to combine video with truly interactive content from Time Warner's other properties, they'll be smokin'. Prove me right Steve Case!

Hotmail Exposed!

I have a Hotmail account on the side, and I feel dirty every time I use it. It's not that I am sending and receiving risquı messages, it's all the ads and the piles and piles of unseemly spam I have to wade through to get to a legitimate message. Now a researcher has publicized the fact that Hotmail can be easily cracked and my messages read. But I'm actually not all that concerned. I figure most hackers will get bored after reading that XYZ Mortgage Co. will beat anyone's rates, how debt can be cut 60 percent, that better gas mileage is a click away and that women I've never met are falling at my feet. I say, hack away.