- Nevermind iPhone, worry about these
- InfoWorld Daily Podcast
- Calculating the cost of an iPhone
- Talent war and H-1B make smokescreen
- InfoWorld Daily Podcast
- Cringe: MS 'clueless clones struggling to look hip'
- Ruby on Rails IDEs, part 2
- InfoWorld Daily Podcast
- Worst error in e-discovery strategies
- When backups go awry, and it's only the beginning
June 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Nevermind iPhone, worry about these
Columnist's corner: While throngs will be unboxing and powering up iPhone's this weekend, Oliver Rist coughs up two words and a question mark: Who cares? "It's just a phone ... An Internet surfing phone, see? With a badly executed access plan, batteries that can't live up to its feature set, and an apparent lack of APIs," he writes in Five technologies more pressing than the iPhone. "If you don't have a compelling business reason to manage one now, that's not going to change, no matter how many colorful TV commercials come out of Cupertino. Get a grip -- we have far weightier issues to worry about." Paris Hilton, Angeline Jolie and Lindsay Lohan, for starters. Oh yes, and Nigeria's Axis of Spam. I only listed two of the five, by the way.
Notes from the field: Robert X. Cringely, once again, has the geek week in review. "The stupidity is only just starting," he reports about the 4,000 iPhone-related domains registered already and one being auctioned at a base of $25K. "Who knows, he might even get it." Paris Hilton finds her way into this post, too, though she is not the one trying to prove that "Chivas is not just for fat stogie-smoking businessmen from Des Moines." No, that would be MSN. Too bad for Cringe, who had more Paris jokes up his sleeve before she was freed.
Best of the blogs: How to catch a spy. The Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive (ONCIX) has released a set of guidelines to help agencies identify potential threats to information security. It's no panacea but, according to government research, "most known American spies (roughly 80 percent) demonstrated one or more of the listed conditions or behaviors of security concern before they engaged in espionage," Matt Hines reports.
The news beat: BlackBerry maker RIM says that the iPhone has helped its business, and reports record high subscriber growth and strong device shipments. AMD says that its first quad-core server chip Barcelona will ship on time. And Microsoft.co.uk gets hit by a hacker by means of a SQL injection attack.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 29, 2007 10:42 AM
June 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)
iPhone to become available tonight, experts caution against supporting them in the enterprise, and we calculate absolute minimum it will cost. Also, DHS plots closed-door cybersecurity meeting, RIM announces record growth, and more
LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 29, 2007 06:41 AM
June 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Calculating the cost of an iPhone
Wireless: Now that they will be officially available this evening, albeit likely hard to find, Apple's iPhone brings the reality of a two-year contract replete with beefy monthly payments. Tom Yager does the math in this Ahead of the Curve post. "What's the absolute minimum cost of iPhone? Add it all up and it comes out to $2,034.75." That number does not include taxes, fees and surcharges which -- as anyone with a telephone can tell you -- account for a healthy portion of one's monthly bill. "That's the cost of a $499 iPhone, a two-year AT&T contract at $59.99 per month and a $36 activation fee." Related: AT&T details iPhone service plans.
Notes from the field: The RIAA is squirming ever deeper into the muck, so writes Robert X. Cringely, referring to the group's nasty suit against a disabled Oregon woman, in which it threatened to bring her 10-year old daughter in for a deposition and even called her school pretending to be a family member. Why grandma, what big attorneys you have. "Incidentally, there is no truth to the rumor Dick Cheney plans to assume control of the RIAA after his current job runs out. But it wouldn't surprise me a bit," Cringe writes.
Green IT: Carbon neutral. Carbon free. These ostensibly noble notions are gaining purchase among tech vendors, true, but Ted Samson asks "is that really the best strategy a company can adopt to reduce its environmental impact?" Since he's raising the issue, you can guess the answer is not some quick and easy "yes". Samson writes, "companies would be better served focusing on boosting efficiency and energy conservation." Virtualization is one approach. Others include power-capping tools, telecommuting programs, solar panels, and PC-power management software. The healthy carbon diet. "If you have an ideal [carbon] weight in mind, the healthiest route is to invest time and money in a sensible diet and exercise regimen."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 29, 2007 04:35 AM
June 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Talent war and H-1B make smokescreen
Careers: "The problem isn't talent -- there is a lot around," explains Nick Corcodilos. "The problem, I think, is management." Companies are so focused on stock price and PR that they define jobs so narrowly they can't find the perfect candidate. "The focus is on filling jobs rather than building bench strength. So companies wage a talent war, lawyers handle the recruiting, the whole thing is revealed to be a sham, and HR is left holding the H-1B bag."
Green IT: Dell chills with Emerson, but the companies claim that the combined Dell-Liebert Energy Smart Solutions heat up servers by delivering an 80 percent performance increase and a 42 percent power reduction, Ted Samson reports.
Columnist's corner: Thanks to a CIO he spoke with, David Margulius has a new viewpoint on Web 2.0. It's a way for customers to rather easily, in said CIO's words, "show disrespect for long-established business processes." As a result, consumers may begin refusing corporate wrappers and, instead, dictate functionality themselves and even force providers to come to them. "But how will this play out for b-to-b customers?" Margulius asks in Web 2.0 fosters healthy disrespect. "Mostly they'll insist on a lower price or better service, as Web 2.0 and its cousin SaaS increase access to real-time price discovery and flexible sourcing." There are costs and risks, to be certain.
The news beat: AMD gets ready to launch its first quad-core server chips, otherwise known as Barcelona. The U.S. CDT and FTC disagree on spyware laws as a trio of anti-spyware bills marches forward on Capitol Hill. The EU and the US move closer to signing a data accord about airline passenger data. And RealPlayer and Helix Player are vulnerable to attacks that could let hacker's take control of a victim's PC.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 28, 2007 10:58 AM
June 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)
IT vendors disagree about patent reform. Also, Sun says it will give clustering software to open source, Intel plans to layoff 800 workers, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 28, 2007 07:47 AM
June 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Cringe: MS 'clueless clones struggling to look hip'
Notes from the field: The oft-curious Robert X. Cringely chimes in with a question: Is Microsoft ready for people? And he doesn't stop there, no. Cringe calls out several so-called A List Bloggers to the carpet for churning out pure mush on exactly what the Redmond slogan "people-ready business" means to them because, it turns out, such personal reflections were inspired by some sort of cash infusion from Microsoft. "That caused other bloggers to rightfully question their ethics," Cringe reports. "A spitball war has been raging ever since." Cringe turns back to Microsoft, which he considers to be "clueless corporate clones stuggling to look hip."
Columnist's corner: Tomorrow is the big day for Apple and it's iPhone. They're already piled up in the back rooms of AT&T stores lining strip malls the continent over. "Apple has answered most of the non-feature-related iPhone questions that I'd have asked on my readers' behalf, but several remain open," writes Tom Yager. What's the absolute minimum cost, for one? Here's another: Can you use iPhone without AT&T service, as a sort of Internet tablet-cum-PDA? iPhone: Apple answers all the big questions. "Apple Stores and AT&T Stores will be mob scenes on June 29 at 6:00. If you actually touch an iPhone and you can afford one, you're likely to buy it." Related: iPhone spawns gray market.
Careers: Many technology professionals will, at some point in their careers, be tasked with developing an IT strategy for their company. One such reader is bold enough to write Bob Lewis asking for advice and confessing to lacking an idea about how to get started. Bob's answer? "You bring in an outside consultant like me, pay a few bucks (well, more than a few) and we walk you through it." Okay, okay. He goes on to write in Advice Line that, "there are quite a few different formats for an IT strategy," and he suggests starting with a situation analysis, then a look at the business objectives, extracting what IT can do to support those and, ultimately, defining IT performance.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 28, 2007 04:42 AM
June 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)
App dev: After his update on Ruby on Rails IDEs Martin Heller is back with more free options. Such as NetBeans 6.0 Milestone 9, Ruby In Steel's Personal Edition, and Komodo Edit, sibling to none other than the Komodo IDE he looked at earlier in the week.
From the Test Center: It's not the dream-come-true single product that encrypts data on all operating systems and media, but "PGP's suite of encryption products offers a competitive solution to protect a variety of content on Windows," begins Roger Grimes, who focuses on PGP's newest NetShare, version 9.6. The software allows files on local and remote SMB shares to be encrypted. "On its own, it's a solid encryption product and should help secure shared files and folders. However, most of NetShare's enterprise functionality is provided by PGP Universal Server." Read Grimes' rating and recommendations in the full review.
The news beat: The long-debated GPL v3 is coming on Friday, says the Free Software Foundation, a pronouncement that sparks the question of who exactly will use it. IBM claims that the final edition of DB2 Viper 2 will become available by year's end, after entering public beta testing last week. And BEA Systems is ready to lock down code for Workshop 10.1 which according to one executive, "leaves the shop Friday. It's done."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 27, 2007 11:03 AM
June 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)
FSF: GPL v3 coming Friday. Also, MS security response center among worst jobs, New Yorkers line up for iPhone already, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 27, 2007 07:48 AM
June 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Worst error in e-discovery strategies
Best of the blogs: There's a new buzzword and acronym on the block, and it's Electronically Stored Information. "If you've not heard of ESI yet, you'd best get up to speed," Ephraim Schwartz writes in The art of e-discovery. "The problem is, ESI is more a term of art than a deliberately defined set of rules." It came about because of changes by the Federal Rules for Civil Procedure. But the FRCP is so vague companies need to create their own strategy. The biggest mistake companies make when devising their e-discovery strategy? "In-house lawyers and IT people never have lunch together," answers Ralph Losey, an attorney specializing in e-discovery at law firm Akerman Senterfitt.
From the Test Center: Monitoring systems to comply with regulations is an enourmous challenge, no question. To that end, Tablus now takes a distributed approach. "The company's content detection is precise," Mike Heck finds. "Tablus Content Sentinel 3.0 helps you gauge gaps in your data security by identifying content at risk on laptops, desktops, and servers. You can then take measures to protect this information before it moves or is misused." Read the full review.
Data management: Sean McCown shares some code you might enjoy. "I wrote this the other day to disable all user logins in SQL Server 2000," he explains. So if you need to be the only one on the server in SQL for doing maintenance, troubleshooting, etc., then you'll find this useful. "All this has come about because MS decided to not allow us to disable Windows groups. Now, I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing ... I'm just saying it's the reason we have to do it this way."
Notes from the field: Offshore gambling site BetUS.com is making book on the iPhone, Robert X. Cringely reports. "Odds are better than even the iPhone will sell more than 12 million units in 2008 (5 to 6) and Apple's stock price will spike on June 30 (1 to 2)," he writes in Gambling on the iPhone. Cringe just cannot resist making his own odds, too. "Steve jobs will appear in public on June 29 wearing something other than a black turtleneck and jeans: 15 million to 1."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 27, 2007 04:41 AM
June 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)
When backups go awry, and it's only the beginning
Storage: With a failed hard drive and backups gone wrong, our Off the Record author sought 'expedited' services for recovering the data. The vendor promised to be done in 4 days, with progress reports every 4 hours. Well, zero reports and 16 days later, they said the data was finally ready, and so was the whopping bill. "But there was a catch." The data recovery company refused to accept credit card payment -- and, despite broken promises and missed deadlines, they wouldn't budge. "Never in my life had I had such a good argument and not gotten what I wanted."
Security: InfoWorld's own Enterprise Data Protection Forum kicks off today in the Big Apple, and Paul Roberts is blogging live from the scene. First up is an entry on keynote speaker Stephen Katz, president of Security Risk Solutions. The moral: CISO's need to make even rank and file employees understand why security is important to them and their customers, Katz said.
Gripe Line: Ed Foster typically breaks tech companies down into one of two molds: those run by engineers, and those by marketeers. Well, now Microsoft, it appears, belongs to yet another category: companies run by their lawyers. At issue is its internal squabbling over virtualization licensing. "It's inevitable that one of the main uses of virtualization technology in the coming years is going to be by Linux and Intel Mac users who need to run a Windows app or two and don't mind the performance hit of a virtual system," Foster writes in Lawyers virtually call the tune in Redmond. "Who else is going to think the solution to fighting a form of piracy that DRM can't prevent is to have a prohibition against it deep in the fine print?"
The news beat: Microsoft's Virtual Earth gets a new dimension through a partnership with Dassault Systemes that will enable users to contribute 3D models of buildings featured on the maps. Symantec takes heat over its Chinese compensation offer, with critics saying it just isn't enough. And Sun needs AMD chips to launch Constellation, the supercomputer it has been working on to compete with IBM's Blue Gene/P.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 26, 2007 10:48 AM
June 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Retail point-of-sale systems more prone to data theft than shopping online, Sun readies AMD-based supercomputer, Google may drop German Gmail, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 26, 2007 10:01 AM
June 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Who actually pays for all that content?
Gripe Line: What with InfoWorld and other publications forging ahead into the world beyond print, Ed Foster raises the question about who pays for content -- and readers respond with some interesting thoughts. One concern was that aggregators such as Google and Yahoo pluck ad revenue without producing content. One less-than-optimistic site visitor wrote, "what I know to be true is that if there is no one investigating, gathering, sorting out fact from fiction, and if all the sources are just relying on each other, then democracy as we know it will no longer exist."
From the feature well: "The process of tracking down every piece of valuable company data -- and applying the appropriate tools to shield information from unwanted access or misuse -- remains in its beginning stages," writes Matt Hines in The struggle to protect enterprise data. The heart of the matter is visibility and, of course, blind spots. The good news? According to one analyst, "people are recognizing the problem." Retail giant Sears is but one example.
Careers: He's said it before and, in all likelihood, will repeat it more than once again. "One of the things that is your job, and that you must never shirk, delegate or otherwise avoid, is to set the tone," John West explains in this Leading from the Trenches post. Aimed at new leaders specifically, other tips include making a big push versus dribbling over time, being sensitive to change and when doing it the hard way is a must.
Notes from the field: Robert X. Cringely has a new nickname of sorts for Microsoft: The hole enchilada. "And people say Redmond has forgotten how to innovate," he writes, referring to a massive underground parking garage, four stories deep and four football fields long. Dubbed Microsoft Live Parking 1.0 by Cringe, who reports that it will be the second largest underground lot in the western hemisphere. "Soil removal is slated to be done by October, however sources say Microsoft is finding plenty of bugs in it, which may delay the lot's official launch until sometime in 2012."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 26, 2007 04:54 AM
June 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)
App dev: Martin Heller has an update on Ruby on Rails IDEs. Those would be Aptana IDE + Rails (nee RadRails), Ruby in Steel and ActiveState Komodo. "The Rails IDE market is continuing to evolve quickly," Heller explains.
Editor's letter: Jon Williams has moved his New York CTO blog to InfoWorld.com, and three people have joined the Open Sources blog: Zack Urlocker from MySQL, Savio Rodrigues from IBM, and Dave Dargo. Whereas Dargo is a "man of mystery and intrigue," editor in chief Steve Fox writes, "the most surprising name here is probably Savio's because he works for a company (IBM) not generally associated with the open-source movement. He is a believer, however, and his traditional software perspective should spark lively discussion." Bloggers, welcome aboard.
The news beat: Oracle's CFO Safra Catz bares her fangs at rivals IBM, Microsoft and SAP, mocking Microsoft for not delivering a third of the features it promised in the most recent SQL Server iteration. Apple patches Safari for the second time since its release to beta testers. And some Macs go snap-crackle-pop after the Mac OS X 10.4.10 is installed, though one intrepid soul already posted a workaround.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 25, 2007 10:59 AM
June 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft kills Longhorn Reloaded, Symantec compensates Chinese customers, eBay back with Google, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 25, 2007 07:29 AM
June 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Trials and tribulations of virtualizing Vista
Best of the blogs: Randally Kennedy has an equation many folks are bound to dislike. Vista + Virtualization = poor performance. "As a veteran IT professional, I would expect to take a hit moving to Vista - just not one that's so out of whack with the established norms," he writes. "Clearly, there's something going on here that makes Vista particularly difficult to virtualize."
Wireless: It might look mighty sexy to your end users, but Apple's iPhone portends to be the handset IT managers love to hate. "The devices will certainly challenge businesses because of the needed support for e-mail, iTunes songs, and other applications," reports Computerworld's Matt Hamblen. Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney explains that his clients "are scared of this device." Related: Countdown to iPhone, and How to dump your cell phone contract for the iPhone.
Security: In this, the third installment in his series about creating a more secure computing ecosystem, Roger Grimes explains the need for laws with a bit of historical perspective. "As a former mohawk-wearing punk rocker, I loved anarchy as an ideal. But I noticed that all my punk friends still called the police when someone hit them or stole their property," he writes. Nowadays it's about authenticating and tracking network packets from origin to source, not purple hair. "Any decrease in performance due to the new network crypto mechanics would be more than made up by the decrease in spam and malware that is so pervasive today."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 25, 2007 05:10 AM
June 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Inspiring change at your company
Best of the blogs: Getting changes made can be nearly impossible, no question about it. And, as Sean McCown points out, the more important the remodeling, the harder it is. He does, however, present some advice in Riding the winds of change about hanging off the skirts of disaster and taking up arms in the form of data.
From the Test Center: Today, a developer's-eye view of Leopard, part IV, in which Tom Yager looks at 64-bit Darwin, Dashcode, Time Machine and Ruby on Rails. Now, Yager is a professed Mac proponent and, accordingly, has high expectations. "Once you use Leopard, you will get hooked on the strengths that Leopard headliners such as Core Animation and Time Machine bring to your applications and their users. Leopard will spawn ideas for creative solutions that wouldn’t have occurred to you for any prior release of OS X." Read the full review.
Notes from the field: Robert X. Cringely once again offers up the geek in review, which reflects on the week that was. Robots presiding over a marriage, the end of Office '03, Gateway's fashionably late appearance at the battery recall party, to name just a few. Cringe even tries his hand at a search engine joke.
The news beat: Cisco pushes IronPort smarts to firewalls, or at least it will be come Monday when the acquisition officially closes. The ITC denies Qualcomm's request to stay the ban on importing chips and cell phones into the U.S. And extradited copyright infringer Hew Raymond Griffiths gets a 51-month prison sentence.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 22, 2007 10:51 AM
June 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Vista has more unpatched holes that XP in first 6 months, U.S. DoD takes systems offline after attack, ITC upholds Qualcomm ban and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 22, 2007 09:12 AM
June 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Careers: Inherent to the recruiting, and ultimately hiring, process are a few problems, two of them being that we try to attract talent when we need it, and the fact that the folks we really want are not out looking for pipelines. "We can be waiting for the best [people] when they are ready, or we can be out chasing people who are chasing jobs," Nick Corcodilos writes in Pipelines & Interviews. "The Zen of it is this: You don't identify the people you want in the interview process."
From the Test Center: Whereas traditional document management tools require a centralized system for tracking documents, "NextPage 2 Document Retention changes all that," Philip Windley writes. "The beauty of Document Retention is that it increases compliance with your organization's document retention policy without requiring significant changes to an employee's normal work habits." Sound too good to be true? Bear in mind it's no panacea. "Remember that this is not an enforcement engine; it will track a document's movements, but won't prevent it from being sent to unauthorized users." Read the full review.
SOA: According to an analyst report, SOA consolidation is heating up. "So, is this good news, or bad news?" David Linthicum asks. "Depends on who's buying whom ... the things that seem to be lacking are clear and concise product plans around these larger acquisitions."
Best of the blogs: Call it an inevitable introduction. Dilbert meets an environmentally-friendly consultant, aka Dogbert. As Ted Samson points out in Scott Adams grooms Dogbert as green consultant, "Dilbert can be a pretty good gauge for when a biz-tech trend achieves mainstream recognition." And kind of fun, too.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 22, 2007 04:46 AM
June 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The beauty and invisibility of infrastructure
Columnist's corner: A recent trip to the Big Apple has David Margulius confessing that he finds infrastructure -- as in bridges, buildings, elevated trains -- to be downright beautiful. "I wish there was a better way to visualize the virtual infrastructure that wraps the world and everything we do in equal majesty, because it doesn't get the same respect. And it should. It's amazing ... just invisible." Then again, it tends not to last as long and, often, is coded by some teenager who finds pre-fab tools on the Web and creates a mashup. "Those same adventurous and masterful genes that built the Brooklyn Bridge in the 1870s and the Golden Gate Bridge in the 1930s are still alive and well, just working in a different medium." Building a bridge to the future.
Green IT: Telepresence technologies might not quench wanderlust as much as those plush travel budgets of days gone by, but they do bring travel-weary workers cause for celebration. "Telepresence technology has, by many accounts, achieved a level of quality, reliability, and affordability such that it's truly a realistic alternative to in-person face-to-face meetings," Ted Samson reports in Telepresence breaks down communications barriers. Meet the players: Cisco, HP, Polycom, Teliris, and Telanetix.
The news beat: Updated Apple Web pages give iPhone details. IBM and Microsoft both fess up to feeling the heat from Google apps, even going so far as to call Google "a great competitor in this space." And Amazon, Apple and eBay rank low on yet another environmental advocacy list, this one by Climate Counts.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 21, 2007 10:44 AM
June 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)
U.S. DHS under pressure for cybersecurity practices, Apple ranks low on another environmental advocacy list, Linden CTO says DRM drags economies down, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 21, 2007 08:30 AM
June 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Dell: No Ubuntu Linux for business users
Open source: Dell won accolades when it began offering Linux pre-installed on PCs but, as Matt Asay reports, the hardware maker is only selling those systems to home users and, in fact, even refused a prospective customer who needed to use a business credit card as payment. "Why not let the market decide where Ubuntu will go today? Or was that part of some agreement with Microsoft? 'We'll only let individual Linux freaks buy Ubuntu -- we won't let corporate Linux freaks buy it,'" he writes in this Open Sources post. "Muppets."
Careers: Kicking off with a question John West asks If leadership is a journey, how will you know when you're there? No easy answer, it's true, but West does offer a benchmark of sorts, or at least an endpoint -- becoming the least important person in your organization. And that's a good thing. "So it's a little bit of hyperbole. There are decisions and responsibilities that you must take on your own. They are the job of the person in charge." Even for West, that takes some adjustment.
Columnist's corner: Even though he's spent much of his career finding and disarming artificial benchmark advantages that don't correlate to real-world computing scenarios, Tom Yager explains that, "the nut that I have yet to crack is an enterprise IT benchmark that passes the test of being portable, easy to run, consistent, realistic, fair, and capable of providing simple, meaningful results." But Greg Leake, an ostensibly solo and even stealth Microsoft employee, is working to create such a test for both Java and .Net. "Microsoft put a lot of time and money behind someone who was more committed to shooting straight than to handing his employer a big win over a competitor," Yager writes in J2EE against .Net. "It trusted a key competitive benchmark to an architect who made sure the competitor had every chance to win."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 21, 2007 04:47 AM
June 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)
A Ducati, Google in Brazil, and smokejumpers
Careers: Sharing a reader's "excellent analysis" Bob Lewis posts Lessons from smoke jumpers. As in, those highly-skilled, IT and otherwise, folks who "do very dangerous work under difficult conditions." But they also bring a downside: adrenaline addiction and messes to be cleaned up.
Green IT: While politicians consider it a potential tool for terrorists, Ted Samson writes that the Surui tribe in Brazil hopes that Google Earth will help save rain forests. Specifically, the chief envisions members using satellite Internet connections to access high-resolution images for policing its reservation.
Columnist's corner: Oliver Rist this week has advice for taking the guesswork out of capacity planning. "Paperwork bites," he begins. In this particular case, Rist is referring not to IT, but to a Ducati motorcycle. But coming back around he points out that, "I get the same way about much of the paperwork associated with running a network." And so he revs the engine of Microsoft's System Center Capacity Planner 2007 beta. "For those with big plans for Exchange 2007 and SCOM 2007, it's definitely worth the playtime."
The news beat: Gateway recalls 14,000 batteries found in its notebook computers. Symantec outgrows its underground nuclear bunker. Dell replaces the displays on nine laptop models. And News Corp. offers up MySpace for a stake in ailing Yahoo.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 20, 2007 11:06 AM
June 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft to change Vista search, Nokia realigns phone units, Google details datacenter-to-be in Iowa, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 20, 2007 09:07 AM
June 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Notes from the field: Robert X. Cringely is keeping tabs and the count is now Geeks 1, Hollywood 0. The game to which he refers, of course, is being played out at Yahoo, where CEO Terry Semel just relinquished the helm to founder, and geek, Jerry Yang. "Talk around the water cooler is that Yahoo has a big red 'Acquire Me' sign on its back," Cringe reports in Yahoo's your daddy? "Look for Microsoft, Google, News Corp., or some other corporate monolith to line up with their knives and forks, ready to carve out a slice."
Columnist's corner: It might not be the first of the bigwigs to embrace Web 2.0 technologies, but by unveiling three major collaboration and social networking tools -- Quickr 8.0, Lotus Connections and IBM Infor 2.0 -- Big Blue lends gravitas to the Enterprise 2.0 trend. "My advice is to skip a few stages and figure out how to accommodate social networking and collaboration into your IT architecture now," Ephraim Schwartz explains. "If you can't, well, now that Big Blue is in the game, get out your checkbook; there's always IBM Global Technology Services."
Careers: Responding to Marc Andreesen's 'How to hire the best people you've ever worked with', Nick Corcodilos says that the three criteria Andreesen lays out "matter much, much more than any others," in Manhole covers don't cut it. Those are drive, curiosity and ethics. "But there's a catch to his approach: It requires a savvy interviewer. A manager who is highly motivated, curious, and ethical. That's where you start. Companies that have a problem with that will have a problem hiring."
The news beat: California's Attorney General Jerry Brown says that Microsoft will make 'significant changes' to the search functionality in Windows Vista. With its new iProcess Suite, Tibco links BPM to SOA. And McAfee sends Total Protection 2.0 into beta testing.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 20, 2007 05:18 AM
June 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Best of the blogs: "While the SOA expectations are high, there is a delta between what's being talked about and planned, and what's being implemented," David Linthicum explains in this Real World SOA post. "I would say it's a 50 percent difference at this point. I'm sure this will change over time ... when implementing, they quickly understand that SOA is complex, risky, and takes a lot of smart people to get it right. I suspect that won't change for a while."
Columnist's corner: Sometimes it takes a great disaster to make us see more clearly. This week's Off the Record author's experience proves that to be truth. "I had been on the job less than a month and had been making observations and recommending changes and upgrades to ensure network and communication systems integrity and stability." The problem? The company is in Tornado Alley, the vendor no longer existed, and management thought the system was working just fine. "About a week later, severe thunderstorms and tornadoes ripped through our area and lightning took out the old phone equipment. Of course it was my fault for not seeing it coming." Vengeance being what it is, this one leads up to an "I told you so."
The news beat: A flaw in Microsoft's Windows Live ID allowed users to register a phony e-mail address that, in turn, could be used as an ID to trick folks into thinking they're chatting with someone they're not. HP bring sanity to storage with new models in its EVA series of disk arrays. And as part of its effort to be eco-friendly Google turns on solar panels lining much of the rooftop space of its corporate campus.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 19, 2007 11:05 AM
June 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Apple's iPhone gets pair of upgrades, Novell issues first service pack for Suse Linux Enterprise, HP buys SPI Dynamics, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 19, 2007 07:41 AM
June 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Negotiating for a better IT salary
Live Chat: This morning Ask the Headhunter author Nick Corcodilos is hosting a discussion on Negotiating Compensation: Just say No in the IT Careers Chat Room. Mr. Corcodilos will give his views and answer questions, beginning at 11 a.m. PST. (Registration is required, but it's free.)
From the Test Center: Today, it's part 3 in our series A developer's-eye view of Leopard. This installment brings a look at Cocoa and other object-oriented frameworks. "Even when Apple supplies several approaches to achieving the same end in order to accommodate developers' various preferences, the company ensures that all those tactics result in a completely consistent user experience," writes Tom Yager. One standout that Mr. Yager addresses is the way that "Leopard incorporates changes to its file system to support enhancements to Spotlight and to enable Time Machine automated backup." Related: Leopard preview, part 2.
The news beat: Under heavy criticism, Yahoo CEO Terry Semel steps down and the company says that co-founder Jerry Yang will take the helm. Apple upgrades the iPhone with longer battery life and a touch screen of so-called optical-quality glass. And Jim Zemelin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, says that Microsoft is not going to sue any of its customers because doing so "would not be in their business interest."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 19, 2007 04:43 AM
June 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft, Google and friends in the DOJ
Best of the blogs: The snarky Robert X. Cringely is asking Whom do you anti-trust, part deux? First, Microsoft urges the Department of Justice to investigate Google's acquisition of DoubleClick. One good turn deserves another, Google insists, and returns the favor with claims that Windows Vista is a patent violator. "I don't see the feds blocking any of these deals or doing anything of substance in one direction or the other," Cringe goes out on a limb of sorts.
From the feature well: Simply put, "today's networked storage must be managed with a deeper awareness of business objectives," explains Mario Apicella in Suit up you storage network with business sense. Think data classification, continuous data protection, data deduplication and tiered storage -- all of which, Apicella adds, alleviate the pain of enterprise data management. No small task, that, but are the tools to help. And Mr. Apicella gets at the increasingly critical question: are backups a waste of time?
Search: Microsoft corporate vice president of intellectual property Marshall Phelps says that Google may not be the answer for poor nations. Personally, I never knew any of them were looking to the search engine for salvation. Okay, okay, it's the 'next big breakthrough mentality' and not Google itself that he's referring to. Google, meanwhile, launches a public policy blog to focus on U.S. government legislation and regulation.
The news beat: ClearCube unwraps what it calls a long-distance version of its thin client PC system, meaning users can access the blades from thousands of miles away, rather than the standard 200 meters. The HP Technology Forum kicking off today brings a strong focus on virtualization, more so, in fact, than any other category. And Talend applies SaaS to data integration.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 18, 2007 11:16 AM
June 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Adobe's AIR brings expectations, reservations. Also, Dell delays SEC filings...again. Microsoft hopes for pact with Red Hat, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 18, 2007 08:26 AM
June 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
RAIGE against the RAID machine
Storage: Whereas clustered storage can reign supreme over dangerous situations which disk drives cannot, drive reliability is still critical. "Even when it doesn't cause data loss, a drive failure is more than a minor annoyance," Mario Apicella points out in Taking RAID out of the box. Then again, more and more clustered systems are challenging the status quo. Example: Pivot3 and its RAIGE, as in Redundant Array of Independent Gigabit Ethernet.
Best of the blogs: One might not know it from the title Red Hat Linux vs. the World, but "Red Hat is not desperate," asserts Dave Rosenberg. At least not when it comes to intellectual property deals Microsoft is cutting with the likes of Novell, Linspire and Xandros. "For all you companies that want to work with Microsoft, I would suggest you get them to acquire you. Anything else is a dead end."
App Dev: Even if it's not as powerful as Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation, Adobe's AIR, as in Adobe Integrated Runtime, creates what one designer calls "a new breed of applications somewhere between traditional desktop applications and Web applications." What's more, another developers says in Adobe AIR fulfills hopes for cross-platform developers that it represents the next evolution of how people engage with the Internet.
Video: In the Week Ahead with Gina Smith, get the scoop on the Enterprise 2.0 tradeshow. "There's a lot of promise for Web-based applications and social networking in the enterprise." Also, Apple news and perspective, and storage management technologies. Watch it here.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 18, 2007 04:57 AM
June 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Security: Addressing readers who believe the Internet is free, Roger Grimes pruports to keep them happy, and have a more secure version. "Several readers said my idea was too expensive to implement. That's a fair statement. However, it's my contention that the better question is: What's the cost of not doing anything?"he poses in The security solution revolution, continued. "In the end, we will all be on a more secure Internet -- it's just a question of whether we do it in a planned, methodical manner or the haphazard, reactive way we do most computer things."
From the Test Center: Apple TV can work for a living. It's portable, too, and plays audio, video, images and music. "Say sayonara to the tacky gray A/V cart in your mahogany-paneled conference room," Tom Yager writes. "Apple TV combines superior ease of use and superb output quality." And there's more to come. "The imminent link to YouTube, and presumably other Internet-based media resources in the future, will only increase its appeal." Read the full review.
The news beat: Opera Software says it is working on native video functionality that will ultimately replace the Adobe Flash plug-in within Opera's mobile browser. Fujitsu is spreading its ultramobile PC beyond Japan's borders with promises of coming to America, but no ETA as of now. And a global co-op feeds the FBI's botnet fight.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 15, 2007 11:03 AM
June 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Opera aims to replace Flash within its mobile browser, Apple patches Safari, Palm has layoffs, iPhone competitors arise, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 15, 2007 07:49 AM
June 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Powering PCs down and savings up
Green IT: Whereas many IT projects (think ERP, CRM, CMS) are nearly impossible to break down into anything less than abstract ROI terms, Ted Samson has one that is not. "PC and monitor power management falls under that easy-to-measure, cost-saving, carbon-reducing, CFO-self-masochism-inducing category," he reports in When PCs don't snooze, you lose. If that seems like minutia -- I'm happy to know since I practice this nightly myself -- it's not. A machine left on all the time, in fact, results in an extra half-ton of CO2 emissions per year. Cough ... cough. It's not just a matter of relying on users, either, and the sustainable Mr. Samson looks at a few tools to help. Related: GreenPrint bets customers will save on printer waste.
Wireless: Fueled by what it claims is a desire to increase the capabilities of mobile Web browsers, Opera Software says it is developing native video functionality for its mobile browser that will replace the Adobe Flash plug-in, Eprhaim Schwartz reports in this Reality Check post. The company points to a trend that will see more powerful browsers on mobile devices, including Apple's iPhone which, Schwartz adds, "already has its first application on the Web from Webware." Related: iPhone disappoints mobile developers.
Columnist's corner: After raising quite a few folks' blood pressure with previous columns on Kaiser Permanente's healthcare digitization megaproject, David Margulius invited Dr. Andy Wiesenthal, one of Kaiser’s lead docs on the project, to our San Francisco offices for "a no-holds barred checkup." Diagnosing healthcare IT. The prognosis? Doctors' view on digitization, and technology in general for that matter, corresponds quite predictably with their ages. It's the midcareer ones who are most cautious. "To its credit, Kaiser has decided that health care needs a tech upgrade anyway." You can also watch the full video interview here.
Best of the blogs: Congratulations are in order for Linspire, at least if you ask Dave Rosenberg, who notes that in signing yesterday's Linux patent pact with Microsoft the company is "relegating its Linux desktop to the dustbin of technology." And he goes on in this Open Sources post to write that there's "nothing like making a mediocre product absolute crap by adding in lame Microsoft services."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 15, 2007 04:48 AM
June 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Readers rebutt: Safari, Google and AmeriTrade
Notes from the field: Robert X. Cringely, this time, is feeding the hand that bites him. As in, you, readers, who flood his inbox with mail of both the love and hate varities. "Sometimes happy, sometimes not, almost always interesting." Topics for this post include Apple's 'alpha in beta clothing' Safari browser, the invasiveness of Google's Street View, and online scams. The moral of this story: "Anybody who buys anything they found via spam has got to be a little loony in the tunes." And perhaps the proof is ample as to why Google ranked dead last on a survey of Internet companies' privacy policies.
Wireless: Apple's iPhone is seeing some new competition today. Sony, for one, is unwrapping half a dozen phones, including a 9GB Walkman mobile phone. Hoping to best both Apple and Sony, a U.K.-based startup says it will offer a flat-rate service that makes tunes, jams, symphonies and what-have-you available on Java and music-enabled devices. Their collective timing could not be better as already the iPhone disappoints mobile developers.
The news beat: Microsoft and Linspire sign a Linux agreement that protects Linspire's customers from patent claims Microsoft might wage. Cisco and and IBM say that beginning next month, they'll sell a network management package for large enterprises, based on software from both companies. And Azul doubles the capacity of its Vega 2 computing appliance for network-attached processing.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 14, 2007 11:07 AM
June 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Apple's iPhone disappoints developers, Google cancels party protesting eBay, Sun CEO Schwartz invites Torvalds to dinner, MS inks patent pact with Linspire, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 14, 2007 08:08 AM
June 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Careers: In response to one reader's dilemma regarding drifting away from work teammates, Bob Lewis confesses, "I have no great answer for this." That's only the beginning, though, and he goes on in Advice Line to suggest deducing whether the problem is a result of perceived ability or interpersonal chemistry. Be judicious and professional. "If the situation degrades further so that instead of merely feeling like you're outside the inner-circle you instead start to feel devalued and marginalized, it's time to either have a heart-to-heart talk with your manager or find a different opportunity in a more congenial environment."
Columnist's corner: A key feature of SharePoint is the document library, which Microsoft describes as the next incarnation of networked file sharing. What's more, the company claims that team leaders won't need IT or savvy to configure and manage SharePoint. "I'll go along with some of that. SharePoint document libraries are certainly a step ahead of your typical Z: drive share," Oliver Rist writes in SharePoint library: No non-geeks allowed. "But that part about allowing non-technical users to set up and manage these suckers is most likely a disaster in the making for larger companies." Why? Just think about how much fun it is to even try explaining network file-level permissions to anyone other than a blueblood IT geek.
Quoteworthy: Again and again I see HR discard (or disregard) outstanding candidates before management gets a chance to meet them, simply because HR is ultimately not qualified to distinguish an excellent software developer. (Hint: You can't figure this out by giving the candidate a personality test or by asking, "If you could be any animal, what animal would you be?") The reality is, HR is an armchair recruiter. HR recruiters justify their existence by "processing" all applicants who are hired, though they recruit precious few candidates themselves. -- Nick Corcodilos. 10 percent effective!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 14, 2007 04:52 AM
June 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The heart of open source: Naivete
Best of the blogs: Waxing reflective, Matt Asay writes, "what a blessing it is to be ignorant of just how hard some tasks really are, and to have it be too late to turn back once we're well into them." In this post he's referring, of course, to open source projects, almost all of which, Asay writes, were begun "on a hunch and some free time."
Notes from the field: Robert X. starts things off with a pop quiz involving not just Windows browsers but also Paris Hilton. "The new Safari beta brings some nifty features to Windows surfers, along with security holes big enough to swallow Steve Jobs' Mercedes," Cringe writes. 18 of them, in fact -- security flaws, that is, not Benzes. "Safari's biggest claim is that its rendering engine is faster than the rest; in my own extremely unscientific tests I found it a smidge quicker than Firefox, but nothing worth changing your boxers over." Surfin' Safari.
The news beat: Apple says that its iPhone requires an iTunes account in addition to the AT&T Wireless subscription before the device can be activated. Storage titan EMC inks its first pact with an Indian outsourcer. And despite reports to the contrary, Intel says it will not change its pricing for the Chinese market.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 13, 2007 10:51 AM
June 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)
IT giants get green with power-efficiency initiative, Google details plans to make user data anonymous, MS clarifies virtualization licensing, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 13, 2007 07:11 AM
June 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Bringing outsourcing back home to the U.S.
Offshoring: Consultancy Gartner says that, due to local labor shortages in their area, Indian CIOs have to outsource -- and one of the countries they are looking for help in is the U.S.
Notes from the field: "Google is not the boogie man. At least, not yet," Cringely espouses in this post. He's responding to Privacy International's report that the search engine is the most privacy hostile Internet company in existence. Then again, Google's retort that PI is in Microsoft's pocket, according to Cringe, is "not bloody likely," either. And so the spitting match continues. Related: Google adjusts its privacy policy -- slightly.
Best of the blogs: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is taking complaints seriously, Matt Asay writes. And the likes of Red Hat, Microsoft and GE are backing the approach. "Patent reform is a universal concern, and its good to see diverse support." U.S. Patent Office experiments with open source approach.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 13, 2007 04:12 AM
June 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Best of the blogs: Which AJAX toolset would you use to develop a mobile application? Tom Yager is at Apple's WWDC, and he shares some thoughts about that. In what Mr. Yager calls the perfect example, Apple CEO Steve Jobs "portrayed AJAX and Web 2.0 as models for the applications of the future, and he added gravity to his point by dropping the name of the 800-pound gorilla in the Web application business, salesforce.com." Back to the mystery with which I began. Well, I'll not spoil it for you, other than this little hint: Steve's ideal iPhone app won't run on an iPhone. Related: iPhone to support 3rd party widgets. Watch the video here.
Columnist's corner: Perhaps the bleaker aspects of Jean-Paul Sartre and other existentialist thinkers had a hand in this one, but our Off the Record author could just sense that a project he had undertaken was doomed from the onset. "It had been designed entirely in French!" Parlez-vous IT? No, is the answer in this CRM initiative demanded, of course, by the CEO. "I wasn't aware that the CEO was negotiating a buyout from a larger vendor." Endless meetings, pet projects, politics and nepotism all rear their ugly faces in this one.
The news beat: Five Republican senators pen a letter asking for more hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee moves ahead with the Patent Reform Act. Sun Microsystems says its Solaris Express Developer Edition is tailored for multicore development to make it easy for developers to start building applications for the OS. And VMware moves closer to its Windows-on-a-Mac product, offering up pricing to match rival Parallels, and beginning to take pre-orders. Related Test Center Review: Parallels cozies up to Vista.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 12, 2007 10:49 AM
June 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Apple opens iPhone to developers, demos Leopard. Also, IBM bids to buy Telelogic, AOL spammer pleads guilty, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 12, 2007 08:07 AM
June 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Special report: Criminals are often not the brightest sort. "You might be tempted to believe online crime would be the exception," Andrew Brandt writes in Stupid hacker tricks. Not so. And Brandt offers half a dozen examples, including a pair of Russian hackers stung by the FBI, and a bounty hunter in gym class.
Platforms: Tom Yager is blogging live from Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco -- where he offers a look at 10 new features, news analysis from the show, and more. Enterprise Mac.
Sustainable IT: Rackspace joins the green party -- as in green IT vendors. The company details plans for carbon reduction, energy conservation. Part of the initiative is that CTO John Engates is concerned about there being sufficient energy available in the future, Ted Samson reports in this post. And "companies like Rackspace are increasingly concerned with their image as it pertains to energy usage."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 12, 2007 04:58 AM
June 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Best of the blogs: Keeping our "stupid tricks" theme alive in his own way, Martin Heller shares his experiences with a new Compaq Presario v6000 running Windows Vista Ultimate for x64, and a Sony Vaio. "I tried booting up the Presario, and found its bloatware just as annoying as the Vaio's had been," Heller explains in Strategic Developer. Missing printer drivers, misbehaving networking, and other such panicky moments all surfaced, but "most of the software I have installed so far works."
From the Test Center: What with Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference taking place this week, the recent release of Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac "brings OS X and Windows even closer together than before," writes Paul Venezia. In short: Venezia calls it an amazing product for the price. "Running two heavy operating systems on a single system will result in periodic slowness, especially during high disk I/O operations. But Parallels handles the task elegantly." Read the full review. Related: Apple's Leopard prowls closer.
Hardware: It's an old question, the one regarding whether Macs are more expensive than PCs. Bearing that in mind, Scot Finnie of Computerworld looks at what you can really get for your money these days, in Mac vs. PC cost analysis: How does it all add up? For starters, "neither side has a lock on good value," he writes. "I happen to believe that many of the small details about Macs have a value that's hard to put a price tag on." That makes it hard to factor in other people's individual context. And then there's the software question.
The news beat: Qwest says that CEO Richard Notebaert will retire just as soon as the board appoints a replacement. The Linux Phone Standards Forum releases its first specs, including a reference model, address book, voice call enabler. And Iona adds two components to its Artix Suite as well as several updates.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 11, 2007 10:50 AM
June 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Google claims Windows Vista is antitrust violation, group ranks Google last in privacy efforts, MIT tests wireless power delivery, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 11, 2007 08:28 AM
June 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Selling technology to your CEO
Best of the blogs: For most chief executives phrases such as 'object-oriented' and 'best coding practices' don't mean nearly as much as those three letters RO and I. But more often that not IT still needs to convince the ones with purse strings of the other reasons to upgrade or adopt entirely new technologies. Such is the dilemma that sparks one reader to write to Advice Line. Bob Lewis offers some of that in Selling a rewrite. "You're better off explaining that over the years, too many design decisions were made without enough of an eye to the future, sometimes because the developer was only solving today's problem today, other times because the company wasn't willing to invest the extra time and money required."
The news beat: Google claims that Windows Vista is an antitrust violation, on the grounds that its desktop indexing system is almost impossible to turn-off. Microsoft is working to link its project management and application lifecycle management servers together. IBM offers $745 million for Telelogic, the Swedish provider of software development tools. And Adobe christens its Apollo runtime with the moniker AIR, short for Adobe Integrated Runtime.
Video: In The Week Ahead with Gina Smith, she looks at Apple's upcoming Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco. "Apple has pre-announced so much big news in advance of the show," she says. Also, eBay's developer conference, the return of smart cards and Cringely on Google Street Views. "Think of it less as big brother and more like a really nosy neighbor." Watch it here.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 11, 2007 06:12 AM
June 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Intel's rumored graphics chip is a no-show at Computex, the U.S. bars the import of some Qualcomm chips, Microsoft will release four critical Windows fixes on Tuesday, and more
LISTEN!
Posted by Caroline Craig on June 8, 2007 07:56 AM
June 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)
EVGA rejects warranty for confidential reasons
GripeLine: It's bad enough when a vendor stiffs you on warranty repair, but as Ed Foster points out in today's blog, EVGA is adding injury by sending customers a form letter that says its refusal to honor its warranty was confidential.
Reviews: The Test Center offers up companion reviews: The Sun Fire X4500 server, nicknamed "Thumper," crams 48 drives into 4U and redefines storage performance -- as long as you run this behemoth on Solaris. And by breaking all the rules, Sun's innovative Zettabyte File System (ZFS) soars to new heights in scalability, reliability, and flexibility. (Also see the related screencast.)
News: AMD says that ultramobile PCs have been unsuccessful because they're too pricey and too power hungry. But the company is nonetheless exploring the prospects for ultramobiles, according to its CTO. An Intel VP observes that the functions that once required of multiple chips will increasingly be combined, but maintains that the chip set is not going to go away any time soon. And Baidu has formerly denied published reports that it has plans for an expansion into Europe. The search giant will continue to focus on China and its new site in Japan, execs say.
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Posted by Caroline Craig on June 8, 2007 05:31 AM
June 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Info access for the rest of us
Best of the blogs: Real World SOA notes that there are a number of limitations to the existing approaches to information access employed by today's traditional middleware and application development tools, including unstructured data. Therefore, traditional access techniques are impossible. So, what do you do? Web integration.
Columnist's corner: David L Margulius gets his gameshow on with Let's make a deal!, which pegs the three deals everyone is buzzing about. One big pact to watch? Google-Salesforce, of course. But David notes the current impact on IT: none. Still, he predicts: "Your Microsoft rep might just get a little friendlier as the hosted competition’s footsteps draw closer!"
News update: The U.S. International Trade Commission barred the import of future models of phones using Qualcomm third-generation chips, marking a blow to the vendor in its ongoing intellectual property battle with Broadcom. Plus: Critical Windows fixes coming, MS buy boosts SQL Server and Vista SP1 verified.
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Posted by Mike Barton on June 7, 2007 04:39 PM
June 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Sun's CEO spills a secret about Apple's Leopard OS, the schoolteacher who faced jail time after spyware exposed her students to pornography gets a reprieve, India's largest outsourcer plans to hire 5,000 staff in Mexico, and more
LISTEN!
Posted by Caroline Craig on June 7, 2007 08:15 AM
June 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Why we're producing fewer technologists
Best of the blogs: Well, one reason is that "employers offer work that drains but never re-fills you," Nick Corcodilos argues in It rolls downhill. Indeed, too much focus on cost containment and schedule pressure, leaves no time for workers to deliver process improvements and innovation, he writes. "So when you read that glowing job ad about how 'Your career will take off at our company!', pause to consider the processes the company uses at work."
Columnist's corner: Playing around with Microsoft's RoundTable, Oliver Rist finds that the tabletop device -- and its audio-visual capabilities -- needs a little beta polishing, but it eventually worked. Microsoft packs A/V Web conferencing features into RoundTable. "And the brains really kick in when someone speaks." One caveat: You'll need Office Live Meeting 2007; the 2005 version just won't cut it.
Platforms: What with no iPhone yet and Leopard delayed, Tom Yager wonders exactly what will come out of the upcoming Apple Worldwide Developer Conference. "To pull developers to the Mac and keep them there, Apple needs to give its coders an easily-crossed bridge to mobile and embedded that enhances the reach of their skills," he writes in Apple WWDC: Nothing to see here?
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 7, 2007 04:56 AM
June 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Open source sets terms, Microsoft follows
Best of the blogs: It could not have been said the same way five years ago, but Microsoft must now live by open source's rules, or suffer, Matt Asay paraphrases MySQL CEO Marten Mickos. "Imagine a world where Microsoft is an island of proprietary software, surrounded by the real world of web sites, business applications, etc. that all run open source software," Asay writes in this Open Sources post. "Five years ago, it was open source that was accused of being religious. Now it's Microsoft."
Special report: Day three, here, of our 2007 InfoWorld CTO 25 awards. This morning's batch brings five new winners, including Jeremiah Grossman, founder and chief technology officer of White Hat Security, which in his words aims to "test what matters most: production code." Read the profile of Grossman, or view the slideshow with all those we've revealed thus far.
The news beat: IBM buys Watchfire for its Web application security products. Google kept its own acquisition streak alive by gobbling up Peakstream, which develops software for multicore and parallel processors. ARM's CEO says that the iPhone will ignite smartphone use. And Adobe aligns with Kinko's in a pact the companies claim will enable users to electronically send documents to stores for printing.
Notes from the field: