May 09, 2008 | TrackBacks: (0)

Virus outbreak at JavaOne

Java may be impervious to computer viruses, but not even the JRE sandbox can protect against viruses of the microbial kind. According to the San Francisco Department of Public Health, several persons who attended the JavaOne conference currently underway at Moscone Center contracted a norovirus, known as a common source of gastroenteritis. more

TAGS: None

May 08, 2008 | TrackBacks: (0)

Developers vs. designers: Who wins?

It remains one of the thorniest problems in app-dev: How to get the folks in the blue shirts, khakis, and glasses to get along with their black-shirted, skinny-jeaned, faux-hawked neighbors down the hall? Like as not, your own answer largely depends on which side of the building you sit. Particularly for RIAs (rich Internet applications), where form and function share equal billing, team dynamics can make or break a project. Little wonder, then, that Adobe, Microsoft, and Sun are all racing to market with new tools and platforms aimed at helping developers and designers meet each other halfway. Unfortunately, though well intentioned, these wonder-products aren't likely to solve anything. more

TAGS: Web applications

May 04, 2008 | TrackBacks: (0)

Was Yahoo becoming too open for Microsoft?

Look at the bright side: Yahoo will save a fortune on business cards and letterhead. Whether you think the breakdown of merger talks between Microsoft and Yahoo will lead to some other, greater good must depend to some degree, I suppose, on how much faith you have in Yahoo's new Open Strategy. I wonder -- how much faith did Microsoft have in it? more

TAGS: Microsoft

April 29, 2008 | TrackBacks: (0)

Yahoo and the Facebook dilemma

It seems Google isn’t the only company borrowing a page from Steve Ballmer’s playbook. Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh took the stage at last week’s Web 2.0 Expo to announce that his company, too, is mounting a major push for third-party developers. Calling it the Yahoo Open Strategy, Balogh said its goal is nothing less than to transform Yahoo from a portal to a bona fide social network. Is there a draft in here? more

TAGS: Social networking

April 17, 2008

An engine for change

Developers, developers, developers -- you don't need to see Larry and Sergey jumping around like monkeys to get the picture, and neither does Steve Ballmer. Microsoft has been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since Google unveiled Google Docs two years ago, and with the debut of Google App Engine last week it landed with a thud. Sure, Windows is the reigning OS and Office is a cash cow. But Ballmer's no dummy. He knows that if the House of Redmond is built on software, independent developers are the mortar between the bricks. Now along comes Google, and it's holding a chisel. more

TAGS: Google