- Can't we all just get along?
- A return to reality at Tech Ed
- As predicted, hot spot provider closes shop
- Hot spots will wither away
- Pity the poor Microsoft PR rep
- Microsoft prepping Web conferencing server in addition to service
- Pop ups at their most obnoxious
- 3D laptop without the funny glasses
- Apple to introduce Tiger, next version of OS 10
May 28, 2004 | Comments: (0)
The Middleware Company, which operates TheServerSide Communities Web sites for developers, is getting a divorce from JBoss, makers of the JBoss open source Java pplication server, severing business ties between the two.
If you listen to The Middleware Company, the argument is about trying to work out a situation in which JBoss employees, including Chairman/CEO and Founder Marc Fleury, are alleged to have anonymously posted messages promoting JBoss. If you listen to JBoss, the argument is about JBoss dropping advertising on serverside.com. JBoss spent about $12,000 in ads on the site during the past three months, according to the company.
Fleury, in his blog, stressed he does not need a mask to speak his mind. He says the practice of anonymous postings, known as "astroturfing," is wildly popular. But Fleury concludes in a May 21 posting, "'Astroturfing' is hereby banned at JBoss, starting with me."
Apparently, the two vendors had been very close, as evidenced by a recent publicity campaign by The Middleware Company. The company put out playing cards with the theme of "Who's Who in Enterprise Java 2004," featuring different players in the Java field. While Java founder James Gosling did not make the cut, Fleury and his wife, Nathalie, who is co-founder of JBoss and Director of Communications, both are featured, with Nathalie on the queen of diamonds card and Marc a joker.
How any of this dispute helps educate Java developers and others about Java technologies and makes things life easier for enterprise IT developers, I don't know. Can’t we all just get along?
Posted by Paul Krill on May 28, 2004 11:22 AM
May 25, 2004 | Comments: (0)
A return to reality at Tech Ed
After wearing out the hype machine trumpeting its distant technologies such as Longhorn and Yukon, at this year's Tech Ed Microsoft has deliberately turned its focus to today's real-life business problems faced by its customers. Most of the news rolled out here has a clear focus on solving pressing IT problems in the here and now: the integration challenge taken up by its Windows Server System Common Engineering Roadmap, better collaboration and productivity through Visual Studio 2005 Team System, Web Services Enhancements 2.0 for working with secure Web services, and spam relief for all Exchange 2003 users with the availability of Intelligent Message Filter.
Signaling signs of life in high tech, the show is completely sold out. In fact, I wasn't allowed to attend the opening keynote, due to what I overheard were fire code issues stemming from the maxed out attendance. This is very unusual for a credentialed media person to be denied attending the keynote. From the way conference passes were fiercely guarded by the events staff yesterday before noon, you would have thought Jesus Christ himself was headlining the keynote. But I guess Steve Ballmer is a religious figurehead of sorts for the Microsoft faithful.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on May 25, 2004 02:03 PM
May 18, 2004 | Comments: (0)
As predicted, hot spot provider closes shop
Cometa says it is due to lack of support from the investment community.
Given the fact that Cometa was started by AT&T, IBM and Intel, three companies that have their own investment community, actual company divisions that invest in start ups, it seems to me that they pulled their own plug.
I believe it is really due to the reasons given in my column of March 28, 2003.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on May 18, 2004 02:44 PM
May 17, 2004 | Comments: (0)
In response to many emails blasting my May 3rd column here's more to get mad at.
What I've been saying in my columns is basically that the wide area networks will, over time, become as inexpensive as subscribing to a hot spot.
The problem is everyone who follows any part of the high tech industry is always looking at things in some sort of hyper-time mode. If it doesn't
happen in a year folks say it is dead, etc.
I disagree. WANs are slowly but surely getting better. And given another year or two they will replace hot spots. Not Wifi. I think on campus Wifi is great. But off, if I want coverage everywhere, and I mean everywhere, then I have no choice but to use and subscribe to a wide area cellualr network.
If anything, hot spots will help make the market for wide area.
Consumers will be so pleased with the abilty to get on the Internet when at airports or certain restaurants they will naturally want more. WiFi not being able to give it to them will force consumers to look at other alternatives.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on May 17, 2004 09:23 AM
May 13, 2004 | Comments: (0)
Pity the poor Microsoft PR rep
In what has to be a colossal marketing and branding error Microsoft has decided to use the same public code name for two versions of its operating system, Longhorn Server and just plain old Longhorn for the client OS.
In the space of a few hours InfoWorld received about four emails from their PR folks asking us to correct our story on Longhorn in order to spell out which OS we were referring to.
Who knew?
Pity the poor Microsoft PR people who will be calling publications well into 2007 when it finally ships, having to correct them...sort of like the myth of Sisyphus rolling that rock up the hill only having to do it over and over again.
And what is it that ships in 2007, Microsoft? If Longhorn Server ships six to 12 months after Longhorn as I was told by Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Windows Server group at Microsoft, that means Server might ship in 08. Stay tuned.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on May 13, 2004 01:12 PM
May 12, 2004 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft prepping Web conferencing server in addition to service
I wanted to clarify this post a bit. Today Microsoft offers Web conferencing as a service, but soon Microsoft will release a server version of its Office Live Meeting offering that will be offered in addition to the service. It will be a server/service continuum, depending on the size and the needs of the customer.
I spoke with Taylor Collyer, director of marketing for Microsoft's Real-Time Collaboration Group, at N+I in Las Vegas yesterday.
Collyer would not commit to a specific timeframe for the offering, but he did say they are working on it now. My earlier assumption that end of year was possible seems to be pretty far off the mark, according to feedback from Microsoft. So now I'm just going to say it is anyone's guess. Microsoft is good about letting the press know what they are working on even if it is farther away than Pluto (Longhorn, for example), and I'm thankful for that. So the server version of Live Meeting could be years out. But analysts have expected this, so it is not a big surprise.
Microsoft jumped into the Web conferencing space last year when it purchased PlaceWare, and rolled out is re-branded Office Live Meeting service last September.
"Customers have said they want an on premise server for doing Web conferencing. That is consistent with our vision for this space," Collyer said.
The server will build off the same Real Time Communications platform, leveraging presence capabilities from the Microsoft Live Communications Server. And the product will be managed the same way as other Windows servers, Collyer said.
We also talked a little about the next release of Live Meeting (not clear if this will coincide with the server offering). That version will improve ease of use by bringing in more Office metaphors, he said. By this he means the look, feel, and functionality of Live Meeting will more closely resemble Office. For instance, the ability to highlight text and perform an action on it such as making it bold or italic, and the drop down menu concept will be carried over. Also naming conventions will be aligned, so a function that PlaceWare formerly called Desktop Frame will be called Application Sharing to more closely resemble Office lingo.
"Leveraging the familiarity people have with Office will lead to productivity gains and improvements in usability," he said.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on May 12, 2004 05:42 PM
May 12, 2004 | Comments: (0)
Pop ups at their most obnoxious
I don't know about you but I vote for a pop up 'Search the Web' created by C2 Media.
Full address:
C2 Media Ltd.
Unit 12, 571 Finchley Road
Hampstead, London, NW3 7BN
United Kingdom
Not only do they put an unwanted tool bar at the bottom of your screen, it actu-ally takes over and makes itself your home page. To me, taking over your home page selection is an invasion of privacy. Anyone know if this is legal or not?
Also, as far as I can tell some major vendors here in the States actually use this service.
I'm not 100% sure, but it appears as if the links provided on their so-called "news page' are created in cooperation with the linked companies. The first four companies on the site as of May 12th are IBM, the Chemistry Council, the Boston Globe and MSN.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on May 12, 2004 11:58 AM
May 05, 2004 | Comments: (0)
3D laptop without the funny glasses
For those road warriors tired with traditional two-dimensional displays of corporate data on their laptops, Sharp Systems of America has a new toy -- err, I mean business tool -- for you.
Here at the Mobile Showcase in Palm Springs, Sharp demonstrated a 3D notebook computer that offers what the company says is a realistic sense of depth and presence in the LCD display.
Although it was difficult to convey the 3D 'oohs and ahhs' to each attendee in the midsize conference room, the wow factor was conveyed, for me, by the behind-the-display technology, which seeks to imitate the way human eyes process depth by separating an image in two so there is a separation of light going to each eye of the person viewing the screen.
The fact that we have two eyes about 3 inches apart lets each eye see a slightly different view of an image. The brain unites these views, and interprets the distance to create a sense of depth. Similar to our brains, the Sharp Actius RD3D, displays two images at the same time, and with some Sharp switching technology combined with controlling the path of light, slightly different images reach the left and right eyes. They called it stereoscopic imagery, which previously required a person to wear funky red and blue glasses.
Oh yeah, the business applications are for drug discovery, engineering/CAD drawings, medical manufacturing, and mapping geophysical modeling, in case you were wondering.
-- By Cathleen Moore, blogging live from Mobile Showcase in Palm Spring, California. (Posted by Tom Sullivan)
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 5, 2004 01:42 PM
May 04, 2004 | Comments: (0)
Apple to introduce Tiger, next version of OS 10
It looks like Apple will make some news at its upcoming developer conference next month, June 28 through July 2, 2004.
While in typical Apple fashion company executives remain pretty closed mouth about details, what I did learn from a conversation with Ron Okamoto, vice president of worldwide developer relations makes it obvious that Apple is continuing to ramp up its efforts to move in on the enterprise.
First things first, Apple will unveil the next version of OS 10 at the event, code named Tiger. "A major upgrade" similar in scope to Panther is all they would say.
However, when I asked Okamoto if that also meant an upgrade to Cocoa the application development environment he clammed up.
"We haven't made any announcements about that," he said.
But that seems like an obvious thing to do.
On the enterprise track, Okamoto said that last year's event had an entirely new class of users, more enterprise types who use Java, Open Source and Unix. Up until last year, Okamoto said most of the developers attracted to the conference were "API developers.
"What we learned is a developer in an enterprise may be an API developer but they are also a Perl and TKL developer, a part time sys admin and someone who makes the connections between Mac and other systems," Okamoto said.
It doesn't seem like they will have any iPod news at the conference, no tracks specifically targeted to Apple's hot handheld. But there will be sessions focused on hardware integration like Firewire development.
Steve Jobs will kick it off. The message I got from talking to Okamoto is that the enterprise is being targeted. If that is the case we should see some of the major upgrades in OS 10 - Tiger, also targeted at that audience.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on May 4, 2004 11:19 AM
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