- Renault in Linux deal with Microsoft, Novell
- Report finds licensing dissatisfaction
- Sun researches Lively Kernel effort
- Microsoft sets dynamic analysis project
- Google gears up for offline Apps
- Job hunt 2.0: Get paid to be interviewed
- Microsoft offers code portal for developers
- Web 2.0 to earn enterprise cred in 2008
- Mobile developer alliance discussion to continue
- XML to the e-voting rescue
January 30, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Renault in Linux deal with Microsoft, Novell
Microsoft will deliver more than 1,000 support subscription certificates for Suse Linux Enterprise Server to French automaker Renault, under an agreement announced by Microsoft and Novell on Wednesday.
Renault will receive priority support subscriptions to Novell's Suse Linux distribution. Renault plans to consolidate existing Linux distributions to Suse Linux Enterprise Server with the intent of improving interoperability and taking better advantage of virtualization, Microsoft and Novell said.
Through a 2006 agreement between Novell and Microsoft, Microsoft has purchased support certificates to Suse Linux, with Novell to provide the support.
“Increasing the presence of Suse Linux Enterprise in the data center, well-integrated with a Microsoft Windows environment, will enhance the deployment of applications and increase the competitive advantage of innovative companies," said Susan Heystee, vice president and general manager of global strategic alliances for Novell, in a statement.
“Customers have asked for solutions to make Microsoft products work better with other platforms and for IP assurance that enables vendors to build technical bridges,” said Susan Hauser, general manager of strategic partnerships and licensing at Microsoft, also in a statement. “We are pleased to provide this real-world, pragmatic solution to customers, such as Renault.”
The controversial 2006 agreement also included provisions that Novell and Microsoft not sue each other's customers over any IP issues.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 30, 2008 05:16 PM
January 30, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Report finds licensing dissatisfaction
In an independent report, Forrester Research has found that software licensing and pricing continue to be "marred by complexity, soaring maintenance costs and a lack of flexibility and alignment with business goals."
The company's "Trends 2008: Applications Licensing and Pricing" report featured interviews with 25 clients of leading enterprise applications providers and surveys of 215 business process and applications professionals, queried about software licensing and pricing experiences.
Forrester, which published the report last week, believes trends such as SOA and SaaS will provide the impetus behind a shift in how firms view application licensing and pricing and what they demand from application providers. But in the meantime, business process and application professionals must "arm their firms to mitigate licensing pain points," Forrester said. Some have concluded, however, that licensing and pricing complexity is a necessary evil to fight misuse and accommodate heterogeneity.
Among the study's findings were that licensing remains too complex and often has a lack of clarity regarding the value customers were receiving. Some firms reported paying 26 percent of total cost of ownership on maintenance. Some clients said they paid for maintenance but never used the services.
Users interviewed also were dissatisfied with the inability of vendors to accommodate specific business needs. Mergers and acquisitions, meanwhile, create "a hodgepodge of licensing and pricing models," Forrester said.
The study also found issues with existing customers being treated like "second class citizens" while new customers get significant discounts. Vendor lock-in was another concern.
On the positive side, some vendors have embraced what Forrester called its "licensee's bill of rights." Vendors have worked to shorten sales cycles by assigning dedicated relationship-building account managers. Discounts for loyalty, large account values and early adopter status also are being awarded. Meanwhile, some mid-market vendors tailor service and licensing to clients' specific needs.
Oracle was cited as offering a flexible custom bundle allowing access to all products in a suite and to reapply pricing based on user increases.
Interviewees with the most positive feedback about application providers were early adopters and/or active in user groups, with vendors facilitating open forums for user groups.
SaaS, meanwhile, will force customers to think about cost per-user per-month while SOA will drive customers to consider business process pricing, Forrester said. Customers, meanwhile, will demand third-party alternatives to vendor-controlled maintenance.
Forrester recommendations included educating an organization before contracting with an application provider, insisting on openness and negotiation and considering total costs on a 10-year basis.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 30, 2008 02:08 PM
January 29, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Sun researches Lively Kernel effort
Sun Labs is proceeding with its Lively Kernel project, a programming environment supporting desktop-style applications with rich graphics but without the installation or upgrade "hassles" of desktop applications, according to Sun.
Written in JavaScript, the intent is to have the environment run in commercial Web browsers without installation or plug-in components.
"The main goal of the Lively Kernel is to bring the same kind of simplicity, generality and flexibility to Web programming that we have known in desktop programming for 30 years, but without the installation and upgrade hassles than conventional desktop applications have," Sun said on a Web page on the project.
"The system leverages the dynamic characteristics of the JavaScript language to make it possible to create, modify and deploy applications on the fly, using tools built into the system itself," Sun said. Lively Kernel also can serve as an IDE to make the system self-sufficient.
Lively Kernel emphasizes treating Web applications as "real applications" as opposed to the document-oriented nature of most Web applications today, Sun said. "In general, we want to put programming into Web development, as opposed to the current weaving of HTML, XML and CSS documents that is also sometimes referred to as programming," Sun said.
Currently, Lively Kernel is recommended for use on the Safari browser but the project is still in the research stage. The system also has been tested on the Firefox browser.
With the project still a lab effort, it may never, in fact, come to market, according to a Sun representative. Lively Kernel is being made available as open source software to encourage further exploration.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 29, 2008 10:37 AM
January 28, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft sets dynamic analysis project
Microsoft Research is working on a project for dynamic analysis and test generation for .Net-based software development projects.
Pex, for Program EXploration, is an intelligent assistant to a programmer, according to a Microsoft Research Web page. It automatically generates unit tests to help find bugs early and also suggests to how to fix bugs.
The project enables a new development experience in the Microsoft Visual Studio Team System application lifecycle management platform by taking test-driven development to "the next level," Microsoft Research said.
"From a parameterized unit test, it automatically produces traditional unit tests cases with high code coverage. Moreover, when a generated test fails, Pex can often suggest a bug fix," Microsoft Research said.
With Pex, a systematic program analysis is performed, with detailed execution traces of existing test cases recorded. The software learns the program behavior from execution traces and a constraint solver produces new test cases with different behavior.
"The result is a minimal test suite with maximal code coverage. When a test fails, Pex uses detailed dataflow information to determine the root cause and a potential bug fix," Microsoft Research said.
Microsoft has not set any date for release of any product based on Pex, a Microsoft representative said.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 28, 2008 07:37 PM
January 28, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Google gears up for offline Apps
Beat to the offline punch enabled by its own Google Gears technology, Google appears on the verge of leveraging Gears to enable users of its Google Apps online productivity suite to work on documents and spreadsheets while not connected to the Net.
Ever illuminating the guts of the search giant's wares, Tony Ruscoe of Google Blogoscoped stumbled across experimental offline access to Docs while "playing around with one of Google's not-so-private experimental sites."
Although Ruscoe was able to rename and star documents while offline, the crown jewel of the proposed functionality, being able to actually view and edit documents, lays in wait. This functionality is an essential component to any serious push to unseat Microsoft Office as king of productivity in the enterprise.
Even when the functionality is present, however, a lack of business-grade service-level agreements and increasing security concerns will remain significant impediments to widespread Google Apps enterprise adoption.
Gears, the technology that will eventually fuel Google Apps' future offline capabilities, was first put to use by Google Apps competitor Zoho, a move Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering at Google, cheered as a victory for the Web as a platform, and thus for Google itself.
Google has implemented Gears into its Google Reader, the synching capabilities of which are reminiscent of what Ruscoe uncovered in this experimental Docs iteration, as he points out.
In other recent Blogoscoped sightings of highly anticipated Google functionality, Ruscoe uncovered a Google Sites-related icon in a stylesheet, suggesting Google's proposed integration of Wiki capabilities obtained in its now long-ago purchase of JotSpot may also be around the corner.
Additional resources
Thin vs. Fat: Google’s plan to kill Microsoft Office
Google security under fire
Google revs up security play
Posted by Jason Snyder on January 28, 2008 04:44 PM
January 28, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Job hunt 2.0: Get paid to be interviewed
IT workers with one eye on the want ads now have a means for making their passive job search lucrative -- by getting paid to interview with potential poaching organizations.
Seeking to provide employers with improved hiring options, startup NotchUp offers passive job-seekers the ability to set their own headhunting price at which they would agree to be interviewed.
The proposed online recruitment marketplace allows individuals to create a profile, tap the NotchUp calculator to evaluate the marketability of their skills, and put their time up for auction to employers seeking a less work-desperate pool of applicants without tapping recruiters.
For the 41 percent of IT workers passively seeking a new gig, according to the InfoWorld Compensation Survey, NotchUp could very well be a hit. Rather than investing in pounding the pavement, they can simply sit back and wait for companies to pay them to talk new horizons.
The service is geared directly toward organizations strapped to fill key positions for want of highly qualified candidates, who are more often than not already under contract elsewhere. Given that the inability to fill open spots is this year's top staffing concern of IT organizations, according to the InfoWorld Compensation Survey, the marketplace, if successful, could prove worthwhile for hiring managers.
Similar to eBay and other such reputation-enabled marketplaces, NotchUp offers feedback capabilities to ensure hiring organizations that those cashing in on their potential interview bid will in fact be seriously open to new opportunities when talked to. The service provides granular candidate search capabilities and, according to the Web site, a 100 percent money back guarantee on all interviews.
For those putting their chops up for interview auction, the service includes privacy assurances. Prospective employers must make an offer to interview you before your contact details are revealed. More to the point, the system blocks your profile from your current employer, allowing you to sniff out new opportunities on the DL.
Additional resources:
• Take home more tech pay in 2008
• 2007 InfoWorld Compensation Survey: Personal gains and personnel woes
• 2007 InfoWorld Compensation Survey: By the numbers
• 20 ways to get promoted in the tech industry
• IT's seven deadly career sins
Posted by Jason Snyder on January 28, 2008 01:14 PM
January 28, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft offers code portal for developers
Microsoft has launched a portal for developers to find code snippets, sample applications and other resources, a company official said Monday.
Called the MSDN Code Gallery, the portal also offers pages that describe samples, supporting documents, screen shots and design documents, said S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Developer Division, in his blog.
"One of the most requested things we have heard is that developers want snippets, samples, sample applications and other resources," Somasegar said.
"Code Gallery is, at its core, simply a community-enabled site where we share developer-enabling information and resources that will be integrated into the MSDN experience," he said.
Developers also can find hosted conversations about samples and sample projects and can offer their own contributions, he said. But the site is purely for storage and offers no project management capabilities, said Somasegar. Projects that need management can be offered to Microsoft's CodePlex site, he said.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 28, 2008 01:12 PM
January 28, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Web 2.0 to earn enterprise cred in 2008
The majority of IT departments that currently view Web 2.0 technologies as trivial, consumer-grade frivolities will eat their words by year's end and instead lead the charge to implement RSS, mashup, and social networking technologies, according to a recent report from Forrester.
Despite only 24 percent of companies citing Web 2.0 technology as a purchasing priority for 2008, Forrester remains convinced that the people-centric value add these technologies offer will soon make believers of 42 percent who have not yet earmarked a dime for blogs, wikis, RSS, mashups, and social networking in the coming year.
Why the anticipated change of heart? End-user desire for said tools will overwhelm CIOs into admitting that IT is already tapping the fledgling paradigm internally for managing and tracking IT projects. Moreover, "enterprise Web 2.0 tools will be a high-impact, low-cost method to show leadership and innovation," according to the report.
In other words, catch the wave before someone else benefits from championing a Web 2.0-influenced move.
Top on the docket, according to the survey, will be enterprise RSS technologies for keeping workers on top of the flow of information at their companies.
At the bottom of the list of currently slated enterprise Web 2.0 projects is buzz-worthy social networking, with 20 percent of companies testing the waters or having a look. But the drumbeat for internal social networking solutions is loud, Forrester contends, and by year's end, such profile-based networking tools "will eat up much of the limelight" of Web 2.0's gala entrance into the enterprise.
Other assertions in the report that could hold up to scrutiny include the potential for enterprise mashups to eat into the portal, search, and EAI (enterprise application integration) markets. Empowering end-users to discover knowledge assets through a mashup framework is certainly a compelling proposition, but as Forrester does admit, the chief obstacle -- other than IT buy-in -- to such technologies is cultural, as process re-engineering, change management, and training loom large as impediments to such paradigm shifts.
Posted by Jason Snyder on January 28, 2008 11:12 AM
January 27, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Mobile developer alliance discussion to continue
The possible formation of a mobile developer alliance, an idea discussed at a developer conference last week, remains a topic of interest but more investigation will be necessary, said a Sun Microsystems official spearheading the effort.
Attendees of last week's Java Mobile & Embedded Developer Days Conference at Sun headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif. were invited to stay around an extra day on Friday to ponder formation of such an alliance.
"As expected we did not come to any definitive conclusions or action items but we agreed there are a lot of opportunities we need to investigate and that the discussion will continue online in a yet-to-be-determined open forum," said Terrence Barr, Sun evangelist for the mobile and embedded community, in an email.
This alliance would deal with the multitude of issues facing developers and mobile content providers, such as having to accommodate different technology platforms, carriers and original equipment manufacturers.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 27, 2008 07:02 PM
January 25, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Fearful that Election 2008 will devolve into an e-voting miasma of epic proportions? Well, wax conspiratorial no longer.
At least that's the tenor of today's OASIS announcement of EML (Election Markup Language) 5.0, which has garnered the highest level of ratification the standards body has to offer.
"By providing a uniform, secure, and verifiable way for voting systems to interact, EML safeguards voter confidence in the election process," Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS, said in a statement. (For the record, Gannon also serves on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission's Technical Guidelines Development Committee.)
The standard, built on XML schemas, covers the election data transaction gamut, from candidate nomination, to voter registration and authentication, to vote casting, confirmation, tabulation, and auditing. It even includes a new VoterID element that is repeatable -- a handy bit of scalability for those governments seeking to extend the list of required modes of identification for its citizens to participate in the election process.
And who do we have to thank for this electoral safeguard standard? A multilateral crossing of myriad corporate aisles, with EDS, IBM, and Oracle topping the list.
Driving the consensus was a mission to "develop a standard for the structured interchange of data among hardware, software, and service providers who engage in any aspect of providing election or voter services to public or private organizations."
Focusing on the interfaces between components of election systems, what the standard doesn't answer for is the security of the systems themselves.
Per the document: "References to security within EML are not to be taken as comprehensive requirements for all election systems in all election scenarios, nor as recommendations or sufficiency of approach when addressing all the security aspects of election system design, implementation or evaluation. In fact, the data security mechanisms described in this document are all optional, enabling compliance with EML without regard for system security at all."
Not exactly a rousing vote of confidence for the standard's ability to ensure the integrity of election results.
Finger in the eye aside, the movement toward open, standardized voting transactions is a welcome one -- especially as the trend toward electronic-based voting systems appears virtually irreversible.
And to hear the standard's authors tell it, you'd think the e-voting train was fueled by your interest in sharing photos of datacenters on Flickr and bidding up Atari 2600s on eBay, rather than the government or technology vendors:
"Times are changing. Society is becoming more and more web oriented and citizens, used to the high degree of flexibility in the services provided by the private sector and in the Internet in particular, are now beginning to set demanding standards for the delivery of services by governments using modern electronic delivery methods," the document states.
Although it does admit that gadgets alone won't cure election no-showism, OASIS lends a little tech evangelism to its undertaking, syllogizing, "The implementation of electronic voting would allow increased access to the voting process for millions of potential voters. Higher levels of voter participation will lend greater legitimacy to the electoral process and should help to reverse the trend towards voter apathy that is fast becoming a feature of many democracies."
Not exactly an argument that boils down to, The more it looks like a widget, the more likely folks are to press on it, but certainly one that assumes "electronic" invokes less voter skepticism.
True, the adoption of open e-voting standards will mitigate some doubters' qualms, but is defining the XML schema for voting data transactions assurance enough?
Posted by Jason Snyder on January 25, 2008 02:20 PM
January 24, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Mobile developer issues to be aired at Sun
A group of persons interested in the plight of mobile application developers and content providers will gather at Sun Microsystems headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif. Friday morning to discuss how to get concerns addressed.
The idea is to gather feedback on issues faced by developers in dealing with telecommunications carriers and others in getting their products up and running on different handhelds.
"The bottom line is it's hard to create content, to deploy it, to monetize it," said Terrence Barr, Sun technical evangelist for the mobile and embedded developer community, at the Java Mobile & Embedded Developer Days Conference on Thursday in Santa Clara.
Barr also broached the subject of the formation of a mobile developer alliance on Wednesday at the conference. Attendees of the conference can attend Friday's meeting as well.
Friday's event will be a grassroots session on how to proceed with addressing the different players to get them to move on developer concerns.
"Unfortunately, the mobile developer has no lobby," and the playing field is tilted toward the original equipment manufacturers and telecommunications carriers, Barr said.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 24, 2008 04:31 PM
January 23, 2008 | Comments: (0)
IBM at the Lotusphere conference in Orlando, Fla. Wednesday unveiled Web 2.0 and collaboration tools intended to enable development of enterprise mashups and social software.
Conference attendees had an early look at the IBM commercial mashup maker, called IBM Lotus Mashups, which the company said allows non-technical users to build enterprise mashups. Ad hoc visualizations can be developed featuring enterprise and Web data.
Features in Lotus Mashups include a browser-based tool for assembling mashups, a set of business-ready widgets, a catalog for finding and sharing widgets and a builder for building widgets to access enterprise systems.
Also unveiled by IBM was the next release of its IBM Lotus Connections social software for business. Due in the first half of this year, Lotus Connections 2.0 is slated to include a new homepage that aggregates and filters data from the five services of Lotus Connections. Users can see what has changed in their professional network and search for information. Widgets can be developed to link information to other social networks such as Yahoo or LinkedIn.
The Lotus Connections community component is slated to be enhanced with discussion forums and the ability to link wiki services from IBM Lotus Quickr, SocialText and Atlassian.
Additionally, IBM demonstrated Lotus Quickr 8.1, a collaboration environment allowing teams to more effectively work together. Version 8.1 plans call for inclusion of content libraries, team discussion forums, blogs and wikis. IBM plans to integrate Quickr with content management systems such as IBM FileNet P8.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 23, 2008 03:13 PM
January 17, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Yahoo's one-armed OpenID embrace
As much as Yahoo's OpenID support is worthy of applause, perhaps that applause should remain one-handed for the time being. After all, the company's upcoming beta campaign to allow members to tap the fledgling digital identity framework is, at this point, but a one-handed endorsement of user-centric identity.
Placing users at the center of identity transactions, OpenID is a relationship-based approach to authentication, in which relying parties ping a user's identity provider of choice to validate the user's identity. The model is part of a larger trend that involves the incorporation of user-centric technologies in pursuit of ever-elusive federation.
[ For more on user-centric federation, see Federating identity for the Web. ]
By far the most prominent name to sign the list of folks willing to vouch for user's identities in the three-party relationship-based model, Yahoo has yet to outline plans for reciprocity. In other words, Yahoo will allow you, Web site, to trust its relationships but won't be accepting the word of any other OpenID identity provider at this time.
[ For more on OpenID, see Understanding OpenID and CardSpace. ]
This move does, of course, expose upwards of 250 million users to the framework, certainly increasing OpenID's prospects for achieving wider acceptance. And it is welcome from an end-user perspective, in terms of extending the value of a single Yahoo log-in. But OpenID's success as a whole hinges on the channel of authentication queries being a two-way street -- unless, of course, identity is to evolve into a service offered by a handful of providers.
Which, on the face of things, could be what this announcement is ultimately about -- a pitch for users to put Yahoo in their longed-for single sign-on wallet before Google offers a competing alternative to the multitudes already splitting their time between Google and Yahoo log-ins.
Other vendors reportedly examining an OpenID push include IBM and VeriSign.
But until Yahoo makes good on talk of allowing users to choose a different identity provider when logging in to Yahoo services, this will remain more about offering identity management pain alleviation to smaller sites in exchange for ever more valuable information about the kinds of non-Yahoo services Yahoo users are tapping when not trolling the Yahoo-owned domains.
A user-centric strategy, yes. But by not exposing itself to the relying-party end of the OpenID authentication handshake, Yahoo may be taking a slightly different user-centric tack than the OpenID faithful ultimately hope Yahoo intends.
Related resources
• Federating identity for the Web
• Understanding OpenID and CardSpace
• Podcast: An identity layer for the Web
• Podcast: User-centric identity in the enterprise
Posted by Jason Snyder on January 17, 2008 07:17 PM
January 16, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Oracle-BEA: It aint over till it's over
Yogi Berra supposedly said it aint over till it's over. This is certainly something that applies to the newly announced merger between BEA Systems and Oracle that once looked like it had been abandoned.
After Oracle proposed buying BEA for $17 a share in October, BEA countered with a $21 per share proposal and then filed provisions with the SEC to ensure its employees received generous severance packages if anyone took over the company and employees were let go.
Oracle declined BEA's counteroffer and its original $17-per-share offer expired. Afterward, we heard Oracle CEO Larry Ellison say in November that probably no one would buy BEA and that BEA was doing a good job of trying to stay independent. He also said any subsequent offer by Oracle would be lower than the initial $17 per share. Also, Oracle President and CFO Safra Catz said in December that Oracle did not believe a friendly deal could be consummated with BEA's current board at an acceptable price.
Now, all of a sudden, the deal is done. BEA is sold to Oracle for $19.375 a share. Just goes to show what can happen behind closed doors and away from the peering eyes of the public and press.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 16, 2008 02:17 PM
January 16, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Analysts: OOXML to TKO ODF in late rounds
Position is everything when defending market share, and it just might be that Microsoft, both market-wise and technology-wise, has what it takes to ultimately defend its productivity app dominance from those backing the ODF document standard, according to a recent research report from the Burton Group.
The report, written by analysts Peter O'Kelly and Guy Creese, puts the power of XML -- and the need for enterprises to exploit it – firmly in the decision-maker's seat in terms of the long-term outcome of the heated file format battle between Microsoft's OOXML and ODF, the document standard supported by IBM, Novell, and Sun, among many others.
Likening the document standards skirmish to a James Bond plot rife with "multibillion dollar business empires, global political intrigue, and even some conspiracy theories at the intersection of capitalism, communism, and democracy," O'Kelly and Creese note that slower-to-move enterprises yolked to legacy productivity app content compatibility needs will prove instrumental in bringing ODF ultimately to its knees.
Not exactly new bad-boy Daniel Craig Bond fare. More like Roger Moore on codeine.
Many enterprises "just want to use what works for their needs," O'Kelly and Creese write. "So, by migrating to Office 2007, many companies will let Microsoft make the [file format] decision for them."
In some ways, O'Kelly and Creese's analysis hinges on this inevitability, implying that the ODF camp might be better off lying down in the face of Microsoft's will and market dominance and instead tap into OOXML's openness to create other "productivity ecosystem" opportunities. Many, however, question Microsoft's commitment to keeping the standard "open." Burton's analysts err on the side of taking Microsoft at its word, depicting Microsoft's go-to-alone OOXML standards stance with regard to openness as well-intentioned.
"The debate and scrutiny are not surprising, given Microsoft's historical track record as an extremely aggressive competitor and convicted monopolist, but it's important to understand that Microsoft appears to be sincerely committed to making OOXML a substantive standard," O'Kelly and Creese write.
Enterprise traction aside, O'Kelly and Creese suggest that XML's power in assembling documents from disparate data sources, leveraging reuse opportunities, and facilitating querying will ultimately bring the ODF vs. OOXML battle to heel to W3C standards developments, to which both are already dependent. This shift, the analysts argue, is not simply because of the swift, successful, apolitical advancements of the W3C in comparison to other standards bodies, but part of a larger trend away from file-based content to hypertext models.
And that tips a significant chunk of long-term betting money toward productivity solutions with a SaaS twist, according to the analysts. Incorporating collaboration and communication technologies, the Web-centric productivity model is beginning to gain notable traction. Paying mind to the W3C will prove vital in accounting for the burgeoning tide of wiki- and blog-based content rising at many enterprises.
"In some respects, the web-centric approach represents something of a Copernican revolution for productivity applications," O'Kelly and Creese write. "While the traditional model has productivity applications and related files at its core, the web-centric approach is centered on collections of webpages, and the pages may contain components for document, spreadsheet, presentation, and other needs."
Good news for vendors such as Adobe, Google, and Zoho already deep in pursuit of a services-based productivity app model. But the analyst firm that last year declared deploying Google Apps a "career-limiting move for enterprise architects" remains reluctant to make a full-on hosted endorsement.
Instead, the analysts advise exploiting OOXML, using ODF by exception rather than default, and getting "out of the (traditional) office more often" by tapping XML forms-based Web-centric solutions, such as blogs and wikis.
A hedged bet, yes. But one still firmly in favor of Microsoft, sure to rankle those who support ODF.
Posted by Jason Snyder on January 16, 2008 01:56 PM
January 16, 2008 | Comments: (0)
It's tempting to say that Larry Ellison has finally got his boot on BEA's neck, but in fact he might have BEA's boot caught in his throat. This one is going to be much harder for Oracle to swallow than PeopleSoft and Siebel were, not to mention the countless smaller technology vendors that Oracle has acquired in recent years. Although some of BEA's technology complements Oracle's portfolio (as these prior acquisitions mostly did), a whole lot of it -- from the Java stack and enterprise service bus to portal and collaboration software -- competes directly with Oracle offerings.
Certainly BEA has technology that Oracle wants (see Eric Knorr's take, "BEA's sweet portfolio"). Most recently, BEA has even brought terrific innovation to the J2EE server, launching a "virtual" edition of WebLogic that runs in a VMware virtual machine without a resource-hogging operating system (see Andrew Binstock's review). Nevertheless, the monumental headaches that Oracle product strategists will face in reconciling BEA's offerings with Oracle Fusion Middleware supports the view that the acquisition is aimed mainly at bolstering Oracle's middleware market position, and not about nabbing important technology.
Oracle has been pushing to become a heavyweight in middleware, where the movement toward services-based integration and process orchestration opens up new opportunities. Acquiring BEA cinches that. According to Gartner's figures, the worldwide market for "portals, process, and middleware" software stood at nearly $12 billion in 2006, and IBM had the lion's share, with almost 32 percent of that revenue. Adding BEA's 10.5 percent to Oracle's 8.6 percent makes the combo a healthy #2, and way ahead of #3 Microsoft, which Gartner attributes a 4.2 percent market share.
Oracle had already been making steady gains in middleware at BEA's and IBM's expense. If Oracle succeeds in smoothly integrating BEA (a formidable task and wild assumption, but Oracle has proven to be good at this), IBM's lead will not be safe. But Oracle has more than Big Blue to worry about here, and pulling in BEA may also help the company keep the threat of open source alternatives at bay. Oracle has always had an ambiguous relationship to open source. It was quick to adopt Linux as a preferred platform, a good hedge against both Microsoft and Sun. But it has otherwise strived to keep the open source middleware and database genies in the bottle, going to a lot of trouble to run interference against up-and-coming rivals Red Hat and MySQL.
We all remember the rumors that Oracle would acquire JBoss (now part of Red Hat), then MySQL, and finally Red Hat itself, and in the case of MySQL the rumors turned out to be true. After that offer was spurned, Oracle dealt blows to MySQL by acquiring Sleepycat Software and then Innobase, both sources of transactional storage engines at the heart of MySQL's goal to deliver a truly enterprise-class database. Now that MySQL will be a part of Sun Microsystems, it will be a bigger threat than ever.
On the middleware front, the battle is not only with commercial solutions from IBM and Sun and Tibco, but with JBoss and open source brethren including MuleSource, WSO2, and Iona, which are casting a shadow over future sales prospects. Both IBM and Sun have even embraced open source middleware, most notably Sun with its Sun Open ESB.
Oracle is clearly not content to beat open source rivals by joining them. Caught between strong commercial rivals on one side and open source challengers on the other, Oracle had two options: acquire open source challengers to get them out of the way, or shore up its market position. By buying BEA, Oracle eliminates a strong commercial rival and expands its reach into enterprise customers for a new generation of middleware. Was buying a top commercial rival instead of the leading open source challenger the right strategy? Only time will tell.
Meanwhile, we need a fresh set of rumors around Red Hat. When will Sun make the move?
Posted by Doug Dineley on January 16, 2008 12:08 PM
January 16, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft 'spyware' to jack into your brain waves
A recently published Microsoft patent application should send shivers down the spines of those already paranoid about companies' employee-monitorning capabilities -- and once the technology in question is developed, companies will gain access to those shivers to trigger a little heart-to-heart with the spine owners' managers.
According to a report in The Times, the patent, which was last month published by the U.S. Patent Office after an 18-month filing period, describes a monitoring system that would enable computers to wirelessly pick up on a user's heart rate, galvanic skin response, brain signals, body temperature, facial movements and expressions, blood pressure, and respiration rate.
Although the sense of this sentient system would seem to be to provide nefarious means for employers to spy on employees, the patent describes a more empathic rationale. Detecting frustration by mapping biorhythmic changes against profiles corresponding to employee's weight, age, and health, the system would gently nudge managers to conduct a quick, how-are-we-doing-today pop in -- certain to ensure further off-chart trajectories for the monitored biorhythms that alerted the system in the first place.
Not surprisingly, such a patent, which could be granted within a year, according to the U.S. Patent Office, pretty much shakes the notion of privacy to its very core. And civil liberties groups and privacy lawyers are experiencing elevated heart rates and noticeably troubled facial expressions over the patent.
According to The Times, one such expert on data protection law, Hugh Tomlinson at Matrix Chambers, said, "This system involves intrusions into every single aspect of the lives of the employees."
Fortunately, brain signals will likely not have to spike to keep such a system out of employers' hands, should it even come to fruition. Yet, as an analyst speaking to this editor yesterday pointed out, people are becoming much more identified with their technology, as the iPhone and iPod phenomena suggest. How much longer before, culturally, we become accepting of computing-human emotive kinship going two ways?
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• Test Your Geek IQ
Posted by Jason Snyder on January 16, 2008 11:04 AM
January 16, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Tech analysis: BEA's sweet portfolio
The conventional wisdom about Oracle's takeover of BEA says that Oracle is buying market share, not acquiring technology. After all, there's a broad overlap between Oracle’s Fusion middleware and BEA’s WebLogic and AquaLogic suites. But that reasoning doesn't do justice to some glittering technology gems in BEA’s portfolio.
To begin with, BEA’s AquaLogic Service Bus (as in ESB, or enterprise service bus) not only has major market share, it’s a mature product that even competitors express admiration for, with a superior management console with integrated runtime monitoring.
BEA boasts other attractive technology central to SOA (service oriented architecture). While both Oracle and BEA rely on Systinet for their service registry, for example, BEA has recently integrated the Systinet registry with the Flashline repository that BEA acquired in 2006 (together now called AquaLogic Registry Repository). The company has also mixed in two other acquisitions: Fuego business processes management (now AquaLogic BPM) and the Plumtree portal (now part of AquaLogic User Interaction). The successful combination of these solution layers – all potentially vital parts of a complete enterprise SOA solution – into one fully integrated stack may be whetting Oracle’s appetite more than any individual technology asset.
Not to minimize the attractive bits. AquaLogic User Interaction, for example, incorporates strong .Net technology, delivering a nice cross-platform twist on top of BEA’s Java foundation. Plus, the portal component has led the enterprise portal space in incorporating Web 2.0 technologies, including AJAX, widgets, and Wikis.
Another, lesser-known nugget: the AquaLogic Data Services Platform. Consolidating enterprise data and making it available as a service is highly desirable for a large-scale SOA with composite applications that must draw upon multiple data stores. And it's interesting to note that IBM, which has made more noise about data integration across the enterprise than anyone with its Information On Demand initiative, does not yet have an enterprise-class data-as-a-service solution.
So, in fact, there’s no shortage of technology reasons for Oracle’s purchase, nor any mystery about which competitor Oracle is arming itself against with its new BEA arsenal. IBM has all the SOA puzzle pieces BEA and Oracle have, but unlike with BEA’s integrated solution, you need IBM Global Services to put those pieces together. And just about everyone knowledgeable about SOA agrees that some sort of data services solution is necessary for a successful SOA.
Posted by Eric Knorr on January 16, 2008 10:26 AM
January 15, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft, JVC in IP agreement
Microsoft and Victor Company of Japan Ltd. (JVC) late on Tuesday announced they have entered into a patent cross-licensing agreement intended to further the development of each company's product lines and expand technological innovation.
Covering a range of consumer products each company sells, the agreement expands the relationship between the two companies to promote the exchange of valuable information and the incorporation of patented technologies in their respective products, Microsoft's statement said.
While contents of the agreement and specific financial terms were kept confidential, the parties indicated Microsoft will be compensated by JVC, according to Microsoft.
Microsoft launched its IP licensing program in December 2003, with the intent of opening up access to Microsoft's research and development investments and patent and IP portfolio, the company said. In November 2006, the company forged a controversial IP agreement with Novell in which the vendors agreed to not sue each other's customers over IP issues. Payments went between the two companies as part of that agreement.
Also as part of that arrangement, Microsoft agreed not to assert rights over any patents to software technology that may have been incorporated into Novell's Suse Linux.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 15, 2008 05:18 PM
January 15, 2008 | Comments: (0)
JBoss boosts Java app services platform
The JBoss development team at Red Hat has released JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 4.3, featuring upgraded messaging and Web services technologies.
The platform offers open source technologies for building and deploying enterprise Java application services. It integrates the JBoss Application Server with JBoss's Hibernate object-relational mapping software and Seam application framework for building Web 2.0 applications.
JBoss Messaging serves as the messaging architecture for JBoss 4.3, 5.0 and beyond, the company said. It is an upgrade over the prior JBossMQ component, according to Red Hat. JBoss Web Services, another component of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, supports JAX-WS (Java API for XML Web Services), a Web services API that replaced JAX-RPC 1.0 in the Java stack.
Red Hat is offering subscriptions to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. The company released version 4.3 last week.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 15, 2008 01:49 PM
January 13, 2008 | Comments: (0)
First Google Android phone suite completed
While the world awaits an ear-candy update from Steve Jobs at this week's Macworld, the iPhone's most likely long-term mobile buzz disrupter, Google's Android platform, received a boost from a small California-based development firm that will tomorrow announce a complete suite of phone apps based on Android, according to a report today on USA Today's Web site.
[ For an in-depth look at the Android SDK, see Analysis: Long odds for Google's ambitious Android. ]
The firm, A La Mobile, has deployed a Google browser, phone dialer, audio player, calendar, and contacts manager onto a Qtek 9090 smartphone from HTC, which is part of the Google-launched Open Handset Coalition. Boasting more than 30 partners, Open Handset hopes to shake up the mobile market by simplifying mobile app development via Android's open development platform.
A La Mobile's suite includes such ancillary phone favorites as camera software and games, and offers calculator and note-taking functionality. The prototype suite will be pitched to handset makers, A La Mobile CEO Pauline Lo Alker told USA Today.
A La Mobile is one of many teams presumably working to develop for Android. After all, Google, which released its SDK for Android in November, is offering $10 million to developers of "innovative and compelling" Android-based apps.
But luring developers to establish suites using the Java-based SDK is one thing. Winning over the mobile industry is another. Many question the platform's ability to make a lasting impact. Chief among them, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who described Android as a mere "press release" in November.
Yet, assuming the suite performs, the A La Mobile announcement could be significant, if only because it lends something concrete to Google's dream.
"Android has the ambitious mission of creating a total mobile device software platform, from the chip level to the user GUI, based on Linux 2.6 and implementing a custom Java virtual machine, a WebKit-based browser, SQL database, and full application access to device hardware," InfoWorld's Tom Yager writes in his in-depth analysis at the Android SDK. "It's every mobile developer's dream, but right now, Android is a set of Java classes, some rough-hewn tools, and a device emulator, the last of these giving Android a shot at pull from end users."
Related articles:
Google android: Invader from beyond
Analysis: Long odds for Google's ambitious Android
You don't know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz
Posted by Jason Snyder on January 13, 2008 08:33 PM
January 11, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Sun sounds death knell for datacenter
An intriguing blog post by Brian Cinque at Sun announces -- and hazily outlines -- the company's vision to consolidate its datacenters out of existence by 2015.
The great migration to nothing will be evolutionary, Cinque writes, noting that Sun's IT infrastructure will reach a point at which it will no longer be able to reap greater efficiencies by way of server virtualization, storage consolidation, and the like. At that time, Sun's IT operations will transform "from a service oriented architecture to a more of a software as a service."
Along the way, Sun expects to cut the physical footprint of its datacenter operations in half by 2013, resulting in a reduction of 50 percent or more BTUs consumed, with less than half of this year's power usage expected to be necessary at that time.
How this will be accomplished is glossed over, with hints of future datacenter-eradication blog posts to come. But it appears that the company InfoWorld contributor Bill Snyder notes is "back in the game," in his Top 10 underreported tech stories of 2007, is committed to a future of tapping utility computing in the cloud.
Posted by Jason Snyder on January 11, 2008 02:44 PM
January 11, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Rails stack inks $3.5 million deal
Engine Yard, a startup that allows businesses to outsource their Ruby on Rails app deployment needs, today received $3.5 million in Series A funding from Benchmark Capital, providing further evidence that Rails is a Java alternative to be reckoned with.
The open source Web framework provides organizations with a quick way to develop database-driven Web apps. As such, its relative development ease has made it the darling of the startup set; yet it and fellow dynamic languages, PHP and Perl, are fast finding their way into the enterprise as strategic tools to cut down the development backlog fast, as InfoWorld contributor Andrew Binstock outlines in "Dynamic languages: More than just a quick fix."
That said, don’t expect Rails and other scripting languages to replace programming mainstays such as Java anytime soon, despite the hype. As Binstock cautions in "The shortcomings of scripting," such programming tools do present limitations in terms of scalability and performance.
Much of Rails' momentum has thus far been fueled by its community-driven roots. But investments such as Benchmark’s into Engine Yard suggest at least some believe there is money in the model -- in this case, offloading the mess of deploying applications away from those developing them, and providing those businesses the means to scale operations quickly.
Engine Yard's cluster computing platform is the company's core asset. Cluster resources are either dedicated or shared along slices, depending on customer needs.
Related articles:
• Dynamic languages: More than just a quick fix
• The shortcomings of scripting
Posted by Jason Snyder on January 11, 2008 01:52 PM
January 10, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Application developers and project managers top the list of sought-out IT pros, according to an Atlantic Associates' survey, which also noted that, when it comes to managing techies, folks are not fully psyched to wrangle work out of so-called "millennials," the generation currently entering the workforce, those aged 18 to 31.
The survey, which polled more than 100 Massachusetts executives, noted an expected pay hike for both certified and non-certified IT pros, with those bearing credentials having a two-in-three shot at grabbing more pay in the coming year and 45 percent of non-certs taking home more.
The upbeat outlook on pay echoes the findings of the 2007 InfoWorld Compensation Survey, providing further creedence that IT skills remain valuable despite increased reliance on outsourcing and offshoring.
[ For a granular look at compensation trends, see: 2007 InfoWorld Compensation Survey: Personal gains and personnel woes and 2007 InfoWorld Compensation Survey: By the numbers ]
Nearly one in three of the executives surveyed expressed a serious need for application developers, while more than a quarter lacked the project management personnel required to get out in front of mounting tech requirements.
But for those young among you looking to capitalize on the IT job market, take heed: Management may fear the overhead in bringing you on board, as executives were three times as likely to label "millennials" difficult to manage than they were to cite Generation Xers as a headache.
Often perceived as a generation in need of coddling, responsive only to pats on the back, rec time, and "employee of the day" accolades, those entering the workforce face an uphill battle proving their chops in IT. More than one in two executives cited those between 18 and 31 as the most difficult employees to manage.
Manageability aside, computing education has been taking flak as of late when it comes to preparing students for careers in IT. And much is being made of the sense that there is a shortage of qualified candidates to fill open IT positions. Some, however, contend that the IT talent "shortage" is in fact a failure of management. Debate aside, managers remain ultimately in control of hiring, and so the fact that 22 percent of managers surveyed by Atlantic Associates list the talent gap as their primary staffing challenge for 2008 make a packed résumé a serious advantage-maker for those resolved to make more dough this year. More to the point, two in three executives said finding qualified candidates is harder today than a year ago.
[ For tips on capitalizing on the IT job market, see Take home more tech pay in 2008 ]
Yet underqualified candidates took the No. 2 spot of staffing challenges among polled executives. No. 1 was retaining existing staff, as many managers are dealing with the fallout of a thawed IT job market. In fact, 32 percent of respondents noted an increase in voluntary turnover in the past 12 months, while 11 percent saw a decrease in churn.
Additional resources:
• Take home more tech pay in 2008
• 2007 InfoWorld Compensation Survey: Personal gains and personnel woes
• 2007 InfoWorld Compensation Survey: By the numbers
• 20 ways to get promoted in the tech industry
• IT's seven deadly career sins
Posted by Jason Snyder on January 10, 2008 01:08 PM
January 09, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Google Fellows discuss parallel processing model
Google Fellows Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat have published a paper in this month's Communications of the ACM, a publication of the Association for Computing Machinery, detailing the programming model Google leverages to process more than 20 petabytes of data per day on commodity-based clusters.
The paper is an update of a prior article on the process and includes deeper insights into the effect the model has had on operations at Google in the time since first publication.
The methodology, known as MapReduce, allows users to break computations into a map and a reduce function, which the runtime system automatically parallelizes across large clusters, navigating machine failures and honing the efficiency of network and disk use in the process.
Inspired by similar primitives in Lisp, the methodology abstracts parallelization, fault tolerance, data distribution, and load balancing into a library. More than 10 thousand programs have been implemented at Google using MapReduce, which can also be used to parallelize computations for multicore processing on a single machine.
The model has been used for large-scale graph processing, text processing, data mining, machine learner, and statistical machine translation, among other algorithms, Dean and Ghemawat write.
The clusters on which MapReduce jobs run consist of thousands of commodity PCs connected by Gigabit Ethernet. The Linux-based dual-processor x86 machines have between 4GB and 8GB of memory per machine, with two 160GB IDE disks directly attached. Google's homegrown GFS (Google File System) manages the data stored to the disks.
Computations are submitted to a scheduler, which maps tasks to available machines. The MapReduce library splits input files into pieces typically between 16MB and 64MB and implements a master/worker model to perform tasks across the cluster.
MapReduce use has scaled significantly in its first four years of use at Google, with map input data topping 403 petabytes in September 2007. More than 11,000 machines were used that month to process 2.2 million jobs, with an average of 394 machines taking 395 seconds on average to complete each job.
As Dean and Ghemawat note in the paper, the most significant use of MapReduce has been a rewrite of the indexing system used for Google search. The MapReduce system has reduced computations from approximately 3,800 lines of C++ to 700 lines.
Posted by Jason Snyder on January 9, 2008 05:59 PM
January 09, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Google employees trade on optimism
A recently released study of trades undertaken in an internal predictive market in place at Google surfaced a quantifiable can-do spirit among the company's employees.
Analyzing the predictive market trading behavior of 1,463 participating Google employees from April 2005 to September 2007, Justin Wolfers and Eric Zitzewitz, economists at Wharton and Darmouth, respectively, along with Google economic analyst Bo Cowgill, found that "internal markets overpriced securities tied to optimistic outcomes by 10 percentage points."
Meaning, in essence, that participating Google employees were, on the whole, willing to pay a 10 percent premium to place a bet on success.
[ PDF download: "Using Prediction Markets to Track Information Flows: Evidence From Google" ]
Part of a larger trend attempting to glean insight from the wisdom of crowds, predictive markets allow participants to perform trading-style transactions on the outcome of various short- and long-range conjectures. Participants are given tokens -- in Google's case, "Goobles" -- to place bets. The flow of this currency is believe to provide a credible prediction engine for future events -- more accurate, some believe, than knowledge gleaned from polls and surveys. Much of this accuracy is attributed to the assurance of vested participation in the form of financial compensation for individual participants' predictive accuracy -- for Google, this took the form of a $10,000 prize budget pool per quarter.
[ For a deeper look at predictive markets and crowdsourcing, see "Mob wisdom means business" ]
Google's market, which the authors believe is the largest such company market in operation, has been up and running for four years. Similar markets are under way at Abbott Labs, Arcelor Mittal, Best Buy, Chrysler, Corning, EA, Eli Lilly, Frito Lay, GE, HP, Intel, InterContinental Hotels, Masterfoods, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Pfizer, Qualcomm, Siemens, and TNT, according to the authors of the report.
Conjectures ran the gamut, from demand forecasting (number of Gmail users at the end of a particular quarter), performance (Google Talk quality rating), company news, industry news, decision markets (will users of feature A use feature B more), to plain-old fun (how many rotten tomatoes will Star Wars III get?).
In all, 270 such "markets" were opened at Google, each with between two and five bet outcomes.
Participants in the Google market, who were more likely to be programmers at the Mountain View campus, exhibited a bias toward outcomes linked to a positive outcome for Google. Moreover, the economists found a measurable correlation between bullish predictive market behavior the day after Google's actual stock price experienced a better-than-average boost.
According to the economists, such optimism is akin to what is known as the "entrepreneur's curse," in which "firms are started by those most overly optimistic about their prospects." Such optimism, the authors conjecture, is desirable for leaders and employees in such environments, as it generates motivation, leads to risk-taking, and "makes employees cheaper to compensate with stock options."
Optimism, according to the study, was correlated most prominantly with more recent hires, as experienced employees tended to be less likely to overspend on optimistic outcomes.
Also of note from the study was a correlation of like-mindedness with physical proximity, as strong correlations in trading were found among employees with 10 to 20 feet of one another in a shared office setting, suggesting that being on the same page means being in the same environs.
Moreover, trading correlations were also found among employees sharing the same "three-levels-below-SVP" manager, which at Google, usually means working on the same broad set of products, according to the authors of the report.
Analysis of holdings and trading activities is used to determine how an organization processes information.
Interestingly, the authors did not find friendship to be a strong correlation factor in Google's predictive market. Apparently, work-farm architecture and workforce organization have a demonstrable effect on siloing information.
Organizations looking to foster cross-departmental collaboration, take note.
Posted by Jason Snyder on January 9, 2008 01:41 PM
January 08, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Is Java partly responsible for a neglect of basic skills in computer science education?
Two professors emeritus at New York University, who also happen to be executives at AdaCore, which specializes in the Ada programming language, criticize Java in an article entitled "Computer Science Education: Where Are The Software Engineers of Tomorrow?" in CrossTalk - The Journal of Defense Engineering, this month.
"It is our view that computer science education is neglecting basic skills," particularly in the areas programming and formal methods, according to the article, written by Robert Dewar, AdaCore president, and Edmond Schonberg, AdaCore vice president.
"We consider that the general adoption of Java as a first programming language is in part responsible for this decline," they wrote.
Java, the authors said, has been used in introductory programming courses in a "misguided attempt" to make programming more fun.
"The irresistible beauty of programming consists in the reduction of complex formal processes to a very small set of primitive operations. Java, instead of exposing this beauty, encourages the programmer to approach problem-solving like a plumber in a hardware store: by rummaging through a multitude of drawers (i.e. packages) we will end up finding some gadget (i.e. class) that does roughly what we want," the article stated.
"The result is a student who knows how to put a simple program together, but does not how know how to program," according to the article.
The authors did give Java points for concurrent programming and reflection, which is the understanding that a program can be instrumented to examine its own state to determine its own behavior in a dynamically changing environment.
At Sun Microsystems, which created Java, representatives scoffed at the article, noting that the authors have an interest in Ada.
"If you look at these guys, they specialize in Ada," said Tim Bray, Sun director of Web technologies. Ada, Bray said, was "the most expensive, embarrassing failure in the history of computer languages."
"I felt like I was reading something out of the '80s," given the article's Ada emphasis and its lack of discussion about Ruby, Python and agile methodologies, Bray said.
Java, according to Sun, is being used at more than 869 universities. Additionally, the BlueJ environment has been developed for the purpose of teaching object orientation with Java.
In an emailed response, Schonberg stood up for the authors' involvement with AdaCore.
"Of course, if we are involved in Ada software it is because we are convinced of its technical superiority in many areas, but our opinions do not come from business interests but from decades as academics, teaching across the curriculum, and participating in long-term language design and implementation projects. Our negative views of the impact of Java on early CS education come from experience (ours, and that of colleagues at NYU) teaching more advanced courses," Schonberg said.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 8, 2008 03:49 PM
January 08, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft is offering the beta version of its Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack, enabling development of applications with the look and feel of popular Microsoft products, Microsoft's S. "Soma" Somasegar said in his blog Tuesday.
The Feature Pack extends Visual C++ libraries that shipped with Visual Studio 2008. That product first shipped in November.
Somasegar, corporate vice president of the company's Developer Division, said the beta release features a major update to Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) and an implementation of the TR1 (Technical Report 1) library. TR1 specifies additions to the C++ library.
"Using the new MFC library, developers will be able to create applications that feature the 'look and feel' of Microsoft’s most popular products – including Office, Internet Explorer and Visual Studio. With the TR1 library, developers gain access to a number of important features such as smart pointers, regular expression parsing and new container classes," Somasegar said.
Some of the new capabilities include support for development of applications with the Office Ribbon-style interface and the Office 2007, Office 2003 and Office XP look and feel.
The feature pack is downloadable here.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 8, 2008 03:10 PM
January 07, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Spring framework offered for .Net
SpringSource, keepers of the Spring series of open source application development technologies, announced Monday the final release of Spring.Net 1.1, an application framework for building .Net applications.
Rooted in the Spring Framework programming model for Java, Spring.Net features dependency injection. This is an application configuration concept that makes it easier to switch between alternative implementations of a service type and then specify which implementation is to be used via a configuration file. Dependency injection bolsters unit testing by enabling a mock implementation of a service to be injected into the service being tested.
Other key features of Spring.Net 1.1 include an inversion of control container for configuring application classes; an ASP.Net framework for Web development and an aspect-oriented programming framework complementing object-oriented programming. Declarative transaction management via XML configuration and attributes also is offered to provide a consistent programming model across different transaction APIs.
Other features include ASP.Net AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) integration and portable service abstraction, to export plain .Net objects via .Net Remoting and other technologies.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 7, 2008 01:38 PM
January 07, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft Silverlight going to the Olympics
The 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China this summer will be broadcast on the Web using Microsoft's Silverlight 2.0 technology, a Microsoft official said in his blog on Monday.
"We have signed an agreement to partner with NBC Universal to build a Silverlight 2.0-based Web broadcast of the 2008 Summer Olympic games," said S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Developer Division in a blog entry.
"As a part of this, we will provide users with exclusive access to over 3,000 hours of live and on-demand video content via Silverlight streaming. This means that viewers can access every minute of every event," he said.
Microsoft's Silverlight plug-in technology was unveiled last year and is widely viewed as a competitor to the Adobe Flash multimedia platform for the Web. But Microsoft has not announced a release date for Silverlight 2.0, which features a subset of Microsoft's .Net Framework programming model. A beta release of version 2.0 is due early this year.
"It is exciting to see Silverlight be the catalyst to turn 'NBCOlympics.com on MSN' into a groundbreaking site and video experience that will redefine sports content online and in some small way we can be part of this historic event," Somasegar said.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 7, 2008 12:39 PM
January 04, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Google PageRank to stem staph infections?
Just as Silicon Valley insiders are calling for a qualified scuttling of Google's PageRank algorithm in sussing out Web page relevance, U.K. researchers are turning to Google's golden formula to combat the spread of treatment-resistent infections in hospitals.
According to a report in New Scientist, a Bradford University research group headed by Clive Beggs believes that PageRank could provide the key to understanding how superbugs, such as staph infections, are transmitted through the wards.
Viewing transmission routes -- by hand, through the air, or otherwise -- as what amount to "infectious networks," Beggs and associates are attempting to build a matrix similar to Google's page-relevancy tool to rank infection paths.
Simon Shepherd, a mathematician on board with the endeavor, believes that by observing normal daily activity in a hospital, a matrix of interactions among people and objects can be expressed and then analyzed to better understand where "nodes in the network" maximize the transmission of infections.
"Obviously nurses move among patients and that can spread infection, but they also touch light switches and lots of other surfaces too," Shepherd told New Scientist. "We sussed out in one ward that the chief node was a light switch. It could potentially distribute infection to the rest of the ward very quickly."
With such knowledge in hand, hospital administrators could then put policies in place or make alterations to hospital infrastructure to disrupt the infection network, targeting those nodes that the BugRank algorithm identifies as the most problematic.
Posted by Jason Snyder on January 4, 2008 04:42 PM
January 04, 2008 | Comments: (0)
High perhaps on its recently announced $20 million in Series B funding, wireless networking startup Meraki Networks has announced it will lift up the tar-smeared municipal Wi-Fi baton dropped by EarthLink in September 2007, stating that it will provide advertising-supported free wireless for the city of San Francisco by year's end.
Meraki's technical solution for the oft-longed-for service would be to establish a mesh network of solar-powered repeater antennas dispersed across the rooftops and balconies of the city by the Bay. The repeaters, which Meraki sells for $49, would be doled out free to interested citizens, who would then affix the units to their own private -- as opposed to city-owned -- property. The repeaters would extend the signal capabilities of Meraki's larger outdoor antennas, which sell for $99.
The populist angle not only frees Meraki of service-level agreements with the city but also transforms the city itself into a proving ground for Meraki's hardware. Should the plan succeed in delivering the 1Mbps download speeds Meraki suggests are possible with its proposed mesh network, the company would be well positioned to cash in on this very high profile proof-of-concept phase.
Some neighborhoods are already experiencing the free love, as 500 repeaters currently serve 40,000 users across the Mission, Lower Haight, and Alamo Square districts.
Intriguing, of course, is the fact that Meraki's announcement dovetails with a report released by Indiana Unviersity researchers regarding the influenza-like computer virus outbreak potential that dense urban Wi-Fi router populations present.
Posted by Jason Snyder on January 4, 2008 12:25 PM
January 03, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft to strong arm Silverlight adoption
Miffed perhaps by the dearth of Web sites buying into its Silverlight proposition, Microsoft has its sights on a Web site redesign centered around showing the world that not only is it capable of eating its own dog food but that it can force you, www.microsoft.com visitor, into eating it, too.
According to a post on The NeoSmart Files blog, Microsoft is immersed in a beta trial of a new Microsoft Web site built around Silverlight, Redmond's last-year-launched salvo vs. Adobe's near-ubiquitous Flash. Soon, anyone looking to download, say, Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool to rid their system of infectious software they don't want will just have to download some noninfectious software they might not want (read: Silverlight) to get to it.
No HTML muss. No HTML fuss.
Although the thought of Microsoft requiring visitors to wear a Silverlight suit to enter its cyberhouse does bring to mind certain William Trevor stories in which awaiting never-to-arrive dinner guests provides the kind of quiet melancholy that can linger for days, the forced-Silverlight-uptake gambit is likely to boost Microsoft's Silverlight adoption rate, if only because the company's Web site serves an estimated 60 million unique visitors per month, according to Compete Search Analytics (nod to NeoSmart on the stat tip).
That's a lot of systems to infect, er, penetrate.
For a look at some screenshots, check out the NeoSmart gallery. Or, dare the beta yourself.
In the meantime, let's just hope that Microsoft remains sensible about access to the product support area of its site. After all, requiring users to download an "under-adopted" Microsoft product in order to figure out why an, um, "over-adopted" Microsoft product isn't working would be the kind of torture Microsoft should be above.
Or maybe not.
In fact, perhaps this is part of Microsoft's greater "frustration-detecting help system" plans.
Of course, as far as technologies go, Silverlight isn't a dog, as Martin Heller finds out in his comprehensive Test Center Review "Microsoft Silverlight rivals Flash, AJAX."
Additional resources
Review: Microsoft Silverlight rivals Flash, AJAX
Strategic Developer Silverlight archives
Posted by Jason Snyder on January 3, 2008 03:01 PM
January 03, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft ponders Emacs effort
Microsoft is looking at Emacs text editor technology to help enable model-driven development as part of its Oslo project.
Acknowleding recent references to an Emacs.net-like environment, Burley Kawasaki, director of product management in Microsoft's Connected Systems Division, said in a statement released by the company that this referred to research and development on model-driven development.
"While it's too soon to announce any specifics in terms of product offerings, this generally referred to some of the early thinking we're doing around Oslo's modeling platform currently in development at Microsoft, specifically focused on how developers will want to edit and create declarative models," Kawaski said. "We'll share additional updates as we have them."
In a recent blog entry, Douglas Purdy, a product unit manager on Microsoft's Connected Systems Architecture team, said the company was looking for developers and testers to build a tool described as "Emacs.net."
Unveiled in October, Oslo involves model-driven design and features a set of technical investments to be delivered in the next major versions of Microsoft platform products such as Visual Studio and BizTalk Server. Beta releases of Oslo technology are planned for release this year.
With Oslo, models become the applications, rather than just describing applications.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 3, 2008 12:52 PM
January 02, 2008 | Comments: (0)
SanDisk auto-syncs flash drive files online
Seeking to assuage the file-loss fears of USB fob-dependent PC users, SanDisk has announced Cruzer Titanium Plus, a 4GB USB flash drive that automatically backs up files to an online data store, thanks to a partnership with Israel-based startup BeInSync.
Priced at $59.99, Cruzer Titanium Plus mirrors documents, photos, digital music and videos to BeInSync's online backup service. The service, which taps Amazon's S3 storage services infrastructure, is free for the first six months, after which a subscription fee of $29.99 per year applies.
The service allows Windows 2000-, XP-, and Vista-based Cruzer Titanium Plus users to sync files whenever the USB drive is plugged in to an online PC. Changes to the USB drive store that are made while offline are automatically mirrored once a connection to the Internet is re-established.
Files deleted from the USB drive linger in the cloud for up to 30 days, or until the BeInSync 4GB backup capacity has been reached.
The move is part of a growing trend toward providing mobile workers greater levels of storage assurance using the familiar USB drive idiom. Rover Technology Fusions recently paired up with IBM to extend CDP (continuous data protection) capabilities to laptops by way of a 2GB credit-card-size USB drive.
Posted by Jason Snyder on January 2, 2008 03:23 PM
January 02, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Bolstering its application lifecycle management platform, Microsoft has released Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Power Tools, intended to improve the Team Foundation Server user experience.
Featured is a set of enhancements, tools and command utilities.
Team Foundation Server offers services such as version control, work item tracking and build management. The Visual Studio 2008 software development platform was released in November. Microsoft previously has offered Power Tools for the predecessor Visual Studio 2005 platform.
"We did not want to just deliver a warmed over version of the VS2005 Power Tools, so we included lot of new goodies in this release," said Ed Hintz, a member of the Microsoft Visual Studio Team System team, in his blog.
Among the new tools is a Find in Source Control tool that serves as an addition to the Team Explorer menu that provides the ability to locate files and folders in source control, Microsoft said. Files and folders are located by the item's status or wildcard expression.
Another new feature is the ability to open a selected folder in Windows Explorer straight from Team Explorer. Users can go straight to a mapped folder location from within Source Control Explorer.
Tools installed in the package include: a command line tool, Team Explorer IDE menu additions, a new Build Notification tool, a Team Foundation Server Best Practices Analyzer, Process Template Editor, Work Item Templates and Custom Check-in Policies.
The package is downloadable here.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 2, 2008 11:25 AM