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The InformationWeek July 2008 Archive « June 2008 | Main | August 2008 » |
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Alfresco Releases An Open Source SharePoint Compatible Alternative
Alfresco, whose open source enterprise content management (ECM) software has earned it a significant following, is making more waves with the release this week of Alfresco Labs 3, an open source alternative to Microsoft SharePoint.
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VMware Fusion 2 Beta 2
Leopard Server now supported plus better HW utilization and Windows-to-Mac data sharing.
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The iPhone's Push App Service Appears
While iPhone owners may never get true background applications, the seeds are in place for the next best thing. Select developers are saying the 2.1 version of the firmware has an API for Apple's Push Notification Service.
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rBuilder: DIY Open Source Appliances
I blogged earlier about the growth of open source virtual appliances, which now includes outfits like Jumpbox who create value-added appliances for popular open source packages. Now comes rBuilder, for those with a bit more do-it-yourself spirit.
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Beyond Vista: Microsoft's Plans For Windows 7, 8, And 'Midori'
Microsoft's OS developers need to be more sure-handed than ever these days, given the number of balls they've got in the air.
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Alfresco Debuts Beta Of SharePoint Competitor
Today Alfresco takes aim at Microsoft SharePoint, the collaboration juggernaut, with the release of Alfresco Labs 3. Currently available in beta, Alfresco Labs 3 lets companies use SharePoint in an open-source environment.
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Dell's New Entertainment Service: Will It B-Sharp Or B-Flat?
Athletes recovering from a serious injury should take it slow and not overexert themselves. That's a lesson that's apparently being ignored by Dell, which is looking to compete with Apple's champion iTunes while struggling with a lousy rep for customer service.
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Should Microsoft Play To Its Corporate Strengths?
With Apple recently experiencing explosive growth and Microsoft stock in the doldrums for most of the decade, it's time for some action in Redmond. Last time I proposed a "show them how it's done" model, where Microsoft builds complete solutions that include its software. This time it's the "focus on what you do best" approach; for Microsoft that means servers and business infrastructure.
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Windows Mobile: We Have 18,000 Mobile Applications. Beat That, iPhone
This morning I received an email from the Windows Mobile press relations team. According to what I read, the number of Windows Mobile phones out in the world has doubled in the last year, and Microsoft expects its WinMo phones to outsell the iPhone, like, forever.
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Nokia Drops Phone Prices, Puts The Squeeze On Competitors
Nokia has an empowering, vice-like grip on 40% of the world market for mobile phones. Even with its market-leading position, it is stepping up the pressure on its rivals, and recently cut the cost of many of its phones by about 10%. Is this the first sign of a price war?
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Ancient Olympic 'Computer' Calculated Dates Of Games
Researchers announced Wednesday that a geared device dating to the second century BC was used to calculate the dates for the first Olympic games.
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Google Says Privacy Doesn't Exist, Get Used To Everyone Knowing Everything About You
The headline practically says it all. Google is being sued by a Pittsburgh couple for posting images of its house on the Internet in Google's Street Views pages. Google responded, in court no less, that complete privacy simply doesn't exist in today's world and the couple should stop crying about it.
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Nielsen Norman Group Evaluates Intranet Portal Usability
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, a Web usability-centric column published every two weeks, focused recently on enterprise intranet portals. It's been three years since the Nielsen Norman Group last took a detailed look at the enterprise portal industry, and in its latest report, it notes that while many things have changed, certain key principals -- such as usability, governance and effectively measuring return on investment (ROI) -- are still critical.
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Geeks 1, Rapist 0
It's not often that the geeks get to help put a bad guy in the slammer but as eWeek reports, the geeks at Seagate Recovery Services managed to recover the video of a rapist's confession that was badly burned in the transfer from the original camcorder tape. The poor DA didn't have the original tape and couldn't read the CD. Defense council claims the DVD has exculpatory evidence so the DA has to produce it.
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Google Acquires Omniso
Google, via the YouTube blog, on Wednesday said that it has purchased Omniso, a California-based social video startup.
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Cisco Won't Buy EMC, Will It?
Analyst Kaushik Roy with Choi and Pacific Growth Equities really stoked the fire of a longstanding rumor (repeat rumor) that Cisco would just love to buy storage king EMC. And while this won't happen, there are kernels of truth in there.
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Radware Reveals Critical Vulnerability In Firefox 3
Well, not exactly "critical." But there is a flaw. And there is no patch. And so Radware demonstrates how many security vendors push their gear by spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt on the user community.
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The Instinct Gets A Software Update
Apple's iPhone 3G isn't the only touch-screen device that's selling like hot cakes, as Samsung's Instinct also has been flying off the shelves. While the Instinct was successful, many have reported data-related issues with the phone. Those problems should be fixed with the latest firmware update.
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The Reality Of Private Clouds
In his blog "Clouds Are Only in the Sky" yesterday, Richard Martin suggested that a cloud must be on the public Internet for it to truly be a cloud and that if something resembling a cloud is used internally then it must be utility computing. He makes a very good point; however, I respectfully disagree.
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Google Maps Adds Mass Transit Support For S60 And Windows Mobile Phones
Not too long ago, Google added transit directions to is Maps for Mobile product. Initially, it supported just BlackBerry smartphones. Today, Google added support for Nokia's S60 platform and Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform, as well. I gave the new mapping software a spin.
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Do Most Restores Really Fail?
Every once in a while I see some analyst, usually talking about some backup to disk product, say "X% of all attempts to restore from tape fail" where X is some ridiculous number like 62.7. While I've been involved in my share of restore disasters from OnStream tapes and no OnStream drive to "We found tapes 1-3 and 5-8 do we really need tape 4 of that set" 95% were due to stupidity of some sort. So tell me folks what percentage of your restores fail? Good restore war stories also welcome.
Fighting Siloing In Open Source
Another major theme recurring through the notes I took at OSCON, something echoed by many people there, is "siloing" -- or, rather, how to recognize it and do something about it.
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T-Mobile Takes Customization To A Whole New Level With Latest Sidekick
Last night in New York City, T-Mobile announced its new Sidekick 2008 with a bang. The update to T-Mobile's messaging device for the masses now lets users interchange the exterior shell of the device, making it more personal. It also is slightly more svelte than previous models and includes some other noteworthy tech updates.
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The CIO Was Right: Web 2.0 Is Dangerous
CIOs have gotten a reputation -- rightly or wrongly -- for dragging their feet when it comes to Web 2.0 initiatives like social networks and application mash-ups. The reason: security. Now it appears they may have been justified.
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Looking For Anyone In Particular?
In the current economic climate, hiring new people is something that's put on the back burner at many organizations -- especially if there's any threat that a "reduction in headcount" might be in the cards. But, that doesn't mean no one is hiring IT people. In fact, certain talent is still hard to find and highly sought after at some organizations.
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LG To Add Dolby Mobile Sound To Its High-End Phones
As a certified audiophile, I am always looking for improvements in the quality of music playback in mobile phones. To date, very few have impressed me. Looks like LG could be changing that sad song to a happy one, though, as it announced it will begin putting Dolby Mobile sound into its premier phones later this year.
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Do Your Batteries Look Like Bombs? Do You Even Know What A Bomb Looks Like?
With the exception of a pipe bomb I once saw on the news, I don't think I've ever seen what a regular bomb looks like. Have you? It's an important question because the TSA is apparently willing to confiscate something (in this case, batteries) that it knows isn't a bomb, but that it still considers a threat because it looks like a bomb to other people (other people that don't know what a bomb looks like). Writes Bruce Schneier of the incident...
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IT's Olympic Trials
Even as Olympic teams around the world were holding their final qualifying trials to see who got to go to Beijing, the technology infrastructure behind the Games was going through its own grueling trials.
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Bamboo Solution's Bundles Extend SharePoint Functionality
Bamboo Solutions is probably a familiar name to the IT staffs at enterprises running SharePoint. The company made headlines in couple of months ago when it released information on how to run SharePoint on a Vista box, but it's also one of the best known and most successful vendors of plug-in modules intended to enhance SharePoint's base functionality.
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Google Should Take Privacy Lessons From Cuil
Google can rest easy, at least for the time being. Cuil, the search startup that debuted on Monday, is no Google-killer. Judging by the dismissive comments left by those reading InformationWeek's coverage, Cuil was more of a danger to itself than any other company, thanks to downtime and poor performance on both a technical and functional level.
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Oracle WebLogic Servers Vulnerable To Attacks
When it comes to security vulnerabilities, this flaw is as ugly as it gets -- but, in this case, it's not all because of anything Oracle did wrong.
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Is eBay Getting Into Cloud Computing?
Another of the Web giants, eBay, may be joining the growing and nebulous (pun intended) field of cloud computing, if a new job listing is any indication.
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Clouds Are Only In The Sky
There's a lot of blogosphere chatter these days about "private cloud" computing. Unfortunately, there's no such thing.
Continue reading "Clouds Are Only In The Sky..."
EV Certificates Enhance The Bottom Line, Not Trust
VeriSign has been very active in beating the Extended Validation certificate drum. I just have a real problem with EV certificates being sold as "better" than regular EV certificates. EV certificates don't change the security features of the resulting SSL connection. The green or red address bar doesn't tell us whether a Web site is trustworthy or not. But the green bar adds greenback to your coffers, regardless.
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An Open Letter To Apple And AT&T: Why Did You Brick My First-Generation iPhone?
Anyone who upgraded from a first-generation iPhone to the iPhone 3G had to sync the new hardware with iTunes in order to finalize the activation process. By so doing, you effectively killed the cellular radio in the first-generation iPhone. Sure, the 1G iPhone can play media, browse the Web via Wi-Fi and access the Apps Store, but it can't make phone calls. What gave Apple and AT&T the right to disable my $600 piece of property?
Continue reading "An Open Letter To Apple And AT&T: Why Did You Brick My First-Generation iPhone?..."
Siemens Enterprise Finds A Buyer
Some two years after it was spun off from the Siemens AG parent company, with the intention of being acquired, Siemens Enterprise (SEN)has finally reached that goal with today's announcement that Gores Group, a Los Angeles-based private equity firm, will acquire 51% of SEN, while Siemens AG retains the rest. (For more posts, go to No Jitter.)
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Sony Bundles Spare Backup With New PCs
From the good news/bad news desk Sony has joined Packard-Bell (they still buy them in Europe) to bundle Spare Backup's agent and online backup service with every PC they sell. On the good news front this means more of the fashonistas that buy Sony PCs at retail will backup their data online.
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EMC Drops MozyPro Server Prices
In an e-mail to Mozy resellers, EMC this week announced that it was dropping the price for server backups via MozyPro from the $1.75 per GB per month level they reached in February (see Previous Blog Entry) to 50 cents per GB per month, curiously the same amount it was charging before the price hike earlier this year. Server coverage is still $6.95 a month for each protected server, up from the $3.95 price that covered both servers and workstations in the distant past (2007).
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BlackBerry Users Can Save Gas By Using Local Shopping Application From Slifter
If you're desperately in need of a new pair of shoes and don't know where the closest shoe store is, the location-aware shopping application from Slifter will tell you. It also will tell you exactly where they are in stock, so you don't waste gas driving to three different stores to find the right size.
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Potential Verizon Strike Could Impact Enterprise IT
If Verizon is the "last mile" for your ISP, and you are planning on ordering voice or data service in the near future, you better get your order in now.
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An Open Source Software Police?
I'm still sorting through the last bits of my OSCON trip notes, but one striking conversation I had was with Byrne Reese of SixApart about people who violate the end-user licensing of for-pay editions of OSS apps. Do we sic the open source cops on them? I'd like to think not.
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iPhone 2.0 Outrage Tearing Up Apple Discussion Boards
On the heels of the MobileMe meltdown, it's now appearing that Apple's iPhone 2.0 software update is meeting with, er, more support issues than one would have expected. In fact, the outcry on Apple's own discussion boards has reached a crescendo, with numerous unhappy iPhone customers complaining that they're getting no comfort from Cupertino. Here's what they're saying.
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Apple And Security: Long Road Still Ahead
Apple's trying to pick up its game with iPhone security, recently listing an iPhone Security Engineer position. Assuming the job is really about helping users -- and not just thwarting pesky unlockers -- it's a good move, but some corporate inertia might need to be overcome before security is a true priority. Just take a look at the official iPhone Enterprise Deployment tools.
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Looking At Open Source CMS Market Share
Lots of factors go into choosing an open source content management system: ease-of-use, compatibility with existing systems, support options, user communities, functionality. And while you don't want the selection process to turn into a popularity contest, knowing what systems are building critical mass and increasing (or decreasing) in popularity can be helpful.
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MWg Zinc II Reviewed, Unlocked WM6.1 For $749?
MGw is a brand new device company that first introduced its new handset, the Zinc II, at the Mobius 2008 event a while back. It's a SIM-unlocked Windows Mobile Professional 6.1 device that's now available in the U.S. for a staggering $749.95.
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Memo To Ballmer: Microsoft Doesn't Control Its Own Destiny
Last week, a Steve Ballmer memo leaked out. The main point of the memo was to announce the departure of platforms and services chief Kevin Johnson. However, other points in the memo caught my attention.
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Michael Dell Revives Smartphone Rumor
In a recent interview, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell alluded that the company is exploring the idea of crafting its own smartphone. While he didn't provide any specific details, the comments revive one of the oldest rumors in the technology blogosphere.
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Cuil Runs Too Hot On Opening Day
The creators of Cuil have garnered a good bit of buzz today with their new search engine that sifts through 120 billion Web pages, reportedly three times the number Google searches. Now if only the Cuil folks can find a way to ensure that their search engine performs while under pressure.
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Modeling IT Attacks
Every day IT managers have to contend with an ever-changing risk environment. That’s where good risk modeling can help.
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Beating Up Storage Vendors
An analyst firm recently published a report suggesting that the No. 1 priority in reducing IT costs was to beat up your storage vendor for lower costs. I would like to give a dissenting opinion.
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OSCON, Pt. 5.0: Sam Ramji's Wonderful, Terrible Job
There's a part of me that thinks Sam Ramji, director of Microsoft's Open Source Lab, has the worst imaginable job at Microsoft. But he doesn't see it that way: Where other people would see such a position as being crushed between two wholly opposed forces (Microsoft and open source), Sam sees it as a way to build a bridge that didn't exist before -- and maybe to transform Microsoft all the more from within.
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BlackBerry Bold Gets A Black Eye, Delayed Again
Research In Motion's next-generation BlackBerry, the Bold, was announced in May and set for a July launch on AT&T's network. Then it was pushed to August. Now it appears that the new smartphone won't be available until September.
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Is Cuil Too Cool For School, Or Does It Still Need To Learn Some Lessons From Google?
This morning a band of ex-Google employees launched a competitive search offering called Cuil (pronounced cool). Cuil has indexed about 120 billion Web pages, which is approximately one-eighth of Google's claimed 1 trillion indexed pages. Just how useful is Cuil?
Continue reading "Is Cuil Too Cool For School, Or Does It Still Need To Learn Some Lessons From Google?..."
Apple Mans Up To MobileMe Mess
Will MobileMe mail users be mollified by Apple's just-updated status page, which gives a progress report on how the Mac maker is recovering from the meltdown? Mmmm. Judging by the comments I received in response to my post last week, What's Behind Apple's MobileMe Meltdown, I wouldn't bet the iPod Touch on it.
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Will IT Win A Medal?
The 2008 Summer Olympics, set to begin in Beijing on Aug. 8, is being billed as the "High-Tech Olympics." That's one of the three main themes set by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG), along with the "Green Olympics" and the "People's Olympics."
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Mobile Set To Revitalize Local Newspaper Business?
It's no secret the local newspaper industry is failing, with readers dropping print versions for a more digital means of staying up to date with local news. Among efforts to revive the dying industry is an initiative on behalf of Verve Wireless to pump local news through mobile devices to provide a new medium for local outlets to boost their readership and subsequent ad revenue.
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Google Index Reaches 1 Trillion URLs
Three years after Google declared that its index was three times larger than any other search engine and then declined to cite a specific number to support that claim, it was widely believed that Google had tired of index one-upmanship and that it would no longer be measuring its index.
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Open Text Rounds Out Offerings With Strategic Acquisitions, Partnerships
Open Text has had a busy couple of months, with certifications, partnerships, and a couple of acquisitions to round out its already robust enterprise content management (ECM) product offerings. These will serve to extend their reach internationally, as well as bolstering the functionality of its flagship ECM Suite.
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AT&T Paranoid About Xohm/Clearwire Merger, Cries To FCC
It may have been out of the headlines the last few weeks, but out of sight does not mean out of mind for AT&T when it comes to the merger between Sprint's Xohm WiMax service and Clearwire. It recently filed a petition with the FCC trying to block the merger in what would be a serious competitive threat to its own 3G network.
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The View From Google Knol
Google’s answer to the Wikipedia encyclopedia, Google Knol (short for Knowledge), launched earlier this week to some fanfare, at least from cash-strapped authors and other subject-matter experts.
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Windows Memory Has Physical, Design, and Marketing Limitations
Mark Russinovich is one of Microsoft's best technical people, and he shows that every time he makes a blog post. This week he has a great post about the maximum supported memory in different versions of Windows. I thought I knew this story pretty well by now, but learned several new things about the limits--and the interesting reasons behind them.
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OSCON, Pt. 4.2: openSUSE's Eleventh Hour (And Twelfth, And Thirteenth...)
Aside from having one of the niftier names in the industry, Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier has a pretty nifty job, too: He's the openSUSE Community Manager at Novell, where he oversees the folks that help make what will ultimately turn into the next version of SUSE Linux Enterprise. I grabbed a few minutes of his time to follow up on things I'd talked to him about back at the Red Hat Summit.
Continue reading "OSCON, Pt. 4.2: openSUSE's Eleventh Hour (And Twelfth, And Thirteenth...)..."
Memo To Forrester: Vista Is Not The Problem
Everyone's atwitter (not that Twitter) about the new "enterprise trends" report from Forrester Research, which stuck the shiv in Microsoft's virtual back by comparing Vista to "new Coke." Wrong; Vista is actually like Sprite -- it's a decent alternative to Windows XP, though not to everyone's taste.
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OSCON Pt. 4.1: SourceForge's CCA Awards & Ross Turk: Everyone's A Winner
Even if two of my pet projects didn't garner any awards in the SourceForge.Net 2008 Community Choice Awards, it was still a thrill to hang out at Portland, Ore.'s superstylish Jupiter Hotel and see everyone from one of Microsoft's open source guys, Sam Ramji, to SourceForge community manager Ross Turk himself take the stage.
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Gmail Adds Easy Email Encryption
E-mail can be a major security headache. That's why corporations take pains to ensure that their sensitive e-mails are protected. Sometimes that means using encryption. Gmail users always get encryption protection when signing in, but now it's easier to encrypt messages and everything else, too.
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Vibrations Part II
In my last entry we opened up a can of worms around drive vibration, discussing what it is and how it occurs. Vibration exists, but why should you, the IT professional, care? This stuff is all on RAID 5, right? Why do you care if a drive fails?
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Revisiting Click-to-Call
If you sit through enough unified communications marketing presentations, sooner rather than later, you'll hear someone confidently assert that "UC is more than just click to call." But what if click to call is really enough for you?
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Apple Seeds iPhone Firmware 2.1 To Developers, Includes Better GPS Support (And Hopefully Bug Fixes)
It appears that iPhone application developers have been given access to a new version of the firmware for the Apple device. Among the changes readily found in the system software is a new Core location feature, which could power turn-by-turn directions. But what about eradicating all those nasty bugs?
Continue reading "Apple Seeds iPhone Firmware 2.1 To Developers, Includes Better GPS Support (And Hopefully Bug Fixes)..."
iPhone For The Rich, Android For The Rest Of Us?
ReadWriteWeb outlined an interesting interview with Nicolas Gramlich, founder of AndDev.org, an Android development community, who stated a rather controversial sentence: "Android is for the masses, iPhone is for the rich." Whether you believe the validity of Mr. Gramlich's statement or not, it's hard to deny the facts that help support his view.
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Content Migrations: Not For The Faint Of Heart
A number of bloggers in the content management community have been buzzing about why Oracle recently migrated its internal and external blogs to Movable Type instead of one of its own tools. It's a fair question, but the migration is understandable, as Movable Type is a solid platform, and well-suited to the type of work they are doing. But I'm interested in a more pragmatic question: How did Oracle manage to migrate all of that content?
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Disclosure Isn't Working
After a decade of writing about IT security, I don't know how anyone would think this current system of disclose and patch is working. It's not.
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Zune Phone Rumors Heat Up Again
That Zune tattoo guy may want to want to reconsider getting rid of the logo, as, once again, the rumor mills have Microsoft working on a Zune phone.
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Beyond Server Farms In The Sky
In a previous entry, I wrote about how weeks of outages had forced Twitter, the popular microblogging site, to scale back on service features in an effort to keep its servers from going down.
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You Think You Have Problems?
Despite cuts to both capital and operating budgets, the CIO of Oakland County, Mich., is bullish on the prospects of keeping his IT group efficient and serving his customers effectively.
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OSCON Pt. 3.2: OpenOffice.Org's 'Meaningless' Community Manager
Right after my chat with Zack of MySQL, I sat down with Louis Suarez-Potts, the community manager for OpenOffice.org -- a project that's probably every bit as important to Sun as MySQL, if not more so. Our conversation rambled a bit (he's a Philip K. Dick fan, same as me), but I was able to touch on the most important things on my mind -- and the first thing I learned was that Louis's job description is, in his words, "meaningless." Meaningless, but far from pointless!
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Will In-Flight Web Access Save The Airline Industry?
This will almost certainly go down as the worst year in the history of the U.S. airline industry. Buffeted by high fuel costs, the airlines are canceling flights -- and losing money -- in record numbers. But there's a glimmer of hope in providing in-flight Web access to passengers.
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Are Lock-Picking Demos On YouTube A Bad Idea?
Amateur lock hackers who share their techniques may be improving security -- or endangering your life and property.
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Verizon Wireless Kills Off The Palm Treo 755p
Well, that was a short-lived affair. Verizon Wireless has announced it is phasing out the Palm Treo 755p. Verizon only began selling the 755p several months ago, and apparently now favors the younger, hipper Centro to serve as its sole offering running the Palm platform. I can just barely make out "Taps" in the distance.
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Mobile Social Networking A Big Fat Failure So Far?
Despite the online popularity of Web sites such as MySpace and Facebook, a recent study shows that 93% of mobile users fail to access their social networking sites from their mobile phones. I fall into the small percentage of people who use their mobile phones for social networking pretty much every day. Why is such a small minority networking from their phones?
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OSCON, Pt. 3.1: MySQL's Day In The Sun
On Wednesday I sat down at OSCON with a slew of people from Sun Microsystems to talk about key parts of their empire, both new and old. First up was Zack Urlocker of MySQL (whom I'd observed at the Monday Participate 08 panel), one of the newest additions to the Sun galaxy, and an acquisition that's caused a great deal of worry amongst existing MySQL users.
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Google Hosts More Malware Than Anyone Else
Security firm Sophos has been poking around the Internet on the hunt for malware and found out that Google's Blogger service is the world's No. 1 repository for the evil code. Some 2% of all malware can be found on Google's servers. Google, time to clean house.
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Failed Startup Recounts Its Mistakes
Angel investor Roger Ehrenberg has provided a frank assessment of what went wrong at Monitor110, a Web-based information service for hedge fund traders that closed down a few days ago. Many startups fail, but few are this candid about their mistakes.
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3G iPhone Suffering From Network Woes
Apple forums pages are full of complaints from users who are having network problems with their 3G iPhones. They are not alone. My 3G iPhone rarely is able to connect to AT&T's 3G network, and instead of switching back to EDGE, will give me a "No Service" indicator, rendering the phone useless. Apple, AT&T, what's going on here?
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iPhone Sets The Stage For Google's Mobile Ad Business
The iPhone has set the standard for future mobile Web browsing, and it's exactly what Google has been waiting for; an opportunity to extend its lucrative full-Web advertising business into the realm of mobile.
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DAT/DDS The Tape Format That Will Not Die
After an absence of five or six years, and two generations, DDS trademark owner Sony is rejoining HP in supporting the seventh generation of DDS/DAT drives, DAT320, targeted at the SMB market. DAT320, like HP's DAT160s, abandons the Digital Auto Tape cartridge, and its 4-mm-wide tape, using 8-mm tape in a two reel cartridge instead.
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DNS Poisoning Vulnerability: If You Haven't Yet Patched, It May Be Too Late
If you've ignored the urge to patch Dan Kaminsky's DNS cache poisoning flaw, you could be on the verge of big trouble: Exploit code has just been published in a popular penetration testing tool.
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Documentum ECM Suite 6.5 Delivers Solid Web 2.0 Features
It's good news all around from EMC this week, with the one-two punch of strong second quarter earnings and the release of the feature-packed Documentum Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Suite Version 6.5.
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Google + Digg?
Google is about to acquire Digg, or so says Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.
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ZipClip Makes It Easy To Bring Web Content To Phones
Transferring content to your mobile phone can be a pain sometimes, but a new application is hoping to change that. ZipClip is a handy little free app that can get content from the Web to your phone.
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OSCON, Pt. 2.3: Jim Zemlin's Outlook Is Cloudy (In A Good Way)
Wednesday morning at OSCON I sat down with Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation, who I'd also checked out at the mobile Linux panel on Monday and had sat down with at the Red Hat Summit earlier this year. He's a terrifically engaging talker, and regaled me with tidbits about his current Linux-oriented fascinations: cloud computing and the mobile Linux market.
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How Often Do You Meet With The CEO?
Less often than last year, report many CIOs. Is that a good thing or a bad thing in terms of how seriously IT is taken as a business partner?
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EMC Pursues SharePoint And Web 2.0
The newest Documentum platform emphasizes collaboration, and also offers new tools to help manage information compliance.
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Good, Good, Good…Good Vibrations
Its summertime, time for a little Beach Boys? No, Good Vibrations is the beginning of a series of entries that I will be posting on increasing physical hard drive unit life. In recent briefings, manufacturers like Copan Systems and Xiotech have been raising the issue on the impact of drive vibration. While I was aware of drive vibration, it is not discussed much, so I decided to take a deeper dive.
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At Comic-Con, No Tintin Mania
Today is the first day of Comic-Con, the huge San Diego geekfest that celebrates superheroes, starship troopers, and the fanboys who love them. And while this is not a golden age for comics themselves, never has the comics world had more to celebrate, commercially.
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Early Review Of The Unreleased BlackBerry KickStart Appears
Since the clamshell KickStart from Research In Motion isn't ready for prime time yet, I think it's a bit premature to give it such an extended review, but the addicts at CrackBerry.com disagree. They've given the unreleased phone a thorough look-see. What do the editors over there think?
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Google's Knol Finally Goes Public. A Wikipedia Killer?
Anyone remember this? Google first announced Knol, a user-generated, online encyclopedia, back in December 2007. It's been in hibernation since then, as it spooled up its design, added content, and otherwise coalesced. Well, today it finally went live, albeit with only several hundred articles. Can it really take on Wikipedia?
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Valuable H-1B Workers Alberta-Bound As Congress Fiddles
Lawmakers in the Canadian province of Alberta are cashing in on the United States' failure to enact a rational immigration policy for skilled workers -- they're recruiting H-1B visa holders whose permits are about to expire.
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OSCON, Pt. 2.2: Participate 08 (Sponsored By ... Microsoft?)
Let's rewind a bit. My Monday afternoon at OSCON 2008 was taken up by "Participate 08," a Microsoft-sponsored discussion panel chaired by a whole panoply of folks -- including, yes, an open source liaison from Microsoft. The whole thing was neither a "corporate apologia" (as one wag put it from the audience) nor a pile-on where Microsoft got the worst of it. Their approach was only one of a diversity of perspectives, and sometimes not even the most eyebrow-raising.
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Google Maps Wants To Help You Walk From Point A To Point B
People who are walking around cities often need point-to-point directions just as desperately as those in cars. Google figured this out, and has added walking directions to its Maps service. After a few test runs, I can say with confidence that it does a pretty good job, at least in NYC.
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Lost Your Beloved BlackBerry Or Smartphone? No Worries
So you've lost probably the most important device in your repertoire: your beloved cell phone. What to do now? If you've signed up with YouGetItBack, you're one step closer to making sure your personal information is safe, and if you're really lucky, one step closer to getting it back unharmed.
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What's Behind Apple's MobileMe Meltdown
Whenever I see Apple stumble, which admittedly isn't often, I stop and wonder why. And then I remember it's because the same invariant laws of computing, which apply to us all, also pertain to the Mac maker. With MobileMe, and the severe outage which accompanied its attempted launch last Friday, we see that no company can, er, mess with the cloud. Here's what I think really happened.
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Google's Patents At Risk?
A provocatively titled post at the Patently-O blog, The Death of Google's Patents, by John F. Duffy, suggests that the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office's narrowing view of patentable innovation may invalidate some of Google's patents, not to mention patents held by IBM, Microsoft, and other companies with software patents.
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Virgin Mobile Axes Stripping Campaign
So, the MVNO Virgin Mobile wanted a viral way to promote its phones while also donating clothing to nonprofits that clothe homeless teens. Sounds like a noble goal, and nothing could go wrong, right? Well, it can get sticky if you involve stripping.
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