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The InformationWeek February 2009 Archive « January 2009 | Main | March 2009 » |
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Do You Backup Your Blog?
Yesterday I reported on an apparent hacker attack on the iMedia Connection site. It appears the site must have been hit hard as it is down over 48 hours. What are you doing to make sure your blog is backed up in the case of a hacker attack or server outage?
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Death Of Local Newspapers Spells Trouble
The Rocky Mountain News is dead, and the San Francisco Chronicle is on life support. The Detroit Free Press, which just won the George Polk Award and Worth Bingham Prize for investigative reporting that led to the perjury conviction of a popular mayor, is reducing home delivery to three days a week. Community newspapers are dying, and online news media isn't filling the void. It's a bad situation.
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CIOs And The Art Of IT Project Triage
Global CIO guest columnist Howard Anderson has chimed in with a classic piece of strategic advice for CIOs on surviving these brutal times via artful negotiation of political minefields. Howard counsels CIOs on how to deal with suits seeking "shared pain," Sacred Cows, Godfathers, and Mahogany Row, and says to consider your pool of projects "one large Dungeons & Dragons game."
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Content Management Conference Season Is Upon Us
Late winter and spring seem like prime time for content management conferences. If you were so inclined, you could practically make back-to-back reservations so that you're out of the office from March through June. Here's a quick look at a few of the conferences and events coming up for the first half of 2009. Ladies and gentlemen, start your frequent flyer miles!
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The Mobile Roundup
While there wasn't a massive industry trade show this week, there was some major news. We saw Nokia hint that it might make a laptop, Microsoft confirmed that it wouldn't build its own smartphone, and white hats offered $10,000 to crack the iPhone 3G. But a few stories did slip through the cracks, and I'll walk you through them after the jump.
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Interop Insider (MP3): Virtualization, Cloud, Green IT, & Security Are Major Themes At Upcoming Interop
I've decided to start publishing a new series of podcasts that I'm calling Interop Insider. After all, in addition to publishing InformationWeek, TechWeb also is the producer of some great events like Interop. So, given that us InformationWeekers can get an inside track on what's happening with our sister events, why not jump on that track early and develop an audio series that can be heard over time, or piled in its entirety into your iPod for en-route (to Vegas) listening? My first guest for this episode? Interop head honcho Lenny Heymann.
Continue reading "Interop Insider (MP3): Virtualization, Cloud, Green IT, & Security Are Major Themes At Upcoming Interop..."
The Data Center Hot/Cold Aisle Containment Debate
Optimizing air flow in your data center has several key benefits, including reductions in energy cost and carbon footprint. Most server equipment manufactured today is designed to draw in air through the front and exhaust it out the rear. This allows equipment racks to be arranged to create hot aisles and cold aisles. This 'hot/cold aisle containment' approach positions racks so that rows of racks face each other, with the front of each opposing row of racks drawing cold air from the same aisle (the cold aisle). Hot/cold aisle containment systems often use makeshift design solutions like vinyl plastic sheeting used in meat lockers to prevent the mixing of hot and cold air and there is some debate at the moment about whether it is better to contain the hot or cold air.
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A Cloud User Switches Clouds
Less than two weeks after platform-as-a-service vendor Coghead disclosed that it's going out of business, competitor Caspio has migrated one of Coghead's abandoned customers to its platform.
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Oracle's Social Networking Plans?
There has been some buzz about Oracle working on a new social networking and blogging platform called Social Suite. It's true, but only sort of.
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The Beat Of The TomTom, Pt. 2
Voices from all sides are rising to further discussion of Microsoft vs. TomTom, with Linux and open source possibly caught in-between. It's not looking like it'll be a case of proxy war against FOSS, though: that would be political suicide for Microsoft, and a slow death by a thousand cuts. Here's the latest.
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Salesforce CEO Benioff Claims Huge Wins Over Oracle
UPDATE: Bob Evans has just posted a new column about Salesforce and Benioff's challenges and opportunities in squaring off against Oracle, Microsoft and SAP.
Two months after Oracle CEO Larry Ellison told financial analysts his company was whipping Salesforce in head-to-head competition for cloud deals, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff hit back this week by releasing a list of customers his company has taken from Oracle as enterprise customers are, in his words, "replacing those stagnant legacy technology costs." Is this getting personal?
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Carbon Disclosure In Discrete Measures
The Carbon Disclosure Project's first global supply chain report, due on March 5, should be an eye-opener –- not only for what it contains but for what it lacks. Acer, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM are among the IT companies that joined the CDP Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration and will be represented in the report.
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Should Microsoft Build Its Own Phone?
Steve Ballmer recently said that Microsoft is not interested in building and selling its own phone. This was the same speech where he announced Windows Mobile 7 would be out in 2010. Instead, Microsoft would focus on the operating system and working with manufacturers to get products built. Should Microsoft be so rigid in this stance?
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FCC Approves CDMA Version Of BlackBerry Pearl Flip
If you're a Verizon Wireless or Sprint customer and have longed for the chance to get your hands on the BlackBerry Pearl Flip, there's some good news. The FCC has recently given the green light to a CDMA variant of the Pearl Flip.
Continue reading "FCC Approves CDMA Version Of BlackBerry Pearl Flip..."
IT Search Engine Adds Netflow
Startup Paglo, which offers SaaS-based IT management based on search, now collects Netflow data to help customers monitor bandwidth usage by users, applications and protocols.
Continue reading "IT Search Engine Adds Netflow..."
Too Hot To Handle: BlackBerry Bold Yanked From Store Shelves In Japan
The poor BlackBerry Bold. This device has not had an easy life. The latest chapter in the Bold's saga comes from Japan, where is has been pulled from store shelves by NTT DoCoMo due to overheating issues.
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Obama's IT Protectionism Rattles Indian IT Industry
President Obama's plan to penalize U.S. companies that use outsourcers from India and other countries will hurt the U.S. economy, the Indian economy, and the global economy, according to officials from the Indian technology industry. While it's not exactly a shocker to hear India's $63 billion IT and BPO market express such reactions, they underscore the central issue of just how damaging such a policy would be.
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Want An Obama Coin? Operators Are Standing By
Have you been tempted by a historic Obama coin or wished you could hear those bingo numbers better? Have you wondered whether operators are really standing by? It turns out they are.
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Users Want One Phone For Personal And Business
Now that cell phones have morphed into mini-computing devices, people are putting a lot more in them than just a few cell phone numbers. Now they have hundreds if not thousands of contacts, all of our appointments, tasks, a sizable chunk of our music library, pictures and maybe even a few DVDs that have been ripped to watch during a flight. Trying to keep a personal and work phone up to date with critical information has just about become impossible, leaving many to just go for a single device for both business and home usage.
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Parasoft CEO Sees Possibility Of Huge IT Productivity Gains
There's a huge opportunity to improve productivity inside IT, which can then be leveraged into huge leaps in productivity at every level of your enterprise, an opinionated Adam Kolawa recently told InformationWeek in an exclusive interview. CEO of software tools vendor Parasoft, Kolawa holds a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Caltech and has written three books on software development, including his most recent one, The Next Leap In Productivity (Wiley, 2009), which he says is intended to provide nongeeks with a road map about how IT works and how IT needs to be managed.
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Unified Communications: Don't Forget The Glitz
Yes, we're in a recession, so now more than ever hard cash savings are the key reasons to adopt a unified communications strategy, and key to getting budget for it. Just don't forget that the gee-whiz features matter, too.
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Microsoft Sues TomTom; Orange Alert For Linux Backers
Microsoft has filed suit against a software maker whose GPS navigation system uses Linux. Microsoft claims TomTom infringes eight of its patents. Linux backers are keeping a wary eye on the case, but so far consider this to be a dispute over GPS mapping software.
Continue reading "Microsoft Sues TomTom; Orange Alert For Linux Backers..."
25 Random Things About... bMighty.com!
You know that annoying Facebook meme going around where people you hardly know shared way more than you ever wanted to learn about them? And you know how it's finally died down and you thought you were safe? Well, think again: here are 25 Random Things About bMighty.com, the InformationWeek Business Technology Network's site for small and midsize busineses.
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Google Shortchanges Android Developers
Developers who paid $400 for the fully unlocked Android Dev 1 are being prevented from buying and downloading premium applications from the Android Market.
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NASA's Bad Week: A Crash; Accusations Of Fraud
On Tuesday, a failed NASA launch sent a satellite deep into the frigid sea near Antarctica. On Wednesday, the FBI searched the offices of a University of Florida professor accused of swindling the space agency out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. [Update: on Friday, the White House released its budget proposal, which calls for the space shuttle to be retired.] Luckily for NASA, the week's nearly over.
Continue reading "NASA's Bad Week: A Crash; Accusations Of Fraud..."
UC Integration, ROI, And Direction
I've been reviewing slides for VoiceCon Orlando, which is always intense. One that's just loaded with great information is the Nemertes Research tutorial on business cases for IP telephony and UC.
Continue reading "UC Integration, ROI, And Direction..."
Opera Brings Gears Support To Mobile Browser
Google Gears is a great tool to have if you need to access certain Google or other Web services and there's no Internet connection available. Opera has extended the ability to use Gears to its Opera Mobile 9.5 browser, bringing new potential to the offline powers of mobile phones.
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Obama Stresses Importance Of Helping Small Businesses
U.S. President Barack Obama shone the spotlight on small businesses Tuesday when he addressed Congress.
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Does Microsoft's TomTom Beating Bode Ill For Open Source?
Open source folks are nervous about a Microsoft lawsuit against in-car GPS maker TomTom, allegedly because of possible implications for Linux.
Continue reading "Does Microsoft's TomTom Beating Bode Ill For Open Source?..."
Proving The ROI
With budgets and IT staff stretched to thinner levels than ever, change is going to come slowly this year and proving the ROI of each project is going to be critical not only to enable the approval of the next project, but possibly to keep your job.
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Change In The Wind You Can Believe In
PricewaterhouseCoopers says the winds of change that have blown a few clean-tech IPOs off course aren't strong enough to stop the renewable energy market from moving ahead. That includes wind power. Certainly, Intel, Cisco, Google, and other high-tech companies agree and continue to invest in wind and other renewables. There is, however, still that pesky question of a new, or revitalized, electrical grid.
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Shareholders Criticize Apple Over Steve Jobs' Health Disclosures
Apple shareholders are taking the company to task over how it handled disclosures about Steve Jobs's health, saying the company needs to be more forthcoming about the CEO's condition. But Apple directors say they've done nothing wrong -- and that nothing has changed since Jobs announced last month that he was withdrawing from day-to-day operations, and the ailing CEO plans a June return.
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Despite Outage, Google Makes More Tweaks To Gmail
Even though Gmail crashed for several hours earlier this week, Google is moving forward with its continual roll out of new features for its e-mail product. This week, Gmail adds the ability to change the tab label for Gmail, as well as add multiple attachments at once.
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Obama's IT Protectionism: Just What Are 'Our Jobs,' Anyway?
"We will restore a sense of fairness and balance to our tax code by finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas," President Obama said last night. That begs the central question: In our massively interdependent business world where more and more products are designed, sourced, built, sold and serviced everywhere, how exactly do we define "our jobs"?
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Give Up Technology For Lent?
Now that the Mardi Gras parties are over, Catholics (and others) are looking at 40 days of Lent, with self-denial replacing wild exuberance. Well, here's a modest proposal: why not give up some seductive technologies that may waste more time than they save? bMighty.com came up with 8 likely candidates.
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Softwear By Microsoft: What A Puzzle
While doing some browsing a few days ago, I stumbled into a bizarre Microsoft site named Softwear By Microsoft. Really, I had to check the domain name several times to make sure this wasn't some sort of phishing site or parody. But no, it's real.
Continue reading "Softwear By Microsoft: What A Puzzle..."
Nokia Mulling Laptop Business
Nokia's CEO recently said that the company is thinking about a future in laptops. Can the Finnish maker of cell phones successfully make the leap from cell phones and Internet tablets to full-featured laptops?
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Android Users Can Look Rich, Too
Remember that $1,000 iPhone App "I Am Rich?" The app showed a glowing red jewel, and ... well, that's about it. The point was that you could afford it and show it off. Now Android users can have that same kind of fun, and you'll also be able to get a recession-friendly discount as well.
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Better Storage Practices To Improve Backup
Backup is the thorn in the side of many otherwise smoothly running IT operations. There is probably little coincidence that the newest hire is almost always assigned the backup process or the ramification for missing the assignments meeting. The truth is that backup should be simple -- all you're doing is copying data to tape. The problem in general has nothing to do with the backup process, it has more to do with how primary storage is managed and optimized.
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Podcast With Google's Pete Koomen On New Business Model For App Engine
When it comes to running custom apps in the cloud, there are basically two architectures. One involves an IaaS (Intel-as-a-Service) provider like Amazon with its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) where you load your own software stack onto Amazon's pay-as-you-go bare metal (virtual as it may be). The other is to develop your code to run on one of the platforms as a service (PaaS). One such PaaS is Salesforce.com's Force.com. Another is Google's App Engine, which had limitations on its usage because it was free. In this interview, App Engine Product Manager Pete Koomen discusses the business model for App Engine that Google announced yesterday.
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Britain Endorses ODF; Why Not The U.S.?
The Open Document Format was adopted today by the British government as a basis for making future software purchases based on open standards. In general, Britain is requiring government agencies to use as much software based on standards as possible, based on its 10-point program to encourage open standards and open source. If Britain can do it, why can't we?
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Stimulus Package Will Spur New Tech Jobs
Compared with other job sectors, the IT labor force has been holding up relatively well during the recession. And now there's an extra boost -- the government's economic stimulus programs should fuel demand for new tech talent in several key areas.
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Honda Logistics Adds SaaS Link To Supply Chain
This success story highlights one of the reasons why CIOs in this rotten economy can't close their eyes to forward-looking innovation: a Honda warehousing unit says that a SaaS application from a small vendor called SmartTurn has exceeded all of its expectations and is leading to "a whole new change in how this type of business is done."
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Survey: Fear Slows Cloud Computing Adoption
A survey of 500 C-level executives and IT managers yields some interesting attitudes toward cloud computing. The bottom line is that while many business and technology managers see potential value in the cloud, fears over security and control are holding them back.
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Video: Straight Off The UPS Truck, A New Amazon Kindle 2 Is Unboxed
In this, my first "unboxing" video on InformationWeek, you'll see me unpackage an Amazon Kindle 2 straight off the UPS truck. Amazon had planned to ship the first round of Kindle 2's on Feb. 24. But they shipped a day early and I received my review unit yesterday. Here's a video from carton to Kindle 2.
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Lawmakers Twitter During Obama Address
Lawmakers listened to President Obama's not-the-State-of-the-Union address with their heads bowed -- not in respect or in prayer, but so they could better share their observations and comments with followers on Twitter. About a dozen federal legislators Twittered before, after, or during the speech, according to a roundup at the Huffington Post.
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Mobile Search And Web Use Climbing Rapidly
Two reports came out today that detail how quickly users are adopting the mobile Web and the tools that it offers. According to ABI Research, mobile search grew by 14% from 2007 to 2008, and Opera says that it saw double-digit gains in the use of its mobile Web browser between December and January.
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PCI And Schrodinger's Cat
The inherent paradox of the Payment Card Industry's compliance program to protect credit card data makes PCI a futile exercise. Let's try something else.
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Decoding Steve: Microsoft's Ballmer Not Hard To Read
There's a scene in The Godfather II when Michael Corleone explains to his brother Fredo why Hyman Roth wants to kill him: "He acts like I'm his son, his successor, but he thinks he's gonna live forever. He wants me out."
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Integration Problem Between Apple's QuickTime And iSight Cameras Remains Unsolved
One reason Apple's Macs have consistently produced a pristine experience -- particularly when multiple Apple technologies are involved -- has to do with the degree to which Apple controls both the hardware and the software. It's also one of the reasons that the Mac is such a great multimedia workhorse. But judging by a great many posts across the Web and our experience here at InformationWeek, Apple has a serious problem with two technologies that should work flawlessly together: the iSight cameras that are built into Apple's MacBooks and QuickTime Pro's ability to whip out great, ad-hoc movies using that camera.
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Marvell's PC In A Plug
It's $49, fits in a space the size of a "wall-wart" power converter, uses a meager five watts of power, and could easily replace any number of standalone machines in a small office or home environment. And I want one.
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Did Steve Ballmer Just Cut The Legs Off Windows Mobile 6.5?
Speaking yesterday, Steve Ballmer revealed that Microsoft will release Windows Mobile 7 in the year 2010. With Windows Mobile 6.5 devices not hitting the market until the end of 2009, why would anyone bother upgrading to WinMo 6.5, when WinMo 7 is right around the corner?
Continue reading "Did Steve Ballmer Just Cut The Legs Off Windows Mobile 6.5?..."
Never Let A Good Crisis Go To Waste
At InformationWeek Analytics, we work with senior technology pros involved in government IT at many levels, from local (Jonathan Feldman, author of our latest governance report) to federal (Michael Biddick, who wrote our report on advanced virtualization management).
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Gmail Outage Highlights Why It's More Enterprise-Ready Than It Has Ever Been
Barely one month has passed since the folks at Google announced that users of Gmail would be able to access their in-boxes even though the Gmail servers themselves were inaccessible. For example, if (a) you have no Internet connectivity or (b) the Gmail service goes down. It was only a matter of time before a Gmail failure put the newly announced offline mode to the test. Although most of us here in the U.S. didn't notice, that test came yesterday, just as Europe's business cycle was getting under way.
Continue reading "Gmail Outage Highlights Why It's More Enterprise-Ready Than It Has Ever Been..."
Microsoft Confirms Windows Mobile 7 Release In 2010
Just a week after Windows Mobile 6.5 was announced at Mobile World Congress, Steve Ballmer spoke at a strategic update meeting and said that Windows Mobile 7 was coming in 2010.
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Microsoft Offers Rare Look At Its Global Oil-Industry Plan
Who knew Microsoft is pushing oil field-exploration and related energy initiatives in more than 70 countries? That it's helping Chevron deploy SOA and BI projects in the North Sea to extract more oil? And that Microsoft calls energy security the "über-challenge"? Here's a unique look inside this little-known side of Microsoft via video, text, and -– of course -- PowerPoint.
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Asbru's Latest Web CMS Delivers Impressive Features, Value
Asbru may not snare as many headlines as some other content management systems, but over the last decade it has built up an impressive client base, and has continuously made impressive enhancements to its CMS. The release earlier this month of Asbru Web Content Management v7.0 is no exception and I don't think it's hyperbole to say that it's their strongest release to date.
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Google Searches Measure Economic Misery
Google searches provide insight into the spread of the flu, so it's perhaps no surprise that they also reveal something about our ailing economy.
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Memo To Google: I Know 600 Students Who Depend On Your Gmail
I couldn't help but take Google's Gmail outage today a bit personally. I'm in the midst of my one, big yearly contribution to my son's school: computerizing the school's heavily paper-based read-a-thon competition, using Gmail as the platform. So I'm asking you please, Google, don't mess up my PTO project. For once I look like a hero rather than the under-involved parent.
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As American As Apple Mac
Apple OS X may have been approved for government sale since 2003, but the company has recently ramped up its pursuit of government customers, according to a source.
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An Apple Netbook Won't Just Be A Notebook For 'Cheapskates'
ZDNet's Adrian Kinglsey-Hughes writes a blog I would have agreed with 100% a few weeks ago, ridiculing the idea of Apple shipping a netbook. A netbook is a machine for the budget market, he argues. Apple makes devices for people willing to spend more to get the best, and isn't going to compromise quality to cut costs. "If I was going to go down that line I'd also want a cheap yacht, a cheap Rolex, and a cheap Ferrari," he argues.
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Google Vs. Symbian: 'My Linux Is More Open Than Your Linux'
It looks like a war of words has broken out between Google and the Symbian Foundation over which mobile platform is truly more open. Is there really a right answer to this debate?
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Strong Federal Role Needed To Break Renewable Energy Grid-Lock
Former Gov. George Pataki delivered perhaps the most powerful assessment of the move to rebuild the national electricity grid yesterday when he called for a greater federal role in the permitting process. This was the same Pataki who had championed deregulation in New York state -- and later defended deregulation after the huge 2003 blackout of the Northeast.
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Internet Child-Protection Bill Raises Too Many Questions
Are you a child molester? I know I'm not. And yet U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Lamar Smith apparently think that there's a pretty good chance we both are. They've introduced bills that would require Internet service providers to keep customer records for two years. The law presents all kinds of creepy potential for abuse, and I don't see any reason to believe that it will be a cost-effective way to reduce the problem of molestation.
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BlackBerry E-Mail On Windows Mobile
RIM announced a BlackBerry on Windows Mobile Service at Mobile World Congress, according to TheStreet.com. If you are tied to BlackBerry e-mail but prefer a device that has a bit more computing power, this solution may work for you.
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DNSSEC: Forgetting The User, Again.
A lot of very smart people are working very hard to make the Internet trustworthy. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has launched a beta Interim Trust Anchor Repository so top-level domain owners can publish DNSSEC material while ICANN works out signing of the root zones. The ITAR is one more step in the road to DNSSEC. But DNSSEC is a technical solution and, like other technical solutions, ultimately misses the point.
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How To Lean Towards Free & Open
People talk a lot about "going open", or leaving proprietary apps of various kinds for open source equivalents. My way of putting it has been to say "leaning open", to emphasize that you don't need to do this by diving into the deep end of the pool and praying you learn how to swim right then and there. In this and future installments I'm going to be talking about that process in detail.
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AT&T Wireless Customer Charged $28,000 To Watch Football Game
Taking your cell phone to other countries can be a recipe for disaster if you don't take the right steps ahead of time. One AT&T customer learned the hard way that data roaming charges are no joke.
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People Don't Kill Trolls, But Gamers Do
The video game industry chalked up another victory recently when a federal appeals court struck down a California law meant to keep violent video games out of the hands of minors. I can't help but think of the NRA.
Continue reading "People Don't Kill Trolls, But Gamers Do..."
Is The Mobile Web For Content Or Commerce?
A company called Buzzwire unveiled yesterday a site that will aggregate user preferences to create a guide to the "best content" on the mobile Web. I'm not so sure it's what people are looking for on their phones.
Continue reading "Is The Mobile Web For Content Or Commerce?..."
Gmail Is Down For Some Users
This morning Google admitted that it is having problems with some of its Gmail servers. It didn't say how many users are affected, but said a fix is on the way. Update: Google says Gmail is now fixed.
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SilverStripe CMS 2.3.0 Builds On A Solid Foundation
This week the SilverStripe team released version 2.3.0 of its open source content management system, which packs in literally hundreds of bug fixes and dozens of enhancements. While I wouldn't consider anything in the latest release to be particularly groundbreaking, the development team is doing a commendable job of adding onto an already solid foundation.
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Is NAC Hot, Or Not?
This is InformationWeek Analytics' fourth year tracking the state of NAC adoption. It's been fascinating to see firsthand the arc of a technology, from media darling to sitting on the sidelines, watching as new starlets like cloud computing grab all the glory. Something like Etta James watching Beyonce belt out "At Last," but without the smack talk.
Continue reading "Is NAC Hot, Or Not?..."
The 9 Types Of Power Problems
Did you know that power issues come in separate flavors, and that you need different kinds of UPS systems to deal with different kinds of power problems?
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Mobile Microfinance: Its Time Has Come (Video)
Very few of us get to see our daily drudgery contribute to something politically, environmentally, or sociologically charged, to a cause with greater implications than the outcome of driving the machinery of Brand X or Company Y; sleepless nights reimagining business processes, building customer portals, renegotiating a key vendor contract, all for company, livelihood, or a write-up in HR's internal newsletter.
Continue reading "Mobile Microfinance: Its Time Has Come (Video)..."
IBM Tops Indian Firms As Leading Outsourcer In India
In the highly fragmented Indian market for IT services, IBM grabbed the biggest market share for the second straight year as Indian CIOs are requiring outsourcing partners to offer end-to-end services and deep domain expertise and are putting less emphasis on low prices.
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Did Google Tip HTC And T-Mobile's Plans For The Magic?
Last week's Mobile World Congress was a disappointment if you were looking for Android news. The one real interesting handset announced was HTC's Magic, which is only headed for Vodafone's European markets -- unless you believe in a slide presented by Google itself.
Continue reading "Did Google Tip HTC And T-Mobile's Plans For The Magic?..."
Health Concerns Rise Again As Steve Jobs Skips Apple Shareholder Meeting
Steve Jobs won't be at this week's Apple annual meeting, the first he's missed since he returned to the company more than 10 years ago, according to reports. Jobs, who was successfully treated for pancreatic cancer in 2004, stepped aside from day-to-day responsibilities for six months starting in January, citing uncontrolled weight loss.
Continue reading "Health Concerns Rise Again As Steve Jobs Skips Apple Shareholder Meeting..."
How To Get Started With Storage-As-A-Service
Pay-as-you-go online storage services are a flexible way to deal with exploding data volume. For 25 cents per month, you can rent a gigabyte of storage from Nirvanix. But is that any way to buy enterprise storage?
Continue reading "How To Get Started With Storage-As-A-Service..."
Do You Need Security Software On Your Mobile Device?
Security programs like firewalls, antivirus, and anti-spyware are just common sense in most PC scenarios, at least for the Windows market. The Mac and Linux platforms are the target of far fewer attacks than their Microsoft-powered brethren. What about your smartphone? Should you worry about being attacked?
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Red Hat Speeds Up Addition Of Hypervisor To Enterprise Linux
Red Hat has moved from being a bolt-it-on virtualization vendor to a build-it-in supplier. It will include the KVM hypervisor in its next release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, earlier than expected. It's doing so because it wants to get competitive in virtualization. And it realizes the time to do so is now.
Continue reading "Red Hat Speeds Up Addition Of Hypervisor To Enterprise Linux..."
Is Fast Booting A Red Herring?
Seems like every open source OS project these days is throwing at least some of its effort behind speeding up boot times. Mark Shuttleworth mentions it in his discussion of Ubuntu 9.10; the Moblin alpha is all about getting up to speed in seconds; and so on. But with suspend/resume and other power conservation measures also standard now, what's the big deal about boot time?
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Will The Perfect Social Media Video Camera Please Stand Up
I've got a bunch of interesting jobs here at TechWeb. Some jobs have titles (currently, I've got three official titles). Others don't. One of my lesser known roles has to do with our video strategy across TechWeb's Web properties and events. I wore a similar hat when I worked for ZDNet and thanks to innovative video cameras like Panasonic's AG-HVX200, we were able to publish nicely produced video without sacrificing too much of the speed of blogging. But now, in an effort to move the ball forward again, I can't find the right camera (requirements below).
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Stolen WinMo 6.5 Phone A Great Case Study For Mobile Security
Last week during Mobile World Congress, a prototype HTC phone with an early build of Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6.5 was lifted from Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo. In response, Microsoft wiped the device remotely. This example proves why mobile security needs to be taken seriously.
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What Better Use For An iPhone But To Drive A Car With It?
This week at the Geneva Motor Show, a Swiss company called Rinspeed will show off a new concept car that can be driven with an iPhone. James Bond, look out.
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Why They Bash Facebook
It looks like it's time for another round of Facebook bashing, courtesy of insecure news editors everywhere. The latest "news" is that Facebook causes cancer and compels us to act upon our baser instincts. Only I would argue that it's some people's baser instincts that create the need to bash it.
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This CIO Does Get Respect -- Maybe Even Too Much?
A logistics and transportation company has just named a new CIO with hands-on industry experience as well as theoretical expertise from the academic world: certainly sounds like a good choice and worthy of that respect thing some CIOs are not getting these days. But in a press release, the new hire's boss says the incoming CIO "has driven hundreds of millions of dollars to the bottom line [for] all of those he has worked with." With the bar set that high, I have to ask: can CIOs get too much respect?
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Vlog: Intel Core i7 Ushering In Era Of Ubiquitous Processing
A confluence of events -- faster processors, 32-nm fab technology, and the ubiquity of computing power -- make this an incredibly exciting time in the chip industry. So I made a video about it. Click through to see my eight minute vlog, where I opine on these trends and also show Intel's new Core i7 processor, the X-25 solid-state drive (SSD) that's taking the PC storage market by storm, and one surprisingly large heat sink.
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Microsoft Wins 'Vista Capable' Round One
If the "Vista Capable" lawsuit can be described as a boxing match, it's clear that Microsoft has won the latest round on points. True, the company failed to win an outright dismissal of the case, but they dodged the possibility of a class-action suit. That's a big win.
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Hungry? Here Are Ten Ways To Order Food Online
Today there are many ways to order food online. Sometimes you want food immediately and other times you are willing to wait a couple of days for the perfect meal to arrive. I'd like to share 10 of my favorite sites to order food online.
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Cloud Experts Miss The Point: Solve A Problem Upfront
At the Cloud Computing Forum, InformationWeek asked a distinguished panel why it was necessary for every hypervisor vendor to launch its own virtual machine runtime format. If we can see the need to move workloads from one cloud to another, a common runtime format would simplify the process. What will it take, I asked, a user revolt?
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Coghead's Collapse: Memo From The Trenches
The demise of platform-as-a-service vendor Coghead is being described as a "debacle" and a "disaster" for the small and midsize companies who were using applications built on Coghead's cloud-based platform. Here's the story from the trenches.
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Mobile Roundup, Mobile World Congress Edition
This was one of the biggest news weeks of the year in the mobile space thanks to the Mobile World Congress trade show. We saw some really cool handsets (Omnia HD is my favorite), nearly everyone jumped on the App Store bandwagon, and Android had a rather disappointing appearance. But some of the news slipped through the cracks, and I'll cover that after the jump.
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How Much Work Should Washington Put Into Social Media?
The General Services Administration has put out a request for a research firm to look into how the public views Facebook, YouTube, and other social media. How much do Americans want the government to communicate with them through social media versus other channels?
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The Case For A U.S. Innovation Officer
A recent Business Week column hits on a theme -- the need for a federal position to champion innovation -- that tech leaders such as Sybase CEO John Chen raise in our own coverage of what the federal CTO's agenda should be.
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Security, Privacy And Compliance In The Cloud
One of the more interesting panel discussions at the IDC Cloud Computing Forum on Feb 18th in San Francisco was about managing the complexities of security, privacy and compliance in the Cloud. The simple answer according to panelists Carolyn Lawson, CIO of California Public Utilities Commission, and Michael Mucha, CISO of Stanford Hospital and Clinics is "it ain’t easy!"
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A Premature Funeral For Analog TV
Premature death observances must be in the air. First, Anne Thomas Manes proclaimed the Jan. 1, 2009, death of Service-Oriented Architecture, "SOA Is Dead; Long Live Services," and followed up with an open invitation to a wake. Earlier this week, I attended a funeral service that featured eulogies from author Bruce Sterling, technology pundit Paul Saffo, and others at the Berkeley Art Museum to mourn the (premature) loss of the analog television Signal.
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Kansas E-Waste Efforts Still Dust In The Wind
Kansas has had a few shining ecomoments, most recently on Jan. 24 when Sedgwick County collected more than 500 tons of e-waste. But any hopes environmentalists have of really cleaning up the state may be no more than dust in the wind.
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Why Cloud At All?
In his recent blog, Bycast CTO David Silk provides some insight on how enterprises minimize the risk associated with adopting cloud storage. At the heart of the matter is why does cloud storage or, for that matter, cloud computing, exist at all?
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Linux, nComputing, And Overheated Classrooms
Educational institutions are consistently cited as one of the best places for open source to take root and flourish. The best way to find out more about how that works is to ask the people right in the trenches, and so this week I spoke with, Scott Hershauer, director of technology for the Greensburg, Ind., Community School District, about the use of Linux and open source in a high school setting. And aside from saving money, they also cooled off the classrooms a bit.
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Is SaaS Cheaper? Depends On How Long You Have It.
Gartner published a report this week on the "five most-common SaaS assumptions." I agree with all of them, but must throw in my own two cents on the first assumption: SaaS is less expensive than on-premises software.
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Should People Care What OS Powers Their Smartphone?
I am sure just about everyone reading this blog knows exactly what operating system their smartphone runs, and more than a few of you know what patches and updates have been applied, either automatically or manually. I suspect few average consumers knows what is driving their smartphone. This is in stark contrast to the desktop, where just about everyone knows what operating system their desktop runs.
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Adobe's Mobile Flash Falls Flat; Let Fingerpointing Begin
Suddenly, somehow, maybe even unintentionally, Adobe's got a flat tire like the ones you gave your friends in grade school. For years it found niches we now take for granted, and insatiable apps to consume its technology with frenzy, and yet, inexplicably, it remained largely unchallenged. It became dominant without being threatening, kind of like a benign vampire novel except it's suddenly being banned in the church; or in this case, on far too many mobile devices.
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The 'Un-Demise' Of Publishing
I've been having interesting conversations about content and content management of late with consultant Russ Edelman, an enterprise content management veteran and recent first-time author. I found his thoughts on the recent O'Reilly Tools of Change Publishing conference worth sharing.
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Wacky White House Critics All Wet About Transparency
The Obama administration is being rightly held to an exacting standard. It promised a new kind of government with transparency as its hallmark, and it's being held to account.
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Lessons From The Demise Of A Cloud Startup
Amid the growing interest in cloud computing, Coghead's collapse provides a reality check. SAP is providing a safety net for Coghead's intellectual property and its employees, but Coghead's customers are left to fend for themselves.
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More Is Less, Or Less Is More?
Verizon Wireless is promoting its new "virtual communications center," which promises to manage all of your day-to-day communications activities, from Internet search and e-mail, to good, old-fashioned telephony. We've seen this concept before, haven't we?
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Insecure Eye Sockets Layer: Defeating SSL
Moxie Marlinspike's presentation New Tricks for Defeating SSL in Practice should be an eye-opening presentation on the fragility of the trust we place secure Web sites. Marlinspike uses some fairly mundane technical tricks coupled with astute observations about human behavior to pull off a difficult task -- seamlessly subverting the indicators of HTTPS Web sites presented to a user and fooling the victim into trusting when they shouldn't.
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Vista SP2 Release Candidate Raises Upgrade Path Questions
The Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista is in the news today, following an Ars Technica story reporting that Microsoft has offered up a release candidate of the update to select testers. This is actually pretty ho-hum news, since the SP2 beta has been around since last October. The more interesting question going forward is, what's the upgrade path to Windows 7 for current Vista users?
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A Content Management Head To Head (To Head)
There's no shortage of people willing to rhapsodize about why their favorite open source content management system is better than everyone else's. So it's sure to be interesting to watch three skilled, dedicated teams trying to prove the superiority of Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress, respectively, in a three-way showdown next month at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival.
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Sorry Mr. President (And Staff): You'll Have To Use A Typewriter For That.
And not an electric one. Today, thanks to yet another political inquiry, the White House disposed of all its technology (computers, smartphones, etc.). And thanks to some Draconian law dating back to 1908 (the same one preventing Congress members from parking their goats on Capitol Hill), President Obama and his team will have to rule the free world without the collaborative agility currently enjoyed by teenagers and terrorists alike. After all, that is how I read reports of clampdowns on everything from Obama's BlackBerry to his staffer's use of Gmail.
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Google Mobile App For Windows Mobile
Google has released yet another application for Windows Mobile this month, following on the heels of its Google Latitude and Google Sync for Mobile releases. Google Mobile App is a search bar for the home screen of your Windows Mobile device that allows you to quickly search the Internet. It also has 11 icons to launch other Google services on your device.
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California's Environmental Budget: One If By Land, None If By Air
It's difficult to see who is winning California's environmental war: the polluters or the polluted. Today, California lawmaker's passed a bi-partisan budget roundly criticized by environmental groups for loosening air pollution regulations. Elsewhere in Sacramento, the state Environmental Protection Agency was holding a symposium on the "greening of electronics."
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Web Traffic For DTV From Older, Poorer Households
Hitwise has done some interesting analysis of Web traffic surrounding the analog to digital television switch.
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How Social Media Changes The Way Citizens Talk To Government
An interesting article in Federal Computer Week looks at how social media are changing the face of public participation in government. Traditional public comment has citizens talking to government, and government (hopefully) listening. But social media involves people talking to each other, with government in the mix participating in the discussion.
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A Cloud Conservative
Vanguard talks about its cautious approach to public cloud services, and the steps it's taking to build an internal cloud.
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Open Source You Can Use, Feb '09 Edition
It's been a bit since I touched on some updates to the the open source goodies I use myself and recommend to others. Here's the haul for February 2009!
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Tim O'Reilly Unplugged: The Kindle 2 And Transforming Industries
Last week, after shooting my video coverage of the launch of Amazon's Kindle 2 in NYC, I sat down with O'Reilly Media founder and CEO Tim O'Reilly, who was producing the Tools of Change For Publishing Conference across town. The book publishing industry is going through a massive, and in some cases very painful, transition. In my podcast interview with O'Reilly (full transcription below), he discusses Amazon's decisions from his perspective as a book publisher, how this transition actually began centuries ago, and where it's going. Is it a case study that your industry can learn from?
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MWC 2009: Yahoo Declares Open War On Google
If you glossed over the news about Yahoo's new mobile application for smartphones earlier this week, I'd invite you to take another look. Yahoo Mobile integrates all its services in one place better than Google does.
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TradeComet.com Files Federal Antitrust Lawsuit Against Google
TradeComet.com, which runs a business-to-business search site, says Google raised its prices for keywords by 10,000% and killed its business. The company filed suit today in New York City, claiming that Google violated antitrust laws by eliminating competition and choice.
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MWC 2009: HTC Sells 80% Of All Windows Mobile Smartphones
Some simple math performed on the numbers given by Microsoft and HTC representatives during a press conference at Mobile World Congress leads to a staggering conclusion: HTC alone is responsible for some 80% of all Windows Mobile sales.
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Report: Apple Buying Flash Chips Like Crazy For The Next iPhone
The buzz around the rumored next-generation iPhone is slowly growing. All reports are pointing to a possible June launch. Now, analysts say that Apple is scooping up massive quantities of NAND Flash RAM.
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Mobile Paella In Barcelona
Mobile World Congress and Barcelona surprised me this year more than any other. I rediscovered Parc Guell, a Guadi-gingerbread-ish spectacle I'd forgotten; our audio engineer was almost mugged right in front of me on the subway -- I'd always heard of the dangers in this city; hookers were rampant on La Rambla (I'm just reporting here); and everyone from mobile operators to handset makers to content providers added a little spice to the mix, like a tasty paella on a midnight eating binge (again, just reporting).
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No Major Problems Reported From Early DTV Switch
The transition to digital television appears to be going smoothly for most viewers in areas that went ahead with the switch instead of taking advantage of the postponed deadline.
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ROI Is Not A Good Justification For Security
It's no secret that the business office uses financial models to approve and disapprove purchases. Getting proposals approved on business merit is often misunderstood by many IT and security practitioners who see the need for a technology, but can't convince business folks. Return on investment, ROI, often is used to justify, in part, an IT purchase which results in the percentage return. Risk reduction is the primary goal.
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UC: All About Predictability
I had a chance to chat recently with Henry Dewing of Forrester Research about Forrester's latest UC report, and the conversation quickly turned to ROI.
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Amazon To Offer Kindle eBooks On Other Mobile Devices. Will Tiny Lexcycle Survive?
For tech titans, it's a time-honored ritual in the hi-tech business; Use your market "influence" to drive acceptance of your proprietary technology for as long as possible, until you have no other choice but to lift the proprietary veil (if only just a bit). By then, momentum is driving your success anyway. Such has been the path of Goliaths Microsoft and Apple. But it remains to be seen if Amazon-the-book-Goliath can repeat industry tradition with its strategy for Kindle, or, if a tiny 3-person self-funded "David" known as Lexcycle could spoil the party (podcast included).
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Another Line Of Haiku (The OS, That Is)
Once upon a time, there was BeOS. The brainchild of former Apple alum Jean-Louis Gassée, it looked for a time like a genuine alternative to both Windows and Mac, but its star fizzled. An attempt to create an open-source clone of BeOS, Haiku, is underway -- but to what end, you might ask? Don't we have enough platforms?
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Amazon's Cloud Is Too Cloudy
Amazon senior VP Andy Jassy talks about Amazon Web Services in a recent interview with TechFlash.com. It's an interesting chat with the guy who oversees Amazon's cloud computing business. Unfortunately, Jassy, once again, refuses to answer key questions about AWS.
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One Charger To Rule Them All
The GSM Association announced at Mobile World Congress yesterday that most phone manufacturers will use an energy-efficient charger with a universal Micro-USB connector. There are a number of benefits, including less money out of consumer's pockets when they get a new phone as they won't have to buy extra chargers for travel or replacement car chargers to fit their new phone.
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MWC 2009: First Impressions Of The New Android Phone
I had the opportunity to spend about 30 minutes with the new HTC Magic phone, which runs Google's Android platform. Instant verdict: Much better than the G1.
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MWC 2009: HTC's New Android Phone Can Shoot Video
InformationWeek will have a full hands-on report about the new HTC Magic soon, but I wanted to share with you right away that there's one really interesting new feature. Android can now record video.
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How Uncle Sam Is Already Saving Money With IT
The sweeping $787 billion economic stimulus bill signed yesterday by President Obama contains billions of dollars in tech-related spending. With this bill, and plans by the Obama administration to soon name "the first" federal CTO, one has to wonder how the federal government has been doing in its own use of IT till now.
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The Upwardly Mobile CIO
Sears offers the latest evidence of a CIO moving into a business-unit role outside technology, tapping CIO Karen Austin to lead one of the company's business line leadership roles that are central to its turnaround strategy.
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Top Windows Must-Have Apps: Dragon NaturallySpeaking
I'm writing (actually, speaking) this post using Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It's the first speech-recognition tool for the PC that's really ready for prime time. Indeed, since I started using it about six months ago, it's become one of my top 10 Windows must-have applications. Read on to see a video chat I had with Peter Mahoney of Nuance Communications, the maker of NaturallySpeaking.
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Microsoft's Promising New Mobile Store-y
Hoots of derision from some quarters aside, it looks like Microsoft has decided on a new course of action that doesn't rely on "but we're Microsoft" as the underlying basis for its strategy.
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How Much Green Does The Stimulus Act Have For Computing?
I'm hoping that somewhere tucked in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act are provisions for the General Printing Office to upgrade the servers it used to distribute the stimulus bill. I finally got through at 3 a.m., after six hours of trying. I could have accepted and withdrawn my nomination for a Cabinet position in less time.
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MWC 2009: Android Gets Microsoft Word And Excel Viewer
One of the limitations of the Android platform is its inability to work with some of the basic business applications used by many, including Microsoft Word and Excel. Quickoffice decided to do something about that.
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Kentico's Latest CMS Focuses On Social Networking
I've been keeping an eye on Kentico CMS for a while now, and I've been consistently impressed with its products. With each release, it has been adding substantial new features to an already solid foundation and Kentico CMS 4.0, released earlier this month, is no exception. This release focuses on a number of social networking tools, including support for blogs, wikis, and community-building and management features.
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Google Row Boat
Oliver (Olly) Hicks set out from Tasmania last month in his rowboat to become the first person to row across the world on his own.
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Stimulus Funds To Be Tracked On Recovery Web Site
The White House has launched a new Web site dedicated entirely to the 1,100-page American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which President Barack Obama signed into law Tuesday.
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Hybrid Storage Service Targets Cloud Doubters
Don't quite trust online storage providers with your company's files? A new service wants to lure the doubtful with a hybrid model that combines local and cloud-based storage. Startup Egnyte links your premises file server to an online service for belt-and-suspenders storage and backups.
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Write Your Opinion About Rewriting Requirements
According to Microsoft’s Encarta Dictionary (not my reference of choice, but that's what came up on Google) the word "survey" has two alternate meanings. One is to make a detailed map of an area of land, including its boundaries, area, and elevation, using geometry and trigonometry to measure angles and distances, and the second is to question people in a poll: to do a statistical study of a sample population by asking questions about age, income, opinions, buying preferences, and other aspects of people's lives. InformationWeek Analytics is conducting the latter so we can get an idea of the former -- that is, a lay of the land about how well your applications are meeting requirements.
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InformationWeek Editor Duped In Facebook Phishing Scam
The damage could have been worse. I had my guard down. Although today started like any other day, I hadn't even taken one sip of my tea when I noticed a slight hiccup to the way things normally work when logging into Facebook (see image below). And now, someone out there (I'm not sure who) has the password I used to use for Facebook as well as for a handful of other sites. It's one of my not-to-be-used-for-transactional (financial)-sites passwords. So, nothing serious is at risk and I think I moved fast enough to go so far as to say nothing is at risk. But I should have known better and you can learn from my mistake.
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LG Commits To 50 New Windows Mobile Devices
LG Electronics and Microsoft have signed a deal that will put Windows Mobile on at least 50 LG phones in the next five years. This will be a big help in getting Windows Mobile phones in the hands of the mainstream consumer.
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VMware To Take Its Next Steps Into The Cloud
It's been six months since VMware announced vCloud, the company's grand plan for public, private, and hybrid computing clouds. It's almost time for an update on VMware's progress.
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'Gap Insurance' For Open Source
Over at Forbes.com I spied an article with the intriguing title "The Open-Source Collaboration Gap," which delves into the whole question of why the vast majority of contributions to open source projects come from individuals and not companies or institutions. Two questions came to my lips: 1) Is that the case? and 2) If so, why?
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MWC 2009: MOTO A NOSHO
While HTC, LG, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson all took the time to announce exciting new phones at this year's Mobile World Congress, Motorola sat by the sidelines and didn't trot out any new handsets.
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MWC 2009: AT&T CEO Causes Dell Smartphone Flap
AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega referred to a Dell smartphone during his recent address at the Mobile World Congress Trade show. At first glance, he appeared to (finally!) confirm Dell's plans to break into the smartphone market.
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Getting Data To The Cloud
In a recent entry I gave some examples of how cloud storage is maturing. There are companies offering cloud based storage solutions both as a service, like Amazon and Nirvanix, and as a product to sell to service providers or for internal use, like Bycast and ParaScale. Some of these companies even have revenue customers and they are organizations of all sizes, as we stated in our recent white paper, Cloud Storage Is A Reality. What is missing, however, is how to get data to these cloud storage platforms.
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Can CIOs Lead The Hunt For Growth Opportunities?
While many companies struggle to find the bottom in this global recession, others are finding pockets of significant growth in unexpected areas: for example, the explosive market for mobile phones in rural India. CIOs can look for inspiration in this tale of untraditional opportunity as part of your effort to identify new markets and new customers in an otherwise brutal economic climate.
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MWC 2009: Android Phone Finally Appears From HTC
Today Vodafone and HTC held a press conference to announce the world's second Android phone. The Magic, as it is called, features a 3.2-megapixel camera, touch-screen display, and the same tight integration with Google services as seen on the HTC G1.
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Mobile Tapas In Barcelona
Mobile World Congress is an enormous show that cuts across the entire mobile ecosystem, from the die casters to the equipment manufacturers to the mobile operators to the handset makers to a diverse roster of content providers (there's even a developer garage), and they are all here again in force in Barcelona, home to the colorful architecture of Gaudi and an insanely endless arsenal of appetizers called tapas, good for arresting every taste bud and an apt metaphor for Mobile World Congress.
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MWC 2009: Nokia's Latest N Series Carries 8-Megapixel Camera
Nokia delivered another whopper of a handset at Mobile World Congress with its newest N Series phone, the N86. It carries an 8-megapixel camera, a mechanical shutter, and can take pictures with shutter speeds up to 1/1000th of a second. Yeah, it's all about the camera.
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Microsoft Stores Are Just The First Step
Apple has had a great decade of growth. The iPod, iPhone, and MacBook have all been wildly successful. During the same time, Microsoft has been stranded in the technology doldrums. So now, Microsoft is taking a page from Apple's book and planning to open retail stores that showcase Microsoft products. But I think there may be even more to come.
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MWC 2009: Windows Mobile 6.5 First Impressions
Microsoft announced a new version of Windows Mobile at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, bumping it up from 6.1 to 6.5. I spent a few minutes toying with the new operating system. Here are my initial thoughts.
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Adobe Flash Coming To A Mobile Phone Near You
Adobe announced Adobe Flash Lite 3.1 Distributable Player at Mobile World Congress, initially available for Nokia's S60 platform and Windows Mobile. Although not in its official press release, it is reported that it also will support the Palm Pre. Notably absent is any mention of the iPhone.
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Twitter Gets Bailout Money?
Twitter, the micro-blogging service that lets users send impromptu 140-character messages to their "followers," just received $35 million, even though it has never generated any appreciable revenue, let alone profits, and has no known plan to do either.
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MWC 2009: Android Forgets To Join The Party
We're only halfway through the first day at Mobile World Congress and already things are looking bleak for Android. Many of the major manufacturers already have announced their new products at the show, and not one Android handset has been seen.
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MWC 2009: Nokia Extends E Series Enterprise Smartphone Line
Nokia took the stage on Day 1 of Mobile World Congress to announce two new business-focused handsets, the super-thin E55 and the sliding E75.
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How To Stop IT Failures And The Four Horsemen Of Doom
What are the four main reasons IT projects fail? And do you know what the early-warning signs are for the approach of those dreaded Four Horsemen? Leon Kappelman, an IT professor who's been studying this issue for many years, will share the results of his extensive research into project failures in an upcoming Webinar. Leon is a prince of a guy and his Webinar is sure to be valuable.
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Sony Ericsson Kicks Off Mobile World Congress With A Thud
Sunday night in Barcelona, Sony Ericsson held its press conference to show off its newest handsets. It showed only one real phone and one vaporware phone that may or may not ever become reality. This is the best Sony Ericsson could do?
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The Importance Of Monitoring Real-Time Analytics
When I first started working with Web analytics packages back in the mid-90's, we were lucky if the data was only a day old. As the years moved on, analytics packages have moved closer to real-time but most still lag behind the current moment. Why is real-time tracking so important?
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Satellite Crash Shows CIOs Must Drive Data-Sharing
OK, folks, be honest: are you sharing data with customers, partners, and suppliers as aggressively as you should be? How about across divisions within your own company? If that makes you a little queasy, consider this: the recent collision of two space satellites has inspired a top U.S. military officer to urge better data sharing with Russia and China, and France. If our military's willing to go that far, what's holding you back?
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Economic Stimulus Scam: Fake IRS Phishing E-Mail Making Rounds
It didn't take long for the online scum to come out of the woodwork and attempt to turn the just-passed $787-billion economic stimulus bill to their wayward purposes. On Friday evening, even before the final Senate vote approving the bill had been cast, I received an e-mail from the "Internal Revenue Service" (that always catches one's attention!) with the subject line "Submit your economic stimulus payment online form." What am I, a failed bank?
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Java A Steep Climb? 'Carbon' Will Get You To The Peak
The OSGi Alliance just celebrated its 10th anniversary. Another vendor consortium congratulating itself? Not exactly. OSGi has done a lot to make Java less of a mountain to climb. It specifies simpler, independent modules of code that can be modified, even when the application is running. And therein lies new opportunity.
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CMIS Continues To Gain Momentum
Up to this point there's been a tremendous amount of excitement surrounding the proposed Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS), but it takes a lot of work to take something from the proposal stage into something more concrete. As with any issue that requires broad-based consensus building, there's always the risk that two or more parties just won't see eye to eye and the whole project will go flying off the tracks.
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Digital TV: A Luddite's Lament
I know that digital television transmission is sharper, clearer, richer, and offers oodles of other benefits that lame old rabbit-eared analog sets couldn't even, er, picture. But remind me again who asked for the improvement?
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Warner Bros. Sends Jobs Out, United Pulls Some Back
With the relentless movement of jobs across borders, in a year or two these moves might hardly be noticed: filmmaker Warner Bros. said it is outsourcing about 300 jobs to India and Poland as part of a larger restructuring, and United Air Lines is closing a call center in India and moving 165 jobs back to the United States "to handle more sophisticated conversations with our guests."
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Access Your PC's Favorites From Your Phone
For those of us with multiple computers and devices, and even with multiple browsers on those devices, keeping all of our shortcuts (or favorites or bookmarks) accessible no matter which computer we are using can be quite a chore. Foxmarks has a product that will help you out, and best of all, it is free.
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Developers, Start Your Engines! Android Market Now Accepting Paid Apps
The Android Developers Blog calmly announced today that the Android Market is accepting applications that end users will have to pay for. If you've been waiting to make a dime or two off of the Android platform, now is your chance.
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How Do You Measure Success On Social Media?
I got active on social media in 2007, when I became a Twitter addict, and continued all through last year, expanding my social media empire onto LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, FriendFeed, Tumblr, and more. But recently, I've hit a bit of a wall. It's not that I'm pulling back from social media involvement -- I'm still hooked. But I'm having a tough time figuring out what the next step is. I'm having a tough time figuring out what the business value of all this is, or will be. And I can't really figure out how to measure success.
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Stimulus Package Good For Tech, But Could Do More
As the economic stimulus package is nearing completion, IT groups and tech groups say they're pleased with the package, but it could do a bit more for the industry.
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Sprint's 90% Recycling Goal A Wrong Number?
Sprint has made quite a call: It thinks that by 2017 it can get consumers to recycle 90% of the cell phones they discard annually. Right now, the industry rate is about 10%.
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SAP Says: We Don't Prohibit Use Of Third-Party Maintenance Providers
There was a good deal of chatter in the "blogosphere" this week about whether legalese in SAP contracts prohibits the use of third-party maintenance providers. But I don't know if anyone bothered to pick up the phone and ask SAP that question. So that's what I did.
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The Problem With Snapshots
Storage solutions have come a long way, but there are areas that need improvement. The next two entries I am going to focus on two of those areas; snapshots and high availability. This entry we will pick on snapshots.
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GM's Bob Lutz, Car Guy Who Broke Mold, To Retire
Not to drop names -- which means I'm going to drop names -- but over the years I've heard many executives speak live, everyone from Bill Gates and Gordon Moore to Steve Jobs and President George H.W. Bush. Of them all, far and away the most charismatic orator was the late, great astronomer Carl Sagan, who passionately believed that we are not alone in this universe. No. 2 is outgoing General Motors vice chairman Bob Lutz, who just announced that he'll retire at the end of 2009.
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Linux Vs. Windows ... Round 2,671,852
I'm becoming resigned to the fact that whenever Linux and Windows are mentioned in the same breath, it'll be as "Linux vs. Windows". Worse things could happen, I guess -- and if the tone of the L vs W discussion we get is mature and sensible, that's probably the best we can hope for. Here's an example of that.
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HTC G1 Android Phone Gets Microsoft Exchange Support
Users of the HTC G1 Android phone who've been longing for Exchange access now have it. A company called Emtrace is offering Exchange syncing capabilities for the G1 through its Moxier Mail product.
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Google Adds Attachment Control To Offline Gmail
Google silently adjusted its offline Gmail access tools today. Starting with the 0.2 version of Offline, users can control the size of attachments that are downloaded and stored on their machines.
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Tata Tells CIOs: Show Me The Money!
After the recent Satyam scandal, most outsourcing clients rushed to assess the financial health of their software and BPO partners. But as the global rececession deepens, Tata Consultancy Services is shifting the burden of proof of viability from outsourcer to customers as Tata, burned by bankrupt client Nortel, looks to ensure its clients can pay their bills.
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Apple Drops Major Security Patch
Apple today released a bevy of patches that, by my quick count, fix about 55 bugs in its flagship OS X operating system as well as Java. Fortunately, through Software Update, the patch updates for Java for Mac OS X 19.5 Update 3, and Security UPdate 2009-001, which total 47 MB, went smoothly for this user.
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IE8: Better, But Still Not Best
It's been more than two years since Microsoft brought its browser development group out of mothballs and released IE7. It was a great step forward from IE6, but Microsoft was so far behind that it couldn't catch up in a single version step. Now Microsoft is on the verge of releasing Internet Explorer 8.
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Amazon Web Services As The Center Of The Software Industry
IBM is the latest software company to make its wares available as machine images on Amazon Web Services. Expect to see more enterprise-class software vendors do the same as a fast-and-easy way to move their software into the cloud.
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When The Cloud Fails: Nokia's Ovi Service Loses 3 Weeks Of User Data
Nokia is attempting to position itself as much more than a handset company. It is rife with other services, such as Comes With Music, or Contacts On Ovi, where people can upload pictures and save contact data directly from their phone. That is, when it works. A recent server crash completely lost three weeks' worth of user data.
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IBM To Help Orange Data Center Go Green
The Syracuse Orange are looking to go green with Big Blue. Syracuse University's Office of Campus Planning, Design, and Construction says IBM "will sponsor the development and construction of a first-of-a-kind Green Data Center."
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My Computer, A La Carte
OS installs have gotten easier over the years, whether it's a Linux distribution, Mac OS X, or Windows. Fewer choices to make and fewer technical decisions that need to be pondered. But today, I found the easiest of them all, Slax 6 Build a Distribution and I think it serves as a model for how software should be distributed, a la carte, and as a model for smart system recovery.
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Forrester: Platform-As-A-Service Is Here And Now
Some of the key questions around cloud computing these days involve timing. When will cloud services be ready? And when should your company adopt them? In a just-released report, Forrester Research says there's no reason to wait.
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Fitness Freak? Google Has Some Tracks For You
Are you ready to share more of your location information with Google? If so, Google's My Tracks software for Android will let cyclists, hikers, and joggers record their routes and share them with others.
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Critics Spank Congressman For Twittering From Baghdad
Pete Hokestra did what a lot of people do. While traveling overseas, he posted regular updates to Twitter, to keep the folks at home informed. But Hoekstra isn't just any Twitterer: He's a congressman, his trip was a congressional delegation to Iraq, and now he's taking heat for possibly violating security protocols and endangering everyone he was traveling with.
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Fortune Mag Paints CIOs As Clueless Dorks
Anybody out there read Fortune? Did you know they just referred to CIOs as "geeks" who know nothing of corporate strategy, focus on server upgrades, have "limited social skills," hang out in "the wiring closet," and whose top value is "coding skills"? But due to the recession, Fortune says, "Tech execs get sexy." Did April Fool's Day come early, or is Fortune just showing its ignorance of the role played by CIOs and business technology in today's global economy?
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ThinkFree: Not Free, But Close
The most commonly cited alternative to anything that's expensive and closed (Windows, Office) is something that's free and open (Linux, OpenOffice). But a third alternative has made headway: something proprietary, but either free or so cheap you won't care.
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Aerohive Proves Some Are More Equal Than Others
Enterprise WLAN startup Aerohive Networks packs a lot in each of its software updates, and HiveOS 3.2 is no exception. Among the 20 new features, however, the new Dynamic Airtime Scheduling and a new management solution for small deployments are the most significant.
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Skyfire Adds Social Networking Powers To Its Mobile Browser
Today, Skyfire announced the latest beta build of its mobile browser for the Windows Mobile and S60 platforms. The biggest changes with this newest version are native integration of Facebook and Twitter feeds. Skyfire wants you to get your social on!
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I-Mate Readies Military Grade Phone
If your job description resembles that of Jack Bauer's, or you handle your phone a bit more roughly than the average person does, vnunet.com is reporting that i-mate is preparing to release a ruggedized phone that doesn't require you to carry around a brick-sized device.
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The Cost Of Doing Nothing
Cost containment seems to be THE word in storage right now. One of the options for containing costs is to archive old data off primary storage as described in our Archiving Basics article. A common thought, however, is that instead of creating a disk archive, just keep expanding primary storage. Isn't it cheaper to add a shelf of storage instead of developing a whole new storage tier?
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Intel's $7-Billion Stimulus Package
Thank God for Intel. That's all I can say; in the wake of a sagging economy and continued weak chip demand, the semiconductor behemoth is doubling down on the future of the PC industry by pledging to spend $7 billion over the next two years. The money goes to upgrade a bunch of existing chip fabs to Intel's next-gen 32-nm fabrication technology, and will keep some 7,000 people employed.
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The Massachusetts Data Privacy Law Debacle
As an InformationWeek blogger, I often feel like I'm preaching from the pulpit about the technology events of the day. But today, I'm reaching out to you, our loyal readers, for help with how you're approaching the new Massachusetts Data Privacy Law. For you attorneys out there, that's 201 CMR 17.00. Don't do business in Massachusetts? Read on anyway, you might still be affected.
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Nordstrom Eyes End To Trademark Blitz; Settlement?
UPDATE: Retail giant Nordstrom's blunt-force attempt to seize a trademark from a small online retailer, made possible by an error within the Patent & Trademark Office, might produce a happy ending instead of wiping out the small firm that's had to spend more than $70,000 on legal fees. Nordstrom says it's "sorry" if it hurt the small business and is seeking an acceptable solution.
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New And Improved Storm Botnet Morphing Malware
Waledac (which was previously known as Storm) is once again spewing gads of Valentine's Day spam and malware.
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Seeing Through Sun's GlassFish
Sun's GlassFish stack is, in a way, Sun at its best: creating infrastructures around and powered by its star product, Java. It's also its newest attempt at monetizing several pieces of its portfolio at once -- including MySQL, which many people outside the company are now biting their nails over.
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Stimulus Bill Stirring Debate In IT
The IT industry should be giddy that the House and Senate reconciled their respective versions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act with most IT spending provisions intact. Right now, though, the industry seems a little...underwhelmed.
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At Last, A Major Update For PortalApp .NET
In the content management system world, there's a fine line between "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and simply letting your product get stagnant while competitors race ahead. While it had been starting to look like Iatek's PortalApp .NET might be falling into the second category, the release last week of PortalApp .NET Enterprise 4.0 puts the company squarely back into the thick of things.
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Using Analytics And CEP Tools To Navigate The Economic Downturn
The day after the new Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner roiled the financial markets with an uninspiring explanation of how the U.S. government plans to end the financial crisis, InformationWeek caught up with Dr. John Bates, a complex event processing (CEP) industry pioneer and founder of market leader Progress Apama, for a lively conversation about how organizations are using CEP as a tool to mitigate risk and keep volatility under control.
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Palm CEO Stabs Palm OS In The Heart
Palm CEO Ed Colligan said to investors that the company does not plan to introduce any more new handsets based on the Palm OS. It is focusing all efforts on webOS and Windows Mobile moving forward. In other words, Colligan just said that Palm OS, as it has been known, is finally dead. But that's not all he said.
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Mobile Browser Wars
Well, maybe just browser skirmishes. Certainly nothing like the browser wars on the desktop when Netscape and Microsoft duked it out for supremacy in the late 1990s. There are a surprising number of third-party browsers for mobile devices.
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Old Approaches Are Killing IT's Ability To Succeed
Want to maximize the odds that a business-technology project will fail? Then be sure to follow the age-old formal request process. Want to maximize the odds that you'll fail to harness the potential of SaaS and cloud computing? Then just keep playing the cop instead of the evangelist. Want to ensure projects are outdated? Then keep grinding through The Queue even after business conditions have changed. A guest columnist makes the case for new approaches.
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Is The Federal CTO Job Too Much For One Person?
When Candidate Obama promised to create a national Chief Technology Officer, it was part of his campaign to bring change and new ways of governing to the White House. But what will the CTO job entail? What will the responsibilities be? Now that Obama is president, he has a lot of work to do to define the parameters of the job, even before the new CTO starts work. The job could entail many different responsibilities, some different enough that they might be better split into different positions.
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Is AT&T Prepping Visual Voice Mail For BlackBerrys?
AT&T provides visual voice mail to one device on its network right now. You may have heard of it, it is called the iPhone. According to reports, AT&T is ready to enable visual voice mail on BlackBerry smartphones, too.
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So What Is The Value Of Video?
Over at No Jitter, John Bartlett of NetForecast has a blog post that asks a question I expect will be on the minds of an increasing number of enterprise decision makers in the months and years ahead: "Is videoconferencing a second-class citizen on the network?"
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Michael Phelps Sinks Deeper, Cancels On IBM
Bong-blowing Olympian Michael Phelps did little to repair his image with the tech crowd on Tuesday as the 14-time gold medalist bowed out at the last minute as a keynote speaker at a major IBM conference.
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Salesforce.com President Leaves For SaaS Vendor Xactly
We learned last week that Steve Cakebread had left his president and chief strategy officer job at Salesforce.com. This morning, SaaS vendor Xactly announced it's appointed Cakebread as its CFO.
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Next Global Outsourcing Hot Spot: Egypt
Indian IT and BPO firms looking for new sources of affordable talent are expanding into Egypt -- Wipro's already doing some IT and BPO work there, as are Microsoft, IBM, Vodafone, Orange, Valeo and Teleperformance. So it's good to know that while Egypt faces significant social challenges, a recent study on economic freedom around the world finds that Egypt's business climate is improving.
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Google Makes Your Gmail Signature Location Aware, Lets You Be A Doofus
The onslaught of new features on Gmail Labs continues. The latest? Google has added a location-awareness feature to Gmail that will insert your location into your Gmail signature. Just another way to be an Internet doofus?
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Twitter Makes It To 'The Price Is Right'
Last month, a group of friends who hang out on Twitter made an excursion from San Diego to L.A. to try to appear on the game show The Price Is Right. One of them succeeded: Peggy Gartin, who goes by the handle @thepegisin, got called by the announcer to come on down.
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Analyst Revives Cheap iPhone Nano Rumors. Again
This story has taken on a life of its own. Yes, it's back again, the iPhone Nano scuttlebutt. This time, an RBC analyst says we'll see a $99 iPhone by summer.
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White House Web Site Takes Shape With Web 2.0 Transparency
After a bit of a slow start, the White House Web site is beginning to look more like a Web 2.0 vehicle for government transparency.
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Google Updates App Engine In Advance Of 'Big Announcements'
It's been a busy few days for Google App Engine, the "preview mode" platform-as-a-service with which users deploy applications on Google's IT infrastructure. Google yesterday released an updated App Engine software development kit and late last week updated the App Engine road map with new APIs.
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Kindle 2 vs. IPhone vs. Who Reads Books?
Now that the basics are out on the Kindle 2 bookreader from Amazon, there's a debate about it vs. the iPhone from Apple. Where do you stand? Do the differences even matter?
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President Obama Seeks Immediate Cyber Review
The White House yesterday instructed the National Security and Homeland Security Advisers to immediately conduct a review of all of the federal government's cybersecurity plans and programs.
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Did Apple Squash Multitouch On Google's Android Phone?
According to reports, the reason the HTC G1 Android phone doesn't have true multitouch capabilities is because Apple strong-armed Google into keeping the feature off the phone.
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Dave Duffield Explains The Stickiness Of SaaS
I had a chat the other day with Dave Duffield, a software industry icon who founded PeopleSoft and, more recently, SaaS company Workday. Why, Dave, I asked, are you so confident in the profitability and growth potential of the SaaS model? After all, there's a lot more red than black on the industry's SaaS balance sheets. I share with you Duffield's thinking on the sustainability of SaaS.
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Smart Companies Still Looking For Smart IT People
Are IT jobs defying gravity as overall U.S. employment figures continue to tank? Latest monthly employment figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and a recent IT pay trends study by research firm Foote Partners sheds some insight into what IT skills remain hot in an ice-cold jobs climate.
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The Job Collar Is Always Greener On The Other Side
A few hours ago the U.S. Senate passed its version of the economic stimulus plan. The plan will unquestionably -- depending on your economics ken and party affiliation –- either create millions of jobs or bury the country further in debt and hopelessness.
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SEC Mulls Risky Data Center Move
My morning skulk through the government databases (i.e., my daily Constitutional, get it?) uncovered this little gem -- the SEC's lease on its backup data center in Virginia runs out early next year, and it may need to find new digs in a hurry. The situation carries some risk for the investing public.
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Microsoft's Buy-N-Hold Search Strategy
Microsoft hopes a license deal will win enterprise search customers today with the promise of more advanced capabilities in the future. But you'll have to kiss your index goodbye.
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My Phone And Microsoft's Consumer Strategy
Last week Microsoft's My Phone Web site went live prematurely, but confirmed rumors that the software giant had been working on a service for its Windows Mobile devices that would bring some form of synchronization between a Windows Mobile phone and some cloud on the Internet. Will it be enough to compete with the likes of Apple's MobileMe service and entice the average Joe into buying a Windows Mobile phone?
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McKinsey: 5 Habits Of Highly Successful CIOs
Buddying up with the CFO, parceling out scarce resources to desperate LOBs, proving the value of discretionary projects, learning to love regulators, and negotiating turbulence in global IT sourcing -- who could ask for a more-inviting agenda than that? McKinsey says successful CIOs must master all five of those challenges in 2009, and adds that a bit of luck won't hurt.
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Cloud Storage's Killer App... Geographic Collaboration
Cloud storage can be used for backups, archives, and extra disk space, but the ability to collaborate on documents, even if it is in a sequential process, could be the most significant.
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Gmail Adds The Ability To Merge Contacts
If you're like me, it is highly likely that you have multiple entries in your contacts database for the same person. This annoyance comes from syncing software that just doesn't get the job done correctly. Gmail now offers a way to boil multiple contact entries down into one.
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IBM Drifts Slowly Toward Mainstream Cloud Computing
Building on its 15-month old Blue Cloud initiative, IBM today introduces additions to its cloud computing portfolio and named new customers and partners. Big Blue's cloud strategy remains focused on the enterprise; customers can't pay by the minute with credit cards, as they can with Amazon Web Services and other general purpose cloud offerings.
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Combining Open And Proprietary: Bruce Perens Tells You How
If there's an authority on the concept of open source, it's probably Bruce Perens: after all, he helped found the open source movement in the first place. Over at Datamation, he's got an article on a subject few people understand well: the tricky practice of combining open source and proprietary software.
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An Aging Security And Governance Geek Muses On Facebook's '25 Things' Meme
My buddy Ariel asked me whether my usual security paranoia reared its ugly head about posting "25 random things about me" to Facebook. This is one of those viral concepts that has blown through FB like the Melissa virus.
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Tech Vendors Offer Seductive Financing Packages
When Cisco released its quarterly numbers last week, the company said it financed customer purchases totaling $2.1 billion from its cash reserves in the quarter. After looking at the financing plans of some other major IT vendors, I can't decide whether such financing options are the greatest deals in the history of the universe, or if some part of the story has yet to be told.
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Radiant Improves Their Promising Ruby On Rails-Based CMS
After nearly half a year of heavy development, Radiant 0.7.0, a content management system built on the Ruby on Rails framework, was released this past weekend. This newest version delivers a nice set of new functionality and backend improvements that are sure to make it even more appealing to small teams with basic content management needs.
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Google Bloggers Speak As One
Google maintains dozens of blogs, on which various Google engineers and product managers post pithy, informative tidbits about the company's new software, services, and activities. It turns out they're more a tool for corporate communications than a form of personal expression. Not that anyone should be surprised by this.
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Love, Love, Love: 11 Technologies To Embrace For Valentines Day
As we get closer to Valentine's Day, your heart may be turning to warm and fuzzy feelings of tender affection. That's cool, but don't leave tech out in the cold! bMighty presents 11 technologies and trends worthy of IT love, and you might find some of them a bit surprising.
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Metasploit To (Almost) Go SaaS
The Metasploit hacking tool is going the direction of many other IT security tools: it's going to be delivered, in part, as a service. But will corporate security managers upload critical data to a third party to test to see if it can be cracked?
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Is This The Next BlackBerry?
While you may be still enjoying your BlackBerry Bold, Storm, or Curve 8900, you know Research In Motion has been working on the next line of smartphones. It appears that The Boy Genius Report got a scoop on one of these upcoming smartphones, and it should make BlackBerry fans smile.
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Bye-Bye, WiMax? You Won't Be Missed
I'm ready to throw my WiMax modem and wireless card out the window and cancel my contract with Sprint or Clearwire or whoever's handling service these days for Xohm. (Updated below)
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Cloud Computing In Government: From Google Apps To Nuclear Warfare
It’s still early in the adoption cycle, but we’re beginning to see how U.S. federal agencies and other government users might employ cloud computing. Among the scenarios: cloud-bursting at sea by battleship groups, satellite imagery, and open source software development.
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Nordstrom Steamrolls Tiny Firm In Trademark Snafu
Nordstrom, the retailer with the glorious public image, is using a screwup by the federal government's Patent and Trademark Office to overwhelm a tiny online retailer via courtoom challenges that to date have cost the two women who own the small business $70,000. Reflecting the riskiness of IP issues, they tell the PTO, "Your office has ensured our demise."
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Google's Sync Available To iPhone, Windows Mobile In Beta Flavor
Today, Google announced that it is making its Sync product available to the iPhone and Windows Mobile platforms. The software makes it possible to sync calendar events and other data from Google directly to the phone.
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Full Details Of Nokia's E75 Spill Out
Spy shots of the newest E series device from Nokia were first seen way back in September. Today, mobile phone retailer Expansys published the full spec list of the upcoming phone. See what $612 will buy you.
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About That Microsoft 'Open Source' Job Opening
Scarcely a single open source- / Linux-focused blog hasn't been abuzz (or a-Twitter) with news about a job opening at Microsoft for a "director of open source strategy." From the outside, it looks like the first of many pre-emptive strikes against the likes of Ubuntu and the Linux-powered netbook world. But is it a sign Microsoft is desperate, or just smart?
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Is In-Flight Internet A Terrorist Threat?
Could Internet access onboard an airplane facilitate a terrorist attack? That's the scary supposition that's making the rounds, in the wake of in Saturday's New York Times story noting the rise of in-flight wireless services like Aircell's Gogo, which'll let you Web-surf your way cross-country for only $12.95.
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Samsung Retouches Its TouchWiz User Interface
It appears that Samsung is set to unveil an updated version of its TouchWiz user interface at Mobile World Congress. TouchWiz is a finger-friendly UI that competes with the iPhone and Android platforms. Will the upgrades make it a better competitor?
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Live Blog: Amazon Announces Improved Kindle 2.0 For $359
It's about 9:53am and I'm at the Morgan Library off of Madison Avenue in NYC where Amazon executives are preparing to make a big announcement. Since the notices first went out to this invite-only affair, the speculation has been that Amazon is going to to announce version 2.0 of its proprietary electronic book (ebook) reader; the Kindle. The Internet is already riddled with pictures of the new model (video and photos below). Based on what's been written,...
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Windows Mobile May Become Windows Phone
DigiTimes is reporting that Microsoft will be changing the name of Windows Mobile to Windows Phone. It isn't the first (or second or even third) time Microsoft has renamed its platform.
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IT In India Is Booming, Gartner Says; Oh, Really?
Gartner's India CIO Summit 2009 next month should be a real head-spinner: the company says the event will "concentrate on the significant challenges" facing CIOs in India, but then its VP of research in India says "IT in India is booming, with no sign of deceleration." Good thing Gartner's so smart because it'll be tough to square that circular logic -- even with a magic quadrant.
Continue reading "IT In India Is Booming, Gartner Says; Oh, Really?..."
The Kindle Is A Swindle
Amazon's Kindle v2 officially arrived today, and it's a swindle. I have no argument with the item itself, but $400 is a lot of dough to pay for a gadget that will sit gathering dust a couple of weeks after you've purchased it.
Continue reading "The Kindle Is A Swindle..."
Woz To Compete On 'Dancing With The Stars'
It took fancy footwork for Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs to invent the Apple computer. Now, Woz will get a chance to display fancy footwork of a different kind when he competes on Dancing With The Stars on TV this year, which premieres Monday, March 9.
Continue reading "Woz To Compete On 'Dancing With The Stars'..."
Startup May Just Digitize Your Wallet
I despise having to carry paper. You also can add credit and ATM cards, driver's licenses, insurance cards -- all of this stuff we need to carry every day to that list, too. While we worry about hackers cracking retailers' Web sites and getting our credit card or financial information -- a lost wallet or purse can easily end up being a much bigger nightmare.
A startup from Bend, Ore., believes it may have a solution.
Continue reading "Startup May Just Digitize Your Wallet..."
Adobe's Claims Are Filled With AIR
Last week I read that Adobe AIR Passes 100 Million Installs, which seems like a pretty important milestone and a really big number. The Adobe Internet Runtime lets developers deploy applications outside of the browser that can still use browser-born technologies such as Ajax, HTML, and Flash. There's a lot of appeal to that idea.
Continue reading "Adobe's Claims Are Filled With AIR..."
Is Your Brand Socially Protected?
Nearly every week a new social media service launches. Is your brand protected?
Continue reading "Is Your Brand Socially Protected?..."
Microsoft Cops To 'My Phone' Cloud Service
After accidentally publishing the My Phone Web site before it was supposed to, Microsoft issued a statement regarding the new, cloud-based synchronization service.
Continue reading "Microsoft Cops To 'My Phone' Cloud Service..."
Super Bowl Photo File Almost As Good As The Game
Steeler fans are sure to love it, but even for others, this outstanding collection offers not only superb action images from the game but also some striking candids: Ben Roethlisberger and Mike Tomlin clutching hands on the sideline during a tense moment, Troy Polamalu hugging his infant son, Hines Ward with tears running down his cheeks, and many more.
Continue reading "Super Bowl Photo File Almost As Good As The Game..."
Jahia Launches New Version Of Enterprise CMS
Jahia launched version 6 of its open source enterprise content management system a couple of weeks ago, adding some slick new features to the content creation tools, and adding a number of improvements to its document management functionality.
Continue reading "Jahia Launches New Version Of Enterprise CMS..."
If You Have a Startup, You Must Have A Properly Utilized Blog
Last night I spoke at the Ultra Light Startups event in NYC. The majority of the time was spent offering some suggestions to the entrepreneurs in the room about how they can improve their startups. One of my top suggestions is to make sure you have a blog.
Continue reading "If You Have a Startup, You Must Have A Properly Utilized Blog..."
VMware Offers Its First GPL Code For Thin Clients
VMware is bidding for thin client device makers and independent software developers to develop for its Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, now called VMware View, with a piece of open source code, Open Client, it's first Lesser GPL open source, as best I know.
Continue reading "VMware Offers Its First GPL Code For Thin Clients..."
Google Latitude: Not A Real Privacy Risk
Google is far from perfect when it comes to privacy, but the outcry over its Latitude location-sharing service is excessive.
Continue reading "Google Latitude: Not A Real Privacy Risk..."
SaaS Growth Thrown Into Question
Steve Cakebread, president and chief strategy officer of Salesforce.com, has resigned, and two other execs are out. One analyst speculates that the company is closing smaller, shorter deals. That wouldn't bode well for the SaaS market.
Continue reading "SaaS Growth Thrown Into Question..."
Handset Vendors In The U.S. Ranked
With the final numbers in from IDC, we now have a pretty clear picture of how the mobile market in the United States played out in the fourth quarter of 2008. Who was on top, and who wasn't?
Continue reading "Handset Vendors In The U.S. Ranked..."
The Anti-Spam Gateway Drug
Proofpoint touts its new SaaS spam filter as an add-on to an e-mail security appliance. Actually, it's a teaser to get customers hooked on the cloud.
Continue reading "The Anti-Spam Gateway Drug..."
CHP Engines Could Drive Job Growth, Given The Chance
As unemployment ranks swell -- 598,000 jobs were cut in January -- it's hard not to look hungrily at green collar jobs. They are the hope of millions, but the reality of few. And unless federal, regional and state policies on energy distribution and taxation change, that may not change.
Continue reading "CHP Engines Could Drive Job Growth, Given The Chance..."
Mobile Spam On Your Phone
Last year, messaging security firm Cloudmark conducted a survey and found that 66% of Britons had received spam on their phone via SMS or MMS. That number is surely going to increase.
Continue reading "Mobile Spam On Your Phone..."
D'oh, I Should Have Made A Backup
In yet another chapter in our continuing series bringing further embarrassment to poor souls that were foolish enough to not have a viable backup plan, we have the sad tale of blog hosting firm JournalSpace. It managed to survive six years using RAID as a substitute for backups. But then data corruption struck and business failure soon followed.
Continue reading "D'oh, I Should Have Made A Backup..."
Lenovo Retrenches, But From What?
Lenovo has fired its American CEO, put a Chinese board member in charge, and plans to bring back a co-founder to help run the board and "refocus on China and other emerging markets." So what is it leaving behind?
Continue reading "Lenovo Retrenches, But From What?..."
Three Execs Reportedly Out At Salesforce.com
Reuters reports that three high-level execs are out at Salesforce.com. The on-demand software company hasn't issued a statement, and I can't yet reach the PR team this morning (it's 7 a.m. on the West Coast). But I do find it interesting that it reportedly showed the door to Gary Hanna, executive VP of enterprise sales, a market segment viewed critical to Salesforce.com's continuing growth.
Continue reading "Three Execs Reportedly Out At Salesforce.com..."
U.S.-Russia-Afghanistan: World's Trickiest Supply Chain?
Global supply chains are always complex beasts involving customs requirements, import/export licenses, security procedures, and much more. But when a crucial global logistics partner on the far side of the world drops the United States and signs with an archrival, who steps up and offers to fill the strategic gap for the U.S.? Why, none other than archrival Russia.
Continue reading "U.S.-Russia-Afghanistan: World's Trickiest Supply Chain?..."
Details About Microsoft's Mysterious, Cloud-Based 'My Phone' Emerge
Reports indicated that Microsoft has been preparing a service that resembles Apple's MobileMe product, which allows end users to sync their contacts and other information to a Web site in the cloud. It appears those reports were true, because a Microsoft-branded Web site recently appeared that provides details about the service, which will be called "My Phone".
Continue reading "Details About Microsoft's Mysterious, Cloud-Based 'My Phone' Emerge..."
The DOD's SourceForge: Soon To Be One Of Many
After the news broke about the DOD setting up its own open-source forge site, Forge.mil, I grabbed some time with Sourceforge.net's own Ross Turk to get his feelings about the whole thing. He was, in a word, elated, and he thinks it's a strong sign of how forges, plural, are a natural for open source's future. "It's a vindication of the way forges work," was how he put it.
Continue reading "The DOD's SourceForge: Soon To Be One Of Many..."
View 'Multiple Inboxes' In Gmail
Google bowed yet another new feature in Gmail Labs on Thursday. Now users can view up to five separate in-boxes in their Gmail account.
Continue reading "View 'Multiple Inboxes' In Gmail..."
Hero Pilot Sullenberger's Exchange With Air-Traffic Control
An audio recording of the exchange between US Airways hero pilot Sully Sullenberger and ATC sheds light on the extraordinary two minutes after his plane was disabled and he decided to crash-land in the Hudson River between two of the country's most densely populated areas. Sully's voice remains calm as he first reports "hit birds -- we lost thrust in both engines" and barely 100 seconds later says, "We're gonna be in the Hudson."
Continue reading "Hero Pilot Sullenberger's Exchange With Air-Traffic Control..."
An SSD Strategy We Can Believe In?
NetApp this week began to enhance its solid-state disk strategy. I have been critical of traditional storage suppliers' efforts in trying to incorporate SSD into their overall storage offerings. This time someone is finally getting close.
Continue reading "An SSD Strategy We Can Believe In?..."
Cisco Warns Of Significant Wireless Vulnerability
Cisco today warned its customers of vulnerabilities in its Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers, Cisco Catalyst 6500 Wireless Services Modules, and Cisco Catalyst 3750 Integrated Wireless LAN Controllers gear. The four vulnerabilities, which are not related to one another, could enable attackers to escalate privileges on some equipment or launch sustained denial-of-service attacks.
Continue reading "Cisco Warns Of Significant Wireless Vulnerability..."
Larry Ellison Bets On IT For The IT Department
Will IT spend on itself in this recession, buying technology aimed at helping CIOs run a more efficient IT shop? Oracle is betting the answer is "yes," based on its latest acquisition plan.
Continue reading "Larry Ellison Bets On IT For The IT Department..."
Techno Babble And Parachutes
This might best be filed under a topic like, "beware of what you laugh at, because you might be laughing at yourself."
The bit you can laugh at is this pitch letter:
Hi Michael,Spreadsheets are a necessary tool for most businesses, but oftentimes open source business intelligence can be slower than most commercial solutions.
Continue reading "Techno Babble And Parachutes..."
Google Calendar Goes Offline Thanks To Gears
Google has given yet another service the power to work when the user is not online. This time around, it is using its Gears product to allow access to your calendar even when disconnected.
Continue reading "Google Calendar Goes Offline Thanks To Gears..."
Are There Too Many App Stores For Phones?
The Washington Post has suggested that not every company needs an app store for their devices. As Samsung readies their new Mobile Application Marketplace I have to wonder is a cell phone manufacturer the right person to do this?
Continue reading "Are There Too Many App Stores For Phones?..."
Street Signs Hacked To Warn About Zombies, Raptors
It's a funny story, but it has a serious point: Hackers in Illinois and Texas fiddled with electronic street signs to warn motorists about upcoming zombies and raptors. "The latest breach came during Tuesday morning's rush hour near Collinsville, Ill., east of St. Louis. That's where hackers changed a sign along southbound Interstate 255 to read, 'DAILY LANE CLOSURES DUE TO ZOMBIES,'" according to an article by the Associated Press.
Continue reading "Street Signs Hacked To Warn About Zombies, Raptors ..."
Reports Indicate U.S. Tech Leader To Be Named Soon
District of Columbia CTO Vivek Kundra is expected to be named as a replacement for Karen Evans, becoming the United States' e-government and information technology leader in the Office of Management and Budget.
Continue reading "Reports Indicate U.S. Tech Leader To Be Named Soon..."
IT & Legal: Can't We All Just Get Along?
A new survey shows there's a long way to go before IT and legal make a good e-discovery team.
Continue reading "IT & Legal: Can't We All Just Get Along?..."
The $20 Laptop And The Race To The Bottom
India's plans for a $20 notebook have "too good to be true" written all over them. And no, at that price, I don't think it's feasible -- not even with Linux at the core. In fact, I don't think it's just infeasible. I think it's a bad idea, period.
Continue reading "The $20 Laptop And The Race To The Bottom..."
Economic Swindle-Us: Air Force To Spend $228,000 On Trout Fishing
At a time when OMB has ordered the military to cut its budget, at least one branch of the armed services is telling the number crunchers in Washington to go fish.
Continue reading "Economic Swindle-Us: Air Force To Spend $228,000 On Trout Fishing..."
The Next iPhone Needs To Be Better At Content Creation
Though Apple has remained mum about the existence of a new version of the iPhone, the blogosphere is rife with reports and rumors about what it will bring. Whether or not those reports are accurate, one thing is for certain, the next iPhone needs to be much, much better at creating content.
Continue reading "The Next iPhone Needs To Be Better At Content Creation..."
Tuning The Signal-To-Noise Ratio On Twitter
I created a Twitter account a couple of months ago, and yesterday marked my 100th tweet. Others are much more prolific in the number of tweets they produce, and it’s becoming clear to me that on Twitter there can be too much of a good thing.
Continue reading "Tuning The Signal-To-Noise Ratio On Twitter..."
Samsung And T-Mobile Offer Highest Megapixel Cameraphone In The U.S.
Meet the Memoir, a new 8-megapixel monster camera phone from Samsung. Not only does the Memoir have a killer camera, it boasts a full touch screen user interface, and 3G.
Continue reading "Samsung And T-Mobile Offer Highest Megapixel Cameraphone In The U.S...."
Is Hospital Tech Study A Breakthrough Or 'Vioxx Moment'?
Researchers looking for links between the quality of hospital IT systems and patient mortality said their results show "extraordinary outcomes" when hospital tech is well-planned and easy to use. But a physician blogger reviewing the study said its findings are "alarming" and a "possible Vioxx moment." With $20B in health care funds looming, we'd better figure out who's right.
Continue reading "Is Hospital Tech Study A Breakthrough Or 'Vioxx Moment'?..."
How Common Are Fake Reviews?
The folks over at The Daily Background have been working overtime to publicize the problems with companies generating positive buzz about their products through astroturfing. It started with Belkin fake reviews; now some Carbonite glowing reviews have been unmasked.
Continue reading "How Common Are Fake Reviews?..."
Targeted Attacks Keep Rolling
There's a stealthy Trojan, named Bankpatch.com, that is circulating in Denmark. Unlike most Trojans, which aim to grab information from wherever they can, this one is targeting specific banks.
Continue reading "Targeted Attacks Keep Rolling..."
Palm Pre In March?
There may be some good news if you're eagerly awaiting the Palm Pre smartphone, as the Boy Genius Report has obtained documents showing it could be in stock in the middle of March. But I wouldn't start lining up yet.
Continue reading "Palm Pre In March?..."
IT Industry Supports Stimulus But Requests Revisions
President Barack Obama and Congress are drawing some praise from IT insiders for including IT as an integral part of their plans to stimulate the economy, but at least one group is pushing for more.
Continue reading "IT Industry Supports Stimulus But Requests Revisions..."
Can IT Execs Save Detroit?
As the sales results continue to tumble for the Detroit carmakers, I worry that they don't know how to fix their problems. Would they get different results if they approached their vehicles like IT projects?
Continue reading "Can IT Execs Save Detroit?..."
Garmin Teams Up With Asus In Mobile Phone JV
Garmin stunned the mobile world by announcing that it would make a touch-based mobile phone just about one year ago. That phone has yet to materialize. Rather than cough it up, today Garmin announced a new partnership with PC-maker Asus. The two hope to launch an entire range of mobile phones that will boast GPS-based features.
Continue reading "Garmin Teams Up With Asus In Mobile Phone JV..."
Nokia Strengthening Social Mapping Presence
Nokia announced last week that it is buying bit-side GmbH in an effort to increase its social network mapping presence. Social network mapping goes beyond getting directions or finding retail services near your current location.
Continue reading "Nokia Strengthening Social Mapping Presence..."
Second Life Plays Host To Healthcare Hearings
Avatars don't need health care, but the people at the keyboard do. That's why a Chicago marketer, who previously worked on the Budweiser "Wassup" campaign, organized a hearing on health care policy for then-President-elect Obama in Second Life.
Continue reading "Second Life Plays Host To Healthcare Hearings ..."
Arista Networks Won’t Trademark 'Cloud Networking'
In a blog post, Arista Networks CEO Jayshree Ullal reveals that the company will drop its attempt to trademark the term "cloud networking." Like Dell before it, Arista has learned that the language of cloud computing is so general in nature that it can't be the intellectual property of one company.
Continue reading "Arista Networks Won’t Trademark 'Cloud Networking'..."
SAP Acknowledges Problems Of Monolithic Software
SAP called it one of its most significant announcements of the year. It leaked its announcement to the Wall Street Journal, which posted a story last night that referenced "Web-based software" and quoted a Salesforce.com executive. But today's big announcement didn't have much to do with SaaS at all. Rather, it was an acknowledgment that SAP's traditionally monolithic approach to software has created problems for customers.
Continue reading "SAP Acknowledges Problems Of Monolithic Software..."
Google's Grand Grab -- Beyond Latitude, Earth, And Mars
Google has been on its usual tear, demonstrating its propensity to roll out ever newer and funkier visual mashups -- Earth 5.0 and Latitude being just the latest. (What's next, Google Bailout to track the distribution of TARP money?) What this activity masks is a bigger issue that's brewing: how larger can Google get before its bubble bursts, and, more important, what's the ultimate destination of the search-engine giant?
Continue reading "Google's Grand Grab -- Beyond Latitude, Earth, And Mars..."
A Very Successful CIO Muses On The Meaning Of Success
John Halamka enjoys a rich, diverse, and fulfilling life: he's a CIO at a prestigious university, is actively involved in professional organizations, and writes a wonderful blog. And did I mention he's also the CIO of a health care system? Oh, yes -- and a practicing physician? So I was eager to see John's latest post, in which he explores how we measure success and why that matters.
Continue reading "A Very Successful CIO Muses On The Meaning Of Success..."
Free Visual Voice Mail For BlackBerrys Offered By YouMail
Visual voice mail is one of the best features of phones such as the iPhone and Storm. It allows you to see voice mails in a list and pick the one you want to listen to rather than calling in and listening to one at a time in the order they were left. YouMail believes that everyone should have visual voice mail, and launched a new, free visual voice mail service for BlackBerry devices.
Continue reading "Free Visual Voice Mail For BlackBerrys Offered By YouMail..."
One Linux, Or Many, Or None?
DistroWatch chatted with none other than Linus Torvalds about Linux in general, wherein he admitted "multiple [Linux] distributions aren't just a good thing, I think it's something absolutely required". I'd agree, but is it required as a first step or a last one?
Continue reading "One Linux, Or Many, Or None?..."
New Google Service Lets You Stalk, Er, Find Your Friends
Helio first offered its Buddy Beacon service back in 2007. Buddy Beacon allowed Helio subscribers to opt into a friend-locating feature so you could "see" your friends on a map directly from your handset. Google has added a similar feature, called Google Latitude, to the newest version of its Maps for Mobile product.
Continue reading "New Google Service Lets You Stalk, Er, Find Your Friends..."
Pickens Pragmatism Means Going Wherever The Wind Blows (Part 2)
T. Boone Pickens is not an environmentalist. He may be a patriot. He is definitely a pragmatist. That may not turn out to be a bad thing for the environment. Unless Pickens finds environmental protection competes with the national security or his own business interests.
Continue reading "Pickens Pragmatism Means Going Wherever The Wind Blows (Part 2)..."
If Microsoft Loved Open Source, Who Would It Buy?
Could Microsoft take its cash reserves and buy an open source company? Why not? Who expected Oracle and Citrix Systems to become such big investors in open source. Citrix' purchase of XenSource sure has worked out--for Microsoft, in my opinion. And that example might seed a desire for more open source code in Microsoft's camp.
Continue reading "If Microsoft Loved Open Source, Who Would It Buy?..."
The Economics Of Private Storage Clouds
ParaScale is about to release new software that lets customers create "storage clouds" using commodity Linux servers. The economics are such that the cost of a petabyte of storage, once the domain of only the largest organizations, is coming within reach of more companies.
Continue reading "The Economics Of Private Storage Clouds..."
Federal CTO: Gov-Tech Guru, Or Private Tech Evangelist?
President Obama has promised to appoint what's being called the first federal CTO. There are two big areas that person could focus on: driving government itself to be a better user of IT, and championing policies that help IT companies thrive and expand technology use generally in the United States. Where do you want the federal CTO spending the most time?
Continue reading "Federal CTO: Gov-Tech Guru, Or Private Tech Evangelist? ..."
New Software Automates Data Archive Migrations
Procedo has announced a new version of its software to move archived data from one platform to another, including premises to the cloud.
Continue reading "New Software Automates Data Archive Migrations..."
Archives Dirty Little Secret
If you have read this blog for any length of time, you know that I am a big believer in archiving. Moving data off primary storage and onto a disk-based archive just makes sense and saves dollars. That said, there is one downside to archiving; you have to really like your choice of archive solutions (software and hardware) because leaving IS painful.
Continue reading "Archives Dirty Little Secret..."
Economy Is Biggest Wild Card Outsourcers Face, Says Wipro Co-CEO
If the global economy doesn't improve over the next six months, there's likely to be more industry consolidation, not only involving IT services providers, but especially among big outsourcing clients, predicts Girish Paranjpe, joint CEO of Wipro Technologies.
Continue reading "Economy Is Biggest Wild Card Outsourcers Face, Says Wipro Co-CEO..."
The Mobile UC Endpoint
Will the smartphone become your only computer, and if so, what are the implications for the enterprise-in terms of cost and security, among other issues?
Continue reading "The Mobile UC Endpoint..."
Google Adds To Gmail Features. Again
The onslaught of new features in Gmail shows no signs of abating. Today, Google added a few more more capabilities to its email product. The first lets you archive and label emails in a single step, and there are now new keyboard shortcuts, as well.
Continue reading "Google Adds To Gmail Features. Again..."
Pickens Pragmatism Means Going Wherever The Wind Blows (Part 1)
Oil and water don't mix. That is, unless you're T. Boone Pickens and you're rounding out your investment portfolio.
Continue reading "Pickens Pragmatism Means Going Wherever The Wind Blows (Part 1)..."
New iPhone 3G Due In June: Reports
Apple is planning to release the next version of the iPhone in June, with support for running apps in the background and a brand new, more powerful hardware architecture, according to reports on the buzzing Apple blogs.
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Motorola Confirms Windows Mobile 7 Efforts In 2010
Motorola has confirmed that it will participate in the Windows Mobile 7 area in 2010, but it will focus on Android for the time being.
Continue reading "Motorola Confirms Windows Mobile 7 Efforts In 2010..."
Think Electronic Passports Are Secure? Think Again
With a little time, and a $250 investment, a security researcher says he has shown how easy it is to capture electronic passport data, and then create cloned passports.
Continue reading "Think Electronic Passports Are Secure? Think Again..."
Razr Cuts Both Ways, Moto Goes From MSTR To MOOT
Motorola's fourth-quarter earnings spotlight just how bad things are at the maker of cell phones and networking equipment. It posted a loss that amounts to a staggering $3.6 billion. Motorola used to be the master of the mobile domain. Now, it is teetering on the edge of the abyss to obscurity. Can anything save the Razr maker?
Continue reading "Razr Cuts Both Ways, Moto Goes From MSTR To MOOT..."
Motorola, Microsoft In Suicide Pact
Things are so much worse at Motorola that it can't even afford to spin off its mobile division as planned.
Continue reading "Motorola, Microsoft In Suicide Pact..."
Microsoft Kills Window Vista--Not
It pays to read the whole headline. Yesterday I wrote about the expiration of automated Windows service pack blockers under the words, "Microsoft To Kill Vista, XP Upgrade Blockers". I think some people got the wrong idea.
Continue reading "Microsoft Kills Window Vista--Not..."
VMware's Next Open Source Step: VMware View Open Client
No, VMware isn't going open source with their core products any time soon -- at least, I don't think so. But there's little question they understand how important it is to have at least one toe in that water. To wit: the VMware View Open Client, an open source app that lets you connect from Linux desktops to remote Windows machines managed by VMware View.
Continue reading "VMware's Next Open Source Step: VMware View Open Client..."
England's IT Projects Face Massive Cost Overruns
Note to all candidates for the proposed federal CTO position: in the United Kingdom, eight government-run IT projects are about $35 billion over budget. The biggest failure is the electronic health-records effort, now four years late and facing cost overruns of more than $15B. Can the United States avoid a similar disaster with this vital health care initiative?
Continue reading "England's IT Projects Face Massive Cost Overruns..."
Google Powers Tasks And To-Do Lists Via Mobile Browsers
If you're a Gmail user, you probably rejoiced that Google added a Tasks feature to Gmail several months ago. Unfortunately, you couldn't take those tasks with you and check them from your phone. Well, now you can. Also, iPhone and Android users take note, Google has a little something extra lined up for you.
Continue reading "Google Powers Tasks And To-Do Lists Via Mobile Browsers..."
Sprint Gets All Warm And Fuzzy, Offers Rewards To Best Customers
Today Sprint announced a new program for what it calls its "most loyal" customers. Sprint Premiere will offer perks, rewards, and other benefits for being good to Sprint. About time, or desperate measure?
Continue reading "Sprint Gets All Warm And Fuzzy, Offers Rewards To Best Customers..."
How Simple Is Too Simple?
As traditional blogging platforms such as WordPress and Movable Type seem to make their products more like full-fledged content management systems with each release, there's an interesting counter-movement bubbling up: content management tools that seek to provide simplicity over deep functionality.
Continue reading "How Simple Is Too Simple?..."
Cost Of Data Breaches Keeps Going Up
The costs associated with a data breach involving consumer records have been steadily rising, according to the Ponemon Institute's fourth annual study, Cost Of A Data Breach. The survey took a close look at 43 organizations that reported a breach in 2008 -- ranging from the loss of 4,200 records to more than 113,000.
Continue reading "Cost Of Data Breaches Keeps Going Up..."
Google Execs Face Jail Time In Italy
Google's global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, and three other Google executives face the prospect of being jailed for a video that was uploaded to Google Video's Italian site on Sept. 8, 2006. The maximum sentence is 36 months.
Continue reading "Google Execs Face Jail Time In Italy..."
Gartner: Cloud Computing Still For 'Trailblazers'
Gartner has a surprisingly conservative forecast for business adoption of cloud computing services. The IT advisory firm says it could be up to seven years before cloud services reach "mainstream critical mass and commoditization."
Continue reading "Gartner: Cloud Computing Still For 'Trailblazers'..."
Microsoft Open Source Code Is Part Of Google's Chrome
Much of the reader feedback to "Why Windows Must Go Open Source" is saying, "No way." But part of my hypothesis is the fact that Microsoft as a developer culture is much less averse to such a move than Microsoft as a business culture. Consider the Windows Template Library, code that's now part of Google's browser, Chrome.
Continue reading "Microsoft Open Source Code Is Part Of Google's Chrome..."
Cash Flow Problems? T-Mobile Offers Installment Plan
If you're not exactly flush with cash or don't feel like plunking the cost of a new mobile phone on your credit card, T-Mobile is offering another solution: installment plans for mobile phones.
Continue reading "Cash Flow Problems? T-Mobile Offers Installment Plan..."
Is Window Mobile On Its Last Legs?
Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO of the mobile open source company Funambol, has all but declared Windows Mobile dead in a recent blog entry. Is he right, or is there still life left in the mobile platform from Microsoft?
Continue reading "Is Window Mobile On Its Last Legs? ..."
Google Earth 5.0 Lets You Plumb The Ocean's Depths
Today Google released a new version of Google Earth. The biggest change in the Earth exploration software is the addition of data from the world's oceans. Now you can scour the ocean floor and study its topography.
Continue reading "Google Earth 5.0 Lets You Plumb The Ocean's Depths..."
OpenOffice: What Just Happened?
Last week I had a long chat with Michael Meeks of Novell, he of the (in?)famous blog post about the stagnation of OpenOffice. The post itself has been chewed over and thrown around by so many other big dogs, I thought I'd go right to the man himself and ask him some questions. The biggest one was this: How is it that one of the biggest success stories in the open source software world (at least in terms of recognizability) is getting so badly bogged down from within?
Continue reading "OpenOffice: What Just Happened?..."
Apple Planning Video-Call iPhone
Recent stories on Apple's iPhone patent have focused on Cupertino's threatened legal action against Palm, which is launching the iPhone-like Pre smartphone. But a closer examination of the Apple patent yields much more interesting news. Namely, Apple is considering adding a video record feature to the iPhone -- an omission users have long complained about -- and it may soon become a handheld videophone platform, with support for mobile video-conferencing calls.
Continue reading "Apple Planning Video-Call iPhone..."
Comcast Broadcasts Porn Clip During Super Bowl
Super Bowl watchers in Tucson, Ariz., "got more action than they bargained for" when cable provider Comcast showed a short and extremely graphic porn clip during the final moments of the game.
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Video: Super Bowl Security
There will be about 250,000 people in Tampa, Fla., for the Super Bowl today. And while the FBI has reported that there are no credible terror threats for the game, one bet you're guaranteed to win today is that security will be tight.
Continue reading "Video: Super Bowl Security..."
Windows 7 'Security Flaw' Really Is By Design
Blogger Long Zheng is raising concern about a supposed Windows 7 security bug that he discovered. He's shown that it is possible to push keystrokes into the User Account Control dialog to turn off UAC completely. Although Zheng contacted Microsoft about the problem, they insist it's "by design."
Continue reading "Windows 7 'Security Flaw' Really Is By Design..."
How The Stimulus Bill Supports Enterprise IT
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed by the House last week, will probably sail through the Senate in the next week or so and get to the president's desk for signing by mid-February, despite the political theater to which we're likely to be treated over the next 15 days.
Continue reading "How The Stimulus Bill Supports Enterprise IT..."
5 Hot Technologies To Learn To Rev Up Your Web 3.0 Smarts
I admit it; I love technical books. Give me a cookbook-sized tome from O'Reilly, Addison-Wesley, or even Web access via the great new Safari Books Online service, and I'm there. Sadly, there's never enough time to dive into the platforms and programming tools one wants to learn about. Yet now's the perfect time, because reading is a great way to develop new professional skills while remaining positively focused on the future amid these challenging economic times. Read on for my "I'm getting ready for Web 3.0" list.
Continue reading "5 Hot Technologies To Learn To Rev Up Your Web 3.0 Smarts..."
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