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The InformationWeek October 2009 Archive « September 2009 | Main | November 2009 » |
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New Project Takes Aim At Web Vulnerabilities
New open source honeypot sets bait to lure attackers and to gain first hand information on current attack techniques underway.
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Blue Coat Identifies Halloween Trick
Blue Coat has identified a new malware trick just in time for Halloween. Unsuspecting victims are redirected to one of two malware sites after searching for Halloween related sites. These distribution sites are typically used for hosting of warez, pirated digital content, but have been switched to malware distribution in the past 12 hours.
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WhiteHouse.gov Drupal Detractors Get Buggy
The news that WhiteHouse.gov relaunched this week running open source Drupal software raised eyebrows and hackles among knee-jerk anti-Obama types and a small cadre of ignorant bloggers.
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The Internet At 40: A Promise Deciphered
The Internet turned 40 yesterday, and it got me thinking about its relationship to the time and place in which it was invented. The happenstance of its first message belies why it wasn't just an innovation or improvement, but a truly disruptive technology.
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Nokia Dis-N-Gages
Nokia has decided to shut down its N-Gage gaming service in September 2010. This is a rare public admission of defeat for Nokia, which launched the N-Gage gaming platform to much fanfare several years ago. Ever since Nokia transitioned the service to an online gaming portal, it has failed to find users.
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Users Reporting BlackBerry Storm2 Wi-Fi Goof
Covered by the tidal wave of Motorola Droid news this week was the launch of the BlackBerry Storm2 on Verizon's network. In all respects, the device is a major update to the original that is seriously worth considering. Although, there appears to be an issue with the Storm2's Wi-Fi radio.
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Amazon Serves Up MySQL
Amazon's newest cloud offering: MySQL 5.1 in the cloud, also known as Amazon RDS. And there's worry that it'll turn out to be a bad thing for MySQL in the long run, although that might not hold true for other open source repurposed in the same way.
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iTunes 9.0.2 Breaks Palm Pre Sync Again
The cat-and-mouse game between Apple and Palm continues. Apple offered up iTunes 9.0.2 yesterday. The main reason for the update was to bring new compatibility with Apple TV 3.0 software. Apple was sure to take the time to nix the Palm Pre's ability to sync with iTunes, too.
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IBM And HP Seeking $700M Microsoft Outsourcing Deal
IBM and Hewlett-Packard are among the finalists for a $700 million outsourcing contract from Microsoft to manage huge portions of its global IT infrastructure, according to a media report from India.
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Confirmed: Significant Percentage of IT Spend, "No ROI"
What could you do if you had, say, 25% of your budget freed up to use for innovation instead of maintenance? I'm asking because in our recent research about end user devices, we learned that two thirds of a research population of 558 IT professionals spend anywhere from 11% to over 40% on end user device replacement. And, what's the ROI? Most don't measure it: "it's just overhead."
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Does The World Need A Twitter Device?
Twitter has become a very popular service and to make the most of it, Peek has released a new device called the TwitterPeek that does just one thing - Twitter. Really?
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Benioff Discloses All In 'Behind the Cloud' Except...
Five copies of "Behind the Cloud" have arrived at my desk, two intended for fellow IW staffers and three for me, an embarrassment of riches. It's Marc Benioff's book on how Salesforce.com was created and built into a successful company. I am reading it avidly… but some disclosures will apparently have to wait for the sequel.
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A Public Broadband Option?
Having looked over Google's explanation of its Google Voice call blocking practices to the Federal Communications Commission, it's clear to me that U.S. telecommunications regulations need to be thrown out and re-written from the ground up.
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Social Media Influence Elections, Not Laws
We've seen how social media like Twitter and Facebook can be used as part of a winning election strategy, but the same tools don't seem to influence elected officials or public policy.
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Sprint: No More Tethering
Here's an interesting move. Today, a Sprint spokesperson said that moving forward it will not allow its smartphone customers to tether their devices to their laptops. You want mobile Internet on your laptop? Buy a Sprint dongle and data plan.
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The State Of The Mobile Web
Opera has released a report on the state of the mobile web and it shows, as expected, growth in the number of people viewing the web on their mobile phones, the number of pages each person views and the amount of data they each consume.
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Does Driving Electric Need To Mimic Combustion?
I've read that most of the plug-in electric vehicles under development have been designed to mimic the "feel" of driving a combustion engine car. I'm not sure that's even possible, and I don't know why they'd try.
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Sprint Continues To Bleed Customers
Sprint reported its third quarter earnings today, and the news wasn't so good. Though Sprint lost customers at a slower pace than the previous two quarters, it still saw overall subscriber numbers drop. So much for that whole "Palm Pre to the Rescue" notion, eh?
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IBM Takes $150M From Sun And HP Accounts In Q3
IBM says its Migration Factory service had a busy third quarter as it displaced Sun and Hewlett-Packard Unix servers and storage systems for 235 separate customers, accounting for $150 million in revenue for IBM. For the first nine months of the year, IBM said, the corresponding revenue total is $400 million.
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HTC Bringing Android 2.0 To Hero
It's no secret that the Motorola Droid's ace-in-the-hole is the Android 2.0 "Eclair" operating system that's on board. The big question on everyone's mind is, will existing Android devices be able to upgrade? The answer is yes. Sort of.
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Verizon: Our Network Can Handle The Droid
Verizon Wireless and Motorola announced the Droid smartphone yesterday with much hoopla. Neither company spared the competition, and Verizon took a direct shot at AT&T when it said, "We’re not anticipating the network will take a hit on this."
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Ksplice: No More Reboots?
How'd you like to never have to reboot a Linux box again -- no, not even if you have to apply a kernel-level patch? That's the promise of Ksplice, a software technology for Linux (and maybe soon other platforms) designed to allow a system to be patched from the kernel level on up without having to be restarted. It's available right now for Ubuntu, and from what I can see, it's not digital snake oil.
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Forget Windows 7 Service Pack 1
If you have ever seen a survey about when consumers and companies plan to move to Windows 7, there's one choice you can count on being there: "After the first service pack." I suspect that many of the people who make that choice are simply saying they are really busy and just don't want to think about the whole disruptive OS migration thing right now.
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Oracle Fading In Rear-View Mirror, Says SAP CEO
Trying to apply some sort of favorable spin to SAP's disappointing quarterly results, CEO Leo Apotheker implied that while things at SAP aren't exactly booming, the situation at Oracle is even worse.
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Four Possible Reasons Why L.A. Chose Google Over Microsoft
The Los Angeles City Council has chosen Google over Microsoft for 30,000 city employees' email accounts. What better place than Tinseltown for this tech industry drama to play out, with one councilman even delivering a choice line about whether cloud computing could push the city off the edge of a cliff (a drama AND an action film). But we're still waiting for an ending that answers this question: Why Google over Microsoft?
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First Impressions Of The Motorola Droid
I was able to spend some serious time with the Motorola Droid today. The hardware has a few quirks, but it is solidly engineered and built. The materials exude quality, and it feels great to hold in your hand. Oh yeah, and Android on it is pretty cool, too. Its real killer feature is its lead on every other Android handset with the 2.0 -- a.k.a. Eclair -- system software.
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Innovation, Not Cost, New Cloud Battle Cry
Maybe folks are simply trying to talk themselves out of the recession (which would be a good thing in itself), but it seems like the conversation around cloud computing is shifting from cost-cutting to unleashing innovation.
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New iPhone App Gives 24x7 Swine Flu Coverage
Swine flu is permeating everywhere these days--not just the virus, but news about it. But if you're still not getting your fill of H1N1, Harvard Medical School has released a new iPhone app that provides real-time updates while you're on the move.
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DOD Says Yes To More Open Source
Open source in the government and military isn't a new thing; governance is one of open source's biggest target markets, so to speak. It's still all the more heartening to hear the Department of Defense come out strongly in favor of open source, and to recommend using more of it whenever possible.
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Pre-Beta: SAP Expands BI On Demand (Video)
It's exciting to see this part of SAP: nimble, open, swift, even on demand. Last week, the company began showing pre-beta versions of several new software as a service technologies, code named 12 Sprints and Kona, one meant to provide a collaborative decision-making environment, the other to provide users with an on demand BI experience. We got an up close look, and filmed it, ReviewCam style, and even took a glance at SAP's newest BusinessObjects Explorer.
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File Virtualization, The Ultimate Cloud Gateway?
In our last entry we talked about the use of cloud storage as a backup target, but another ideal use case for cloud storage is to use it as an archive area. Almost every IT organization has old data that they want or must keep, but are struggling with where to keep it. Its ability to identify, automatically move and transparently recall data could make file virtualization the ultimate cloud gateway.
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Motorola And Verizon Wireless Make Droid Official
This morning Motorola and Verizon Wireless officially unveiled the Motorola Droid. The Droid features some fantastic specs and looks to be a winner for Verizon Wireless and Motorola both, especially at the price point of $200.
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How Important Is Open Source To Mobile Devices?
Open Source software has been around for a long time but really made its name in the public eye with Linux. For some, they think open source is Linux. Despite the name recognition Linux enjoys, it is still a relatively minor part of the overall computer industry, especially on the desktop side. The mobile industry though is shaping up to be quite different, and most of this has come about in just the last few years.
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Patch Your Firefox
Mozilla just released 16 patches for vulnerabilities in Firefox. Eleven of the flaws are critical, and affect a number of components in the browser.
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Dealing With Digital Depression 2.0
I knew things had really changed when I came across a homeless man sitting on the ground at Columbus Circle last weekend, panhandling for $15 million to fund an "electronic Democracy project." One thousand dollars would go towards an iBook and $5 for lunch. He wouldn't tell me about his project in detail unless I put up some "serious money," but his request drove home how much has changed in our society since even the recession of 2002-2003, never mind 1991.
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Opera's Latest Report: 35M Users, 2PB Of Data
Today Opera Software released the findings of its monthly "State of the Mobile Web" report. Among the many tidbits of data shared is that Opera Mini saved its 35.6 million users $8 billion in data fees, and processed 2 petabytes of data.
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Sony Ericsson's Android Phone Coming Soon
It looks like the Android Army is going to add another top-tier handset to its ranks, as Sony Ericsson is preparing to announce a new phone Nov. 3. All signs point to it being the latest version of its high-end Xperia line running the Google-backed operating system with a custom user interface.
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I've Got A Netbook And It's Not A Toy
I just put the wraps on an InformationWeek Analytics Informed CIO report on the rise of netbooks in the enterprise. These babies continue to make their way into the office, despite the somewhat weak claims from Intel and Microsoft that they're not appropriate for business use.
Says who? Not folks in IT. In our recent InformationWeek Analytics Windows 7 survey of 1,414 business technology professionals, 36% of respondents said they already have some level of netbook use in their organizations today. This is expected to grow to 72% of companies over the next 24 months.
Why? Simple: Netbooks fill a major computing gap between the smartphone and laptop and do it at a terrific price.
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Android 2.0 Changelog Is Droolworthy
Today Google officially made Android 2.0 available to developers and along with it a new SDK, toolbox and APIs for them to use in crafting their apps. Google also spilled some details about the features that are now going to be part of Android. Some of the goodies include support for multiple Gmail and Exchange accounts.
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Want To Escape Google? There's An App For That
Google understands that sometimes people -- and businesses -- have to pack up and move on to some other service. It is now offering a tool for users of Google Docs whereby they can convert, zip, and download all of their documents at once.
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Ubuntu's Future Shouldn't Be This Unpredictable
Yesterday Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth held a phone conference to talk about the state of Ubuntu. It's clearly become more than just "Linux for human beings". But it's getting harder to avoid thinking of Canonical as a black box, and that hurts.
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EMC Adding Big Data Center Plus 400 Jobs: A Cloud Hub?
Five weeks ago, EMC said it would add 400 jobs in Research Triangle Park over five years. Three weeks ago, it announced its new Atmos Online Compute Service. And yesterday it bought a 450,000 square-foot warehouse in RTP to serve as a data center and R&D facility. If we triangulate in the Triangle, could that mean that mean EMC will base its new Atmos cloud business there?
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Have AT&T's Network Performance Issues Been Self-Inflicted?
Network performance at AT&T hasn't been much to brag about in recent years. The number one excuse seems to be the ravenous appetite for bandwidth iPhone owners have. Get a few thousand of them together in one city for a convention and people are suddenly reminiscing of the good old days with GPRS speeds.
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Pilots Who Missed Airport Busy With Laptops
The pilots of Northwest Airlines Flight 188, which overflew the runway at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport last week, told investigators from the National Transportation Safey Board that they used their laptop computers -- a violation of company policy -- while discussing airline crew scheduling procedures.
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UK Jobs Website Hacked
The news site Guardian is warning members of its UK jobs site that the site has been breached, and that personal data may been snagged.
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Verizon CEO: iPhone For Us Is Up To Apple
Verizon executives must be sick of answering the iPhone question, but Verizon Communications CEO Ivan Seidenberg gave it another shot recently. He said, "This is a decision that is exclusively in Apple’s court." Um, what now?
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Is Cloud Bigger Than The Advent Of The Personal Computer?
Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, says "the cloud" is a phenomenon that is bigger than the advent of the PC. I think he's almost got it right. Cloud is bigger than the PC Revolution, but it's big in part because it incorporates and extends the PC revolution to Internet server clusters. The cloud owes more to the PC than Eric acknowledges.
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Atigeo's Smarter Social Profile (video)
The World Wide Web is becoming the World Wide Watch -- a creepy place where people talk about behavioral targeting and learning your intent. The goal is less nefarious, because implied in that is the ability to offer consumers more meaningful content. Startup Atigeo promises to make this all palatable by giving users access to their social profiles, including how that profile is acted upon.
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Nokia Delays N900 Smartphone
Fans of Nokia's N900 will have to wait a bit longer to get their hands on the Maemo-powered smartphone because it will be delayed until sometime during November. While no one likes delays, this handset is powerful enough to look like it's worth the wait.
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Can Open Source Software Save Democracy?
Voting machines and their foibles were catapulted to the top of public consciousness during the 2000 Presidential election, but have gone largely unnoticed in subsequent elections, which is a good thing. The possibility that a widespread glitch could affect a close national election, and the potential for this to undermine democracy, cannot be overstated.
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Cloud Based Backup, Ready For Business?
Cloud based backup services have been successful in the consumer space. Companies like Mozy, Carbonite and others are protecting thousands of laptops and home desktops, but can cloud based backups services move beyond protecting consumer or prosumer data and into the data center? Are cloud based backups ready for business?
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H1N1 A National Emergency: Bring On The E-Records!
President Obama has declared a national emergency in respect to H1N1. This gives hospitals more leeway in setting up emergency operations to respond to the rising swine flu pandemic. Wouldn't e-medical records systems come in handy now?
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Recommended: Update BlackBerry Storm To OS 5.0
Attention BlackBerry Storm 9530 owners: If you haven't already, plug your phone into your computer, launch BlackBerry Desktop Manager, and install the new OS 5.0.0.328 system software ASAP.
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Fidelity Sees Surge In Mobile From Gen X And Y Customers
A search for "chief wireless officer" shows it's a very exclusive club. One name that'll come up is Fidelity Investments' chief wireless officer Joseph Ferra, whose 10-year advocacy for mobile IT has driven huge growth for Fidelity Anywhere, particularly among Gen X and Gen Y clients.
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Hospitals Serving Poor Lag In Healthcare IT
It's no surprise that hospitals which serve predominantly poor patients are lagging in implementing healthcare IT. However, it's a cause for concern that the federal stimulus program might not be up to the task of closing that gap, according to federally supported researchers.
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PortableApps Adds Non-Open Source Apps, Sort Of
In a startling move, a favorite platform of mine for delivering no-install open source applications on Windows has thrown open the doors to adding freeware -- non-open source apps -- to their collection. Did the planets fall out of alignment when I wasn't looking?
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Wells Fargo's Innovation Balancing Act
Wells Fargo's Executive Vice President of Information Services, Wayne Mekjian faces all of the challenges most bank IT executives face, like an increasing focus on security and privacy and a move to consumer friendly services like mobile banking. But he's also had to digest the integration of acquisitions. And yet, the bank still manages to focus on innovation. Mekjian shared some of his challenges and innovations in a video interview.
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Palm Pixi To Street Nov. 15 For $100
Palm's second phone to run webOS will finally become available from Sprint starting on November 15. The Palm Pixi features a touch screen, full QWERTY keyboard, and an attractive $100 price point.
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Twitter, Facebook Waste $2B Annually In U.K. Economy
Calling the personal use of social media by businesspeople during the workday "a productivity black hole," a British IT services company said more than half of the 1,460 surveyed employees said they spend up to 40 minutes per week on such sites. I'd say that while those numbers might be accurate, the conclusion is astoundingly shallow.
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T-Mobile Launches Project Dark
T-Mobile has officially launched their pricing plans that have been floating around under the names Project Dark or Project Black in the last few weeks. The pricing should be low enough to pull a number of people to their network. The rumor of the iPhone though, was, as I suspected, false.
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Ten Useful Windows 7 Downloads
If your company is staying with Windows then it's going to move to Windows 7 eventually. That means you need to be prepared to make the decision about when and how to migrate. Here are a few useful files and utilities on the Microsoft site to make you the Windows 7 expert in your company.
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Why Do Companies Fail?
Every week I read about another company that has closed its doors. Many news outlets are quick to report on the closures but rarely there is an analysis on why they failed.
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Ochocinco Beats Single Coverage, Breaks Anquan Boldin News
Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Ochocinco likes to boast that he can't be covered. Now he says he's the one who'll be doing the covering. Of news.
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Mobile Round-Up: Storm OS Upgrade, Droid Army Amassing
This has been a busy week for the mobile industry. Several nuggets came to light that may not have caught your eye, so Over The Air rounded them up for you. In this edition, we talk about a new operating system update for the original BlackBerry Storm and a spate of Droid-related news.
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Application Security Is National Security
Hacks targeting U.S. government computers are coming from China. We knew that. The Chinese hackers are relying on zero-day software vulnerabilities to exploit critical systems. So, tell me again: why aren't we doing more to require applications be built secure from the start?
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Questioning "Hardware Refresh" Spends A Good Career Move
The times, they are a’ changing. Vista didn’t stick. Windows 7 hasn’t stuck yet. Netbooks are becoming more and more popular, while desktop apps grow ever less dominant. And IT is serving an increasingly mobile and tech-savvy workforce. To continue a status-quo (and large) spend on end user device replacement seems insane, and perhaps a career-limiting move.
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BlackBerry Storm2 Landing Oct. 28 In Verizon Stores
If you're anxious to get your hands on the new BlackBerry Storm2 -- and I wouldn't blame you if you are -- you won't have to wait much longer. The device will street Wednesday, October 28. Let me say this, any person using the original Storm needs to upgrade to the Storm2.
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In Search Of Lost Time
This week's O'Reilly Web 2.0 Summit yielded the usual detritus about technology reinventing the laws that govern time and space, but Facebook's revelation that people spend 8 billion minutes a day on its service really cut through the clutter for me.
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Is There A Business In The Virtual World?
Much has been made of the premature obituaries for Second Life, but while the virtual world manufactured by Linden Labs has prevailed long beyond its presumed expiration date, the business model seems too arcane and forbidding to inspire many imitators.
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Google Goings-On: Reader, Maps, Picasa, Search Updates
Google has been busy this week. Beyond announcing a search deal with Twitter, it also brought more options to its RSS Reader, layers to Maps for Mobile, support for Windows 7, and customized mobile search.
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CNN Bringing iReport Closer
CNN.com unveiled a new site design to reporters Thursday that it will launch on Monday that includes more prominent use of video and a radical change in how it incorporates so-called citizen journalism.
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Reducing Storage Complexity In Server Virtualization
The storage component of a virtualized server infrastructure has been labeled as complex and expensive. In our prior entries about selecting a storage foundation we discussed what systems and protocols are available that might help simplify and reduce costs for storage in a virtualized environment. Beyond physical hardware you need software tools that can link the abstract virtual machine to the physical storage.
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Why Was The Open Source Guy At The Windows 7 Party?
It does sound like a setup for a joke, doesn't it? What was I, the Open Source Guy, doing at Microsoft's gala Windows 7 launch party in New York City yesterday? A colleague of mine pointed this out, and I joshed back that I felt like the only guy in a corduroy suit at a black-tie ball. Actually, my first jolt of perspective came before I even stood on line for my badge.
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Keep Your Laptop Off Our Inadequate Network
Why do IT people resist end users bringing their own equipment to the enterprise network? Those same IT folks are typically pretty proud of what they've achieved with their infrastructure. The message is typically, "it's a security risk." But the implied message is: "we have an inadequate network to deal with this challenge."
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Microsoft Pokes Fun At Itself In Mobile App Video
Microsoft has made another video that pokes fun at itself, this time about Windows Marketplace for Mobile. It also seems to be taking a few swipes at other app stores, namely the Apple App Store. It isn't mentioned specifically, but once you view the video, you'll see some of the absurd apps Microsoft was pretending to work on. I bet more than one of them is in the iPhone App Store. With over 75,000 apps, there has to be at least one mustache simulator, right?
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Full Motorola Droid Specs Leak Before Announcement
Oops. Someone over at Motorola published the full technical specifications of the upcoming Motorola Droid Android handset for Verizon Wireless about one week too early. The device boasts some impressive specs. Care to find out what the Droid is packing?
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The Top 10 Offshore Nations In The World
Which countries around the world are the best choices for your offshoring projects? This study by respected outsourcing/offshoring consultancy Tholons includes some nations that are obvious (India) but also some that are unexpected: will the neighbors of the U.S. to the north and the south both make the list?
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Windows 7 Photo Gallery & Movie Maker (video)
Windows Live Photo Gallery and Movie Maker come with Windows 7, but are free to download and will make working with your photo images insanely easy. Movie Maker is also a pretty nifty tool -- and one that should make YouTube happy, because I can see many families posting simple slide shows from this tool.
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Windows 7 Taskbar & More (Video)
Windows 7 is being hailed as the operating system that Microsoft finally got right. Time will tell of course, but there's sure a lot to like at first glance. We got some demonstrations of a few of the end user productivity enhancements from Microsoft. In the first part of our video demonstration, we'll look at the new Taskbar and similar features.
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A Few Of Fedora 12's Coming Features
Fedora 12's public beta is now out -- what timing, right? -- and while a cursory glance at the feature list as a whole doesn't sport anything revolutionary, there's more than a few goodies worth singling out.
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My Hat Is Blue
For the past two days I have been back in Seattle. It was almost two years ago I left the city, and was not sure when I'd get a chance to return. Microsoft's BlueHat security conference was a great reason to come back to my favorite rainy city.
What is BlueHat?
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Adobe's Opportunity
Like most CEOs of public companies, Shantanu Narayen, CEO of Adobe, isn't the most compelling interview subject because he's too guarded about what he says.
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How To Scale Apps The Facebook Way (Video)
As critical and operational applications drive today's business, one of the biggest challenges most organizations face is how to scale those applications (especially as they become distributed) and their data. Facebook is a great example of one of the most distributed, massive applications around. At Web 2.0, Facebook's VP of Engineering, Mike Schroepfer, talked about how they tackle this challenge.
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Alternative IT
Cloud Computing. SaaS. They're such over-used marketing words that they've become the butt of jokes (Larry Ellison on YouTube, anyone?). But hopefully the hype machine hasn't generated too much noise to drown out the fact that there have been some significant, permanent changes in how CIOs view software. At InformationWeek, we call it Alternative IT.
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Sun Plans To Cut 3,000 Jobs Over the Next 12 Months
Sun disclosed Tuesday in regulatory filings that it plans to cut 3,000 jobs from its workforce, as it awaits the go-ahead on its takeover by Oracle. It's cut 7,600 workers in three rounds of layoffs over three years, according to SEC filings. Will this mark the end of the downsizing?
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Network Neutrality Forces: Rules Good For Business
The network neutrality forces are trying to make the case that regulations will be good for business -- even for the likes of AT&T and Verizon, which are quite frankly the targets of the Federal Communications Commission's rulemaking proposals.
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Nokia Dampens Apple's Big Week With iPhone Lawsuit
If you hadn't noticed, Apple has been having a heck of a week. On top of its record quarterly performance, it introduced a range of new products and its stock hit an all time high. Alas, it wasn't to last. Today, Nokia smacked Apple upside the head with a huge iPhone-related lawsuit.
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Web 2.0 Summit: HP's MagCloud Unveiled (Video)
HP unveiled its MagCloud offering at Web 2.0 Summit this week. It's an impressive service that gives would-be publishers a cost-effective and cost-predictable way to easily publish content, all on-demand. We got a hands-on demonstration.
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Verizon Wireless Pulling Out The Stops For 'Droid'
If Verizon Wireless' current "Droid Does" ad campaign isn't enough to convince you that the company is excited about its first Android handset, here's a few more clues: It mailed R2D2 "droids" to the media, and has set October 28th for a big Droid event.
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Nook eBook Reader Ups Ante
Barnes & Noble just announced their Nook eBook reader, which should be available next month in time for Christmas. Priced at $259 just like the Amazon Kindle it adds a few features. It also could be a sign of things to come in the smartphone world.
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The Day That XP Died
Bye, bye, to the XP supply
And Vista, what a nightmare, it was quite a black eye
Windows 7 now will be the rallying cry
Thinking this will make my new PC fly
This will make my new PC fly
Continue reading "The Day That XP Died..."
Avoid Trap Of Proprietary Cloud Tooling: Use Simple API
What's the first thing you should do if you're thinking of developing software for cloud computing? At ZendCon, Zend Technologies user group yesterday, three members of a five member panel answered the same way: adopt Simple Cloud API, the open source cloud services interface.
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Enterprise IT Is Not Ready For Private Cloud Storage
Our esteemed Director of InformationWeek Analytics, Art Wittmann, has a theory that I’m secretly working as a cheerleader for underdog technologies. And our esteemed Executive Editor of InformationWeek Analytics, Lorna Garey, often asks if my favorite drink is Koolade. To my dismay, they have proven themselves right once again. 18 months ago, I predicted that private cloud storage would take off for the Tier-2 storage needs of enterprises. You won’t hear me say this often, I WAS WRONG.
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SAP Salvages Maintenance Contract With Siemens
When software vendors issue a press release on a deal, it's usually for a new customer win. But after some scuttlebutt last month about souring negotiations between SAP and marquee customer Siemens, SAP decided to put out a different type of release Wednesday: Siemens has renewed its maintenance contract with SAP.
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Should Your Enterprise Network Be An Internet Hot Spot?
Thursday's Windows 7 consumer launch finds me wondering about a seemingly radical idea suggested by a chief technology officer. Namely, enterprises should open up their networks, effectively turning them, as far as users are concerned, into Internet hot spots. The emergence of both cloud computing and Windows 7 could push this forward, though one will be able to argue that this is simply conventional networks in hot-spot clothing.
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Understanding Hard Drive Performance
In the last performance entries we discussed understanding storage bandwidth and understanding storage controllers. Next up is to understand the performance characteristics of the hard drive itself and how the mechanical hard drive can be the performance bottleneck.
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What's This Google Music Nonsense All About?
Google is going to launch a music service? Really? That's what reports suggest today, with informed sources confirming that Google is set to bow the service with partners LaLa and iLike -- complete with blessings from the four major record labels. Does Google really expect to be able to make money with this venture?
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A 'Bill Of Rights' For SaaS Customers
Analyst R "Ray" Wang is a tireless and well-respected customer advocate in the world of enterprise software. Now Wang is bringing his advocacy over to the SaaS side with his recently published "Customer Bill of Rights" for SaaS. I share with you some of the highlights.
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First Impressions Of BlackBerry Storm2
I was able to spend a few moments with the BlackBerry Storm2 today. My initial take-away is that it is better in almost all respects than its predecessor, but weaknesses remain.
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Web 2.0 Summit: WOWD -- New Way To Search
WOWD is a new search engine that made its debut at Web 2.0 Summit this week. Mark Drummond, WOWD's CEO provided an explanation and demonstration on stage. (Video included.)
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ReviewCam: LendingClub's Online Financing
LendingClub offers an online service that lets borrowers borrow, and lets investors invest in that borrowing. We sat down with LendingClub CEO Renaud Laplanche to get a demonstration of this fascinating model.
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Web 2.0 Summit: Twitter CEO Zips Beak On Revenue Model
At the Web 2.0 Summit this week, Evan Williams, CEO of the ever-popular Twitter, danced lithely around the question of his company's future revenue model -- a question that continues to dog the industry, but doesn't seem to faze Williams much at all. (Video clip included.)
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Comcast CEO on Fancast and Net Neutrality
Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts got the Web 2.0 Summit started this week talking about everything from its beta Fancast service to net neutrality and bandwidth capping to social networking. The only thing he couldn't talk about was its rumored work on acquiring NBC, but he did discuss the company's broader push into the content business.
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IBM's Ubuntu, Ubuntu's IBM
Most of the comments about IBM's release of a Linux desktop package have been about timing it to compete with Windows 7's release. Let's look at a slightly broader picture.
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PayPal Opens Its Platform
PayPal President Scott Thompson announced at Web 2.0 this week that his company will be opening up its platform to developers, which should be good news, especially to startups.
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Quick Demo of Nokia N900
Nokia had a variety of devices on display at the Web 2.0 Summit this week, none more compelling than the N900, which is the first phone in its portfolio to run the Maemo Operating System. We got a quick demo in the Ovi Lounge.
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Are E-Books Chasing Imaginary Customers?
Barnes & Noble has unveiled "Nook," its own proprietary electronic reader, and the headlines breathlessly wonder if it's a Kindle killer or whether Apple is about to announce its own. I'm still wondering if anybody wants an e-reader to begin with.
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The Top 8 Outsourcing Cities In The World
While there's been a lot of talk recently about fundamental upheavals in the global outsourcing industry, this year's list of the top 8 outsourcing cities in the world remains the same as last year's, according to a joint study by experts Tholons and Global Services.
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AT&T And T-Mobile Announce BlackBerry Bold 9700
Both AT&T and T-Mobile announced that they'll be offering the BlackBerry Bold 9700 smartphone from Research In Motion in time for the holidays. The good news for both carriers is that the 9700 will run on their 3G networks.
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Windows Mobile 6.5.1 Spotted
Windows Mobile 6.5 isn't even a month old yet and already an update has been spotted. No, not WinMo 7. Just a minor update that mobile platform watchers have started calling 6.5.1. What updates has Microsoft included in this build?
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Gartner's Tepid IT Spending Forecast
Gartner predicts a 3.3% increase in IT spending next year, after plunging in 2009. And more than half of CIOs likely will see no increase, or a cut.
Continue reading "Gartner's Tepid IT Spending Forecast..."
Google Should Not Make Android Phones
You've probably seen the reports that say Google is planning to release its own unlocked smartphone with the Android operating system. I don't buy it, and I also think it's foolish for Google to get into the handset business.
Continue reading "Google Should Not Make Android Phones..."
Motorola's Third Android Handset Spotted
If you were wondering what Motorola's third Android handset will look like, wonder no longer. New images have appeared that show a simpler handset that won't match the CLIQ or DROID when it comes to specs.
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How Much Identity Management Do We Want?
Identity management, from both national security and personal security standpoints, could well be the next big policy debate we have in the United States.
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Google Phone To Be A Reality: Analyst
Here we go again. Long thought dead due to the presence of nearly a dozen Android handset models in the market, the Google phone rumor has reappeared. The Google-branded hardware will come with Android 2.0 and use Qualcomm's chips.
Continue reading "Google Phone To Be A Reality: Analyst..."
Gumblar: Back With A Vengeance
Earlier this year, the botnet Gumblar made a splash when it infected more than 2,300 Websites, including popular destinations such as Tennis.com, Variety, and Coldwellbanker.com. Now, security researchers say Gumblar is back in strength and is changing its tactics.
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FCC Gets Net Neutrality Boost
Prominent tech companies and individuals associated with the creation of the Internet (although not Al Gore) are filling new Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski's inbox with letters in support of his proposed network neutrality rules.
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Web 2.0 Summit - Time To Imagine
As we launch into another exciting week of Web happenings, I had a chance to conduct a video interview with the Web 2.0 Summit Chair, John Battelle about what we could expect to see this year. You can see the interview at our Live Web 2 Summit TV site. We'll stream selected content live, and on demand, throughout the conference on that site. The lineup is pretty impressive, but after talking to Battelle, I'm even more excited. Here's why.
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Cincinnati Children's Hospital CIO On Inclusion
One of our top five InformationWeek 500 award winners was Cincinnati Children's Hospital. In our video interview with CIO Marianne James, it was clear that her focus is being a part of the hospital's business, and making the hospital's business leaders a part of hers. This is a story of inclusion, which has bred extraordinary growth for this community hospital.
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NYC Taxi Commish: No More Cell Phones
Did you know that taxi and limousine drivers in New York City aren't supposed to be using cell phones when driving? Problem is, they ignore the rules and do anyway. Now, the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission is out for blood.
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SCO Ousts Darl ... But The Saga Continues
Just when you think the saga of SCO can't get any weirder, it does. The SCO Group announced in the last few days it was firing Darl McBride, but also "restructuring" and also "looking to raise additional funding and sell non-core assets to bolster working capital." To which I can only add: What non-core assets?
Continue reading "SCO Ousts Darl ... But The Saga Continues..."
Android To Reign Supreme By 2012
Gartner is predicting that the number one smartphone platform will be Android by 2012, surpassing the iPhone. Can the platform, which is currently only ahead of WebOS in market share, overtake its rivals in just three years?
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InformationWeek SMB Virtual Event: Dealing With Data Centers
Whether your company's data center is a couple of servers stashed in a closet or a gleaming, state-of-the-art climate-controlled facility, you're still facing the same set of challenges: how to keep the IT lights on while controlling costs, take advantage of new technologies to stay competitive, and position your company for an economic recovery in the midst of the toughest times for IT that many of us can remember.
On Wednesday, October 21, 2009, help is on the way.
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EMC Tops IBM In Huge Deal For Storage
One of Australia's largest hosting providers has bypassed incumbent storage provider IBM and instead picked EMC to deliver 261 terabytes of of storage. The customer's CTO said big factors were EMC's tight three-way alliance with Cisco and VMware and its willingness to extend service coverage from three years to four.
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Ballmer Bullish on New Directions for SharePoint
Microsoft's CEO talks up the collaboration software as a platform for customer-facing Web sites in an interview with InformationWeek.
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Bluetooth SIG: Wi-Fi Direct Bad For Consumers
Last week, the Wi-Fi Alliance announced work on a new specification that will allow devices to connect directly to one another without the need for wires. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group has taken the time to respond, and the message is one of caution.
Continue reading "Bluetooth SIG: Wi-Fi Direct Bad For Consumers..."
Live Web 2.0 Summit TV
There have been many technology-oriented gatherings (conferences, expositions, etc), but none that rival Web 2.0 Summit for attention, hype and, ultimately, delivering the goods, and this week marks the sixth annual conference. The theme: Web Squared. Techweb and O'Reilly Media will be broadcasting select sessions live for those who couldn't make it.
Continue reading "Live Web 2.0 Summit TV..."
Live Web 2.0 Summit TV
There have been many technology-oriented gatherings (conferences, expositions, etc), but none that rival Web 2.0 Summit for attention, hype and, ultimately, delivering the goods, and this week marks the sixth annual conference. The theme: Web Squared. Techweb and O'Reilly Media will be broadcasting select sessions live for those who couldn't make the sold out show.
Continue reading "Live Web 2.0 Summit TV..."
InformationWeek 500 Awards Video
This year's InformationWeek 500 awards were well chronicled on this site, but there's nothing like being at the InformationWeek 500 conference and the elegant gala we throw for our winners. We've captured the ceremony and the awards for you to watch, including special presentations of our top five, a look behind the scenes at our preparation and winners in several elite categories.
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Microsoft: Sidekick User Data On The Way
Microsoft and T-Mobile have issued yet another statement on the status of Sidekick end-user data. According to them, Sidekick users should see some of their data return later this week.
Continue reading "Microsoft: Sidekick User Data On The Way..."
Verizon 'There's A Map For That' Is Truthy
Verizon's recent TV ad comparing its national wireless coverage to that of AT&T's is a double-barreled attack on both AT&T and, by mocking the iPhone's "there's an app for that" slogan, AT&T's partner in smartphone domination, Apple.
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No Linux Finger Pointing, Please
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols's (in?)famous "Five Ways The Linux Desktop Shoots Itself In The Foot" has generated as much heat as it has light. I feel I can boil all five of his points down to one simple exhortation. Dear Linux community: Stop blaming other people for your own failings.
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Verizon's iPhone Attack Ads Dash Verizon iPhone Hopes?
If you were holding out for a Verizon Wireless-compatible variant of the iPhone, you just might want to give up. Verizon Wireless' new iPhone attack ads pretty much confirm that Verizon will never sell an Apple iPhone.
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T-Mobile's Project Black To Shake Up Industry
There have been a number of rumors on T-Mobile's "Project Black" the last few days, and while nothing has been confirmed, some of the veil has been pulled back on the details of what is going on. Could an iPhone from the carrier with a $50 per month all-in plan with 4G speeds be forthcoming? And by $50 all-in plan, I mean one that includes voice, text and data.
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Verizon Levels Sights At iPhone With Droid Ads
This weekend Verizon Wireless kicked off an online and TV-based ad campaign that takes direct aim at Apple's iPhone. The ad taunts "Everything iDon't, Droid Does." Verizon's first Android phone -- made by Motorola -- is finally ready.
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Microsoft and Mozilla Agree On Browser Risks
Usually the PC press spends a lot of time pitting the number 1 and number 2 browser makers against each other. I think that's just mean, and would prefer to focus on the important issues where they agree. Wouldn't you know, Microsoft and Mozilla have found common ground on the issue of browser plugins: both companies agree they can be dangerous.
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Friendfeed Traffic Drops Post-Acquisition And The First Employee Departs
When Friendfeed launched, it was supposed to be the ultimate sharing service that was going to beat Twitter. So why is traffic to the service down post-Facebook acquisition?
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Scammers Up The ‘Rogueware’ War
Attackers have been known to encrypt user files (such as happened with Gpcode), and then demand payment for the decryption key, for some time. These so-called rogueware, including scareware, attacks have been underway for some time. Now scammers have upped their attack tactics.
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HCL Ties Its Pay To Boeing 787 Sales
I just spoke with HCL America President Shami Khorana, who shared some examples of how the company’s tying outsourcing pay to client business results--including the sale of Boeing 787s.
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The Custom URL Shortener
My first thought when I saw that the federal government had created its own URL shortener was: what a waste of time and effort. The more I think about it, the more I wonder why other large organizations with popular Websites haven't done this for their links.
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The Trouble With Monetizing Infinity
Yesterday, Facebook said 90% of the ad demand market not served by Google was ripe for its profits, and Sony debuted a PlayStation 3 with twice the storage previously available. There's a common theme to both news stories:
Continue reading "The Trouble With Monetizing Infinity..."
Nokia's Comes With Music Barely Breaks 100K Users
Nokia put a lot of marketing muscle and dollars behind its Comes With Music campaign. Despite the promise of free music for a year, the service only managed to interest 107,000 users it its first 365 days.
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Android 2.0 Features Leak Out
A run through of screen shots on a Motorola Android device show off what Android 2.0 has in store. The biggest features are integrated Facebook support, Exchange support, and a new user interface.
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Here Comes Automated Storage Tiering
At Storage Networking World, at least one new category in storage is coming to the forefront; Automated Storage Tiering. These are typically devices that can sit in front of your existing storage platform and allow some of it to leverage a high speed solid state front end without you manually having to move data to a Solid State Disk (SSD).
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GPLv2 Ambiguities Linger On
Scarcely a week goes by without some criticism or analysis of open source licensing, and this time around it's whether or not the GPLv2's "legally ambiguous".
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BadCustomer.com Is Bad News For Online Retail
My recent post about BadCompany.com, which blacklists customers who claim refunds from their credit card issuer rather than directly from the retailer, raised a number of interesting questions: have any retailers actually signed up for this, how does BadCustomer even get a hold of those names, and isn't it a violation of customer privacy for retailers to reveal customer names to third parties?
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Google Street View Gets A Trike For Off Roading
Oh, this is awesome. Google is taking its street view idea, well, off road. Due to the limitations presented by the size of its street view cars, Google has created a street view trike that can go where the cars can't. Not only that, but it is opening up the floor to requests on where it sends the trike for mapping.
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HTC HD2 Coming To T-Mobile?
One of the most impressive devices running Windows Mobile 6.5 is the HTC HD2. It has been thought that it would be sometime in 2010 before it came to the US, but it may be coming to T-Mobile sooner than that.
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The Apple Tablet Hype Isn't Right
Apple's rumored tablet computer, widely believed to be coming next year, deserves the hype it has received and will usher in a golden age of journalism, argues Newsweek's Daniel Lyons.
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For You, iPhone, Anything
Here’s how one CIO bent--well, blew up--the company’s smartphone policy to let the iPhone in the door.
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Google Adds Docs Preview To Gmail
Gmail users can take advantage of Gmail Labs to preview things such as YouTube videos and Picasa Web albums without leaving their Gmail inboxes. Now, users can do the same with Google Docs.
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Is Virtualization The Key To Continuity?
Business continuity and disaster recovery have long been sore points for enterprise IT. Can virtualization change all that and make true continuity a reality ... or at least, make recovering from disaster a faster and more thorough operation? That's the premise of our latest InformationWeek Analytics poll.
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Boston Hospital Bans Facebook
New England Baptist Hospital banned Facebook and other social media, citing privacy concerns over employees revealing too much information about patients in their online posts, and complaints about employees wasting time online. The ban will remain in place until the hospital can come up with a social media policy, according to reports.
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iPhone Round-Up: FM Radio, No More Jailbreaking?
A few interesting stories have surfaced in recent days regarding the iPhone. First, a developer is saying that Apple is nearly ready to introduce an FM radio tuner application for the iPhone. Second, newer iPhone 3GS models appear to be resistant to jailbreaking.
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Heartland's Breach: Lessons Learned (w/ Video)
Earlier this year, Heartland Payment Systems announced a major security breach that sent a few shockwaves through the financial world, not just because of its impact on Heartland, but also because of what the incident revealed about the sophistication of the Russian hackers who perpetrated this fraud. Heartland's CSO Kris Herrin talked to me about it at our recent Bank Summit in Pasadena, CA.
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San Francisco Opens Government Data
San Francisco is opening up government data to third-party application developers, who are jumping in with applications that track information on public transportation, recycling centers, and local crime.
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How Did T-Mobile Suddenly Recover Unrecoverable Data?
Microsoft today said it had recovered most of affected Sidekick customers' lost data. But this past weekend, like a doctor issuing a terminal prognosis, T-Mobile told affected customers that their data "almost certainly has been lost." So, what changed between then and now?
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Oracle Not Telling The Truth About WebSphere, IBM Says
Continuing to use its massive Oracle World stage as a platform from which to jab at its competitors, Oracle has been touting benchmark results that show the superiority of its middleware over IBM's. But IBM has shot back, claiming Oracle unfairly rigged the results, used antiquated figures, and generally pumped out a lot of BS to mislead customers.
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Don't 'Sell Open Source' - Sell Brainpower
The big question many people ask themselves about open source is: "How do we monetize this?" The real question should be: "What are we really selling?" Answer: Brainpower.
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Is Twitter A Secret Instrument Of The State?
Privately-held Twitter has been closely linked to three incidents that we know of in which the Internet service worked closely with official United States agencies. The first was in Iraq, then Iran, and the most recent in Pittsburgh.
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T-Mobile: Most Sidekick User Data Recovered
Today T-Mobile posted yet another update about the on-going Sidekick data disaster story, but now the news is looking pretty good. According to T-Mobile "most, if not all" Sidekick user data has been recovered.
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Google's Android Eclair Unveiled
Just a few months ago Google finished off Donut, the latest version of Android. Now, a giant eclair has been seen at the Google offices. Nothing is official, but it is likely that the newest revision of the Android platform is just around the corner.
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Microsoft, That's No Way To Treat A Partner
The news today from T-Mobile is that the servers are back and Sidekick users can start picking up the pieces of their mobile lives. The T-Mobile message isn't completely clear, but it seems Microsoft's Danger group has managed to totally destroy most of the data on the servers. The Sidekick product line may be dead.
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Walt Mossberg Reviews The BlackBerry Storm 2
Yesterday, the New York Times may have broken news of the BlackBerry Storm 2's existence, but the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg actually got to review it. He published his review today. Find out what he has to say about this sequel to RIM's first touch phone.
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Too Many Unhappy Returns? You’re Blacklisted!
How's this for a new customer service angle? If retailers get tired of your returns history, you might be out of luck next time you shop for something online.
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How To Effectively Use Your Cell Phone After An Earthquake
Verizon Wireless periodically sends out press releases with information so banal, you have to wonder why it wastes the time and effort. The information it shares today -- about how best to use your cell phone after an earthquake -- is actually pretty useful.
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Big Brother Looking To Control Your Smart Grid?
Is Big Brother about to muck about with your toaster? That's that latest concern--out of left field though it may be--which is being raised about Smart Grids, the technological push du jour to update our creaking electricity transmission infrastructure with efficiency inducing digital controls. Or, as I call it, the utility is the network.
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Benioff, Dell Link Arms: Here Comes Hybrid Cloud
Marc Benioff set aside his duties as master of ceremonies at the death of software Tuesday and announced on-demand applications and on-premises applications could work together. His venue was a Yerba Buena Center theater in San Francisco next to Oracle OpenWorld. He still took a swipe at enterprise software, but his talk was titled, "The Best of Both Worlds."
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E-Mail Is Dead, Long Live E-Mail
In a provocative and well reasoned article in The Wall Street Journal, Jessica E. Vascellaro makes the case for why e-mail's reign as "king of communications" is over. Allow me to take the counter view.
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Ubuntu's Design Team: Make It Look Good, Run Better
On Tuesday afternoon I spoke with Ivanka Majic, leader of Canonical's design team for Ubuntu Desktop and Netbook Remix. She's spearheading the effort to make Ubuntu that much more appealing and useful -- to make it more of its "Linux for human beings" namesake.
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5.8% IT Unemployment Rivals Rate In Last Recession
There’s no sign of recovery yet in the U.S. IT job market, with a 5.8% unemployment rate for IT professionals that rivals the worst from the recession earlier this decade, according to our analysis of the government’s latest research.
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The Drama That Didn't Happen At Oracle Open World
So Marc Benioff treaded onto Larry Ellison's turf at Oracle Open World yesterday and acknowledged that sometimes, customers use both Oracle and Salesforce.com. Well, unless you're completely gullible to the attention-loving drama kings of the software industry, this shouldn't come as a surprise. Cloud and traditional computing will forever coexist in an IT architecture world that is far more grey than black and white, and both Larry and Marc know it.
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New Wi-Fi Tech Will Let Devices Connect Without Hotspots
The Wi-Fi Alliance announced that it is working on new Wi-Fi technology that will let devices skip the hotspot and connect directly to one another. The spec will be ready by mid-2010, and should be compatible with existing hardware.
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Understanding Storage Controller Performance
Storage controllers are the engine that drives the storage system you own. They are essentially a compute engine for storage arrays. Understanding storage controller performance and what can impact storage controllers is an important step in the optimization of your storage environment. It is also something that many storage managers assume is good enough.
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Microsoft Seeks SAP Synergy In Alliance With Capgemini
Looking to become more of a player in the highly strategic enterprise ERP space, Microsoft is teaming with global IT-services provider Capgemini to help customers wring more value out of the interactions between SAP's structured-process applications and Microsoft's products aimed at unstructured processes. As part of the deal, Capgemini will establish a Microsoft/SAP interoperability Center of Excellence.
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Will The Sidekick Disaster Affect Windows Mobile?
We still don't know the cause of the problem that caused thousands of Sidekick users to lose contacts, photos, appointments and more. Microsoft has bee mum on the issue, which is a bad thing. Full disclosure wins more respect from interested parties than silence, but that is the subject of another blog post. The Sidekick brand is almost surely doomed because of this, but will Windows Mobile be affected as well given both platforms share the same owner?
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Verizon Wireless CEO Outs The BlackBerry Storm 2
Verizon Wireless -- whether by design or accident, I can't tell -- just announced the BlackBerry Storm 2. In an editorial piece written by the New York Times, Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam admitted that he's been carrying the Storm 2 around for several weeks, and even showed it off to people in New York City.
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RAND: U.S. Should Not Prioritize Cyberwarfare
The think tank RAND came out with an Air Force funded paper that concludes spending money on operational cyberwarfare is a waste of budget. I agree.
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Hitachi Data Systems Reaches For The Cloud
HDS announces a move into public and private cloud storage, primarily through rebranding
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Healthcare Reform Bill Means HIPAA Changes, Too
The healthcare reform bill that passed a key Senate committee today contains several health IT related provisions. Among them are new rules regarding HIPAA, including a proposals allowing the periodic update of HIPAA standards, and fines to health plans that don't comply to HIPAA "operating rules" by April 2014.
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Google Adds Gaffe-Avoiding Lab To Gmail
Another day, another new Lab for Google's Gmail. This one handily prevents you from accidentally sending an email to the wrong Tom, Dick, or Harry (which, admittedly, I have done).
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Google Building Maker: Our Tools, Your Labor
Google on Tuesday introduced a new online graphics tool called Building Maker that allows users to create 3D buildings and place them in Google Earth.
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AT&T, Best Buy, And Nokia Mess Up Booklet 3G Math
Anyone who purchases a subsidized netbook is simply out of their minds. Today, however, AT&T, Best Buy and Nokia are hoping you'll commit yourself to the insanity that is the Booklet 3G, which costs $299 with a $60 monthly AT&T contract.
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Twitter Growth Slowdown Shows We're Sick Of Shouting
Twitter may have to find itself a new business model, if recent numbers are any indication.
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Take Two On Three Ways
I goofed a bit in my previous blog about open core / open source licensing. As always, the details are full of devils -- but that afforded a chance to bring some more thought to the table.
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How Oracle World Is Just Like Thanksgiving and New Year's
I've been to several Oracle Open World events, and I've experienced more than 50 Thanksgivings and New Year's Eves. But it took a cab driver from a tiny country on the other side of the world—Nepal, to be exact—to draw the connection between the three.
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T-Mobile Pulls Sidekick From The Shelves
For the time being, T-Mobile has pulled the Sidekick from store shelves and it is showing as "temporarily out of stock" on their web site. They will remain unavailable until T-Mobile is satisfied the cause of the data loss has been identified and corrected so it doesn't happen again.
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T-Mobile Offers Sidekick Users $100 Gift Card
As T-Mobile struggles to come up with a solid solution to its Sidekick woes, it is waving yet another peace branch at its customers. This one comes in the shape of a $100 gift card for those who actually lost data. There's a new twist, though. T-Mobile says, now, that some data may be recovered.
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Users Can Now Share Folders In Google Docs
Users of Google Docs have long asked for one feature in particular: the ability to share entire folders of content with others. Today, that feature goes live. So does the ability to upload multiple files at once. Which one has you more excited?
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CIO To Customers: Name Your Price
Working alongside Progressive Insurance business leaders, CIO Raymond Voelker's team developed an application -- called "Name Your Price" -- which flips the online auto-insurance quoting practice inside out. Instead of entering the features you want and getting a price, you can use the apps sliding bar to select a price and see what kind of insurance you can get.
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Cloud Computing & Bad Weather
Users of Sidekick mobile phones have had their first bad weather experience: Microsoft's Danger subsidiary has lost all of the customer data stored on its servers.
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Best Video Of BlackBerry Storm 2 Yet
If there's anything left you wanted to know about the unannounced, unofficial BlackBerry Storm 2 9550/9520 from Research In Motion, this new video covers it all. Also, accessories for the BlackBerry Storm 2 have started arriving in Best Buy Stores, and Vodafone may launch the device as early as this week across the pond.
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State Department Awards Social Networking Grants
The State Department plans to award up to $5 million in grants to expand the use of social networking in the Middle East and North Africa to drive citizen engagement and civic participation. The pilot program is part of a long-term effort to help bring democracy to the region, with a preference toward using existing technologies and social media platforms.
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The iPhone Is Too Cheap
The $99 iPhone is turning the wireless industry on its head, and not in a good way. It's having an obvious negative affect on AT&T's bottom line, and it's causing some serious pain for other makers of mobile devices.
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Oracle's Ellison Calls Out IBM: Why You Gotta Love The Guy
He's never run a hardware business but he's calling out the company that invented it. He voted for HP hardware to run his Exadata software before he voted against it, picking Sun instead. And he's betting $10 million that his Exadata package will double the speed of a comparable one from IBM. Larry Ellison surely makes this business more interesting, but more importantly he makes it a whole lot more valuable.
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Twitter Corroding The National Fabric
Acid-tongued Tweets are eating away at the fabric of our national conversation 140 characters at a time. Meanwhile, regrettably to my mind, "Twitter is emerging as a new and powerful political tool."
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Tweetie 2: A Great iPhone Twitter Client Gets Better
Tweetie is a favorite client for Twitter power-users on the iPhone, because of its simple interface, versatility, and ease-of-use. Now, the highly anticipated new version is out, with features that make the great Twitter client for the iPhone even better, without cluttering it up.
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Swarm: Open Source Web App Scaling
A new open source project called Swarm bills itself as "a transparently scalable distributed programming language." It's been written to tackle one of the thorniest problems of today's cloud-centric world: How do you create applications that can scale up and out without driving yourself nuts?
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Who Do You Blame For Cloud Computing Failures?
Think of the one million T-Mobile Sidekick customers that may have lost important data last week. Think of the dozens of CIOs that anxiously waited for Workday to restore its SaaS service on Sept 24. Cloud computing has created a new era of accountability, and we must demand that tech vendors work harder than ever to prove their trustworthiness.
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Should AT&T Dump All-You-Can-Eat Plans For The iPhone?
AT&T has gained at least four million new subscribers as the result of their exclusivity agreement with Apple on iPhone distribution in the US. It hasn't all been good news for AT&T though. iPhone users use a disproportionate amount of the carrier's available bandwidth. This affects not only iPhone users but all smartphone users on the AT&T network. Should AT&T drop the all-you-can-eat plan for iPhone users?
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Microsoft Danger: Living Up To Its Name
Every computer user learns that it's vital to back up important files. They usually learn this lesson the moment after they lose a bunch of important files that they haven't backed up. That's just silly users though. Most large enterprises not only back up files, but have disaster recovery plans that allow them to continue business if their primary data centers are taken out. The key word there is most.
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A Chat With ITPI About Demand Management
I had a great conversation last week with Kurt Milne of the IT Process Institute. ITPI is the source of the Visible Ops Handbook, unarguably one of the most usable and practical ITIL books out there, and I'm delighted that they've turned their focus to one of my pet IT peeves: demand management.
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Kosmix Offers An Online Content Aggregator
Finding content about a topic can sometimes be difficult. Valley-based startup Kosmix aims to help you find related content quickly and accurately.
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Cloud Goes Boom, T-Mo Sidekick Users Lose All Data
This week has been a rough one for T-Mobile's Sidekick users. T-Mobile's Sidekick service experienced a prolonged data outage and today came the really bad news. The servers Microsoft, T-Mobile and Danger use to store all the data for Sidekicks have crashed, and all user data appears to have been lost.
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Adobe Brings Photoshop To The iPhone
Adobe surprised more than a few people when it made free (yes, free) photo editing software available for the iPhone. Given what Adobe charges for Photoshop CS4, you'd think this software would cost a pretty penny. Nope. it's gratis...and pretty darned good, too.
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Thoughts On The HTC Hero
Many smartphone fans are anxiously awaiting Sprint Nextel's very first Android phone, and the HTC Hero is full of high-end smartphone features. But does the touch-screen smartphone live up to the hype?
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AT&T Distracting FCC With Google Voice Vice
It appears that the Federal Communications Commission isn't immune to industry pressure after all.
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Bean, A Free Mac Word Processor That Does Less
Writing tools are intensely personal choices -- for some people. Most people make do with the corporate standard, Microsoft Word, and many are even happy with it. But some of us have to be different, we're unhappy with Word and seek productivity elsewhere.
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October's Scary Patch Tuesday
Next Tuesday Microsoft plans to release 13 separate security bulletins that will cover more than 30 individual patches. More than half of the bulletins are ranked as "critical."
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Open Three Ways, Or More
Ealier in the week the CAOS Theory blog of the 451 Group noted there were three, or actually four, ways you could handle "open core" licensing -- where the basic version of your product is free, but the add-ons and support and such are not. Everyone will (and should) do these things differently, and the details are full of devils.
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Is Workday's 15-Hour SaaS Outage Acceptable?
On Sept. 24, Workday's SaaS service for human resources, financial applications and payroll was down for 15 hours. That's right, not 15 minutes, not 1.5 hours, but 15 hours. Google Gmail is down for 90 minutes, as it's as if the world has come to an end. So it begs the question: Is 15 hours' downtime for core applications such as accounting and HR acceptable?
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Vivisimo Search Engine Aims For Scalability
The company says Velocity 7.5 can search up to one billion e-mails on a single server.
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Understanding Storage Bandwidth Performance
Storage bandwidth is the connectivity between servers and the storage they are attached to. When it comes to understanding storage bandwidth performance you have two challenges to deal with. The first and most obvious is can the storage get the data to the application or user fast enough? The second and less obvious is can the applications and hardware those applications run on take advantage of that bandwidth?
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Services To Keep Data Flowing On 4G Networks
4G networks are slowly being deployed now and that pace will increase in the coming years. While the speeds promise to dazzle us there will be added complexities that network operators are going to have to overcome. The faster the network, the more noticeable a slight service interruption is to the end user. Funambol has a new mobile sync solution that they claim will minimize these performance issues for the consumer.
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Running Out of Airwaves?
FCC Chair Julius Genachowski told a wireless industry conference this week that "the biggest threat to the future of mobile in America is the looming spectrum crisis." We're running out of airwaves.
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Microsoft's Ad Network Quality Problem
Microsoft's deal with Yahoo shows that the company isn't ready to roll over and surrender the lucrative Internet advertising arena to Google. Still, the MicroHoo ad network is far behind Google when it comes to the size of its ad network. The result is that Microsoft ad inventory is sparse and ads are not of the best quality, as the Sunbelt Blog discovered.
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Digital Moving Sure Has Changed
How much has changed online in the past three years? My family and I just moved to a new apartment, and much of the move was facilitated by aspects of our digital lives that either didn’t exist or weren't ubiquitous enough three years ago to have made a difference.
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The Conversation With Gates And Ballmer That Sparked Microsoft's Cloud Strategy
Microsoft's march toward cloud computing is fascinating to watch. Next year, Microsoft will take the most successful desktop software package of all time—Office—and offer it online to businesses, somewhat similar to the Google Apps model. Microsoft's VP of Online recently shared with me some thoughts on Microsoft's strategy—and the conversation he had with Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer that led to Office Web Apps 2010 and other decisions.
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iPhone OS 3.1.2 Fixes Bugs
Today Apple made a small point update available for iPhones via iTunes. iPhone OS 3.1.2 doesn't appear to add new features, but does fix a handful of important bugs.
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Indian CIOs On Global CIO 50 Celebrated At Interop Mumbai
A few months ago, we created a list of 50 of the world's top CIOs for our Global CIO 50 project. Our list included 10 CIOs from India, and their achievements were celebrated by 300 members of the Indian IT community at a special event at this week's Interop Mumbai. The gathering also celebrated the extraordinary progress of India's IT industry in the past decade.
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Hospital Hires 'Scribes' To Help Docs With E-Records
The University of Virginia has hired "scribes" with laptop computers to follow doctors around as they treat patients, updating electronic medical records as they go. The antique-sounding position is one example of the steps hospitals are taking as they struggle to adopt e-health records.
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New E-Discovery Software from Sherpa
The e-mail archiving vendor adds new features to its e-discovery software for Exchange.
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Explorer In Slump Without Help From Brussels Sprouts
Microsoft's share of the browser market is off sharply as new rivals emerge and a bevy of gadgets that provide access to the Web from beyond the PC flourishes. That raises big questions about what's really behind the EU's move to force Redmond to make room for Explorer alternatives on Windows under threat of seven-figure fines.
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Source Code Isn't A Standard
Savio Rodrigues just wrote about a colleague testing a bunch of browsers based on the open source WebKit rendering engine. To his dismay, "no two are exactly the same". Or, as he put it, "A WebKit-based browser is, well, whatever the vendor wants it to be."
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CTIA To Phone OEMs: Standardize, Standardize, Standardize!
One of the issues plaguing the wireless industry is a broad proliferation of connection ports on mobile phones. Proprietary ports mean consumers have less choice when it comes to finding replacement hardware. Now, the CTIA says enough is enough. It says all phones must have 3.5mm headphone jacks and microUSB charging/data ports by 2012.
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AT&T Says No Tethering For iPhone. Yet
In the wake of this week's surprise announcement from AT&T that it would allow VoIP services to use its 3G network, some had hoped that meant tethering for the iPhone was soon to become reality. Not so fast. AT&T says it is still fine-tuning its network.
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Old Media, Not Internet, Driving Healthcare Debate: White House Advisor
The healthcare debate in the America has been driven by cable news and other old media, rather than new technologies, according to White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod, adding that cable news networks focused on a small number of angry people at town hall meetings in August, and ignored the larger debate.
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Palm WebOS Gets More Distribution
The new mobile platform by Palm, WebOS, gets additional distribution in Spain. Telefonica will be picking the device up. It looks like Palm has ordered over 700,000 Pixies too.
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CTIA 2009: Android Has Officially Arrived
If anyone doubted that Android would succeed, the news coming out of the CTIA wireless trade show this week in San Diego should put those fears to rest. Samsung alone revealed two new Android handsets, and it isn't alone. A handful of phone makers announced this week that they are banking on Android to take them into the future.
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Dell Finally (FINALLY!!!) Bringing Dellophone To AT&T
Wow. WOW. A rumor nearly three years in the making has finally been confirmed today. Dell, PC maker, is bringing a smartphone to the U.S., and it will run Android.
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Green IT Tries To Get Beyond Abstractions
Executives from Cisco, EMC, Dell and Symantec gathered at the United Nations today as a sort of coda to the climate summit held here last week, to talk about the role IT can play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and reversing catastrophic climate change.
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Think You Have Swine Flu? Take A New Online Test
You've got a cough and a fever--and haven't had your flu shot yet. Could you possibly have H1N1? Microsoft has launched a new website to help you assess whether you've got swine flu.
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Understanding Storage Performance
For most storage managers improving storage performance is an endless loop of upgrades that are taken until the problem goes away. Understanding where to look and how to configure the environment is often a series of "best guesses" instead of a thorough understanding of it. In today's economy best guesses are not allowed. Making the right move, the first time, is critical.
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Google Busy Protecting Privacy Of KFC's Colonel Sanders
In Europe, where worries about Google's Street View imagery at one point led villagers in England to set up a roadblock and have generally enraged bureaucrats who believe that only the state should take pictures of people, Google has struggled to present the snapshots it takes on public roadways without being criticized for invading someone's privacy.
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Samsung Bringing Android Moment To Sprint
The avalanche of Android devices continues, as Samsung just announced its first U.S. smartphone utilizing the Google-backed operating system. The Moment smartphone looks like it will also give Android the proper hardware it requires to run well, as it will come with a nice 800-MHz processor.
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When You Fly Go Bladder-Dry To Help Airline Save Planet
Forget all that unimaginative stuff about slashing power consumption by consolidating data centers and turning off PCs overnight: All Nippon Airways wants to save the planet by badgering passengers into hitting the restrooms pre-flight so that less carry-on waste means lower airplane weight. And I swear I'm not making this up.
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Astronaut Tops 1 Million Twitter Followers
The group of people who've left the Earth is a small, select club. Now, one of those people has joined a club that's a lot less important but still interesting. Astronaut Mike Massimino joined the group of people with more than 1 million followers on Twitter.
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New $279 Kindle Can Finally Roam Internationally
There's a bit of news coming out of Amazon today. The company is dropping the price of its existing basic Kindle (the smaller form factor one, not the larger $489 Kindle DX) from $299 to $259 and introducing a third Kindle that's the same as the basic one, but that's $279 and can roam internationally. This is a huge boon to both international travelers and people living in countries where the 3G CDMA 1x-EVDO radio technologies found in the original Kindles (basic and DX) don't work. Given the ambiguity in the...
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LotusLive iNotes: A Necessary Move For IBM
IBM released a $3-a-month, online subscription email service this week, called LotusLive iNotes, and really, it had no choice but to get very aggressive on the SaaS front. I know of at least two big company CIOs that recently left Notes and migrated to Google Gmail or Microsoft Exchange online, after considering upgrades to both on-premises Notes and the existing Notes subscription service that starts at $8 a month.
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SocialCalc Could Help Wikis Grow Up
Have you been wiki-ized? I don't know if that's a word, but if you work at a tech company, you know exactly what I'm talking. Mostly it's been Clearspace which has provided the platform that's doubled your e-mail load, even as it has genuinely helped us all grope towards greater levels of collaboration. But there are other innovators in the wiki space, notably Socialtext, which has just advanced the cause of group-wise spreadsheets. In the process, they could push wikis towards better real-world usability.
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Not All Windows Phones Can Upgrade To 6.5
Microsoft recently trotted out the most recent edition of Windows Mobile and with it a bevy of new devices. If upgrading your hardware isn't a possibility right now, a few lucky smartphone owners out there will be able to upgrade their devices to Windows Phone 6.5. "Few" is the right word here, as most current WinMo phones can't make the upgrade.
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Ex-Googler Launches Startup To Deliver Personalized Health Advice
The former head of the Google Health team has launched a startup designed to allow people to get personalized medical advice on the Internet, based on their own e-health records. If it catches on, the service will accelerate the trend of people using Internet research to take charge of their own healthcare. That trend is both a help and a hindrance to healthcare providers, depending on the kind of information patients find online, and what the patients do with that information.
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Amazon Web Services DDoS Attack And The Cloud
A suspected denial-of-service attack aimed at Amazon Web Services (AWS) this past weekend shut down a code hosting service for nearly 24 hours. I don't see this as a security issue specific to cloud computing, rather just another disruption to availability like all of the others.
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HTC, Fender Team Up To Create Every Geeky Guitarist's Dream Smartphone
One of the faults of the T-Mobile myTouch 3G is that it doesn't have a 3.5mm headset jack. Those looking to listen to music from their device need to use a clunky miniUSB-to-3.5mm adapter. Not any more. A unique partnership with luthier Fender adds a 3.5mm headset jack to the Google phone.
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The New York Times's Open Source Project
Newspapers are either a dying breed or a changing breed, depending on who you talk to. The New York Times wants to adapt, not go extinct, and one of the little ways they're adapting involves a software tool they're releasing as an open-source application for their fellow news organizations -- or anyone else, really.
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IT Stand-Up (not so) Routine
A friend of mine writes for Conan O'Brien. I knew he would do great things because not only did he test out of high school a year early, but he was a bigger smart ass than me. He took me to the Friar's Club once for dinner and broke his job down for me: slip in around 9 am, read newspapers for a couple hours combing for current events, and then write jokes. When the day was done, all the writers would go see whether their jokes made it on the show. On a good day, two or three make it. Now ain't that the life?
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IT Industry Supports Healthcare Reform But Is Divided Over Details
As President Obama and Congress hash out healthcare legislation, the IT industry has its own views about healthcare reform. That includes the industry overall supporting a public option to lower healthcare costs, but at the same time worrying that reform will grow government too large, according to a new survey.
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Where Is Motorola's Android Phone For Verizon?
Despite a large announcement from its platform partner (Google) and carrier partner (Verizon) concerning Android, Motorola failed to actually announce a new device. Why?
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Windows Mobile 6.5 Launch Spurs Extra Features
Yesterday was the big launch for Windows Mobile 6.5 and first and foremost on people's minds are about the devices, and there will be plenty of WinMo 6.5 devices out soon. Some are out already. Beyond that though are the extras that are launching concurrently with WinMo 6.5. The two biggest are the My Phone backup service and Windows Marketplace for Mobile. Read on to see what is new.
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Google Tries Making People Care About Chrome
Google's plan for world domination via its Chrome browser slammed headlong into reality when the company's technical elite realized that the average Joe doesn't know what a Web browser is.
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HTC's HD2 Shows Windows Mobile Can Strut Too
While today is Microsoft's big launch day for Windows Mobile 6.5, the response and reviews have generally been tepid. But HTC's HD2 smartphone may make even the most diehard iPhone fanatic give Windows Mobile a chance.
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Inside SalesForce IT (Video)
This won't surprise you: Salesforce.com wants every application it runs to be in the cloud. Now getting there hasn't been easy, but the company's Vice President of Enterprise Strategy (and former CIO), Trae Chancellor, sees all of the upsides (including proving the viability of his own company's business model, one supposes).
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Ode To Gmail's "Conversations" (a.k.a. "Why MS-Entourage Stinks")
Back in the day, the people at Microsoft who were responsible for bringing the world Office for the Mac (the Macintosh Business Unit) fancied themselves as outcasts on the company's sprawling Redmond Campus; Outcasts with something to prove. When a new version was on the way, they'd parade into my office talking smack as though they just left the Windows version of Office lying on the canvas after a knock-out blow. They'd proceed to demonstrate how the Mac's underpinnings enabled functionality that the Windows Office guys could only dream of. So, why, after the Mac has come so far, does MS-Entourage suck so bad.
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Motorola: No Windows Mobile 6.5 For Us
The initial reviews of Microsoft's new Windows Mobile 6.5. operating system have been less than pleasant. In fact, some reviewers have gone so far as to say that Windows Mobile 6.5 stinks. With the general consensus among tech reviewers being that Windows Mobile 6.5. is a bit of a bomb, it's little wonder that Motorola said it's not interested at all.
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IBM Launches iNotes In The Cloud, More To Come?
IBM is wading into online email service, a space where Google, Yahoo and Microsoft already have big presences. Is IBM staging a kamikaze run, giving itself one more place where Lotus Notes will show it's got difficulty competing? Is there a method to this madness? Why does IBM have its head in the clouds?
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Cisco's 2nd Generation Server Blade Arrives 10/16
The Cisco UCS "Ventura" server blade is ready to hit the store shelves, with an approximate release date of 10/16 according to Cisco. Read on to find out how it ups the ante in the utility computing space.
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The Latest In Patent Absurdity
In one week, Red Hat's asked the Supreme Court to do away with software patents, while Eolas prepares to sue just about everyone on the planet with "fully interactive embedded applications" on their websites. I hate that it's become harder to tell who has the most legitimate grievances.
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Amazon's Three Steps To Cloud Computing
Amazon CTO Werner Vogels is preparing a paper that summarizes his views on how large companies can adopt cloud services. Here's a sneak peek at his soon-to-be-published report.
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U.S. Government Set To Clamp Down on P2P Networks
You've probably heard the horror stories around private and confidential files being exposed via peer-to-peer network sharing. Federal lawmakers are now stepping up their efforts to keep sensitive data from inadvertently leaking to the public.
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FTC To Bloggers: Gut Check Time
The FTC's new rules on what constitutes an endorsement should be required reading for anyone who renders an opinion on products or services, and for those of us who give these bloggers a venue.
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Five Amigos Fight The Power
Every time I'm at an airport and I see one of those giant SAP ads claiming that the world's best-run companies run SAP, I wonder how many of the executives those ads are targeting choke on their Dramamine at the reminder of the ungodly implementation cycles, which are matched in gruesomeness only by the dreadful 22 percent maintenance fees charged by the vendor. I wonder if they worry whether they'll lose their jobs over the cost overruns or the fact that the software doesn't allow them to innovate as effectively as their competitors.
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Eolas Scores New Browser Interactivity Patent And Sues....Everyone
Eolas Technologies has announced a new patent infringement suit, the defendants of which reads like a Who's Who list of big tech and consumer brands. Eolas is the company that filed a patent infringement suit and ultimately prevailed over Microsoft for the latter's inclusion of plug-in capability into Internet Explorer. In today's lawsuit, Eolas says that Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Google, Sun, eBay and many others (complete list below) are infringing on a patent awarded just this month (that didn't take long!).
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Can Teza Survive? CIO Says Code Upload Drew Reprimand
Startup Teza Technologies is battling for its legal life after one of its programmers was arrested for stealing secrets from Goldman Sachs, its three founders were sued by their former employer for violating non-competes, and, in the latest development, another employee was reprimanded for uploading code that might have come from former employee UBS. As CIO William Sterling says, "A lot has changed."
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Verizon Comes Out Swinging Against AT&T 3G Coverage
"Want 5 times more 3G Coverage? There's a map for that." That is the new slogan by Verizon for a new ad campaign touting its superior 3G coverage in the US. It is a takeoff on the Apple iPhone slogan that asks a question and then responds with "There's an app for that." The iPhone, of course, runs only on the AT&T network in the US. Just when you thought AT&T couldn't be beat up any more over the complaints over their 3G network, Verizon kicks them while they are down.
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EchoSign's E-Signature In The Cloud
OK, this is fun: Electronic signature in the cloud. I know, it sounds small, but how many documents do you sign? What about your employees (HR forms)? Your sales team (contracts)? EchoSign lets you create a workflow to do this, from delivery to the actual signature to the storage and management. And all in the cloud.
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Will Consumers Pay-Out-Of-Pocket For Online Healthcare?
If you suspect your extra-cranky baby has an ear infection on a Saturday afternoon, but his doctor isn't back in the office till Monday, a walk-in clinic--like the kind springing up in places such as retail pharmacy chains--can be a convenient place to get the ear checked. But if it's the middle of the night, what do you do?
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End User End Game for UC
One of the most difficult challenges of Unified Communications has been getting end users to buy in and use the systems. In our final whiteboard tutorial, we discuss getting rogue users and resisters to leverage the technology.
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Ballmer: Windows 7 Adoption A Matter Of When, Not If
Steve Ballmer seems confident that businesses will adopt Windows 7. Of course, three years ago, Microsoft's CEO was sure that companies would deploy Vista, and look how that played out. Will he be right this time?
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What The? Latest Mobile Backup Service Offered By Best Buy
Best Buy has decided to take on a bigger role in the mobile landscape, though I am not sure who's going to go for this. Today, Best Buy has announced a service that is similar to My Phone from Microsoft or MobileMe from Apple: mIQ will backup end user smartphones and store up to 1GB of data in the cloud.
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Is Apple The Future Of Print?
Rumors have been rampant that Apple Computer is poised to introduce a new tablet computer, thereby reinventing the way consumers experience books and newspapers. My bet is that a device won't do the reinventing.
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Selecting A Storage Protocol For Virtualized Servers
In our last entry we discussed selecting the right storage foundation and I advised that you may want to initially ignore what protocol to use. That said, part of building a storage foundation for server virtualization is selecting the protocol.
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Opera Scores Major Distribution Deal With AT&T
Today's news from Opera Software is the kind of win the company really needs. Starting with four new feature phones that AT&T announced today and moving forward, Opera Mini will be behind the att.net browser on board AT&T phones.
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It's All The Same Kind Of Free To Us
Over the weekend I got into a heated discussion sparked by some of the things I'd asserted in a previous column about open source vs. free software. Out of that discussion came another, similar idea: Most people don't distinguish between kinds of free, and maybe it's unfair to expect them to.
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T-Mobile Adds Samsung Behold II To Android Stable
T-Mobile sure loves itself some Android. By the holiday shopping season, it will have offerings from HTC, Motorola and now Samsung. The Behold II offers a wealth of features, including a 5-megapixel camera, 3G and Samsung's TouchWiz user interface.
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Correcting Crowdsourcing Misconceptions
The reputation of crowdsourcing as a way of generating new ideas got a recent boost from the $1 million Netflix prize, which was awarded to a group of people who invented an algorithm for suggesting movies to users of the online movie subscription service.
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Windows Mobile 6.5 Launches Tomorrow
October 6 is the big day for Windows Mobile. The first major release since Windows Mobile 5 launched in 2005 is ready to roll out. A lot has happened since then, namely the iPhone. In response to that, WinMo 6.5 is a lot more finger friendly than any of its WinMo predecessors. While previous releases have focused on enterprise features, such as management and security, WinMo 6.5 has a definite consumer appeal that the Microsoft platform has lacked in recent years.
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Salesforce.com Mixed Blessing As Collaborator & Competitor
Salesforce.com's new joint venture to create financial apps on its Force.com platform will provide great comfort to C-level prospects evaluating the SaaS model. But for partners already creating financial apps on Force.com, Marc Benioff's company now presents itself as a competitor as much as a collaborator. Insightful analyst Jeffrey Kaplan breaks down this mixed blessing.
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Hunch Helps You Make Decisions
Hunch aims to help you make the right decision about questions in your life. I wanted to learn more about this new service so I met with co-founder Chris Dixon.
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Palm Thumbs Nose At Apple, Repairs iTunes Sync With webOS 1.2.1
It appeared as though Palm had given up its iTunes syncing fight recently when the details surrounding webOS 1.2 became available. Nope. Today, Palm announced webOS 1.2.1, and it brings back the ability to sync with iTunes 9.0.1.
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Finally, Some Well-Deserved Pay Cuts
This week's public filings from Microsoft showed that in addition to cutting people, the company has cut executive pay in reaction to their revenue downturn. It's good to see that some companies are still willing to hold their executives responsible for poor performance.
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Compliance & Security Often Forgotten w/ UC
One of the big hurdles in deploying unified communications, especially where it includes Web-based technology (think Skype, Instant Messaging, even texting), is how to tie all of that rogue communication into your compliance and security policies. That's the topic of our Whiteboard Tutorial today.
Continue reading "Compliance & Security Often Forgotten w/ UC..."
Compliance & Security Often Forgotten w/ UC
One of the big hurdles in deploying unified communications, especially where it includes Web-based technology (think Skype, Instant Messaging, even texting), is how to tie all of that rogue communication into your compliance and security policies. That's the topic of our Whiteboard Tutorial today.
Continue reading "Compliance & Security Often Forgotten w/ UC..."
Man Threatens His Own iPhone With Gun In An Apple Store
You just can't make this stuff up. Apparently a man brought his iPhone to the Genius Bar at an Apple Store. He also brought his 9mm piece, which he brandished and pointed at his iPhone, threatening to shoot it.
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Is Apple Getting Ready To Re-Invent The Mouse?
Apple is the company that introduced the world to mouse computing; could it now be planning to re-invent the mouse, maybe introducing a new kind of input device that combines the mouse and keyboard? That's the speculation buzzing on the Apple blogs today, fueled by a patent out of Cupertino.
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Android Army Gains A Soldier Of ONE
An unknown company hailing from Spain has released information about a brand new Android device. The Geeks'Phone ONE boasts some impressive specs, and the company expects to be able to sell it unlocked for about $375.
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Electronic Medical Alerts Don't Guarantee Timely Response
Electronic medical alerts are a significant improvement over paper-based systems, but doctors often still ignore warnings they should pay attention to, according to a recent study. Even when notified electronically, doctors sometimes ignore test results that show the patient might have a serious problem.
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Waiting for Wave 1.1
The best comment I've heard about Google Wave so far: "Wave is simultaneously less and more than I'd hoped." Me, I already have plans on the table to set up my own Wave server: my personal "Wave 1.1", as it were. Or even Wave 2.0.
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Selecting A Storage Foundation for Virtualized Servers
The storage component of a virtualized server infrastructure has been labeled as complex. The storage and server virtualization suppliers have both tried to deliver solutions that reduce storage complexity in server virtualization projects. The challenge for virtual infrastructure administrators is that there are so many options that it can be confusing. There are several steps to take when selecting a storage foundation for virtualized servers and our next series of entries will cover these steps.
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BlackBerry Storm 2 Reviewed In Detail, May Street Oct. 25
The BlackBerry Storm 2 has to be one of the worst kept secrets in Waterloo. This device has posed for pictures, made video appearances, and shown up in wireless network operator inventory systems. Now, it's been given one last extensive video review and has a possible street date.
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Palm Won't Survive
I am not even going to speculate and ask "Can Palm survive?" or "Will the Pre save Palm?" I am just going to come out and say it - WebOS is too little, too late. The Pre sales numbers are disappointing. Palm's application store almost non-existent. This and other mistakes by Palm in the last few months will doom the company. Maybe not this year. Maybe not next year, but once they run out of cash, that's it unless someone gobbles them up.
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Why I Started A Facebook Fan Page For Myself
I started a Facebook fan page for myself yesterday. The reason I did it was (take your pick): (1) As a workaround for limitations in using Facebook for business communications with groups of people you don't know or (2) To feed my unreasonably large ego. Well, actually, probably both reasons apply.
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Verizon Intros HTC Imagio
Verizon Wireless is trying to stamp out its reputation for not having good smartphone by introducing the HTC Imagio, the carrier's first handset to have Windows Mobile 6.5. At $200, the touch-screen handset is a pretty good deal considering its packing some major hardware.
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CIOs In The Hot Seat
Anytime you put a "C" in your title, your shadow grows and there's no place to hide. We decided to put three CIOs in the hot seat, in front of their peers, and in front of a board of directors, American Idol-style. The board was tough, but the CIOs were phenomenal.
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Defense Department Loves Social Networking Again
The Defense Department's on-again off-again romance with social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook could be on again big-time if it adopts the policies suggested in a draft memo on "Internet-based capabilities." Troops and their families would be permitted to use public social networking sites, and military brass would be directed to keep an eye on Internet developments to watch for new opportunities and threats.
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Android 1.6 'Donut' Is Officially Being Pushed To T-Mobile Customers
Users of the HTC G1 and HTC myTouch 3G, listen up. T-Mobile is offering you a taste of the Donut this week. Owners of T-Mobile's Android phones can expect to see an over-the-air update bump their version of Google's mobile platform from 1.5 to 1.6 -- also known as "Donut".
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Wikipedia Trusts The Crowd, Almost
Wikipedia is changing the way it updates entries on living people, and will require an "experienced volunteer" to review and approve information before posting. I'm not surprised by the decision, and I suspect there are more changes coming.
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Shakeout For Top Outsourcers Coming, Gartner Says
Twenty-five percent of today's top business-process outsourcers will disappear in the next three years due to economic pressures, poorly conceived contracts, and the inability to adapt to standardized delivery models, says Gartner. Ever the team player, Gartner also offers six suggestions that could indicate your outsourcing partner is not long for this world.
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Leaning Towards Freedom
The advocates of free software -- not just open source, but free as in freedom -- talk about the use of computers as a basic human right. It probably is. But I see freedom as a direction to lean into, rather than a specific path or goal to be obtained.
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Public 'Concerned' About Texting & Driving, Except When It Applies To Them
The headlines about the dangers of texting while driving have been hard to miss this week. Statistics indicate that nearly 6,000 Americans were killed by distracted drivers last year. A new study shows that nearly 90% of Americans are concerned about the dangers of using mobile phones while driving...but it doesn't appear to be stopping them from doing it.
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RIM CEO Goes Coyote Ugly
Blackberry fans got a windfall Wednesday, though most probably didn't even know it. A bankruptcy judge mercifully killed RIM CEO Jim Balsillie's ruinous quest to purchase the NHL's Phoenix franchise. Now maybe Balsillie can get back to running his company, which is withering from neglect.
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Windows 7 Virtual Event Post-Game: Serious Tech Time
The big takeaway that surfaced at the successful Windows 7 Virtual Event we held on Wednesday is that many CIOs and admins are moving beyond the big-picture question of "should we upgrade or not" and are now focused on technical point issues, mostly related to performance and compatibility. (For those who couldn't attend, we'll have a replay archive posted within 48 hours, and I'll put up the link.)
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The Generic Smartphone Is In Trouble
If you talk to someone with an iPhone and ask them about it, they will undoubtedly tell you all sorts of things the phone can do. They know it is by Apple, that there are a bazillion apps for it, that it syncs with iTunes and much more. If you talk to someone with an Android phone or the Palm Pre, you will likely get similar information about those phones. If you ask someone that is running Windows Mobile though, there is a good chance they won't even know what OS it is running, much less features about the platform.
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