Vivek Kundra: All Customers, All The Time
CIOs are an interesting lot, cast as both business and technology leaders. Get them talking about agile development, and the inner geek appears. Talk about net present value, and they grab their lapels and straighten their pocket squares. But today's CIO talks increasingly about the customer, and if our nation's CIO, Vivek Kundra is paid every time does, he might be able to help bail out both the banks and the car companies.
Google Tries To Take The Typing Out Of Mobile Search
Performing searches on mobile phones -- especially those without readily accessible QWERTY keyboards -- can be a pain in the, er, thumb. Google recently made some changes to how local search works on mobile phones, and it requires fewer keystrokes.
BlackBerry For Mac Out Friday
Research in Motion announced that native desktop software for managing the company's BlackBerry smartphones will be available as of this Friday, October 2, at 1 PM EDT. The software will bring Mac-based mobile workers the functionality that up til now they've needed to use a third-party app for.
iPhone Ad Market Share Surges To 40 Percent
According to mobile advertising company AdMob, the iPhone's world-wide smartphone market share has reached 40% in just over two years. Meanwhile, competitors Nokia and RIM lost ground.
Google Wave Ridden By Cybercriminals
Google Wave is being made available on Wednesday to 100,000 or so developers, early adopters, and Google Apps customers. Unfortunately, cybercriminals are making the most of the launch: They've rolled out a blackhat SEO poisoning campaign to turn interest in Wave into a computer infection.
Tenacity Matters In E-Medical Record Projects
E-medical record projects aren't for the faint of heart. The conviction of a strong leadership team and a solid vision of the project's goals are keys to successful deployments. Just ask the folks involved with the EMR rollout at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Vermont.
Oracle To Acquire HyperRoll
HyperRoll's Data Performance Management Suite draws data out of all major databases to speed up reporting of financial results.
Relaunched Recovery.gov Fails Accessibility Standards
Recovery.gov, a showcase government-transparency Web site that relaunched on Monday, fails to meet U.S. federal government Section 508 accessibility standards. The non-compliance issues relate to display of data tables despite on-site compliance claims. Sharron Rush of accessibility-advocacy organization Knowbility goes so far as to state, "The recovery.gov Web site is a good example of what NOT to do for accessibility in my opinion."
MotionX Offers $3 GPS App For iPhone
The iPhone this week got a new entry in the fast-moving category of GPS software: MotionX-GPS Drive is by far the least expensive of the half-dozen alternatives, with a "holy cow!" low price of $2.99, with an annual subscription of $25. It's a heck of a lot cheaper than any of the alternatives.
Zipcar App Is Brilliant Branding
The Zipcar iPhone app announced about a week ago is a great example of how to merge technology and marketing in order to deliver branding. More business would do well to follow the lead.
BlackBerry Round-Up: TiVo And Mac Support Arrive
Today two interesting bits of information concerning BlackBerries became public. First up, TiVo has launched a new, free DVR-scheduling app for BlackBerries, and second, RIM has said BlackBerry Desktop Manager for Macs will be available Friday, October 2.
Give Away The Platform, Sell The Tools
Here is a radical suggestion to fund the development of newly-emergent open source OS platforms: Keep the platform and as much of the other software on it free. Sell the development tools.
Salesforce.com Helps Launch SaaS Company
FinancialForce.com, a startup providing financial and accounting software as a service, is getting a minority investment and on-campus office space from Salesforce.com.
Sustainable & Green: The Color of Money
Having worked with an organization that got good press for saving money through an automated PC shutdown program, I've fielded a lot of questions from IT managers looking to make sustainability and green moves. I can consolidate my advice on the topic into two short points: First, remember that green is the color of money. Second, overseed.
Solarwinds Tweaks IP WAN Voice Monitoring Tool
Increasingly, businesses are moving their voice traffic from the old telephone network to IP networks. However, this application is especially vulnerable to performance variations often found in IP networks. Solarwinds, which has been gaining acceptance by offering companies inexpensive, easy to deploy network performance tools, revamped its IP WAN tool to help companies meet this challenge.
The Perils Of Relying On The Cloud
I rely more on the cloud as each day passes. GMail is my preferred email interface. Evernote houses most of my notes and web clippings. MyPhone keeps critical data backed up on my Windows Mobile phone. The cloud is awesome when it works, but when it is down, you may be temporarily cut off from your data. In the case of some Palm Pre users, when the cloud went down, it wiped their Pre's memory causing data loss.
The Verizon Hub Bites The Dust
Hi, my name is Eric, and I bought the Verizon Hub. I wanted to keep up with the Joneses and thought it would be really cool to have an Internet tablet in my kitchen. Turns out, I was wrong.
Microsoft's Must-Have Software Release
While all the focus has been on Windows 7 lately, there's another piece of Microsoft software coming out this week that could make an even bigger difference to the Windows world: Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE). Athough I think MSE will be a great solution for most people, not everyone will be happy about this software.
A New Generation Of Internet Lawmakers
I'm still stuck in the 90s when I think about elected officials using the Internet. Back in the 90s, elected officials had never even touched the Internet. They thought it was a sewer of child porn and terrorists, and their only reaction to it was to try to control it--or make it go away. Until recently, I thought of lawmakers as still being as naive as they were back then. But a brief conversation with Rep. John Culberson shattered my preconceptions.
Oracle Fined $10,000 For Anti-IBM Ads
The Transaction Processing Council levied a rare, $10,000 fine against Oracle for comparing an existing TPC result with one it plans to report in the future.
FileMaker Beefs Up Bento
Version 3 of Bento, the "personal database" from FileMaker, adds features that make it a good choice for Mac-based small offices and midsize businesses with modest database needs. Its close integration with existing Mac tools means that getting up and running is relatively easy.
Bank Drops Google Suit Over Errant Gmail
After obtaining information about the Gmail account holder who accidentally received confidential information, Rocky Mountain Bank and Google have agreed to end the bank's lawsuit.
Thoughts on Integrating OLTP and Data Warehousing (Especially in Exadata 2)
Oracle is pushing Exadata 2 as a great system for OLTP (OnLine Transaction Processing), data warehousing or both. This claim rests on a few premises, the first being that Exadata is great for data warehousing. At this time, that's a claim much better supported by marketing and theory than by practice...
Motorola Cliq Will Cost $200
T-Mobile and Motorola said Tuesday the Android-powered smartphone would be available Nov. 2 for about $200 with a new two-year contract. I played with the Cliq when it was introduced earlier this month and liked it, but I think the companies may have shot themselves in the foot with the pricing.
IBM Preparing Self-Service Software Infrastructure
IBM has been investing in cloud computing for several years, although Willy Chiu, VP of IBM Cloud Labs, acknowledges it may be difficult for those outside IBM to develop a picture of what its cloud initiative will finally look like.
|