SOA: Perhaps coining a new term — mashware — David Linthicum explains that “providing middleware between source systems and data allows the user to mashup the services and information in anyway that makes them more productive,” he writes in this Real World SOA post. “While driving a dynamic client has its value, the real trick is mixing and matching views of information, application behavior, and composites of both, and that’s best put between the interface and the sources.” Gripe Line: As if it’s not bad enough that one reader landed a Gateway lemon, the company made it worse by not being able “to find [the PC] long enough to send it back to her.” Adding insult to injury, “each tech would promise she’d have it back in 7 to 10 days, but none would say what was wrong or what was being done,” Ed Foster reports in A stray Gateway Lemon. Happy ending here? Nope. But this piece does raise the question of whether we need a Lemon Law for computers. Best of the blogs: The Hewlett-Packard spying scandal called to light just how ridiculous and unethical pretexting can be. Why, then, did California’s Attorney General back off? Ephraim Schwartz asks. “As a layman my instinct tells me that no Attorney General wants to risk losing a case. If it wasn’t a slam dunk maybe the AG decided to wipe it off his calendar and await legislation that clearly defines wrong doing in future cases like this.” Technology Industry