Opinion

What do you do?

There's an interesting post from a few weeks back by Guy Kawasaki in an article entitled "How to pickup a VC." While it's a short piece illustrating how boneheaded "attention grabbers" will work against you with VCs, I t

SpringSource hires BEA vet

SpringSource, keeper of the popular Spring Framework for Java development, has hired a former BEA Systems official. Peter Cooper-Ellis, former executive vice president and general manager for the WebLogic Server product line at BEA, has joined Spring

Reader Voices: Autorenewal defenses

<P>How can we protect ourselves from online services that employ hidden autorenewal clauses to keep charging us? Readers responded <A href="http://www.gripe2ed.com/scoop/story/2008/5/6/1058/16456">to my recent story</A> ab

Are computing books obsolete?

While working on a roundup review of Rails IDEs and editors, I tried to draw on my large stack of Rails books, only to find that they're all at least a little out of date. For example, Agile Web Development with Rails: Second Edition basically c

VMware gets into desktop application virtualization with ThinApp 4.0

VMware is launching the first release of a product that comes from its January acquisition of the application virtualization company Thinstall. VMware said their Thinstall 4.0 product will let customers run multiple versions of virtually any applicat

Agile and the social developer

More on Apple’s new iPhone pricing

While I noted the price reduction Apple has put in place for the new 3G iPhone 2.0, I forgot to mention one important item. The data plan with AT&T is now $10 higher per month; the unlimited rate increased from $20 to $30 for consumers and it&#03

How to sell SOA (Part II)

In my previous post, I introduced a few key concepts to sell SOA, including: Shining a light on existing limitations Creating the business case Creating the execution plan Delivering the goods Let's add to that list. Creating the business case r

TechEd Notes: Small business everywhere

Conducting your business wherever you happen to be isn't a new concept for many small business owners — there's a reason why the cab of a lot of pickup trucks looks more like an oddly shaped office than a means of transportation. Still, it

Confronting the future of Web standards

As technology consumers, we accept that the Web is built on open standards. We are told that an entire standards body, the W3C, exists to maintain them. Dig a little further, however, and we find that the history and the issues behind the standards a

Businesses saying a stronger no to Vista

Hardware costs, driver problems, application incompatibilities, and more — you've heard the litany of complaints about Windows Vista before, but perhaps you thought IT would roll over and move to Microsoft's new OS as Microsoft expects. Yo

Live webstream of Intel’s “eco-technology great debates”

I wrote about these debates the other day, and they're now under way. You can watch it live below. The debate about AC vs. DC has already started. Next up will be Air Cooling vs. Liquid, followed by Thin Clients vs. Managed Thick Clients….

IBM makes Big Green push for modular datacenters

Designing and building a datacenter has many pitfalls: There's time spent — and often wasted — as representatives from departments throughout the organization gather round the table and butt heads over the design of the new facility. There&#03

TechEd Update: SharePoint keeps growing

In one of my first posts from TechEd, I mentioned the focus on SharePoint in the conference sessions. That focus continues on the exhibitor floor, with lots of companies featuring products and services built around SharePoint. There's even a spe

TechEd Update: DR for SMB

One of the things I worry about most when it comes to small businesses is disaster recovery. For a lot of small businesses, the disaster recovery plan revolves around the owner’s Visa limit, and that's a terrible position to be in. One of

Taking truly amazing photos with a consumer camera

I've seen those amazing high speed camera shots of bullets going through apples, water drops exploding on the surface of a pool of water and time-lapse movies of skyscrapers being built. However, the specialized equipment necessary to produce th

Employees who want jobs vs those who want careers

Dear Bob …Are career minded people necessary at professional level jobs? For instance, if a Security Systems Administrator has no career direction or desire to enhance his or her career, can he or she be effective long term? When a person takes a s

Bottle me up, throttle me down

The notion that we are swimming in broadband choices, floated last week by Cringester B. D. in rebuttal to my snarky jibes about the phonecablopoly ™, did not sit well with Cringesters who are sitting in the cheap seats at the great bandwidth banq

CompletePC Backup, Virtual PC, and VHDMOUNT

When Microsoft released Windows Vista with a backup tool that images your entire system down into one file, I was very interested. My interest in this new feature, called CompletePC Backup, waned slightly when it took what I felt was an excessive amo

Apple iPhone 2.0 mania

At this week's World-Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) Apple unveiled their long expected iPhone 2.0. This new version includes 3G support, GPS, longer battery life, enterprise email, an SDK, an application store for third party apps and a lower

Can anything beat iPhone? Handset makers, here’s how.

One of my live blog entries from the keynote at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference had a one-line body: iPhone competitors, it's over. It doesn't excite me to say that. I don't like seeing any one player rise to lord of the re

TechEd Update: Hiveware for Word

For small businesses (and large enterprises), figuring out how to let employees collaborate with one another is a huge challenge. Microsoft is using its SharePoint server and clients to enable collaboration, but that's a big, strong tool — too

From TechEd: Micro-blogging goes multi-media

It's interesting to see products on the exhibitor floor that compete with, enhance, or complete Microsoft's own offerings. One of the cooler products I've seen so far is from TechSmith, the company that's behind Camtasia and SnagI

TechEd Notes: Tricks of the Vista masters

One of the sessions I most wanted to attend was "Tricks of the Vista Masters." Let me be honest here: I wasn't looking for things that would make Vista do lots of new tricks, but rather things that would simply let Vista run a little (

FTC says yes, you still Can Spam

<P>I just stumbled onto the fact that the FTC <A href="http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2008/05/canspam.shtm">recently announced some changes</A> to the Can-Spam Act, or as <A href="http://www.gripe2ed.com/scoop/story/2003/1

Forrester survey finds lack of interest in OSS?

When a Forrester Research representative emailed with the following survey highlights, I was more than a little surprised: "Forrester released data today analyzing trend lines in enterprise open source usage in 2007. Among the key findings: Seve

BPEL Falling?

Download file…

Getting started at Microsoft TechEd Professional

I'm here in Orlando, diving into Microsoft's TechEd Professional. TechEd Developer was last week, but this year the software giant has split developer and professional user conferences into separate weeks, so here I am… Things are just ge

The tale of the opportunist and some code

In the mid '90s, I was working at a regional ISP, covering about half a dozen states as a systems engineer. Everything in the company ran on trouble tickets. Support issues, customer provisioning, even the sales people used the trouble ticket sy

Intervention: How to salvage Windows 7

I had an interesting conversation this past week with Ben Rudolph, former marketing guru at Parallels and now a member of the Microsoft Windows 7 team. Apparently, my recent pronouncement of death for his new charge struck a nerve. In addition to set

The failed promise of technical services

I don't know what Thoreau actually had in mind, never having read Walden Pond. I've tried several times but found it dull. But from the many clichés I have heard about Thoreau and his pond, I gather that he wanted to get away from it

AC or DC? Thin clients or thick? Intel to host green debates

With companies becoming increasingly aware of the potential cost savings and environmental benefits of green tech, some are mulling some big questions. Among them, which is the most efficient way to cool the datacenter, with air or liquid? Is DC powe

Tripwire offers a free virtualization configuration tool

VMware administrators might want to check out a new, free utility from Tripwire to help them assess their VMware ESX configuration settings and help them improve the security of their environment. The free tool is called Tripwire ConfigCheck. It is a

Dell M-Series demonstrates its green credentials

When Dell unveiled its M-Series blade systems earlier this year, the company pointed a very green spotlight on the machines, touting their high energy efficiency. That power savings stems not only from the machines' 90-plus percent efficient pow

Interim CTO

How to sell SOA (Part I)

Many organizations out there don't really have to sell SOA. They instead understand that the hype is the driver, and in essence leverage the thousands of articles and books on the topic to sell this architectural pattern. However, in most cases

Are Windows Forms old school?

Over on the Advice Line blog, a reader who signs himself "Need help from Bill Gates" asked Bob Lewis about an upgrade project from a Windows application using MDI to the .Net Framework. The architects he talked to pooh-poohed Windows Forms

MDI, WinForm, and other user interface questions

Dear Bob …We are in the process of starting a project to rewrite our legacy applications into .NET. Because of our business situation, we have a requirement to maintain a rich client experience. One of the difficulties in managing technology is the

Top five myths about Steve Jobs

In case you've been living in a cave, today marks the first day of the Apple Worldwide Developer's Conference and Steve Jobs' keynote, which Apple watchers have declared will be the venue where Jobs unveils iPhone 2.0 — a 3G broadband

Forks in the road

If you’ve been watching the technology industry as long as I have, you may like to think you can detect an historical turning point while it's happening. The big picture stuff is the most fun. Today, for example, as the…

Does sandbox security really protect your desktop?

InfoWorld's tests question vendor claims of meaningfully improved security, though not everyone agrees

Catbird and Apani – security in the virtual environment

Security in the physical IT world is often times overlooked in favor of convenience. A true statement, but not something that people like to advertise. And believe it or not, in a virtual world, security concerns often times get even more relaxed as

Blind blogs as a way of facilitating Agile Business Change?

Dear Bob …I'd like your opinion about something Management could have the IT department do to bring ideas to the table and start the coordination process: A blind blog.A concept or problem is put on a company message board … then it is kicke

It’s way too early for this…

My nifty plan of a sleep-in Sunday morning was destroyed by the puppy, unfortunately, leading me to traipse around the neighborhood with bedhead, Birkenstocks, and a bathrobe at 7am. So much for that. Once I had corralled the dog, I came back in to g

SOA: Focus on the fundamentals

I've noticed that those charged with building enterprise SOAs are working on establishing approaches to the implementation of their SOA instance — they are not yet looking for "key enabling SOA technology," at least not yet. This mean

Fixing the broken OSS business model

In response to my previous post, Matt Aslett aptly asks: Does open source have a glass ceiling? In a word, yes. But it doesn't have to be this way. The "OSS business model" is a misnomer as there are many variations. But the business m

Geek Week: Broadcom hits skids, Comcast throttles bits

Boozes, babes, and Broadcom. Here's more proof that I got into the wrong end of this business. Ex-Broadcom CEO Henry Nicholas– already nailed for stock options shenanigans that added a fictional $2.2 billion worth of revenue to his company&#039

Open source in the heartland

I've been doing some sales calls to prospects and customers in the midwest the last week or so. I like to do this periodically to make sure I'm not just drinking the open source koolaid, but really hearing from customers, prospects and the

Real performance is hard to find

Will cable companies throttle YouTube instead of P2P?

<P>Internet bandwidth hogs might not be the only ones with a stake in the outcome of pilot tests Time Warner and Comcast <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/03/AR2008060303248.html">have announc