Opinion

Intuit’s razor

<P>I'm beginning to think there's a lot to be learned about the future of technology by looking more closely at how we've gotten to where we are. My story about <a href="http://www.gripe2ed.com/scoop/story/2007/12/28/0542

Green tech wrap-up: Microsoft’s green vision bears fruit

Every Thursday, InfoWorld sends out my free Green Tech e-mail newsletter in which I point to some of the top green IT articles of the week. Following is the content of yesterday's. You can subscribe to the free InfoWorld Green Tech newsletter (a

Windows Live SkyDrive

I've been having a blast with a great site someone recommended my way called MediaFire.com where the premise is that you can upload files and share them with anyone. It's free, you can upload files that are as large as 100MB (or zip up a bu

Geek Week: The Wiki Quickie Meets Apple’s SDK

His wiki wiki ways. When Wikipedia papa Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales' sex life is big news, you know that either a) it's been a really slow week, or b) Armageddon is fast approaching. But that's what happened after his "ex"

Katmai’s backup compression

I remember a conversation I had at the Redmond campus with the program manager (at that time it was Paul Randall… now I think he goes by Paul Tripp, but all the same he's not a MS anymore.). Anyway though, he was asking me about my favorite Ka

And now, time for some self-indulgence

I use a Treo 700P. Not the newest technology, but certainly not obsolete.I don't travel to Europe very much, but I do have a trip next week, so I called my cellular provider to activate international roaming.I waited in the various queues, was o

Getting started with the Silverlight 2 beta

I'm up to my elbows in the Silverlight 2 beta, the release of which Paul Krill reported on here. I don't have much to say about it yet, but I thought I'd share the best way to get started developing with this version, since I wandered

Reusing the Reuse Topic

Joe McKendrick had some good ideas around my thoughts on reuse, and some good original insights as well. "However, there are three sticky questions around reuse: First, should reuse be a goal in itself, or does it play more of a supporting role

Is desktop virtualization’s promise overstated?

Citrix Systems, EMC's VMware unit, Microsoft, Symantec, and other big dogs have shelled out more than $2 billion on acquisitions related todesktop virtualization in less than two years. But now that they've got the technology, it's not

IT can clean up through clean tech

There are some familiar names on the 14-member roster of the newly formed Green Power Group – California, a partnership of companies that will collaborate on purchasing and fostering clean energy: AMD, Apple, BT Americas, Cisco, eBay, Google, HP, Int

Parallels Server Beta 2 is now open to the public

Parallels announced today that it was going to open up its Beta 2 program for its Parallels Server product to the general public. Parallels Server is the first server virtualization platform to come out of Parallels, now famous for their desktop virt

Will Apple give iPhone developers the SDK they want?

Unless you were one of the lucky ones to get an invitation to the Apple event in Cupertino tomorrow where Steve Jobs will unveil the iPhone SDK (Software Developer Kit), you’ll have to wait for the news reports to find out how much power Apple

L.A. SQL Server 2008 launch pics

Well, as usual I'm a few days behind getting my launch pics posted. There weren't any really interesting things to snap this time, but as usual, Oracle parked taxis outside with their logo on them. Personally, I think it's funny. So he

Forrester: Green IT consulting market to hit $4.8B by 2013

Green IT consulting services are poised to blossom into a lucrative business in coming years as companies worldwide grapple with expanding carbon footprints, spiraling energy bills, and other eco-oriented woes.

Windows “Workstation” 2008 Clobbers Vista in Benchmark Testing

Just when you think you've got it all figured out, along comes another curve ball to keep you guessing. This time around it's a set of new benchmark test results from our old friends at the exo.performance.network. Apparently, these guys he

LINQ webinar video and forum

I mentioned the 2/20 LINQ webinar given by Joseph Albahari in advance of its live presentation, but some of you didn't hear about it until the weekly newsletter went out on 2/21. (That's what the RSS feed is for, folks.) A few of you even a

Netaholics Anonymous

If God had wanted me to be an attorney I'd have been born with a dorsal fin and razor sharp teeth. So the subtleties of the law sometimes elude me. But there have been a couple of recent court decisions that raise big questions about anonymity a

More on PC lockdown policies

Dear Bob …I found it ironic, that just as you are suggesting a new way of looking at the PC (in "The portal," Keep the Joint Running, 2/25/2008), Microsoft is making it even easier to look at it the old way.I received from InfoWorld a let

Defining Types of Services

From an e-mail: "Do all services share the same patterns?" In the world of SOA, there are two types of services: data services, and transactional services, and each requires a different approach to designing, building, testing, and governin

Test Center Tracker: From secure VMs to stable desktops

Today's Test Center Tracker touches on three equally important topics: Securing you virtual machines, giving your business associates tools to better monitor performance and why you should hold on the best fitting, more stable Microsoft desktop

T-Punkt’ed in Germany

So I'm having fun, T-Punkt is one of the German versions of a regular T-Mobile shop, but wait…not quite…because Deutschland's citizens can purchase DSL, home telephones, combo DSL+Wifi+Cellular routers all under one roof. My experience

Microsoft PerformancePoint: BI or BS?

Inconceivable as it may seem, Microsoft has nearly built from the ground up a BI (business intelligence) application called PerformancePoint Server 2007 (drawing on technologies acquired from Proclarity). Although some will argue that the solution is

Supermicro Water cooled blades

It's already late in the afternoon and the snow has long melted from the ground of the Hannover Faire Grounds where the CeBIT 2008 technology conference is being held. This government sponsored super conference is trying to convince Americans to

VMware security: another look at VMsafe

With VMworld Europe 2008 behind us, looking back, one of the more interesting announcements from the show was around virtualization security and VMware's VMsafe. VMsafe is the company's new security architecture that includes an API for sec

Citrix XenDesktop reaches open beta

Citrix XenDesktop, announced in October of 2007, is the company's VDI solution or their virtual desktop delivery system. XenDesktop integrates several distributed components such as Desktop Delivery Controller, Provisioning Server and XenServer.

PCs approach Mac simplicity, courtesy of AMD

It takes a chipmaker to make PCs as easy to set up and operate as Macs, and AMD's going to do it If the reality of the "standardized PC" were aligned with the rhetoric, no PC would ship with a separate driver disc. Windows XP would ins

The benefits, such as they are, for using femtocells

Last week I discussed femtocells and how I believe the carriers are ripping the consumer off by making them pay more for quality service that should have been delivered in the first place. This week, as promised, I want to tell you why you might end

Adding Columns in Katmai

I've come across some new functionality in SSMS that you should be aware of. By default, you can't perform any action, like inserting columns, that forces the table to be recreated. But there's a flag for that. I've put together a

Test Center Tracker: Ajax, Vista troubles, and green lightweights

While politics junkies wait for polls to close in places like Ohio and Texas, IT pros can spend time thinking about serious issues — like critical differences in open source Ajax toolkits, critical flaws in Windows Vista, and the critical question o

MuleCon in San Francisco April 1-2

As a follow on from last weeks SaaS / onDemand conferences, MuleSource has their upcoming MuleCon April 1-2 in San Francisco. If you're doing integration work and looking for a better, cheaper way, this is a good conference to check out. You can

Agile is as Agile does

Scott Ambler reported at SD West that a February survey with about 600 respondents found 69% were utilizing agile development practices. &quot;The bad news is, this is the exact same number we had last year,&quot; Ambler said. This, he said,

Getting to 21st century IT – User-owned PCs?

In this week's Keep the Joint Running, ("Getting to 21st century IT," 3/3/2008), I mentioned a radical approach:Correspondent Richard Resnick provided the most extreme suggestion: No corporate-owned PCs at all. Let employees buy their

What’s Neglected When Testing Services?

People are forgetting a few things when testing services. First and foremost, services should be tested for reuse (reusability). Services become a part of any number of other applications, and thus must be tested so they properly provide behavior and

VMworld Europe 2008 keynote recap

VMworld Europe 2008 took place in Cannes, France; and much like VMworld in the states, just before, during and after the event, it seems like virtualization news was coming from every direction. The European version of VMworld was much like the US ve

Do You Need a SOA Enforcer?

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Manual? What manual?

We have all had our own personal "learning experiences." I experienced one back in 1991 when I was the second-shift computer operator responsible for backing up our Novell servers, including payroll. My job was to run the backups and any ot

Outsourcing moves to the core

The next generation of outsourcing will include porting knowledge-based business functions offshore For those who thought that outsourcing would remain the domain of heads-down coders and customer service representatives, guess again. A new form of o

Western Digital lies about warranty status

<P>Drive manufacturers often seem to have a bad memory when it comes to their warranty promises. That's what one reader discovered when Western Digital's Web site falsely labeled his drive as being out of warranty when it wasn't.

The New Local Internet

I've been saying for years now, why can't my LAN be like the internet?  Why do I have to search for docs or even phrases in docs manually on my different file servers?  What I want is to go to a location on my LAN, and typ

Microsoft targets Google with its latest Online Service announcement

The news out of Redmond this morning that Microsoft will expand its online offerings to companies with under 5,000 seats may indicate that the sleeping giant is almost fully awake and ready to really compete in the new world of online applications. M

Effective post-mortems

Jon Udell’s New RSaaS

Avid runner and all 'round insightful dude Jon Udell wrote about a new idea around what I'll call RSaaS –Running Shoes as a Service. "If you’re a runner, spending $100 every six (or even three) months is infinitely preferable to

Vista (in)Capable: New price, same old ****

Stop the presses: Windows Vista Ultimate is now cheaper than ever! Yes, Microsoft has done something I can't remember ever doing before: it slashed the price of its own operating system. You can now upgrade your XP machine to Vista Home Premium

Microsoft owns up to Vista’s flaws (sort of)

I love lawsuits. The smell of money has a way of dredging up all sorts of interesting and (previously) confidential information. Take the case of the internal Microsoft email thread that surfaced recently in the wake of the pending &quot;Vista Ca

Endless demand for richer experience

Few would dispute that AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) has transformed the Web. The technology has always appealed to my frugal side: a capability already built into Internet Explorer was "discovered" years later and exploited by Web

How to make the iPhone work at work

Execs and users are clamoring for you to biz-enable their iPhones. Here’s how to say "yes" in a rational way

Less-Than-Genuine Buyer Protection

<P>When price hunting online, there's always the risk that the merchant with the cheapest price may be selling phony goods. Many customers rely on the buyer protection plans of sites like Pricegrabber.com as the only leverage they have if

Application virtualization: a conversation with Symantec/Altiris

Application virtualization is one of those technologies that has been around for a little while now, but it just doesn't seem to get the same attention as its older sibling — server virtualization. There are a number of application virtualizati

PlateSpin acquired by Novell for $205M cash

While attending VMworld Europe in Cannes, France, I was surprised to hear the announcement from Novell that it was going to acquire PlateSpin for $205 million in cash. What I wasn't surprised about was PlateSpin finally being acquired. And I was

Zmanda Recovery Manager 2.1

Zmanda has introduced a new version of Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) 2.1 which adds quite a few new capabilities for MySQL users. This version now includes enhanced snapshot support working with Linux LVM, Windows VSS, Solaris ZFS, NeApp SnapManager