Opinion

Test Center Tracker: Taking a Spider from BI to Zoho

A powerful new computing platform, more smarts for business and a Web office suite that promises to work offline are all in a day work (or two) at the Test Center. Say "Hi!" to a Phenom platform What happens when you marry a 64-bit quadcore

Placing IT effectiveness on the org chart

Dear Bob …I am interested if you know of organizations that have an IT Effectiveness manager in their organizational structure. If so, where in the org chart does it fit, who does it report to?- OrganizingDear Organizing …Not that I know of as a

Has the Web changed politics? It’s debatable

Tonight, after may delays, we'll finally be able to see the Republican candidates answer questions from snowmen, animated dollar bills, and talking skulls. The CNN YouTube debate in Florida is scheduled for 8 eastern. And yes, the two a

Review of my SOA Predictions for 2007

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Microsoft SQL Server Preview Rolls in More BI Features

With its latest generation of enterprise platform elements, Microsoft has taken the "customer technology preview," or CTP, to a whole new level, releasing waves of new features into the hands of evaluators. Perhaps the best example of that

AMD Spider weaves its own worldwide web

AMD releases mutant Spiders into the wild. Invite them in and feed them lots of Core 2 I've been alerted that satellites are tracking a massive Spider riding in with a Canadian cold front, and a plot of its trajectory has it reaching my address

Entuity to the Network and Quest to the Desktop

Virtualization management and control is important, so companies like Entuity are looking to virtualization to expand their network management suite, EYE 2008, to help with the management and control of the overall network within a virtualized enviro

Service Pack vs. Service Pack: XP SP3 Beats Vista SP1

According to tests by Devil Mountain Software comparing the release candidates for the last Windows XP service pack and the first Vista service pack, XP SP3 performs twice as fast as Vista SP1 on the same machine–and slower than the initial release

Activision Hits Home Run; Dell on Deck

Tech investors have been looking for excuses to sell for weeks, but Activision gave them a reason to buy on Tuesday. Buoyed by strong sales of Guitar Hero and Call of Duty, the game developer substantially raised its outlook for the critical holiday

What happened to my Visual Studio 2005 News Feed?

Today the news feed on my Visual Studio 2005 start page stopped working. I don't know why. I was able to fix it, though. I went to Tools | Options | Environment | Startup and copied the existing news channel URL. I pasted that into my browser, a

Open Source Businesses Hitting Their Stride

From my conversations with various open source companies, it looks like most are doing very well and headed into a strong end-of-year finish in Q4. While the cost savings are a key driver in adoption, open source is no longer considered as "good

Zoho Writer: Going “Offline” in Name Only

I like Zoho Office. Or rather, the idea behind Zoho Office. It is by far the most ambitious attempt yet to create a fully-functional, web-based productivity application suite. Unfortunately, this nascent Microsoft Office challenger suffers from the s

Test Center Tracker: Maybe you can take it with you

There are libraries to carry around, green power sources for I.T. centers, and good business in open source for today's Test Center Tracker. Take it all:If you can take everything you need with you, why wouldn't you? That's the questio

Idera’s Criminal Activity

WOW, this is big. I just found an article about a lawsuit filed by Quest Software against Idera where they allege patent infringement as well as criminal hacking and property theft. The article is on Technology Law 360. Man, this is just big. Ok, acc

iPhone, What is good for U.S. is not good for Europe

When the iPhone launches tomorrow in France and across the rest of Europe there will be one distinct difference between that market and the U.S. market. Europeans will be able to buy an unlocked iPhone from Orange, the France telecomm carrier. That&r

HP harnesses solar, wind power

Looking to reap financial savings and reduce its carbon footprint, HP today announced that it will use solar power for its forthcoming datacenter in San Diego and wind power for facilties in Ireland.

Law of Least Astonishment

My discussion of software surprises on Saturday reminded me about the Law or Principle of Least Astonishment, also called the Law or Rule of Least Surprise. This certainly goes back to the early days of Unix, if not before: it is discussed in The Art

Outsourced during a deathmarch

Dear Bob …My department is being outsourced. Two people are here until April 15th. I'm not one of them. The other two, the supervisor and I, are gone December 31st.We are in the middle of a huge application upgrade that management hopes to hav

Data flows faster downhill

It was the peak of the dotcom boom and I worked for a travel agency that was buying out Mom-and-Pop travel shops from Seattle to Miami — mid-1999, if I remember correctly. I was part of the traveling network team that was responsible for acquisitio

The future of communications

Lightweight, viral systems that grow with use will define how we keep in touch in the years to come Late last week I spoke with Andy Lippman about the future of communications. Co-director of MIT's Communications Futures Program and associate di

Windows Security Update Roulette

<P>To patch or not to patch — that's the gamble IT managers have to make time and again with Microsoft security updates. Put your money on the wrong side and your company's systems could be toast. And the worst part is it's a ga

HP to Resell Scalent V/OE Software for HP BladeSystem

HP and Scalent Systems have announced an agreement that makes Scalent V/OE software available through HP in December 2007 as part of the HP BladeSystem c-Class Solution Builder Program. According to HP, the software will allow its customers to seamle

ManageIQ Launches into Virtualization Management

The virtualization management space is really starting to heat up. Recently announced new comers Embotics and Fortisphere are now being joined by ManageIQ, a company founded and managed by a team of people who helped Novadigm down the path of acquisi

The new Katmai Experience

I downloaded the new Katmai CTP today and ran an upgrade on my workstation. Unfortunately it didn't go quite as planned. In fact, I'd have to say I'm actually a little disappointed. First, many parts of the upgrade failed. I can take m

I think Microsoft has an OSS Strategy

Shaun Connolly from JBoss/Red Hat has a nice summary of Microsoft's Open Source Strategy. In the post, Shaun states: "As much as I hate to say it, Microsoft could learn something from IBM's strategy. They make no bones about it: they w

Why not carry your entire reference collection?

Depending upon what circles you travel in, you may have noticed the currently flurry caused by the release of the Kindle from Amazon. Based upon the eInk technology developed by Joseph Jacobsen of the MIT Media Labs the Kindle is similar to offerings

Readers write (and bite) back

It's been a while since I combed through the mailbox and shared a little of what Cringesters have been telling me outside the confines of this blog. Since I'm still a little sleepy from all that turkey (and possibly one or two liquid refres

Hard disks on verge of capacity breakthroughs

For those of you, like me, who thought there wasn’t much new in hard disk drives [HDD], i.e., rotating disks, and all the action was around solid state, flash, drives, I gave a call to Dave Wikersham, president of Seagate Technology. I figured

The (Post-SP1) Vista Verdict: Wait for Windows 7

Like many of the IT organizations I consult to, I've been waiting for the release of Service Pack 1 before passing final judgement on Windows Vista. Now that SP1 has nearly arrived (I've been working with the RC0 bits for about a week now),

Test Center Tracker: Leopard scores big

A perfect 10: Apple has achieved perfection with the release of Mac OS X, at least in the eyes of InfoWorld Chief Technologist Tom Yager. He's given the OS a bottom-line score a 10, a feat no other company has achieved (at least as far back as I

Every CTO should be on Facebook

Virtual Worlds and Your Real-World A**

SecondLife might be a virtual world, but you've got a real-world a** to protect, so when the top brass sends you in search of innovation and you want to take a spin with SecondLife, you don't need another "on one hand-on the other&quot

Leopard lands a perfect 10

InfoWorld has been doing product reviews for nearly three decades. Never before has a reviewer had the temerity to award an overall score of 10 until our Test Center Chief Technologist Tom Yager put that ne-plus-ultra stamp of approval on…

Reader Voices: Blacklisting Sony

<P>Do customers hold a grudge against vendors that unfairly restrict usage of their products? Well, it would appear that many of my readers do to the point of blacklisting companies that they think went too far with overly controlling behavior.

What’s wrong with Vongo?

Having endured the Vongo ads during various football games the past few days, I figured I'd at least check it out. I wasn't sure what to expect, and boy was I surprised. If you don't already know, Vongo is a new digital movie distribu

AMD and Cisco put Band-Aids on their wounds

When business gets bad, some tech outfits will do whatever it takes to protect share prices, even it doesn’t add a bit of value to the company. We’ve seen two good examples of this in the last few weeks: Advanced Micro Devices, whose shar

In Software, Surprises are Usually Bad

In life, surprises can be good or bad. In software, surprises are usually bad. This was driven home to me the other day when I was arranging some music using Finale 2008, a capable but complicated musical notation program. I've been using Final

MySQL Workbench & the Future of the Software Business

Marten Mickos emailed to point out the MySQL Workbench offering (a good FAQ here). As I've said before, MySQL gets it. Why? Well, in the eyes of commercial enterprise software vendors, the optimal result is for OSS vendors to stick to their &quo

My Valley PR Blog Interview with Dan Wool

Before I left town to start my four-city, west-coast speaking tour, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Dan Wool of the Valley PR Blog.

FiOS Outage

You may have noticed that I didn't write about the history of Thanksgiving yesterday. I meant to; I just couldn't. About 5 PM Wednesday as I was frantically trying to finish up a few things at work, my son called from home that he'd go

Windows XP SP3 Widening the Gap vs. Vista

The folks over at the exo.performance.network (www.xpnet.com) have been at it again. This time they got their hands on Windows XP Service Pack 3 – something I've been trying to do for several weeks now – and ran it through their usual battery of

One that didn’t turn out so well

Dear Bob …Back in February, I had written to you about struggling to maintain my position in the midst of changes brought about by a corporate buy out. Things looked pretty good back then. And then, they didn't. Biggest problem was the numbers

Oracle Gets Big

Last week's Oracle Open World event reminded me just how big Oracle has become. The conference pulled 43,000 people into Moscone Center and shut down traffic for several blocks around the convention center. While I would not say it was on scale

In search of lost tapes

New tracking system from Fujifilm provides perfect complement to encryption, taps GPS to locate missing tapes

Must-have gadgets for the discerning geek

Sure, you're getting an iPhone. But real techies will want these cool toys, too

DNS hacked again

New vulnerabilities are still being found in some of the Internet's oldest functions

Preview: Early peek at the HP c3000 – Part 2

Please note that this article has been updated to correct some information Welcome to part two of our exploration of the HP c3000 Blade System. If you need a recap, part 1 is here. Last time we looked at the front of the system that can host up to ei

3Tera Updates AppLogic and Verari Offers New Blade Server

3Tera, grid computing and utility computing provider, announced that the company is adding 64-bit support to enhance their scalability and control of resources for AppLogic customers. And Verari Systems delivered a new standard for today's data

Recession? Not in the cards — yet

Leading indicators aren't pointing to recession, and the weak dollar is giving HP and other tech giants a lot of breathing room The Baltic Exchange Dry Index isn't something you read about every day — in fact, most of us haven't heard

Thinsy Announces Latest Xen Based Virtualization Platform

California based Thinsy announces that it is joining the growing list of Xen based virtualization platforms. Just after Oracle announced the introduction of its Xen based platform, Oracle VM, Thinsy becomes the seventh commercial virtualization platf