Opinion

Microsoft Virtualization Security Fix Planned on Patch Day

Microsoft issued an advanced notification of nine security bulletins that the company plans on releasing with next Tuesday's patch day. Six of these will fix critical security vulnerabilities with bugs being found across the board from the Windo

Wait. What?

Okay, maybe it's just me, but I swear that the default "new email" tone on Profimail is the Super Mario Bros. "new life" tone. Seriously. I'm not sure how I feel about that….

Second Life Responds: A Conversation with Joe Miller

In response to my Friday posting on August 3rd about reliability and voice in Second Life (SL), Joe Miller, Linden Lab’s VP for product and platform development, called me on the phone the following Monday. If you look at Joe's bi

Online storage will become a necessity

The news this week that Microsoft Live is now offering 500MB of online storage via its Skydrive service and that Google will allow Gmail users to extend their 1GB of storage with a fee-based storage offering makes me wonder what's going on. I ha

Test Center Daily: Elluminate the collaboration possibilities

Dive into Elluminate Live: Test Center Contributor Mike Heck has dabbled in many a Web-conferencing tool for InfoWorld, so when he finds something he considers innovative, it's worth noting. In this case, it's Version 8 of Elluminate Live.

SOA Maturity, Who has seen it implemented?

This came in as a Google alert on SOA, a gentleman named Willem Kossen, who is an ICT Architect and Consultant at M&I/Partners. He asks the question: "SOA Maturity, Who has seen it implemented?" He goes on to clarify, and I'll

Geek Week in Review

This was the week that was — err, is. Here are some stories you may have missed. An Imperfect Storm. “You've received a greeting card from a friend/colleague/worshipper/family member/neighbor/class mate/partner/complete tool.” Congr

Smartronix Uses Kidaro for Enterprise Desktop Virtualization

Kidaro, provider of enterprise desktop virtualization solutions, told me that a leading government contractor, Smartronix, is deploying the Kidaro platform in order to enhance the security and manageability of their desktop and laptop computers. When

Another Reason Why MySQL Gets It

There has been some discussion about MySQL's recent moves to clarify the targeting between MySQL Community Server & MySQL Enterprise Server. Essentially, MySQL wants to make it clear(er) that Community Server is free and for those of us

Fueling faster file transfers with RocketStream

Application suite blends UDP and TCP to accelerate file transfers over long distances

Thoughts from Black Hat

Good info on bad deeds from the Black Hat conference

SWsoft Virtuozzo Customers Gain from Going Green

With escalating electric power costs and increasing pressure to reduce energy consumption, SWsoft says a growing number of service providers and IT organizations worldwide are using the company's Virtuozzo virtualization software to reduce their

Commitment to delivery

EPA: 50 ways to green your datacenter

Tucked away in the EPA's report to Congress on server and datacenter efficiency is comprehensive list of strategies for reducing energy costs in your datacenter facilities.

Insight on Sun’s Open Source Strategy

Even as an IBMer, I must say that I admire Sun's Jonathan Schwartz. He helped Sun turn its back on Sun’s "kill the Penguin" stance that seemed so deep rooted a few years ago. (Remember that Linux hurt Unix more than Windows). He&

Matt Asay interviews Jonathan Schwartz (A must read Q&A)

When Matt told me he was interviewing JS I was infuriated that he hadn't invited me along. However since we share but one brain, I feel like I was there too. It's a fantastic interview and makes me realize that companies that seem as screwy

Hands-on: Elluminate Live v8 enhances Web interaction

Elluminate delivers an easily deployed Web conferencing solution with high-quality video

Test Center Tracker: Blogs and More Blogs

When test center analysts and editors aren't busy writing reviews, what are they doing? Blogging! There's lots of bloggy goodness today, with information that can make life in your data center more productive, more efficient, and more inter

Open-source Java testing advances

Sun Microsystems on Thursday is announcing availability of OpenJDK Community Technology Compatibility Kit License, providing access to compatibility tests for open-source Java implementations. The release enables the community at large to certify &qu

AOL Spam Roadblock Takes a Toll

<P>Anyone who manages a mail list of any real size knows what a pain it is nowadays to deal with the various spam-blocking techniques employed by different ISPs. As we <A href="http://www.gripe2ed.com/scoop/story/2007/6/29/95926/5883&qu

Hyperic HQ 3.1

I met with some of the folks from Hyperic up at LinuxWorld San Francisco yesterday. They have just released the latest version of HQ 3.1, and won an award for best systems management software at the show. HQ is used at a growing number of companies i

Rally adds integrations to agile software service

Rally Software is bolstering its hosted service for managing agile software development projects, with new or upgraded integrations with open source and commercial development tools. New integration connectors link Rally Version 2007.5 to the Subvers

Silverlight: How to Set Up for Development

After downloading all the new Microsoft tools I told you about on August 1st, I was a bit confused about how best to set up for Silverlight development. It was clear to me that Visual Studio 2008 beta 2, the Silverlight Alpha add-ins for Visual Studi

Reader writes and wrongs

I write, readers write back. Funny how that happens. Here are some of the more interesting things to land in my inbox lately. Cringester D. R. laments: I've been told by two different distributors/VARs that OEMs are bowing to pressure from Micro

Green Grid keeps eye on prize

Contrary to Gartner's opinion, The Green Grid needs to remain focused on datacenter efficiency, rather than branching out to lobby legislators over environmental concerns

IT meets the cable guy

McKinsey spotlights best practices and technologies for aligning field services worker with core business goals

HP Looks to Linux for Tomorrow’s Datacenter

Hewlett Packard outlined its vision for the next-generation datacenter and it says it is dependent on Linux and the open source community. The Linux community will continue to be an important component as more companies embrace the concept said an HP

VMware Fusion Virtualizes the Mac

VMware has announced general availability of its VMware Fusion desktop virtualization software for the Intel-based Mac. It lets Mac users simultaneously run Mac OS X, Windows and other Linux distributions on a single Mac system. The software has been

Strategic SOA ‘outpacing tactical Web services for ROI’

This article by Rich Seeley, who interviewed me for the article, appeared in Tech Target yesterday discussing the results of that Aberdeen survey I discussed, both on my blog and Podcast. "Organizations investing in a 'full SOA infrastructu

Behind the scenes of “Pimp my data center” Part 3

More notes and photos on the makeover and modernization of a little data center that could, if only

Google News allows those cited in news stories to post comments

Google announced on Wednesday that it will add an "experimental feature" to its Google News home page. In a move that certainly differentiates online news from anything print media can equal, Google is inviting "actual participants&quo

Write on .NET, deploy on Java

Having spent the better part of my career working with products that are based on JEE, I sometimes have to remind myself that .NET is still quite prevalent. You'll find that there are customers who are "JEE shops" or ".NET shops&q

Green Grid reveals ambitious road map

The Green Grid has remained fairly quiet over the past couple of months, save for the occasional announcement of a new member. But judging by the roadmap the group unveiled yesterday, it's safe to say that the consortium has been quite busy inde

Sun launches UltraSparc T2, QLogic readies 8Gb FC, Green Grid announces timelines, IBM migrates running apps, and much more

<p>It's been a busy couple days in enterprise HPC. In today's news update Sun launches Niagara II as the UltraSparc T2 and adds a mass storage option for SMB, QLogic readies 8Gb FC, the Green Grid responds to Gartner's criticisms

SOA is Strategic…Get Me?

Download file…

Welcome to Googlian’s Island

Is it just me, or did we all miss something truly big in the recent Google-FCC fandango? For those of you just tuning in, Google offered to meet the $4.6 billion minimum for bidding&nbsp;on chunks of the 700-MHz spectrum now used for&nbsp;ana

Die Access Die!

I've taken a pretty good look at Office 2007 and the new Access, and the one thing that goes through my head is the same thing that goes through every time I see Access… when is MS finally going to just get rid of this thing? What real purpose

How to deal with a really bad CEO

Dear Bob …I have some understanding of being demeaned while at work. My boss, the CEO, likes to play games with his employees. He will put them in a position so that he can use them to get something done for him and then he pulls you out of that hi

Zend, IBM expand PHP pact

Zend Technologies and IBM are expanding their partnership in the PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) application development space Wednesday, focusing on IBM's DB2 database. Featured in the arrangement are enhanced IBM DB2 Express-C capabilities in IBM

Test Center Tracker: graphics, violence and eye-candies

If developing Web apps interests you don't miss Martin Heller taking a shot at InfiView, an Ajax graphics development tool from MB Technologies that’s built with and complements the company’s own Bindows. Martin Heller explains how I

Notes from ‘The Fringe’: New Apple iCandy dazzles

Good-bye Office 2004, hello iWork '08. And welcome new iMacs and .Mac boost — all well worth skipping LinuxWorld Expo for, writes Tom Yager. During an unprecedented Q&A session following Apple's Town Hall meeting Aug. 7, no less than S

Microsoft PsTools bolster Windows admins’ utility belts

From password tweaking to remote shutdowns, this array of free utilities makes life a little easier

Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency

Slashdot reported that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) delivered a study on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency. Here is the 13 page summary and the full (133 pg) report. Here are a few highlights from the summary: "The energy

Virtualization Security – Blue Pills and Black Hats

For those of us looking to learn or just read up on security issues, a great place to start is the Black Hat Web site or conference to find out great information around the topic of security. Even virtualization security seems to be a hot topic. In 2

Silverlight comes to MLB

Why would I, a known Red Sox fan, be interested in the screen shot at left grabbed from a video of&nbsp;Yankee A-Rod's 500'th homer? Because it's the first instance, or at least the first&nbsp;I know about, of a major league&a

Plans & People

Rich Apps and Serious Topics

Early August is an interesting time of year. In much of the country (Florida, for instance) Summer is at its height. Families are taking last-minute vacations and stores are beginning to run their "back to school" sales. During the next thr

(Don’t) Steal My Content

The New York Times published an article recently called "Please Don't Steal This Web Content." It's another random story about how low-life scumbags are ruining the Internet in order to generate ad revenues. That is, until it happ

Microsoft’s Astoria project advances for data services

The Project Astoria team at Microsoft has extended the online service to enable development of experimental Astoria data services hosted by Microsoft, according to a blog on the project. The Astoria online service is an experimental effort to explore

Steve Jobs’ shocking secret

As die-hard Apple aficionados well know, today marks a special day in that magical land known as Cupertino. The Little Company That Could is planning yet another big hush-hush announcement this afternoon.&nbsp;Smart money is that the company will