Keep an Open Eye Eye, Sir

For the past half year at least, Google Search and often all of  Google services have been “out” – just not available while other search engine and Web services such as Yahoo, Bing, Ask, Yahoo Mail and others are up and running. This has implications for Cloud Computing adoption. It also has to be of [...]

Google has just released an Economic Impact Statement – Google has attempted to measure what impact Google’s search engine and other services has had on the US and by implication, World economics. But as well there is the impact of Google on the basic technology of the Internet and therefore global communication. Google seems to [...]

Moore’s Law is not a law but rather an astute observation that has stood the test of time – it has predicted the rate of change in computing power for the past 50 years with uncanny accuracy: Computing power will double in capacity for the same cost every 18-20 months. This “law” is now running [...]

For the next year or two the biggest software battleground among major interface vendors like Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, and others will be over a)who takes advantage of all the underutilized GPU and extra core CPU power available on PCs especially but also cameras, mobiles, tablets, etc. For example, in todays announcement [...]

I just finished an all day seminar on BIRT the partially Open Source report writing package available from Actuate[the Core is open, the extended services are closed and the two packages are, according to Actuate people, moving in different directions - More on this in a later posting]. BIRT software is impressive especially with its [...]

The Guardian and Financial Times in England have been covering the China vs Google story much more closely than US media. So when the Guardian published a story about Bill Gates reactions to the conflict , curious, I took a look: After pouring billions of dollars into the global fight against malaria and rebranding Microsoft [...]

Some people believe that Web GUI operations cannot even remotely match those available on the desktop – be that Windows 7 with its Aero goodies or Apple Snow Leopard with its refined look and often copied navigational features. I would beg to differ. Desktop GUI is playing catch up to mobile and the Web. Gestures [...]

Okay, I will admit a bias toward WordPress because I have been using it on 5 of my own blogs and dozens of other projects. But I use Drupal, Joomla. Gallery, PHPBB and Coppermine too. No one CMS is clearly dominant – you fit each CMS strengths to the tasks at hand. Interestingly, WordPress has [...]

As a developer I have always anticipated programming languages adding 3D operations or APL-like vector and array operations or event handling [more beyond the current Try-Catch paradigm]. Extensions that would become universal. But that has not happened except in a perverse way – the huge functional libraries associated with all the major languages from C/Pascal/ [...]

eWeek’s Jim Rapoza has done a comprehensive survey of Web browsers evaluating their suitability for Enterprise Applications. This is ever more important in the business world as Cloud Computing accelerates and Web 2.0 programs dominate new Enterprise Applications . Also Netbooks/Smartphones are becoming ever more prevalent with much better browser and Web connections. So businesses [...]

While we labor and wring hands over the success (or lack there of ) for Linux on the Desktop – lo and behold Linux has gained not just a beachead but large chunks of application share on IBM z-Series mainframes. Just take a look at the article here. IBM has seen more than half of [...]

The old adage “you get what you pay for” is getting a real workout as two philosophical viewpoints on the Internet vie for dominance in the Web  marketplace. First, there is the journalistic community which is arguing it cannot rely on the current payment  model which cnow uses primarily advertising and a few special services [...]

Just two weeks ago, our report on Semi-Structured data processing had a major gap – no real IBM presence. True enough, the IBM/Cognos, IBM FileNet and other IBM BI offerings certainly dealt with some aspects of semi-structured data ,particularly FileNet’s positions in Content Management and Record Archiving. But the integration across platforms through semi-structured data [...]

There is an article in today’s NYTimes about the profound changes that are occurring in the Health Record business now that the Obama government has added incentives of $40,000 per physician for adopting electronic health records. Players like  Google, IBM, and Microsoft have tossed their Health Record technologies into the ring. But the most important factor is [...]

Frank Ohlhorst at Ziff Davis Enterprise has written a size up of Windows 7 for ChannelInsider (Is Microsoft Windows 7 the Obama of the OS World?) that is a bit short sighted about the depth of the problems with Windows 7′s predecessor Microsoft Vista – and therefore he tends to over-rate Windows 7. Here are two quotes [...]

The big trend in database is the effort to  XML-ize Semi- structured data. This is like a big SOAP project in both senses of the Word. Many of the control structures and procedural setting borrow from SOAP. But  it is also an attempt by the major Relational Database vendors such as  IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and [...]

I thought of titling this posting as “Sam P. ? Is that  a Sunny Yolk on  You?”  - but I didn’t. Instead I would like to ask Barrons to reconsider elevating Sam P. to the exhalted ranks of Best of Barrons CEOs. Also I would like to ask the IBM Board to riddle me this [...]

Rapid developments in smartphones and the emergence of Netbooks would suggest that Apple-AAPL and Microsoft-MSFT are reaching tipping points in their respective industries. However, the probability of when and the nature of the Tip may be different. But first before considering anything else, lets take a look at each company’s financial condition: Both from Google [...]

The Serverside is reporting that Sun is effectively making Java two tiered – an Open Java – and then the latest JDK with all the bells and whistles. See the article here for the almost Machiavellian machinations. These actions by Sun may be motivated by three considerations: 1)The Open Source community (and the whole  non-Sun [...]

The Sun shines on IBM if Armonk decides to go ahead with the rumored purchase of Sun Microsystems   because Sun fills so many serious gaps at IBM. In fact I was just about  to do an article which would cite IBM as being almost out to lunch on key computing directions including: a)virtualization technology and [...]