Technology News: Tech Blog

Google's Strange and Shiny New OS
November 20, 2009

Google just keeps invading new territories, and its latest target is your computer's operating system. It's officially released the open source code for its Chrome OS, an operating system that will turn up in third-party vendors' netbooks. Those devices should start selling next year. With Chrome, Google takes a very different approach than major OSes like Windows, Mac OS, or even most Linux distributions.

Playboy's Bunny Couldn't Make the Hop to the Web
November 20, 2009

What the hell happened to the sort of man who reads Playboy? How could he let the Internet develop into the world's strip club -- and worse -- without taking Hugh Hefner's company along for the ride? There's no long tail for the Playboy bunny, judging from the rumored impending sale of Hefner's company for around $300 million to Iconix, collector of apparel brands like Candies and Joe Boxer.

The Gphone That Could Catch My Eye
November 20, 2009

So far, I haven't seen a compelling competitor to my iPhone -- at least, for me personally -- and this includes the new Motorola Droid. It's nice enough, but is it so much better that I'd leave the iPhone? Definitely not, and that includes some Droid widescreen envy. But what about the rumored Google phone?

Breaking Out of the Pink Ghetto
November 19, 2009

The Pink Ghetto is a largely invisible, often unmentioned and unacknowledged place littered with impediments to womens' upward mobility in the workplace. Women in the Pink Ghetto do not get equal pay for equal work, are not offered the same opportunities as their male coworkers, are not promoted as quickly as men -- or promoted at all.

FOSS and the Google Question
November 19, 2009

Devices based on Google's Linux-based Android operating system may be dominating headlines in the mobile world, but does the search giant *really* love FOSS? Google's introduction of the open Go programming language, for instance, has attracted considerable notice in the blogosphere, inviting widespread speculation as to how it will compare with competitors.

PaaS and the Democratization of Innovation
November 18, 2009

I was re-reading Eric von Hippel's excellent book Democratizing Innovation and found something in it that might help explain the popularity of cloud computing and Platform as a Service. I am on the way to Dreamforce and have little visibility into what Salesforce.com might announce in the next day or two, but no doubt there will be a lot about the cloud, so this might be a good opportunity to make my point.

Back to Basics: 5 Things IT Could Do Better in 2010
November 17, 2009

Well, it's November again -- which means that it's just about time for this year's set of New Year's predictions. Every year around this time, everyone from antimalware companies to analyst firms line up to tell us about the top IT and security trends -- what they are and why we should care.

War and Peace: HP Drops Bomb; Intel and AMD Call Truce
November 16, 2009

We seem to be surrounded by conflict; sometimes it seems peace is harder to make than war. There were two big events in tech last week: HP picked up 3Com, the company that first dominated the network space, as a major shot across Cisco's bow. Also the major legal battle of the decade, between AMD and Intel, came to an end.

Microsoft's Patently Absurd 'Sudo Patent'
November 16, 2009

There's just never a dull moment here in the world of FOSS. One minute, we're busy exclaiming our disbelief at the notion of a Microsoft version of Linux. The next minute -- on *Friday the 13th*, no less -- we learn that Redmond has acquired Teamprise, and will soon be shipping the company's Linux tools as part of its upcoming Visual Studio 2010 release.

Intel Escapes Its Legal Morass, One Settlement at a Time
November 13, 2009

Intel and AMD have finally put a long and bitter disagreement to bed, and in the end, all it took was a little open communication and understanding, along with one and a quarter billion dollars. The two have been at it for years -- accusations, threats, lawsuits. AMD said Intel engaged in anticompetitive behavior; Intel said AMD broke its licensing agreements.

Flu Fear Goes Viral on the Web
November 13, 2009

There's a very good reason why we call Internet memes and themes "viral." Good and bad information spreads on the Web in much the same way those nasty bundles of nucleic acid and proteins do when they attack your body's cells and make you sick. Some of the Internet news items I've seen related to the H1N1 swine flu virus are making me feel a little ill.

IT's Perfect Storm: Managed Services, SaaS and Cloud Computing
November 13, 2009

In a previous column, I described why many IT professionals within small- and medium-sized businesses, as well as in large-scale enterprises, are beginning to embrace Software as a Service, and why managed service providers can't afford to ignore SaaS. A recent industry event brought my previous observations to life and added a new dimension -- cloud computing -- to these dynamics.

Apple's House Rules Won't Be the Death of App Development
November 13, 2009

So Facebook developer Joe Hewitt tweets that he's ditching the super-popular Facebook iPhone app, and TechCrunch, clearly sensing there's more to the story here, reaches out to learn why. "My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple's policies," Hewitt told TechCrunch.

FOSS' Sunny Place in the Cloud
November 12, 2009

Richard Stallman's now-famous warnings about cloud computing (his verdict in a nutshell: It's "marketing hype") sparked a fresh round of debate in the blogosphere this week, along with some outbursts of incredulity. Stallman "is a few bubbles off of plumb and gets weirder every year," Slashdot blogger hairyfeet told LinuxInsider.

A Tale of Two Sages
November 11, 2009

Sage convened its fall user group meeting in Atlanta this week. The event was set in the cavernous Georgia World Congress Center, a complex of three starship hangars left over from the Intergalactic Olympics. The facility is beautiful and very big. Sage estimated attendance at between 2,500 and 3,000 people, but despite that number of people, the place looked underused.

Betrayals: Obama's Hollywood Sellout, Tech Companies' Layoffs
November 09, 2009

Last week, two troubling trends were in evidence. The scarier one is that it appears the Obama administration is in the process of putting in place a secret antipiracy provision that has little to do with antipiracy and everything to do with killing properties like YouTube. It is truly frightening, and people are already planning civil unrest to stop it.