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Thursday, Feb 21 2008

In one of the more abrupt u-turns in recent corporate history, Microsoft announces changes to both development and business practices intended to “increase the openness of its products and drive greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for developers, partners, customers and competitors.”

Details of the announcement:

• Microsoft will publish API specifications for:
  • Windows Vista
  • Windows Server 2008
  • SQL Server 2008
  • Office 2007
  • Exchange Server 2007
  • Office Sharepoint Server 2007
• Microsoft will release 30,000 pages of documentation about client and server protocols. No more secret licenses or partnership agreements.
  • However, Microsoft will “license all of these patents [that cover specific protocols] on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, at low royalty rates.”
• Microsoft will not sue developers who make open source versions of its protocols.
• Microsoft will support other document formats in Office 2007 and create new APIs for Word, Excel, and Powerpoint to encourage interoperability with new document formats.
• Microsoft plans to launch the Open Source Interoperability Initiative (OSII) to validate these ideals through testing and cooperative development.

Unfortunately, a ship the size of Microsoft doesn’t turn on a dime. Therefore, how long will it be before any of this comes to fruition?

As exciting as this announcement seems on the surface, not everyone is buying in. Tim Bray (via Twitter) has expressed concerns about both the aforementioned “low royalty rates” and how Microsoft plans to distinguish between commercial and non-commercial entities.

What do our readers think? Is this just more smoke out of Redmond or is there a legitimate fire there?

Official information can be found at Microsoft Interoperability and special thanks go out to The Register for providing early coverage.

In other news, reports out of Hell indicate temperatures are dropping rapidly with freezing conditions expected.

Tuesday, Jan 22 2008

Python

How is Python, the object oriented scripting language known for imposing indentation on developers, the “Programming Language of the Year for 2007”?

Monday, Jan 7 2008

Let’s get right to it: considering the popularity of open source applications and utilities, why hasn’t the open source flagship - the Linux operating system - caught on with mainstream PC users?

With the various incarnations of Linux available at the click of a button, why do the majority of PC users prefer to drop $200 US on a Windows Vista or Mac OS install disk instead of trying the third, free option?

Wednesday, Jan 2 2008

It seems that the continuing writer’s strike is making people anxious and nervous. With growing access to free online content, shouldn’t all writers - from film to television to newspapers - be compensated fairly for their content accessed on the Internet?

Monday, Dec 17 2007

If print designers were feeling slighted by the recent trend of making magazines look more like web sites, I am sure they are woeful over the recent news that “BusinessWeek is combining its print and digital staff to create a single editorial operation”.

Yet despite promises that the company is reorganizing in an effort to “better integrate its print and web products”, the move will result in the laying off of a dozen or so business and editorial staff.

Thursday, Dec 6 2007

There are a lot of different software products out there. Software that will do anything your organization wants it to do. You can pay just about whatever you want for that software, too.

“Open Source” software, if you will, is a big part of the market. Some of the most widely used software on the internet is wholly free. Not only is it “free”, as in speech; it’s also “free”, as in beer.

Monday, Dec 3 2007

For years the war for the enterprise has raged between Microsoft and Java with the heaviest battles occurring since the inception of .Net. However, recent research indicated that .Net is now coming out on the winning team.

This news is from Info-Tech Research Group - an IT research and advisory firm. According to an article on InfoWorld, Info-Tech’s research indicates that in a survey of over 1,850 organizations of all sizes and industries: .Net is the choice over Java most often.

The report indicates that 12 percent of the surveyed companies focus exclusively on .Net, while only 3 percent are exclusively Java. That’s a big difference and should spark some lively debate in the Java community.

To throw the Java community a bone, Info-Tech compares Java to legacy code in that it will always be around just like the infamous Cobol. Not sure if that’s a postive thing or not.

The report (which is not sponsored so it should be vendor neutral) is entitled It’s Official: .Net Roasts Java’s Beans and is available for a fee on the InfoTech site.

Friday, Nov 9 2007

From the annals of News You Already Know comes two reports that shouldn’t surprise you.

On Monday, Reuters reported that “four out of five U.S. adults” or “79 percent — about 178 million — go online” and spend an average of 11 hours a week on the Internet.

At the LiveLinkUp 2007 user conference in Orlando last month, Open Text discussed the state of the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) market today, how it’s changed over the last year, and what the future holds. Consensus is that more customers are looking at the bigger picture of ECM.

As is well known by the readers of this site, Open Text concludes that ECM has become a key element of the information strategies of global organizations.

Friday, Nov 2 2007

The boffins at the W3C, locked in their dank MIT dungeon, have nothing better to do with their time than rattle off paper after paper on new development protocols.

The more they put out, so it is said, the less Tim Berners-Lee flogs them.

Thursday, Nov 1 2007

One Web, where content from a given domain will be accessible to any device, where one version of an application works everywhere, and where mobile content dominates in as little as five years.

Friday, Oct 26 2007

Mochila, the online marketplace for high-quality syndicated media, announces a partnership with widget provider Gigya to add new distribution features to its network.

The new tie-in will enable Mochila users to utilize Gigya’s Wildfire technology to distribute content in widget format.

Gigya is already partnered with numerous content providers including MetaCafe, Gaia, and c|net amongst others. These widgets enable viral connectivity between available content and the other half of Gigya’s partnership family, which consists of just about all of the popular social networks.

One-click posting functionality lets Gigya users share content without leaving the content provider’s site. Moreover, the widgets are particularly designed with a view to viral distribution.

Have a butcher’s at this one, and you will get the picture:

If you are already part of the Mochila marketplace, grab a widget and spread the love!