Google CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking in Abu Dhabi this week, confirmed that the Chrome OS operating system is on track for the second half of this year. There are new reasons why its brightest future may be as an adjunct OS on netbooks and tablets. Read more »
CA today announced that it is acquiring privately held Nimsoft, which makes performance and availability monitoring software, in an all cash transaction valued at $350 million. According to CA, Nimsoft will help it better serve “emerging enterprises” (read smaller businesses) adopting cloud computing solutions. Read more »
The recent Comedy Central-Hulu announcement made me recall my New Year’s resolution, one that I wanted to share publicly, and encourage you to embrace as well. It is simple in its concept, but epic in scope: Give up Walled Gardens. Read more »
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Since early March, some European versions of Microsoft Windows have been delivered with a “browser ballot screen,” designed to give users a choice of 12 web browsers instead of forcing Microsoft’s Internet Explorer on them. The ballot screen is working, but there are problems arising. Read more »
Kicking things off with the proclamation that “we’re betting the company on it,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer discussed cloud computing and the future at the University of Washington this morning. “The goal can’t be to throw out all the world’s software and start again,” he said. Read more »
On Tuesday afternoon, Elliott Associates, L.P., a hedge fund with a significant position in shares of Novell, placed an unsolicited offer to buy the company for approximately $2 billion. The offer places a high valuation on Novell, and the troubled company must consider it carefully. Read more »
Today at the RSA conference in San Francisco, Microsoft Vice President for Trustworthy Computing Scott Charney proposed an Internet usage tax to fight malware infections and the effects of botnets. Do users at large really need to pay for one of Microsoft’s own most costly problems? Read more »
For years, at various times, tech giants such as Microsoft, Google and Apple have all been referred to as “benign monopolies.” Companies usually earn that moniker when they take on a certain dominance. But it’s worth remembering that dominance also introduces trends that are not benign. Read more »
Security services firm ZScaler is out with its “State of the Web” report for Q4 of last year, which presents views — many of them graphical — of the changing habits and patterns of web users. While some results are predictable, there are a few surprises. Read more »
Skyhook Wireless today announced that Gowalla, the location-based social networking service, has added Skyhook’s Core Engine to its Android application for location results. Up until now, Gowalla officials have been disappointed with location-based apps on Android, but they say that’s changed. Read more »
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On the text web, arbitrage has become the word of the day as whole ecosystems have sprung up to optimize and monetize the link economy. But when it comes to online video, the arbitrage model is failing badly. Read more »
Amazon delivered today a beta of its free Kindle for BlackBerry e-book app, which provides access to more than 420,000 books. It marks the latest example of how the publishing industry is facing seminal changes. Are we on the verge of the death of quality content? Read more »
Despite apologies from Google, and changes to the innerworkings of its Buzz social networking service, a high-profile privacy group has taken its complaints to the Federal Trade Commission. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has urged the FTC to open an investigation into Buzz. Read more »
Alcatel-Lucent has achieved 80Mbps downstream peak speeds on China Mobile’s TD-LTE (time division duplex) trial network, it said today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. And Verizon said its U.S. 4G plans remain on track — more evidence that radically faster broadband is imminent. Read more »
When you’re drowning, you grasp at straws to try to stay afloat. Sometimes you actually convince yourself that you’re standing on dry land. That seems to be the collective response of the traditional TV industry to a recent survey from Parks Associates. Read more »
Apple a couple of weeks back Apple released a “tip” for developers on how to enhance its apps using its “Core Location” framework. But while some said it signaled the death of the location-based ad industry on the iPhone, that seems very premature. Read more »
Apple, since its 1970s launch, has enjoyed special favor and even worship from the open source community, free thinkers and supporters of open standards. And yet, with each new step, Apple becomes more closed. That’s why, as the cash registers ring in Cupertino, peril lies ahead. Read more »
There are a few widespread misconceptions about Cloudera, the promising, well-funded Burlingame, Calif.-based startup that offers services, training and support for the open-source software framework Hadoop. At least that’s what I found out during a talk earlier today with the company’s CEO, Mike Olson. Read more »
Citrix’s announcement that its Receiver software will allow iPad users to run Windows 7 sessions via virtualization has caused predictions that the iPad may have much promise as a business tool. But why stop at Windows? The iPad will reach beyond Apple’s iPhone OS and Windows. Read more »
Collaboration is in full swing on the web, for both social and work-oriented purposes. Most of us can rattle off the well-known applications that are available, but there are many targeted, useful collaboration apps that are more offbeat. Here are 10, many of them free. Read more »
Even after Microsoft reported record earnings a few days ago, one of its former executives has effectively written the company’s obituary in a NYT op-ed piece. Is Microsoft not savable? Here are three surprise scenarios that could have a lot of upside for the company. Read more »
Whether it fails or succeeds, Google’s upcoming Chrome OS will be one of the biggest technology stories of this year. As predictions of its promise in tablets and elsewhere proliferate, though, the hurdles that this operating system faces become clearer. Read more »
New York is the capital of media, advertising, and finance, but historically Silicon Valley and Boston have overshadowed New York’s efforts to encourage and fund technology entrepreneurs. In the past two years, this has changed, especially when it comes to media-related ventures. Read more »
After spending years in beta, Mozilla’s Weave synchronization tool is finally out in a new version 1.0. Firefox users who tote multiple devices will especially take to the extension, which is slated to eventually track and sync all your Firefox preferences. Read more »
In the wake of Apple’s iPad announcement yesterday, some are speculating that it will find early success as a tool for mobile workers. There are several reasons, though, why that is unlikely to be the case, and why Apple won’t focus on this early on. Read more »
Much has been made of the supposedly declining fortunes of virtualization giant VMware, which faces increasing competition from free virtualization platforms bundled into operating systems, including Windows Server. So I paid the company a visit to get the lowdown on how it’s fighting back. Read more »
Social networking tools are critical for keeping up with others and raising our profiles in the working world. They are also increasingly useful ways for businesses to communicate. Here are eight essential guides from our network to make you a power business user of social tools. Read more »
While the recession has battered many U.S. software companies, Red Hat–which has staked its future on open-source Linux software, virtualization and cloud computing — has flourished. The company has a number of secrets behind its success, some of them unique. Read more »
Just a few hours after Oracle’s $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems was approved, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz sent out an internal memo to employees discussing the impact the change in control would have. Go Oracle! he told Sun employees. There’s more to the story, though. Read more »
The European Commission has finally officially approved Oracle’s proposed $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Sun’s time in no-man’s-land saw it lose many customers and raised questions about key products and divisions that it has. The question now is, what has this cost the company? Read more »
Whether it’s a clip of “Tajik Jimmy” putting Bollywood soundtracks to shame, catching a friend’s wedding eight time zones away or working “side by side” with coworkers in another country, it’s all video. And it’s changing the way we communicate with one another. Video technology has […] Read more »
Even as Mozilla rolls out Release Candidate 2 of its Firefox 3.6 browser update, and is only days from official release, some are convinced that the upstart open source browser is doomed. However, Mozilla’s Director of Firefox, Mike Beltzner, provides some good reasons why it isn’t. Read more »
Microsoft , with a nod toward privacy, has announced that it will limit the amount of time that it stores IP addresses of web searchers using the Bing search engine to six months, down from 18. The move follows similar policy shifts at Google and Yahoo. Read more »
Few design trends for electronic devices have had such a seismic impact as the revolution of smallness. It’s not just that the sizes of devices have shrunk; the mindsets of designers and the whole culture of design have shifted toward all things Lilliputian. Read more »
As the controversy surrounding Google’s standoff with China continues, it’s easy to forget that many countries have closed Internet policies. While potential punishments can be severe, there are people and organizations around the world who circumvent censorship. Here are some of the free resources they use. Read more »
Intel this afternoon reported fourth-quarter profits that rocketed past expectations, buoyed by a rebound in the PC market. But unlike the past two decades, the chip maker can’t count on continued growth in PC buying and other familiar benefactors to keep its momentum up. Read more »
Between Gmail, Google Docs, Zoho, Facebook, Basecamp, Flickr, Twitter and countless other applications, much of our data now sits in the cloud. But few people ever stop to think about where that data is stored or how it might be accessed or used. So who exactly […] Read more »
Citrix’s GoToMyPC, among the most widely used applications for controlling remote computers, has always had a glaring hole: inability to connect to Mac systems from anywhere. That’s changed with version 7.0, announced today, and users can also control Macs from Windows Mobile phones. Read more »
On the heels of its acquisition of SpringSource, virtualization giant VMware has announced that it will acquire email and collaboration software player Zimbra from Yahoo. With Zimbra, VMware is spreading out to applications, and moving steadily up the software stack. Read more »
Google on Tuesday announced that it will support uploads of many more file types on Google Docs, and is ratcheting up the size of individual uploads. There are also new online storage options. The moves target both enterprise and individual users. Read more »
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