Topics by EddieC

Microsoft this week acquired [url=http://www.teamprise.com/]Teamprise[/url], a division of [url=http://www.sourcegear.com/]SourceGear[/url] that built tools to give developers access to Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server from systems running Linux, Mac OS X and Unix.SourceGear's flagship [url=http://www.sourcegear.com/sos/]SourceOffSite[/url] provides remote access to Visual SouceSafe, Microsoft's version control system. Teamprise comes in [url=http://www.teamprise.com/products/download/]three forms[/url]. The …

Companies using IBM's Rational and Tivoli product will breathe easier today, thanks to new, integrated versions of nine tools that the company says will facilitate communication and closer collaboration between software development and support teams in the enterprise. What's more, prices will remain where they are, and the updates are …

With all this talk about cheaper laptops for the third world, it’s easy to miss how inexpensive memory has become for us members of the first. I once prophesized to a colleague that by the end of this decade, a terabyte hard drive would be available for less than US$100. …

Apple has done it again. This time with [URL= http://www.sproutcore.com/]SproutCore[/URL], a JavaScript framework that simplifies development of native-looking Web-based applications without the need for Flash or any other specialized runtime. Apple has reportedly contributed loads of resources to the project, which was originally developed by [URL= http://www.sproutit.com/]SproutIt[/URL] creator Charles Jolley. …

Firefox can finally orient itself, at least in terms of iPhones and MacBooks. Mozilla's latest browser, [url=https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Firefox_3.6_for_developers]Firefox 3.6 beta 1[/url], can now talk to accelerometers such as those in many Apple devices, thanks to [url=https://developer.mozilla.org/Special:Search?search=accelerometer&type=fulltext&go=Search]orientation event objects[/url] introduced in the new Gecko 1.9.2 presentation engine at the browser's core. Also …

If you're not yet among the percentage of the population people using Mozilla's Firefox browser, which by [url=http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp]one count[/url] stands at 47.5 percent, perhaps the anniversary of its launch will give you cause. Yesterday was Firefox's fifth birthday, and its market share with co-leader Internet Explorer by [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers]many counts[/url] continues …

Most of the reports out yesterday about the release of [URL=http://www.microsoft.com/ie8]Internet Explorer 8[/URL]Beta 2 focused on its so-calledInPrivate Browsing, which leaves no trace of the Web sites you visit and protects anonymity. And while that's certainly useful, developers are likely to be more interested in its improvements in DOM and …

Craigslist hosts classified ads of all kinds, including lengthy lists of [url=http://newyork.craigslist.org/sof/]developer's jobs in New York[/url] and the [url=http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sof/]San Francisco Bay area[/url]. But another type of job listing was in the spotlight today, and it's nice to know there's at least [i]one[/i] person out there who's thinking clearly. A judge …

Wouldn't it be nice if you could track Gmail messages about specific features and bugs from within your defect tracking system? You can if you're using the open-source SugarCRM, thanks to a team of Italian developers that today launched [url=http://www.sugarforge.org/projects/dolcegmail/]DolceGmail[/url]. The new plug-in for Firefox links Google's browser-based e-mail system …

Dear Steve Ballmer, I believe it's time to give up development of a mobile operating system. With all due respect to the multi-billion dollar empire you're entrusted with running, the simple truth is that Microsoft is quite bad at developing user interfaces that are friendly and intuitive. Windows 7 is …

If you're a whiz at Web design and have time to enter a contest, you could be one of three finalists to have your team flown to the [url=http://live.visitmix.com/]MIX10 conference[/url] Las Vegas, where you'll collect your US$50,000. The winner also goes to New York City to attend the annual [url=http://www.webbyawards.com/]Webby …

That's right, free. And if it's free, it's for me. Software promoter MacHeist is my new best friend, and for the next five days is giving away [url=http://www.macheist.com/]nanoBundle[/url], a package of six Mac OS X applications including the highly-rated Twitterrific, which normally sells for US$15. In all, $154 worth of …

Developers Brad Lassey, Alex Pakhotin, Vladimir Vukićević and Michael Wu this week unveiled what they're calling a pre-alpha version of the Fennec browser, better known as Firefox for Google's Android mobile operating system. You can [url=http://bit.ly/fennec-android]download the code[/url], which as of last week had been tested only on Motorola Droid …

What's Apple up to now? Yesterday it became public that the company had acquired [url=http://siri.com/]Siri[/url], whose sole purpose in life appears to be to make [url=http://siri.com/about/]Siri[/url], a free iPhone app that helps you find things and make plans. To [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpjpVAB06O4&feature=player_embedded]watch Siri in action[/url], it does look pretty useful. But why …

Hewlett-Packard today [url=http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2010/100426xa.html]announced[/url] updates to [url=https://h10078.www1.hp.com/cda/hpms/display/main/hpms_content.jsp?zn=bto&cp=1-11-127-24^1185_4000_100&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN]Service Test Management 10.5[/url] and [url=https://h10078.www1.hp.com/cda/hpms/display/main/hpms_content.jsp?zn=bto&cp=1-11-127-24^1352_4000_100__]Functional Testing 10.0[/url]--its quality assurance tools for software testers--that the company says are now better equipped to help development teams find defects earlier and cover code for Adobe Flex/Flash, Ajax, Microsoft Silverlight and other rich client technologies. New in Functional …

Apple today announced that it will begin shipping iPhones for CDMA networks, such as those offered by Verizon and Sprint, ending a three-year monopoly in the U.S. held by AT&T since iPhone's inception. Once the phones becomes available later this year, iPhone users in the U.S. that don't wish to …

Nvidia yesterday began shipping the [url=http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_gtx_480_us.html]GeForce GTX 480[/url], with double the number of processor cores previously available at 512. The card is intended to to permit smooth playback and editing of 2D or 3D content, including animation, games and videos. The GTX 480 supports Microsoft DirectX 11, Direct3D and [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physx]PhysX[/url], …

As the world awaits for the release of Apple's Next Big Thing, developers are putting the finishing touches on applications to be ready for iPad's April 3 ship date. And Apple is getting ready too. The company yesterday began accepting submissions for iPad App Store, its online application outlet for …

Are you a certified function point specialist or play one on TV? Then the Counting Practices Manual version 4.3 might be for you. Unveiled today by the [url=http://www.ifpug.org/]International Function Point Users Group[/url] (better known as IFPUG), the $100 CD contains the latest "body of knowledge used by function point analysts …

With all the coverage of last week's Windows 7 launch, it was easy to overlook news of the forthcoming release of SharePoint Server 2010, the next edition of Redmond's collaboration platform. A public beta is expected next month, which according a speech given by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer last week …

Less than a year after launching its high performance computing strategy, Microsoft finds its [URL= http://www.microsoft.com/hpc/] HPC Server 2008[/URL] near the top of the heap. The Windows Server 2008 derivative placed 23rd on a list of the 500 top-performing supercomputers in the world, as measured by the [URL= http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/] National …

Last week Toshiba unveiled a series of server-class hard drives that can store as much as 600GB in a 2.5-inch form factor. They're the first products to result from its acquisition of Fujitsu's hard drive business early last year. Set to begin shipping in April, the new [url=http://sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Path=StorageSolutions/EnterpriseHardDrives/MBF2600RC]MFB series[/url] of …

Plagued by duplicate files that clog up your system? Quantum, a company once known mainly for hard drives, yesterday unveiled a new version of its [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StorNext_File_System]StorNext File System[/url] that it says optimizes storage efficiency by implementing automatic data deduplication. It's part of StorNext 4.0, Quantum's high-performance sharing and data management …

Users of GoogleDocs will soon have reason to celebrate. Google this week announced in a [url=http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/01/upload-and-store-your-files-in-cloud.html]blog post[/url] that its free online document collaboration platform will soon store files of all file types, rather than just those it can edit (plus PDFs). To understand the significance of this news, you'll first …

LSI, three letters that are probably etched on nearly every hard drive controller you've ever owned, as of yesterday emblazon 10 more controllers of [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Attached_SCSI]SAS[/url], [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA]SATA[/url] and [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive]SSD[/url] storage devices. On Jan. 19, [url=http://lsi.com/]the company[/url] unveiled a series of new RAID controllers and host bus adapters that double the bandwidth …

Zend Technologies today is set to announce a series of alliances intended to allow its PHP framework and development environment to work with other widely deployed RIA technologies from Adobe, Dojo and IBM. In a keynote speech at [url=http://www.zendcon.com/ZendCon08/public/content/home]ZendCon[/url], the company's annual PHP developer conference in Cupertino, Calif., Zend CEO …

With the release last week of [Groovy 1.7](http://groovy.codehaus.org/), developers using the object-oriented scripting language for Java gained access to anonymous inner classes and nested classes, annotations, SQL and other features that could simplify development when mixing Groovy code with Java. Groovy's [Eclipse community](http://groovy.codehaus.org/Eclipse+Plugin) yesterday released Groovy-Eclipse 2.0.0, a nearly rewritten …

Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein isn't looking to the stars for his comeback strategy. The inventor of the iPod was quoted last week saying he had never used an iPhone and that he doesn't pay that much attention to Apple. Was he kidding? If his strategy for competing with the industry's …

While most eyes this week were trained on Las Vegas and the Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft was gearing up to speak with retailers at the [url=http://www.nrf.com/]National Retail Federation[/url]'s annual [url=http://events.nrf.com/annual2010/Public/MainHall.aspx?ID=5938&sortMenu=101000&exp=3%2f13%2f2009+10%3a07%3a54+AM]Conference and Expo[/url] in New York City running tomorrow through Tuesday. The company [url=http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2010/jan10/01-08nrf10ma.mspx]announced yesterday[/url] that it will be demonstrating new …

With the [url=http://www.daniweb.com/news/story251088.html]release yesterday[/url] of Intel's Core series of high-performance, power-efficient processors, makers of space-constrained, mobile and other embedded devices now have a new low-cost option for their designs. The multi-core CPUs, dubbed Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7, incorporate Intel's Hyper Threading technology for fast program execution, a …

I think we can safely say that Windows Vista was a flop. The only one that doesn't seem to know it is Microsoft. Or does it? This week at [url=http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winhec/default.mspx]WinHEC[/url], the company introduced a series of capabilities in [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7]Windows 7[/url] that it says will "make it easier for hardware partners …

Intel tomorrow will officially unveil a pair of dual-core mobile processors with its [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper_threading]Hyper threading[/url] technology, adding to its x86 line a low cost chip with performance akin to that of the company's i7, Pentium 4 and Xeon parts. The Core i3 and Core i5 processors, [url=http://www.techshout.com/laptops/2010/05/leaked-hp-laptop-and-desktop-portfolio-for-ces-2010/]demonstrated by Hewlett-Packard[/url] and …

The Android has landed. 17 percent of people in the U.S. currently planning to buy a smartphone within the next three months are considering one that runs Google's mobile OS, while 20 percent indicated that iPhone would be their choice. That's according to [url=http://comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2009/12/Android_Crashing_the_Smartphone_Party]a report released yesterday[/url] by analyst firm …

If you've ever remotely operated one computer from another, you've used desktop virtualization. It's been built into Linux, Mac OS X and Windows for years, but recent moves by Red Hat could signal that it's about to go mainstream. The Linux company late last week announced that it was opening …

Thanks to new firmware (v.1.3) released last Thursday, Dell's Lifecycle Controller now works with system management tools from BMC and Microsoft. Most reports that followed Dell's Thursday announcement focused on the speed and capacity of its EqualLogic storage arrays, not on the software used to manage them. While improvements to …

Even Microsoft is sometimes faced with the decision of whether to "buy or build." This time it chose to buy. With the acquisition of Opalis Software announced yesterday, Redmond in one stroke takes a major leap in data center process automation. And it couldn't have come at a better time. …

Tired of parsing all the source code involved in building mobile apps? Or perhaps the approval process for Apple's App Store is getting you down. Or maybe you're an aspiring commercial developer in search of the next must-have platform to tap. If you think Android might be the one, then …

According to a Search Software Quality survey of 492 IT professionals, 22 percent struggle most with requirements gathering. Yet the same group said they spend less than 12 percent of their time doing it. Not so at [url=http://www.lsi.com]LSI Corp.[/url], which probably made some of the storage silicon in the computer …

What if you had access to the millions of tweets that flow to and from Twitter users every day? Perhaps you'd build something like [url=http://www.daniweb.com/news/story240308.html]PostRank[/url], which amasses them along with other data from social media sites to trackcyber-reaction to posted articles. Or maybe you would filter them by demographic and …

After a swirl of rumors that Apple was in talks to acquire music-streaming service [url=http://www.lala.com/]Lala[/url], the [url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704342404574576544196064138.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection]Wall Street Journal reported[/url] yesterday that the companies had reached a deal. Exact terms were not disclosed. Lala, a four-year-old private company, offers a terrific Web-based [url=http://www.lala.com/#howitworks]music streaming and download service[/url] that lets you …

Intel has confirmed reports that it will not release its next-generation graphics processor widely known as [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrabee_%28GPU%29]Larrabee[/url] as a discreet GPU. Instead, most reports indicate that the company will move ahead with its many-core processor as a design and development platform aimed at graphics rendering and high-performance computing. The idea …

Smaller, bigger, faster. The more time that goes by, the bigger the number of bits they squeeze into smaller places for less money. And always faster than before. This time it's Samsung, with [url=http://www.eetimes.com/news/design/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=221901550]news today[/url] that it has begun volume production of flash memory that's more than three times faster …

This is a bit off topic, but times are tough and money is money. There's an opportunity to earn between US$10 and $20 an hour working for the [U.S. Census Bureau](http://2010.census.gov/2010censusjobs/) for the 2010 population count. And after seeing number of hits that "[Craigslist: Developer's Jobs and Other Jobs](http://www.daniweb.com/news/story232973.html)" generated, …

Has your server's memory reached its 192GB limit? Last week a company called [url=http://netlist.com/]Netlist[/url] was demonstrating a new RDIMM technology that it claims can double per-CPU memory capacity without doubling the cost and without replacing any other hardware. At [url=http://sc09.supercomputing.org/]Supercomputing 09[/url], the high performance computing industry's annual conference, Netlist showed …

You know you've established your brand when its name becomes a verb (for example to 'Google' something). A company called [PostRank](http://www.postrank.com/) might hope the same holds true for adjectives, as in "What's your PostRank?" The company hosts an ingenious service that tracks the millions of Web postings that appear every …

With its release on Monday of the [url=http://www.microsoft.com/hpc/en/us/default.aspx]first public beta of Windows HPC Server 2008 RC2[/url], Microsoft also was touting features introduced in the [url=http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/dd582936.aspx]second beta of Visual Studio 2010[/url]. Expected in March, Redmond's next IDE will simplify development of new applications and modification of existing ones to take advantage …

While most reporters and bloggers today are trumpeting the fine showing by chip-maker AMD in the semi-annual list of the world's [Top 500 Supercompting Sites](http://www.top500.org/list/2009/11/100), for me the real news is what AMD has planned for next year. In the first quarter of 2010, AMD is scheduled to begin shipping …

The [url=http://www.blackberrydeveloperconference.com/overview]BlackBerry Developer Conference[/url] concluded yesterday, but not before Research in Motion had the chance to unveil enhancements to its [url=http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/]BlackBerry Application Platform[/url], which now supports [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL_ES]OpenGL ES[/url], a subset of the desktop graphics API specification for embedded systems. Useful for development of 3D games development and other graphics, it's …

You don't have to have lived in Haight-Ashbury in the Sixties to achieve self-awareness in San Francisco. BlackBerry developers are gathered in the city this week for the annual [url=http://www.blackberrydeveloperconference.com/overview]BlackBerry Developer Conference[/url], taking place now through Thursday. Among the top stories is a new service platform from Research in Motion …

Microsoft on Tuesday is set to release six security updates, three of which it has deemed critical and apply only to versions of Windows other than Windows 7. Microsoft released advance notice of its [url=http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS09-nov.mspx]Security Bulletin for November[/url], on Nov. 5. The bulletin itself will be released on Tuesday along …