3 Days Ago - 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 PostRank, 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... (Read More)

34 Days Ago - If you're not yet among the percentage of the population people using Mozilla's Firefox browser, which by one count 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... (Read More)

Nov 2nd, 2009 - Firefox can finally orient itself, at least in terms of iPhones and MacBooks. Mozilla's latest browser, Firefox 3.6 beta 1, can now talk to accelerometers such as those in many Apple devices, thanks to orientation event objects introduced in the new Gecko 1.9.2 presentation engine at the browser's... (Read More)

Oct 27th, 2009 - At the risk of coming off like TV's "Mad Men," Amazon Web Services really are New and Improved. The company today announced the addition of Amazon Relational Database Service, giving users of Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) access to a virtual instance of MySQL. That's the New part.... (Read More)

Oct 17th, 2009 - One might have titled this story "Beware of government bearing gifts." We should be exceedingly wary whenever law makers begin dabbling with something that's been working exceedingly well for decades. Today that thing is the Internet, perhaps the least-regulated industry in the U.S. today. This... (Read More)

Oct 10th, 2009 - With all the libraries available that have emerged, Java and Ajax applications practically build themselves these days. This week Java tool maker Instantiations added support for Ext GWT to GWT Designer 7.2, the latest version of its Eclipse-based drag-and-drop GUI-building environment that can be... (Read More)

Nov 22nd, 2008 - Research released this week by Evans Data showed that 73 percent of the market currently use or plan to adopt the Spring application framework for Java within the next two years. More remarkable is that 83 percent of companies with 500 or more developers use Spring, according to the study. So I... (Read More)

Nov 1st, 2009 - A few weeks ago I received a Google Wave invitation from my friend David Knopf (after publicly begging for one in my post Hoping to Surf the Google Wave). Since then, I've had a chance to use it and I've seen the good, the bad and the ever-present potential of the tool. While it does have... (Read More)

Oct 6th, 2009 - I'm not a web developer by trade, but I visit web sites all the time, and as journalist I'm looking for a couple of key things. First of all, I want to find your press page and a press contact. Short of that I want to find an email address. Note that I don't want to find a form, which could as far... (Read More)

Oct 4th, 2009 - I have watched you on the shore Standing by the ocean's roar Do you love me, do you surfer girl ~Beach Boys, Surfer Girl Google Wave invitations went out last week to 100,000 lucky people and I didn't get one. I'm stuck on the shore line while the fortunate few are riding the first Google... (Read More)

Aug 27th, 2009 - You have to give Sony credit, they are really trying new strategies to wrestle eBook marketshare from the Amazon Kindle. This month they announced several new editions of the Sony Reader, including the brand new Reader Daily Edition, which should be in stores in time for the holiday shopping... (Read More)

Aug 21st, 2009 - In a move that could only be characterized as surprising, Sony announced last week that it was going to be using the open ePub eBook standard, which in theory should enable Sony Reader users to access and use any books created around the standard. Sony Readers will also be able to read Adobe PDFs... (Read More)

Jul 31st, 2008 - Alfresco released Alfresco Labs (Beta) 3 today and with it announced a new capability that enables businesses to leverage Microsoft Sharepoint functionality without buying additional Sharepoint licenses. Sound too good to be true? It’s not, and what has allowed Alfresco to do this is the 2004 EU... (Read More)

Mar 2nd, 2009 - Seems every time I write a piece suggesting open source as an option, I get a couple of comments warning readers about the scary complexities of open source licenses. So I decided to ask a guy who knows free and open source (FOSS) exactly what the deal was regarding FOSS licensing and whether they... (Read More)

Nov 18th, 2008 - In a report on enterprise open source usage released this week, Gartner research director Laurie Wurster stated in rather strong language that companies could face a big intellectual property issue because they are using the software without understanding the IP implications of the licensing... (Read More)

34 Days Ago - Today, Tuesday November 10, 2009, Novell announces a Visual Studio plugin that allows support for non-Microsoft operating systems that use .NET code development on a platform known as Mono via a new product called Mono Tools for Visual Studio 1.0. This is not a cost free toolset. In fact, it's... (Read More)

Jul 2nd, 2009 - This post has nothing to do with Michael Jackson, his death, his kids, his Neverland Ranch or anything related to him. It has everything to do with my need for a virtual laboratory where I can test virtual machines, write about them or produce other documentation about them without a significant... (Read More)

May 23rd, 2009 - Jason Perlow and I had the pleasure of interviewing Kickfire CEO Bruce Armstrong for the May 22nd episode of Frugal Friday to discuss the Kickfire appliance. The Kickfire appliance is a Linux-based, rack-mountable, database appliance tuned for Data Warehousing. Here's the real scoop: Starting at... (Read More)

May 14th, 2009 - Well, well, well...Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO added Virtual Iron to his collection today. Congratulations, Larry. When is Oracle going bankrupt? Every time that I've seen a company acquire too many other companies in a short time period, they always end up in the dustbin. Oracle just acquired Sun... (Read More)

Sep 10th, 2009 - They say it ain't over until the fat lady sings, well it looks like this particular Opera story is far from over folks no matter what some might tell you. Perhaps the most famous Norwegian export since the Vikings, Opera the web browser has certainly lost favour with the technology press. Once upon... (Read More)

Sep 14th, 2009 - According to the 2009 Web Application Security Report from NTA Monitor, 90% of all web applications have at least one medium risk vulnerability and 27% have at least one high risk vulnerability. Apparently the most common vulnerabilities are those which involve SQL injection, cross-site scripting... (Read More)

Apr 8th, 2009 - Just as the excitement started to hot up, first with the news that the controversial and increasingly popular legal free streaming music service Spotify was to open up with the release of a third party developer API, and then with the actual announcement of the availability of Libspotify itself, so... (Read More)

Aug 4th, 2009 - This is just odd, for too many reasons. A file sharer has been fined $675,000 for downloading illegal music. He is a student. People have offered him money because they think it's an unreasonable amount to pay. He has turned them down. Why do I think this is odd? Well, one by one: the amount is... (Read More)

Apr 20th, 2009 - It's probably a little early to be looking for implications of Oracle buying Sun (no, it's official, here's the press release). They've only just confirmed it's happening, and as one of the journalists who covered Novell buying Lotus many years ago I can confirm things aren't done until they're... (Read More)

Mar 6th, 2009 - Following yesterday's interesting events - in which the story to which I referred changed three times and was then taken down within two hours of my linking to it - here's something a little lighter for the weekend. A family is auctioning its talents and above all its availability to endorse... (Read More)

Nov 19th, 2008 - I don't know the extent to which this story has crossed the shores to America, but our local friendly far-right political party the British National Party has had details of its members published on the Internet. I'm not going to rehearse their arguments for them - you know the sort of thing,... (Read More)

Mar 31st, 2008 - I am not an easily shockable person. Anyone who knows me, anyone who has seen me, will understand this. Indeed, other than the usual trio of sexual or racial abuse and mindless violence it takes a lot to drop my jaw in shame and despair while browsing the web. However, a bunch of numbnut griefers... (Read More)

Apr 29th, 2009 - The bad guys of the IT business are always looking for the most effective ways to infect the innocent Internet user, and increasingly that means turning to commonly used web browser plug-ins such as Flash or PDF readers. A couple of years ago we were reporting critical vulnerabilities for all Adobe... (Read More)

Mar 4th, 2009 - With the success of the iPhone App Store and Microsoft wanting a piece of the action it was only a matter of time before RIM got into the online application storefront game. With the BlackBerry App World online store launching later this month, submissions are now being accepted from developers... (Read More)

Jul 29th, 2009 - A company has been awarded a patent for providing episodic media downloads, which essentially gives it a patent on all forms of podcasting. The company, VoloMedia, calls itself the "leading provider of advertising and reporting solutions for portable media, extending the reach of video and audio... (Read More)

May 29th, 2009 - Busy this weekend? President Barack Obama and his IT staff are asking for ideas through June 3 to help make government more open. The call for ideas first went out on May 21. So far, there's 1171. People can vote thumbs up or thumbs down on the ideas. "Then on June 3rd, the most compelling... (Read More)

Nov 21st, 2008 - Is the time that it takes to boot up and power down a computer at the beginning and the end of the day work? A number of lawyers are trying to settle that question. On the one hand, users start rebooting the computer and then spend up to 15-20 minutes chatting, getting coffee, and so on during... (Read More)

Apr 21st, 2009 - Will the tech sector lead an economic turnaround? Forbes.com thinks so. This week, Peter C. Beller writes that Monday’s IBM revenues numbers and the fallout from the proposed Oracle and Sun Microsystems could lay the groundwork for an economic rebound. I’ll get to the IBM numbers in a moment,... (Read More)

Jan 14th, 2009 - It’s another tough morning for tech stocks, with Apple, HP, Oracle, Motorola, Google, and Dell all seeing their stocks fall 2% or more. The falloff is primarily from the news that consumer/retail spending fell 2.7% in December – twice the amount that economists had expected. At least the... (Read More)

Dec 18th, 2008 - Oracle, Research and Motion and Palm are all releasing earnings statements today, and that should pick up momentum in what has been a fairly dormant technology trading week. The web site Tradingmarkts.com thinks the earnings news means opportunity in two technology-heavy exchange-traded funds... (Read More)

Nov 24th, 2008 - Trying, ever so hard, to find some good news amidst the doom and gloom on Wall Street. At least the market went up for a second straight session, with the DJIA up 400 points on Monday trading; that after rising 500 points last Friday. Investors seemed cautiously optimistic about the Federal... (Read More)

Apr 17th, 2007 - Just as it seemed that Linux users (especially 64-bit users) would finally be able to enjoy streaming content with a minimum of hassle, Microsoft's new Silverlight software promises to throw a wrench in the works. Because of sites like Google Video and Youtube, Flash video has become a common means... (Read More)

Nov 21st, 2008 - A few years ago, small businesses just needed a telephone line and maybe a single computer with a dial-up connection to set up shop. Now that technology has exploded, nearly every company needs a reliable phone system, a Web site, and maybe even a whole network of computers to stay competitive. ... (Read More)

Nov 17th, 2008 - If you've been clinging to the interoffice email and calendaring capabilities of Microsoft Exchange as your company's last vestige of proprietary software, it's really time to consider giving up the ghost. Open source collaboration software vendor Open-Xchange, Inc. announced recently it now... (Read More)

Nov 12th, 2008 - There's plenty of speculation that the current state of the economy will greatly benefit open source technology, and you know an idea is taking root when mainstream IT conferences include presentations about implementing FOSS solutions in enterprise. Desmond Atkinson, with UK-based capacity... (Read More)