It always slightly baffles me why Apple have not reaped the rewards of their success through a Technical Education Department, like so many other technical companies. When you have a great product and a ripe demand ready for the picking, it is a win:win situation, where the vendor has the ability to direct and advise development practices on said product, through education. This in turn can lead to increased adoption, standardization, innovation and reduced support cases/development errors (bugs). So as far as I know, it is down to Apple's World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), that we have just seen in San Francisco this month (June), to train the faithful within sessions by Apple Engineers and outside of that, by their great Developer Community. This secondary group being helped by some elite and studious developers to create materials for publication in book format or hands-on training courses themselves. I have always been an advocate of Training Through a Recession... Could Just Help You Out and that 2011 will be the year when the Corporate Developer Goes Mobile. On the first subject there are many great books around and my taste is currently being satisfied mainly by APress. Here are a few more reviews for their iOS books...
Chrome 12 was released last week. You didn’t notice? Few people did. I hadn’t intended writing this article but a few people on Twitter convinced me otherwise (thanks @Mahen23). To start, let’s take a look at the usual list of improvements:
Chrome 12 also marks the end of an era: Gears has gone. Google Gears was launched in 2007 but development was abandoned a year later. The plug-in provided local data storage, JavaScript threading, desktop integration and geo-location but these have been superseded by standard HTML5 technologies.
Merging and minifying JavaScript files has several benefits:
Unfortunately, a minified script is impossible to debug. The code is an indecipherable mess contained on few lines which cannot have breakpoints set. Here’s an example from Google Analytics:
Nasty. However, a quick right-click option will de-obfuscate the script into lovely readable source code:
Built-in de-obfuscation is incredibly useful, although there are a couple of hitches:
For me, this is the most exciting development in Chrome. It may tempt you away from Firebug or Dragonfly when testing live code.
Have you discovered any great new features in Chrome 12?
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In the wake of an attempted hack at Lockheed Martin, EMC unit RSA Security is offering to replace the two-factor SecurID authentication tokens its 40 million users use to log into their computers “securely.” Most of its users are major corporations. It’s unclear exactly what happened at Lockheed but Bloomberg says the company is blaming a data theft at RSA in March for the “significant and tenacious” breach it just suffered. Supposedly no sensitive data was taken because of Lockheed’s monitoring systems but RSA may have lost its crown jewels. The defense contractor, whose codes could be used to hack into other companies, is reportedly replacing all its tokens. It could wind up switching security vendors. Meanwhile, the FBI is investigating.
IBM’s got itself an HPC cloud for advanced scientific and technical computing workloads like analytics, simulations for product development, climate research and life sciences. It’s supposed to let users link computing resources across their organizations into a single high-performance private cloud rather than operate HPC silos and IBM preens that it’s the only major vendor with a HPC private cloud solution. The widgetry includes an HPC Management Suite, a quick-start cloud implementation service and Intelligent Cluster solutions with servers, storage and switches factory-integrated, tested and delivered ready to plug into the data center.
“What makes Cloud Computing more likely to be successful today are both technological and attitudinal changes in the market,” noted Tom Trainer, Director of Product Marketing at Gluster, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “First, commodity computing and storage and virtualization techniques mean that these services can be delivered at price points that make it more than economically feasible,” Trainer continued. “Second, Internet bandwidths make it possible to upload large amounts of data to and from these cloud-based infrastructures, easing the choice of platform.”
To me having information is knowledge, knowing what to do with the knowledge is wisdom. I see a whole lot of knowledge these days, but very little wisdom. As long as the shortcut to the end result continues to be taken, our industry is going to continue to produce garbage, but I guess that is not all bad for those of us who make a living cleaning up garbage.
Remember Eolas, the one-man company whose 1998 browser patent struck so much fear in the heart of Would Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee that he personally asked the US Patent and Trademark Office to invalid it as a “major impediment to the operation of the web”? Well, Eolas rushed out Monday to say that it had settled with Sun Microsystems that morning. Naturally the terms weren’t disclosed. That leaves another 18 defendants to go. In October of 2009 Eolas sued 23 brand name companies in the infamous plaintiff-leaning Eastern District of Texas – specifically faulting Adobe’s Flash and Shockwave; Apple’s QuickTime, Safari for Windows and Mac and Apple desktops and laptops; Google’s Chrome for Windows and Mac; and Sun’s Java and JavaFX – and that was after finally settling up with Microsoft, its test case, two years before.
That reverberating scream you hear, the one that sounds like a wounded water buffalo beset by a pack of rabid hyenas, is Google after it saw how much Oracle expects in damages from its patent and copyright suit over Android’s alleged misuse of Java. Once it got the figure Google immediately started the legal wheels turning to try to get the estimate made by Oracle’s expert thrown out as “speculative and arbitrary,” full of “fundamental and disqualifying” legal errors before the case gets to trial on October 31 (Halloween, how perfect). Google doesn’t want a whiff of his sealed “opening damages report” or his testimony getting anywhere near a jury because his conclusions “would prejudice Google.” The five-page letter saying so that Google’s lawyers wrote to the presiding judge Monday is redacted so key numbers are blacked out but there’s enough substance left to see that Oracle wants a hefty chunk of Google’s mobile ad revenues plus compensation for fragmenting Java.
HP is selling its video conferencing unit to Polycom for a that’s-not-much $89 million so Polycom can go off and do battle with Cisco if in fact Cisco stays in the business and so HP can focus on the cloud. HP’s high-end Halo widgetry never caught on. Maybe it was the $550,000-a-room price tag and the $18,000-a-month service fee or the fact that the guy at the other end had to have one too. Polycom, which told the Wall Street Journal there are all of 425 Halo rooms in the world, means to make Halo interoperate with its existing systems.
After a decade-long sabbatical from the computer industry – during which he began what was to be an affordable on-demand regional jet service that cratered with the Great 2008 Financial Markets Crisis – Citrix co-founder Ed Iacobucci, who once led IBM’s ill-starred OS/2 development team, is back. This time with a stealth Boca Raton start-up called VirtualWorks Group that’s got an $8.5 million first round in its pocket and is supposed to find your data in whatever silo you parked it in – on premise or in the cloud. Any data store anywhere. The widgetry is called the Virtual Index Architecture (VIA) and the first product platform is scheduled for release this summer although it’s reportedly already in use by 300 revenue-producing public and private concerns in Norway, Sweden and the US because it’s based on widgetry developed by an 11-year-old Norwegian company called InfoFinder that VirtualWorks bought in 2009.
Lenovo is buying Medion AG, a publicly traded 1,000-man German PC and consumer electronics retailer, to accelerate its consumer sales in Europe. It’s paying around $906 million (€13 a share), roughly a 27% premium. Lenovo CFO Wong Wai Ming said in a statement that the “acquisition directly supports our attack strategy in the mature market consumer segment.” The plan is a something of a turnabout. Since buying IBM’s business, Lenovo’s PC sales outside of China have been largely to commercial accounts, a focus it inherited from Big Blue, and it retreated to its domestic and emerging markets with the recession.
Two-and-a-half-year-old Groupon, which turned down a $6 billion acquisition offer from Google late last year, put in its S-1 papers to go public Thursday, setting off a veritable tizzy in high-tech quarters and Wall Street. It’s looking to raise a placeholder $750 million although the Wall Street Journal figures it’ll be more like a billion at a valuation of around $20 billion give or take. The prospectus reportedly says the unprofitable start-up had revenues of $30.47 million in 2009, $713.4 million in 2010 and $644.7 million in the first quarter of this year, 53.8% of it coming from overseas. It lost $389.6 million last year and expects to keep losing money (7,100 employees is a lot of mouths to feed plus acquisitions and the cost of acquiring customers).
In a terse statement Wednesday that reads like the top half is missing and Oracle is in the middle of a thought, the company said that it’s “donating” OpenOffice.org to the Apache Software Foundation’s Incubator, a move that IBM, an OpenOffice cheerleader and part of the announcement, evidently encouraged. Anyway, IBM says it will help advance the widgetry by contributing staff resources, new project members and individual contributors. Blue’s got a vested interest in ODF, the OfficeOpen-based Lotus Symphony and its 30-Year War against Microsoft.
About 30 percent of enterprises -- that’s medium, large, as well as small enterprises -- are using app stores to deploy some of their applications at some level. As enterprises and most business users rapidly adopt smartphones and make them mission-critical to their work and lives, tablets are fast on their heels as a similar major disruptor. These fast-moving mobile trends together are also escalating demand for enterprise app stores.
Netbiscuits, a provider of software service for mobile sites and apps, announced on Wednesday that its board has nominated Craig Besnoy to become the company's new managing director in North America. Stepping into his new role today, Besnoy will be responsible for Netbiscuits' growth strategy in the United States and other markets on the American continent. In response to rising market demand for mobile websites on the back of device proliferation in North America, Netbiscuits Inc. is expanding its U.S. operations by opening new offices in New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The successful Enterprise Mobility Guide 2011, that was published by Sybase two months ago, is finally available on your iOS device in iBooks format. If you're like me and have embraced a mobile lifestyle, so much so that you want your publications on your device, this is it! This inaugural publication contains the Latest Tips, Trends and Success in Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Mobile Application Development from experts in the field of Mobility. These experts are formed from within Sybase and SAP as well as Partners and respected Analysts, for example Accenture, Google, Motorola, Orange, RIM, Samsung, Verizon, Yankee Group and the Enterprise Mobility Forum.
“Enterprises will adopt cloud-based solutions at a steady pace and not in a non-linear manner,” noted Atul Saini, CEO & CTO of Fiorano Software, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “Most large enterprises have already been using ‘cloud-based’ solutions since all of their applications are typically hosted in their own data centers, which can be thought of as private clouds.” A very general question first, about Cloud Computing itself: Surely we’ve heard all of this before in various forms and guises – grid computing / utility computing, etc.? What is different this time – why is everyone so convinced it will now work?
Convicted hedge fund felon Raj Rajaratnam wants the presiding judge in his months-long trial on insider trading charges to throw out the verdict that could send him to jail for a very long time. On Wednesday his lawyers renewed a motion to have him acquitted and his slate wiped clean after a federal jury found him guilty of all 14 counts of conspiracy and securities fraud on May 11. The defense tried the same thing after the government rested its case and again after all the evidence was presented. This time his lawyers claim that despite the massive wiretap evidence against him the prosecution failed to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt on at least five of the 14 counts.
Intel has created the job of chairman of Intel China for Sean Maloney, who was two-in-box running chips until his stroke last year. He has made an extraordinary comeback in the last 15 months and the move, which Intel calls “unprecedented” for a senior Intel exec, is understood to put him back on the heir presumptive path to eventually replace CEO Paul Otellini. It buys him time to fully recuperate and regain the full use of his voice. He’s expected to be there for two or three years, responsible for seeing the company’s overarching strategy all syncs. Back in the ’90s Maloney, now 54, headed sales and marketing in Asia-Pacific for Intel so he has a lot of established relationships in China although this will be his first time in-country.
Oh my sainted aunt. Did the ground just shake? Amazon has persuade the cloud-denying Oracle to rent its database out on-demand as part of its AWS Relational Database Service (RDS), whose only other alternative is Oracle’s little-loved red-headed stepchild MySQL. RDS manages common database administration tasks like provisioning, backups, patching, monitoring and hardware scaling and now customers can license Oracle Database 11g Release 2 through Amazon or bring their own license. The hitch is that only the feature-shy two-socket Oracle Standard Edition One can be had from Amazon under what it calls the “License Included” model. Oracle’s Standard Edition and sacred Enterprise Edition are strictly “Bring Your Own License” and mean either having a license already or getting one direct from Oracle.
JNBridge thinks it’s licked the tricky problem of Java and .NET integration in the cloud and to prove it has released JNBridgePro 6.0 saying developers can now access both .NET- and Java-based cloud services and APIs from the ground or from cloud-based clients and develop cloud services and APIs that incorporate both Java- and .NET-based components. JNBridgePro started on the ground connecting Java- and .NET Framework-based components and applications together with Eclipse and Visual Studio plug-ins that remove the complexities of cross-platform interoperability. The company says JNBridgePro 6.0 takes that interoperability to the cloud so developers can build and distribute integrated applications in the same cloud – whether it’s the same or different instances; between wholly different clouds; and ground-to-cloud or cloud-to-ground, where the interoperability is between a cloud instance and an application running on the ground.
SYS-CON Events announced today that the "show prospectus" for the 9th International Cloud Expo (www.CloudComputingExpo.com) is now available. The 9th Cloud Expo, will take place on November 7–10, 2011, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, with more than 10,000 delegates and over 200 sponsors and exhibitors participating in the conference.
Most articles about Garbage Collection ignore the fact that the Sun Hotspot JVM is not the only game in town. In fact whenever you have to work with either IBM WebSphere or Oracle WebLogic you will run on a different runtime. While the concept of Garbage Collection is the same, the implementation is not and neither are the default settings or how to tune it. This often leads to unexpected problems when running the first load tests or in the worst case when going live. So let’s look at the different JVMs, what makes them unique and how to ensure that Garbage Collection is running smooth.
Software AG is buying Terracotta, whose open source widgetry makes Java-based enterprise applications run faster and scale without rewriting the code. The German company wants the start-up as the basis of a perspective cloud offering, expecting to use it to turn into a Platform-as-a-Service house. It figures Terracotta’s Ehcache technology, the de facto caching standard for enterprise Java, will “dramatically” increase the performance and scalability of its own Business Process Excellence platform. Terracotta will be the in-memory technology in the Software AG product stack. Release of the first combined products is due in Q4. SAG’s cloud-based PaaS roll-out is scheduled for next year.
Dell thinks its revenues this quarter are going to be up somewhere in the mid-single digits, not brilliant maybe, but better than its usual seasonal pattern of only 2% or 3% growth. Unlike Cisco, Dell expects to benefit from stronger “budget flush” spending by state and local governments and education customer this quarter. It also thinks its SMB and consumer businesses will do better than usual because of demand for Sandy Bridge-based PCs and solid back-to-school spending. It guided to revenue growth of 5%-9% for the 2012 fiscal year, which puts it at least at $64.6 billion, as well as a 12%-18% increase in non-GAAP operating income, up from an older estimate of 6%-12%.