Showing headlines posted by brideoflinux

Quite a few years ago, a popular Linux site began displaying ads from Microsoft on their home page. Big ones, at a prominent location above the fold. Some were fancy Flash ads, attention getters, mainly for branding purposes. Others were FUD, “independent” TCO studies bought and paid for by Redmond that “proved” it was cheaper to hand MS a wheelbarrow of money to run a Windows server than to run a free Linux server.

Does Microsoft actually hold valid patents being infringed by Android? Who knows? That would be for the courts to decide and, so far, nothing’s gone to court. OEMs are just ponying up and buying MS licenses on the strength of Microsoft threats. So much so that Redmond is evidently making more money on Android than on Windows Phone 7.

My response to this news was to go into denial. This couldn’t be, I told myself. The magazine wouldn’t let it happen. eWeek without Spencer Katt would be like Kellogg’s without high fructose corn syrup. When the next week’s issue arrived, I quickly turned to the page where I would normally expect to find Spencer’s purrings, only to find some boring article (an opinion piece, I believe) in it’s place. I felt betrayed. Spencer Katt had deserted me.

“Shark Cloud is an online cloud application platform. It’s a complete suite of office tools: word processing, spread sheets, contacts, email and forms. The user can go online and have those tools, like Google Apps, but if they ever get tired of our service they can always download the software, just like they do with WordPress or any other online open source package, load it to their server and continue going like nothing’s happened. Totally free. Totally open sourced.”

After you’ve installed plugins to configure your WordPress site for your server and protect your site from spam, it’s time to get your site up to speed. You may have guessed this will partly require more plugins. Some will be for the purpose of visibility, to help people find you. Others will enable you to offer different kinds of content. For example, a music site would probably install a plugin to work with YouTube videos; a photography site would want to make sure to have an effective way to offer slide shows. At this point, every site’s needs are unique.

Yesterday I wrote about how WordPress has evolved into a first rate platform that can be easily customized. One of the ways that WordPress is customized to meet the unique needs of a site is through the use of plugins that add functionality. Most of these functions are visual and offer visitors a richer experience while on your site. Others are never even seen by the visitor and only indirectly affect his or her experience.

Is Ballmer nuts or, more precisely, is he even more nuts that I already thought him to be, paying billions for a company worth thousands? Doesn’t Google own the patent on paying way to much for much too little? It seems I’m not the only one asking such questions.