Showing headlines posted by rsmiller

Last week, Google's Marissa Mayer and Eric Schmidt appeared in separate interviews on the Charlie Rose show, and not surprisingly they spoke in one voice where privacy and trust were concerned. They both said that when we use online services, we give up privacy in the process. There it is on the table. They are providing the service, and you're providing the information, and should you be concerned about this trade-off, Schmidt says simply: "Trust us."

When I came across a Future Montage video from Microsoft the other night, it got my wheels turning a bit and I started to think about the Microsoft Surface, the $10,000 table computer Microsoft released in 2007 and it hit me that maybe, just maybe that table could represent Microsoft's future vision of computing.

CODA CEO Jeremy Roche talks about his company's foray into cloud computing, and why he believes that cloud computing represents the next logical step in the evolution of enterprise computing.

I spoke to Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier, who is openSUSE Community Manager, about FOSS license FUD. Brockmeier explains in detail what you need to understand when using open source software, and that it's really no more complex than the commercial stuff (and usually less so).

It's been quite a couple of weeks for Google as the search giant has had to deal with adversity for perhaps the first time ever and it's been interesting to watch how they respond. In the end, they have behaved like any other large organization under pressure and the result has not been pretty.

Gmail went down over night and the vultures are circling, but being down for a couple of hours doesn't mean that cloud computing is a failure. All software fails from time to time and being in the cloud doesn't make it immune.

You have to give Microsoft credit. They keep trying, even if what they are trying is copying Apple. This time they have announced they are going to open retail stores. Sound familiar? It should because it's what Apple has done so successfully with its Apple Store strategy.

Apple has been throwing its legal weight around of late trying to use IP law to protect its turf. Seems to me Apple should call off the lawyers and let the products do the talking.

A couple of weeks ago Alfresco CTO John Newton posted a question on Twitter asking if SaaS and cloud computing were interchangeable terms. I had been using the terms interchangeably up until that point, but it got me thinking and I decided to do some research and find out.

Google, Microsoft and Apple are in a constant battle for domination of our computing lives, so it comes as a bit of a shock when you find examples of the companies actually cooperating.

The EE Times reports this week that Dell has released a hybrid laptop running both Linux and Windows clearly aimed at business travellers. Linux for quick tasks and Windows for more intensive ones, but will such a machine really fly in the business world?

Microsoft is readying a new cloud service called My Phone that enables users of Windows Mobile 6 or later to sync contacts, calendar appointments, photos, and other information with the My Phone web site.

I came up with an idea this week: What if Microsoft made Windows open source? Before you accuse of me of link baiting, I believe this idea has merit for several reasons. It will reduce the cost of development, put the power of the community behind supporting what's become an endless and expensive project and let Microsoft concentrate on enterprise solutions and cloud initiatives.

[We've asked this question before haven't we? - Scott]

It seems these are heady days for open source as more products develop and mature. It's getting to the point for many of these products that the fact they are open source is really secondary. It has less to do with the license and more to do with the quality of the product or service itself (or at least it should).

Last week I opened my Feedburner account to check the daily traffic statistics for my by Ron Miller blog. There was a link at the top of the page encouraging me to transfer my Feedburner account, which Google had purchased back in 2007, to my Google account. Seemed like a sensible thing to do since I have all my Google services under a single sign-on except Feedburner. It turned out it was a terrible idea...

There are number of factors coming together that lead me to believe that open source's moment is right now, today, this year. Open source already runs so many things and just last week as Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States, he asked Scott McNealy of Sun to prepare a report on open source technologies as a first step toward exploring the use of open source in government.

For the last 10 years Google has been on an upward trajectory making gobs of money and astounding us all with there seemingly endless fount of innovation. For a time, there seemed to be a new product announcement every week. Google has always been very savvy about exploiting the news cycle, and keeping the brand in the public eye, but no company can grow forever and a couple of recent news stories suggest that Google's era of non-stop growth is finally over.

There was a big fuss earlier this week when The Sunday Times of London published an article claiming that every Google search was the equivalent of boiling a pot of tea. Turned out it was a tempest in a tea pot. The Times attributed this bit of profundity to a prestigious Harvard University physicist named Alex Wissner-Gross, who is working on research on the environmental impact of computing.

Lots of strong opinions about Microsoft out there. There are people who stand behind it staunchly. In their eyes Microsoft can do no wrong and critics like me are simply buffoons who don't get it. Then there are people who hate Microsoft for everything it stands for. In their minds no matter what Microsoft offers, it's going to be bad.

I write a great deal about Google mostly because it is always trying new things and putting them out there for free for the world to try. The tools are easy to access and use from wherever you are--any device with a browser and an internet connection--and you can't beat the single-sign on across the tool kit, but for all it has going for it, Google has a major trust issue. Every time I write about Google the comments always include people who won't trust Google with their content ever.