Welcome Blackberry Storm - we've been waiting. It's no secret I think the Apple iPhone is mostly iCandy and benefits more from Apple "cool" rather than real substance as a fully useful SmartPhone. It's an iPod with a bad phone, a bad phone network, and poorly thought out email app slapped on it. I call it the iPlod (and sometimes the iNewton.) And it has Apple designing it, which means users get nice iCandy but fundamentals are lacking or are poorly implemented.
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Woot! The BlackBerry Storm (9530) on Verizon's 3G EV-DO network has been announced. Support on Vodafone was also announced.
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Despite Microsoft's best efforts, Windows XP is the operating system that just won't seem to go away. Seems as sticky as DOS 3.3 was back in the day. Microsoft's officially cut ties with selling new copies of XP but PC manufactures can still downgrade new Vista PCs to Windows XP until June of 2009. Microsoft just extended that date from January 2009 until June 2009.
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Scott Guthrie announced Microsoft Visual Studio would begin shipping with open source library jQuery. The jQuery library searches and performs commands on elements within HTML, using a very short and easy program to syntax structure. JQuery is open source, dual licensed under the GPL and MIT licenses. JQuery will ship under the MIT license. What's the big deal? First, the functions jQuery performs was a priority item on the Microsoft road map for ASP.NET AJAX.
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Windows Cloud OS and Office Live Lite Office apps. Well, Ballmer is turning out to be quite the hype machine himself, releasing the industry buzzhounds with his Windows Cloud pre-announcement this week. Finally, something juicy to speculate and write about. The shine wore off Google Chrome long ago, and I'm getting tired of waiting for Congress to pass my individual bailout package.
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Last week I sat down and recorded a podcast interview with Microsoft Platform Architect and Software+Services expert Eugenio Pace. We've been discussing the unique challenges developing SaaS and S+S utilizing cloud services. Eugenio is looking at the pragmatic issues that crop up when creating software that relies on cloud services. In this episode we talk about identity management and how organizations can improve upon the manual id/password sync processes applications are forced to use when user identities have to live in systems inside the enterprise and services in the cloud. My immediate thought was to use OpenID, an open source software standard used increasingly on the net. Eugenio also exposed me to BizTalk Labs' identity services.
If you are writing software or architecting applications that will live partially or fully in the cloud, you'll find this interview with Eugenio very valuable. Enjoy the podcast.
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Savvis announced Monday its new SaaS Hosting Platform initiative directed at attracting independent software vendors moving to the SaaS model. While the Savvis announcement isn't entirely new territory, it is one of the first pure-play hosting companies to make a major move to wrap a complete program around SaaS ISVs' needs. Bryan Doerr, Savvis CTO, described the offering as a "hybrid" when I talked with him, something between what traditional enterprise and Internet B2C customers need. Enterprises tend to have tighter service-level agreements and more change-control constraints, whereas Internet sites and e-commerce apps see a lot more software and content changes but haven't always had much of an SLA backing them up. The real news in the Savvis announcement, though, is who Savvis has in its sights: OpSource. Opsource has long been the darling of venture-capital-funded SaaS software start-ups, offering a "turn over ops to us" approach to ISVs that may not want the burden of running a 24/7 online SaaS operation. Savvis is also trying to lay claim to the SaaS platform business over other hosters, like Rackspace, that would like the same customers. So, is the Savvis announcement just warmed-over hosting, or is there more to the story?
First, what Savvis announced: Its announcement falls into three areas: core infrastructure, life-cycle services and marketplace services. Picture a global hosting company adding OpSource services plus partner services for development, and a Salesforce.com or Jamcracker partner ecosystem with better network connections and traffic management.
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As much as I wish we'd never gotten into this US financial and credit mess, there actually may be a few bright sides to the whole debacle, and one of those could be network security. One likely outcome of the situation is increased regulation of the financial, and potentially other, industries. You can bet the pendulum is going to swing hard towards more regulation for the foreseeable future, whether we like it or not. At one point in my life a statement like that would have been something I'd never support: more regulation. But my political views about such things have changed over the past five years. I'm still very much a believer in the power of free and open markets, but we've seen the limits of their ability to self correct and contain corruption by people making a buck at others' expense. OK... back to how this all helps network security.
Love it or hate it, regulation has significantly helped improve security in our networks. SOX, GLBA and HIPAA have all created business justification for improving or expanding security and privacy in our business networks. Visa PCI (not a regulation) has also had a huge impact as well. I saw firsthand how these regulations help IT and security professionals get increased support within their companies to go out and spend money on security. Sometimes a security purchase was simply riding on long coattails and in other situations directly supporting meeting a regulation.
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T-Mobile reversed a decision about the Google Android G1 phone this week. One of the under reported aspects of the Google Android G1 phone was that T-Mobile would throttle data rates for users who exceeded 1GB per month. Excuse me? Now there's a dumb decision and it looks like T-Mobile has realized the errors of their ways, backing off that decision. So you have to ask why T-Mobile made such a decision in the first place. Two likely possibilities jump to mind: Either T-Mobile anticipated it might be overwhelmed with customers buying and using the G1 Android phones to surf the Internet, trying out and showing off their new SmartPhone doodad, or T-Mobile has genuine concerns about the capacity or resilience of their new G3 network. Which is it? Only T-Mobile's hairdressers knows for sure.
I can certainly understand T-Mobile not wanting to experience a repeat of the Apple iTunes server provisioning problems during the iPhone G3 launch. What a mess that was. But I don't think we'll see long lines of consumers with G1 phone images dancing in their eyes, salivating to get their G1 phones. Not that they won't be popular, or do well -- I expect the G1 to do reasonably well in the short run and Android phones to do very well in the long run. But it would be shocking if T-Mobile saw the number of units move that Apple did with the iPhone and iPhone 3G launch.
But T-Mobile left themselves an out, just in case the G3 T-Mobile network isn't up to snuff. Here's a excerpt from T-Mobile's statement about removing the data usage cap.
The specific terms for our new data plans are still being reviewed and once they are final we will be certain to share this broadly with current customers and potential new customers.
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Google's Gmail has been in beta for four years. Software beta testing usually only lasts a few months, six at the most, for more normal software companies. So why does Google throw software out there and leave it in a perpetual beta state? That's the question Paul McNamara asks in his blog post. Pingdom says that 22 of Google's 49 products (45%) are in beta. Most normal engineering and product managers would have been fired long ago if they couldn't get their products out of beta and into a GA (general availability) state, but we all know Google doesn't think this way when it comes to releasing software. Matter of fact, Google's approach has influenced even Microsoft's release approach. Live Mesh, Office Live Workspace and many other Microsoft online software have remained in beta for lengthy periods.
So why does Google release software this way? Here's my serious, and somewhat tongue-in-cheek, reasons Google does open ended software betas.
1. Low Expectations. Beta software brings lower user expectations. They're more tolerant of bugs, missing features, poor design, etc., when users get software for free and it doesn't have a detrimental impact to their productivity or other software applications. It's also easy to catch Microsoft sleeping, only to wake up to find millions of Google software users who've switched to a new alternative. At the same time Google's putting beta stuff out their, Microsoft's saddled with everything entailed in shipped GA software. Google can be much more nibble with this new software model than traditional shrink-wrapped software.
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What's the killer app on Android phones? Touch was the killer feature for the Apple iPhone, which Android also offers, but Google has three killer features Google app users will love. First, if you use Google apps, you'll love an Android phone. Google's Gmail, Gtalk, contacts are all on Android. Apps like Google Docs are sure to come as well. Plus, you have Chrome, Google Maps and YouTube. But the real deal is the data sync between apps on Android and their online Web companions, Android's second killer feature. And that's all possible because of Android's third killer feature, single sign-on for all Google apps through your Google account. Check out the video of Android's apps.
For the first time we are seeing the power of Google's multiple application technology and Web presence brought to another platform, the SmartPhone. Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS hasn't done this yet, though we expect it to because of Live Mesh; and Apple had a miserable failure in its MobileMe launch. Because Google has all these online assets, they can seamlessly be brought together onto a mobile phone platform. The obvious missing feature in today's Android launch is Microsoft Exchange sync; and at first blush you might say, why did Google make the same mistake as Apple by leaving out Exchange sync in their mobile OS launch?
But Google wants to leave out Exchange support, to bring users to Google's mail and other applications. It's another thumb in Microsoft's eye, but it could backfire on Google. Maybe Android will support Exchange sync in the future, or maybe it will come from a third party. Google instead wants to help move users onto Google's mail platform and applications, and away from Exchange. It's a big gamble, and we'll see how successful Google might be with this strategy.
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Today's the day Android strutted its stuff to the world. Is Android the game-changer for the SmartPhone industry, a real contender to the iPhone or just another cell phone OS? It's definitely not just another cell phone OS, as evidenced by all the attention around today's launch. Google has technology that other phones use but Google Android will exploit. Google search, of course is the 800-pound gorilla in search. Add Google maps (including a compass feature Google demonstrated in the T-Mobile [HTC] G1 phone), Google Webkit and the Chrome Web browser (a Chrome Lite comes on Android), Google Talk, YouTube, Google Apps, and so forth. This has allowed Google to layer in a single sign-on for all Google apps, and Android syncs data with your Google account for contacts, calendar, chat and likely other applications in the future.
Android's launch today was a much different affair from what the iPhone experienced. While Android's a very big deal, there was no Steve Jobs giving the "we're out to change the world" pitch. And it was missing the whole Apple "we control the vertical, we control the horizontal" Big Brother approach to consumers. Android has much bigger potential to impact the industry than the closed hardware/app store Apple offers with the iPhone. As much as iPhone lovers salivate over their locked-up phones, Android could bust the industry wide open.
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Screenshots of Windows 7 leaked this week on the ThinkNext.net site shows Windows 7 looking more like an update to the Vista user experience and not an overhaul of Vista. That makes sense given the short timeframe to develop and release Windows 7, and Microsoft's change to shorter OS release cycles over the past mega-Windows OS releases. Balmer is saying Windows 7 should be here in 2009. Frankly, most of the screenshots show pretty minor updates to the Vista user interface: a simplified Start menu, ribbon menus (BOO!) in apps like Wordpad, and redesigns to Windows Explorer and other control panel apps. So far, not a lot to get excited about, at least in this group of leaked screenshots.
Will we have more Windows Live applications as part of Windows 7? Yes, they'll likely replace their current day counterparts. I'd guess services like Live Mesh and Office Live Workspace will also be more tightly integrated in Windows 7 along with the addition of touch interfaces and application virtualization for the OS.
The real benefit of all this is to make Vista more palatable to IT and take some of the stain off the Vista reputation. The timing of Windows 7 is at about the point where organizations will start to seriously consider a Vista rollout program. Call it a makeover, but not an extreme one, or call it an effort to whitewash Vista's bad wrap. The Mojavi Experiment commercials are already trying to help that out anyway. The bottom line is, don't expect Windows 7 to rock your socks. We've not seen anything to indicate that will be the case.
Like this? Here are some of Mitchell's recent posts.
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Gartner has weighed in on Microsoft's changes to the Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop (VECD) and the research firm likes them. But it's still only a small step needed for software licensing to catch up with the capabilities of virtualization. With the changes to Microsoft VECD, Virtual Machines (VMs) can be occasionally deployed to someone's home machine, i.e. a remote worker, for $23 per year, and VMs can be run on non-corporate owned machines for $110 per year, such as in the case of a consultant or contractor. In essence you now have some new portability options to run VMs on other machines, decoupling them from a given piece of hardware. That's something VMs technically can do very easily, its just that the licensing mechanisms are beginning to loosen up and catch up with what the technology can do.
Here's Gartner's take on the matter:
These changes create licensing-compliant frameworks for PC virtualization usage scenarios that were previously challenging or cost-prohibitive to implement. In explicitly citing the use of employee-owned and contractor-owned notebooks for work, Microsoft is legitimizing a usage model that has interested many Gartner clients since 2005. Such deployments will remain relatively expensive (over a three-year lifetime of use, licensing for a corporate Windows VM on a non-company-owned machine will be $330) but they will allow the license to be moved after it has been installed for at least 90 days - which will be useful for licensing consultants and temporary workers.
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Sarah Palin might be the first Vice Presidential candidate to get her online email account hacked, but she's not the first person to have this problem and certainly isn't the first to get hacked using information readily available on Google and Wikipedia. Palin's experience goes to show you how relatively easy it is for someone to brute force and social reverse engineer the information needed to crack a password or security question. In this case, the purported hacker actually told us how he/she (it was an individual, btw) did it using Google and Wikipedia. Here's an excerpt from the hacker's own words, thanks to a blog post by Michelle Malkin.
it took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info, Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes (thanks online postal service!)
the second was somewhat harder, the question was "where did you meet your spouse?" did some research, and apparently she had eloped with mister palin after college, if youll look on some of the screenshits that I took and other fellow anon have so graciously put on photobucket you will see the google search for "palin eloped" or some such in one of the tabs.
I found out later though more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on "Wasilla high" I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower...
Now what do you think of those pointless security questions, like "What is your city of birth?" and "What high school did you graduate from?" They are really pretty pointless unless its a question very few people are going to know and can't be determined online somewhere.
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Layoffs. Recession. Bad economy. Job hunting. Those are the topics around many water coolers right now. I was quite a bit younger but I lived through and tried to get a job right out of college during the recession of late 1970's and early 1980's. There weren't many jobs around when I graduated with a CS and Business degree but I did find work right out of college, something not all of my classmates were able to do right away. The present day media seems afraid to say we're in a recession but when mortgage defaults reach record highs, unemployment is on the rise, and banks are failing or being propped up by the federal government, it's a pretty good sign the economy is experiencing more than just an "economic downturn". During 2001-2004 we also saw a huge displacement of many workers in the IT industry as businesses worked to survive through the 9-11 terrorist induced depressed economy.
From those experiences, I've learned there are some things all of us can do to help your career, bring value to your employer and keep a job, or find one during uncertain and tough times. No one can predict for sure what the turmoil in today's financial markets will bring to the economy, or how long it might last, but it's a good idea to button up and focus on the work you're doing to give yourself the best chances of maintaining good employment. Rather than the typical "update your resume" and "make sure you're right with your boss" kinds of recommendations, I have some deeper strategies to help you keep yourself employed and bringing in a steady income.
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Apple is taking tons of heat for banning competitive software from the iPhone. Podcaster, Alex Sokirynsky's $4.99 iPhone app that lets users download podcasts, was banned by Apple stating, "Since Podcaster assists in the distribution of podcasts, it duplicates the functionality of the Podcast section of iTunes." So does this mean you can't make a better clock app for the iPhone? You can't have a different e-mail app? Apple might let those slide, but come near iTunes' revenue generating capabilities and you'll get the Steve Jobs version of a digital smackdown.
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My friend and podcast partner, Alan Shimel, recently succumbed to "cool gadget" pressure when he broke down and bought an iPhone 3G after several years of being a happy Microsoft Windows Mobile user. Alan knows very well my views about Apple's closed hardware and "we know better" arrogance to creating consumer products but decided to take the plunge into the world of Apple anyway. Alan was awe inspired by the iPhone's gorgeous display, cool graphics and advanced Safari mobile Web browser.
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My podcast this week is about BizTalk and Microsoft's announcement that the long awaited BizTalk Server 2006 R3 will be released in early 2009 as BizTalk Server 2009. Microsoft's adding RFID features and also refreshing BizTalk to work with other currently available Microsoft products like Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and WFCs in .Net Framework 3.5.
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Microsoft's momentum in virtualization is growing quickly, as evidenced by September 8th's "Get Virtual Now" virtualization extravaganza showcase. Microsoft announced Hyper-V Server 2008 will be free to download along with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5. Availability will be sometime around the next 30 days. At the same time, VMware is hemoraging leadership following the ouster of the founding CEO Diane Green and the ensuing turmoil the company has experienced.
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Last week's announcement of Google Chrome had every armchair blogger speculating about the same thing: Google is out to replace Windows with Chrome as the desktop operating system. I initially had the same thought but, given that everyone pretty much had that same, obvious idea, I didn't see the need to pile on with one more blog-post vote with the same opinion. But something's bothered me about that prediction, that Chrome will become the OS to replace Windows. Building an OS isn't in Google's DNA. They build Web app components, like Webkit; platforms for Web applications, like Google App Engine; and (to grossly oversimplify) really fast data-search software and databases.
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I just watched the new Microsoft Seinfeld ad. I'm stunned that it wasn't a "blown away" kind of ad. So I have to ask myself, what's going on... what are they doing with these ads? The commercial basically is this; Seinfeld see Gates at a shoe store, goes in, tries to figure out what shoe size Gates wears, advises him to shower with his shoes on, offers him a sugary churro treat, tells him Microsoft should come out with something that makes his computer soft and chewy like cake, and Gates gives Seinfeld a signal that something like that's coming. Commercial's over. Done.
In the latest round of "I'll support your software if you support mine", Microsoft products running on VMware ESX servers are now qualified to receive support from Microsoft. That includes mission critical Microsoft software like Windows Server, Exchange, SQL Server and SharePoint. VMware ESX passed Microsoft's Server Virtualization Validation Program. Does that mean the floodgates have now opened and we'll see Microsoft software rapidly proliferate on VMware ESX servers?
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"Somehow" a Live Mesh client running on Windows Mobile was demonstrated at the Australia Tech Ed conference. Things have been relatively quite on the Live Mesh front and it's good to see some progress revealing itself once in a while. The Windows Mobile Live Mesh client should be available to participants in the Live Mesh beta in a couple of months or so. There's still a lot lacking in Live Mesh though.
I've always believed what's needed next is some type of intelligent device profiling that will tell Live Mesh what types of data, and in what quantities and frequency, would be best for certain kinds of devices. A Windows Mobile device might be idea for mp3 sharing unless I rarely play mp3s on that phone.
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