Thousands of products can improve your business or disrupt the status quo. David Berlind guides you through new technologies, services, and ways of thinking that will help your enterprise use IT more effectively.
Since the conclusion of last week's JavaOne event in San Francisco, I've been e-mailing back and forth with Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz about Java and the deathmatch that clearly looms ahead between it and competing cross-platform runtime environments from Adobe and Microsoft (Flash and Silverlight, respectively).
Right about now, the question is whether or not Steve Jobs wishes he never penned the open letter that he did in February 2007. The one where he eschewed Digital Rights Management technology (the same anti-piracy technology that preserves the dominance of Apple' iPods and well as of iTunes' downloadable audio sales), admonishing the recording industry to give up on the idea of technologically protecting their content.
Last week, while at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco, Sun drew some major lines in the sand for Java and now, about the only thing we can do is sit back and watch to see what happens. If I had to sum up what I heard, it's that the battle for supremacy in the RIA space (that's Rich Interactive Application if you're Microsoft, Rich Internet Application if you're not) will be fought in the mobile and embedded spaces.
Some of my fondest memories date back to the early 90's when, at Interop in San Jose, a company called Epilogue demonstrated how the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) wasn't just for managing routers and other network gear. To prove SNMP's versality, Epilogue showed how it could be used to manage other devices too.
One of the great things about America is that you can sue anyone for anything. What?
Last October, Sun introduced the idea of a datacenter-in-a-box to the world. The idea is that any time, any where you need a datacenter, Sun can drop-ship you one where ever you might need it.
Lenovo's Thinkpads have apparently had an anti-flex roll cage under their keyboards for some time. But with this week's launch of Intel's Centrino Pro brand, the company is not only introducing a new Thinkpad based on the Intel technology bundle (which includes Intel's Core 2 Duo "Santa Rosa" chip), Lenovo is also adding a similar roll-cage to the Thinkpad's lid.
If you're looking for the notebook with the largest footprint in the world (at least the one with Intel's latest greatest mobile tech), it might very well be HP's new Dragon, a clamshell-form factored HiDef-ready multimedia entertainment center that may be able to fit under your armpit, but don't try putting it on any airplane seatback table.
Although it is in many ways the anti-thesis of how Google Apps supports collaboration (if two people are viewing the same document and one makes a change, that change 'magically' shows up on the other person's computer), some users (believe it or not) will still want to send documents around. OK, so maybe you need to send a contract to someone whose not a collaborator.
On the one hand, Centrino Pro represents an aggregation of Intel mobile technologies. On the other, according to Intel's corporate vice president and general manager of Mobile Platforms Mooley Eden, is a disaggregation (or in his words, a "bifurcation").