Larry Dignan and other IT industry experts, blogging at the intersection of business and technology, deliver daily news and analysis on vital enterprise trends.
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.
Andrew Nusca is a writer-editor for ZDNet, contributor to CNET and the editor of SmartPlanet, ZDNet's sister site about innovation. In 2013, his coverage will focus on enterprise startups. He is based in New York.
Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.
Back when the beta of HotMail first came out in 1995 (long before it was a part of Microsoft), I was working for PC Week (now eWeek) writing a column called Reality Check and I remember analyzing its revolutionary ad-based model as a potential new way for businesses to cover the cost of their email systems.
Several exciting new voices joined ZDNet's blogosphere during the past few days. They include:Dion Hinchcliffe brings two decades experience in enterprise software development to his new blog, Enterprise Web 2.
If you've been following any of the news regarding the now draft version 3 of the GNU General Public License, then you also know by now that the Free Software Foundation and its leader Richard Stallman are looking to prevent the mashing up of GPL'd software with digital rights management (DRM) technology (see TiVo in unenviable role as GPL3 vs. DRM guinea pig).
Speaking at the RSA conference in San Jose, Bill Gates said that he now has the right weapons to supplant the password for verifying identities over the next few years. Vista will include InfoCards, technology that gives users the capability to manage authentication and payment information.
Following Jonathan Schwartz's keynote at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco this morning, Bill Hilf, Microsoft director of platform technology strategy, gave a presentation about coopetition, or how to best to live in a Microsoft world. He offered kumbaya bullet points such as "patience is key," "learn what you can handle," and "invest in people smarter than you.
Speaking at the Open Source Business Conference, Sun President and COO Jonathan Schwartz reprised his FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) and ‘free leads to volume’ themes and announced that the Sparc processor will be open sourced under the GPL license. “The most popular products in world will be free—whether they are open source is more of sideshow,” Schwartz said.
According to New Scientist (Jan. 28 to Feb. 3, 2006), a South African inventor has developed a watch that automatically sticks you every six hours (with an 0.
News.com has a package commemorating the 60th anniversary of ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), the first electronic computer that could handle large scale calculations.
If they haven't noticed already, customers of Bank of America's online banking services will start getting prompted to enter what the financial institution is referring to as "sitekey" information. The last time I wrote about BofA (see BofA TV ad explains why IT matters), it took over a week for me get answers from the company's PR department.
Although many will find Steven Zenith's writeup of his gadget-loving girlfiend's (over on Bayosphere) latest acquisition (a Sony-Ericsson smartphone) to be entertaining, I found it to be incredibly frustrating. Wrote Zenith of his significant other's jubilant honeymoon with her new toy: ...