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.
The other day, someone asked me: "do you know of a mapping service on the Internet that shows you drive times as a set of contour lines from a particular location?" I said I didn't, but someone could probably code it up in an hour or two on top of Google Maps.
This week I covered The Antispyware Workshop, hosted by CNET Download.com, here and here.
Microsoft invests billions in R&D and now wants to seed the market of startups and small businesses by licensing its intellectual property. Microsoft has been licensing IP to larger firms, but the new Johnny Appleseed (no reference to Apple intended other than this is a good idea for Apple R&D as well) brings the company benefits in several dimensions.
Updated 5/16: Yesterday I blogged the early morning session of the CNET Download.com-hosted spyware event (MP3 files of all the panel discussions are here--registration required), concluding that the two sides--adware/spyware purveyors and their antitheses--are not far along in formulating a truce that would reduce at least the non-rogue/organized crime induced failures to disclosure and other abuses that result in minor irritants to material harm.
Although he didn't say it in those words, Juniper chairman and CEO Scott Kriens made it clear that when enterprises take a drink of the one-stop shop Kool-Aid that Cisco CEO John Chambers tried to sell Interop attendees yesterday, they could be selling themselves short of the best of breed solutions that he claimed may deliver more business value, ones from more focused solution providers like Juniper.
In what Intel and Interop officials are calling the first live demonstration of a metro-wide WiMax wireless network, Intel Mobility Group executive vice president and general manager Sean Maloney (see photo, left) took to the stage for an early evening keynote here in Las Vegas to prove that WiMax is for real. Intel has been one of the biggest proponents of WiMax (officially known as 802.
The primary barrier to Linux growth is the cost of moving from a Windows ecosystem to a Linux ecosystem. Developing nations, however, have less existing IT infrastructure.
Like many companies in the digital networking or security business here at Interop in Las Vegas, Borderware is one of those vendors that started off with one carrier-class solution (a straight firewall appliance that competed with outfits like Checkpoint) and then, as distinctly separate efforts that leveraged the in-house expertise that went into the first solution, built similar solutions but for other vertical categories.
Here in the bowels of the Mandalay Bay’s convention center, where Interop is taking place (not only has Networld+Interop trimmed its name, it has moved from the Las Vegas Convention Center to the Mandalay Bay and announced a new New York City-based December edition), Cisco CEO John Chambers, as usual, gave the kick-off keynote for the event.
Lydia Parnes, director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission, kicked off the CNET Antispyware Workshop saying that in defining spyware “it all depends.” And, a year after the FTC held a spyware workshop, the spyware and adware companies and their anti counterparts are still battling and consumers are caught in the middle.