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.
Andrew McAfee, an associate professor in the technology and operations management unit at Harvard Business School, has been studying who uses Web services and why. More interesting, perhaps, are his insights into why using Web services remains hard.
Three weeks ago, when I penned my third piece on how Microsoft is very much poised to dominate the media player and authoring landscape (the other two posts are here, and here, and there's also a video of my whiteboard session on the topic), I had no idea what Microsoft had waiting in the wings. First, its announcement with Philips and second, the launch of the next version of its mobile operating platform (code-named Magneto, but officially Windows Mobile 5.
The National Information and Communications Technology Australia lab in Canberra has developed a driver's "assistant" that automatically reads speed limit signs and alerts the driver if he exceeds the posted speed. It also detects stop signs and signals an alert if the car isn't slowing down rapidly enough.
According to Silicon.com's Andy McCue, Gartner has reported that outsourcing, offshoring and the increasing amount of control of IT being handed to business units is leading to the death of the IT department as we know it today.
David Nagel, CEO of the embattled PalmSource, has resigned. For those of you who aren't up to speed on the differences between PalmSource and PalmOne, the former is the licensor of the Palm operating system.
Damn my college Marketing 201 professor. Jack, do you remember that guy?
Blogs, wikis and RSS have have clearly changed how organizations communicate with employees, customers and partners. Many corporations are now encouraging employees to blog and building user community sites.
Search390 reports the results of a Micro Focus survey on mainframes and COBOL. According to the survey, COBOL is still the dominant language on mainframe computers and the median age of COBOL programmers is 45-59.
Updated 5/20/05: Steve Gillmor is back on "the air" again. Under the name the "Gillmor Daily," Gillmor's new regular gig featured Dave Winer (credited with the birth or rebirth of the XML-RPC, RSS, podcasting, and OPML) for the first show and based on what is said near the show's end, Winer will be making regular appearances.
Tim Berners-Lee continues to preach the gospel of the semantic web. Speaking at the Fourth Annual Bio-IT World Conference and Expo in Boston, Berners-Lee discussed how the semantic web could solve problems in the life sciences: Life scientists in particular could find the Semantic Web a useful tool and in so doing "provide leadership to lots of other fields" in implementing this next-generation Web technology, Berners-Lee said.