Applications

Microsoft working on Windows replacement

Paul Mah — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 05:32:09 -0400

Indisputably the dominant computing platform of choice, the Windows Operating System looks set to remain that way for many more years to come. Microsoft is certainly not content to take things sitting down though. Already, its own research lab is cooking up a new operating system that is nothing less than a radical departure from the current paradigm. Called Midori, it does away with dependencies tying Windows to a single PC, with a design that centers on the Internet. Many believe that the idea behind Midori is to create a lightweight operating system that can easily be mated to serve as a portable host for compartmentalized applications. If that is true, it sounds like Microsoft's answer to the threat posed by the increasing use of virtualization on the desktop.

For more about Midori:
- check out this BBC News article

How to get the CFO to buy into an IT project

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 06:59:58 -0400

How does a CIO get approval for new technology projects in tight budgetary times? Greg Baker, the CFO of technology provider Logicalis, said the issue is not always money, but the ability of the CIO to communicate and tie the proposal to business needs and future growth.

In broad terms, said Baker and other experts, a CIO must explain how the initiative will improve the security of the company's applications or operations, how it will increase productivity, whether customer service will improve, and what the impact will be on strategic, tactical or operational goals. In short, said the experts, the CFO will not want to know technical details, but whether the IT project will save money, make customers happy and mean more efficiency.

For more in selling IT projects:
- check out this baselinemag.com article

For more tech stories from the FierceCIO network:
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> Prediction: Faster USB drives next year. Article
> Touch screen Blackberry spotted. Article

Google announces first release of Google Gadgets for Linux

Paul Mah — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 10:13:13 -0400

Linux users who are fans of Google Gadget can start rejoicing now--Google has announced the first release of Google Gadgets for Linux. Long available for both Windows and Mac operating systems, Google gadgets are mini-applications that can be positioned in any way on the desktop. Explaining the delay, Jim Zhuang from Google's software-engineer team noted, "Gadget support is not just a single feature, but rather an entire platform for miniature applications. It's a complex undertaking, but we're now putting the finishing touches on the product." The good news is that Gadgets written for Windows, and even those on iGoogle, are compatible with Google Gadgets for Linux. In the spirit of the open-source movement, developers are welcome to view the source code of the project.

For more on Google Gadgets for Linux:
- check out this ZDNet News article

Google loses H-1B visa sweepstakes

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 06:59:59 -0400

Apparently not even Google can always get its way, at least when it comes to hiring foreign nationals and having them stay in the U.S. Like so many others in the IT field, Google claims to be constrained by the congressionally-mandated yearly cap on H-1B visas, complaining publicly that 90 of its 300 H-1B applications were rejected in the recent government visa lottery. That's still a winning percentage, but not good enough for Google.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency held a lottery after receiving 163,000 applications for 85,000 visa slots. A disappointed Google spokesperson said some of the individuals who did not get visas can still work for the company in other countries, but added that "worker satisfaction is higher when employees can work in the location they prefer."

For more on Google's H-1B headaches:
- check out this Computerworld article

SaaS to the rescue

Thu, 22 May 2008 06:59:57 -0400

Beverly Magda,the Humane Society's CIO, writes in InformationWeek how her organization's fundraising efforts have been aided by new IT applications to support secure credit card transactions.

Turning to SaaS, she said the animal advocacy organization instituted an on-demand compliance service called QualysGuard to provide a reliable, automated way to conduct independent network security audits and securely transmit compliance reports to acquiring banks.

"SaaS opened our eyes to a new way of doing things. With QualysGuard, we didn't need to install any software or infrastructure. QualysGuard runs on Qualys' own secure global infrastructure, so we run security audits on-demand over the Internet with a standard web browser," she said.

To read more:
- see this InformationWeek.com article

Vista gets the cold shoulder

Mon, 19 May 2008 06:59:59 -0400

A new survey has found that fewer than 1 in 12 programmers currently are writing applications targeting Windows Vista, with most still sticking with ASP.Net and Windows Forms applications and finding that most of Windows XP's legacy technologies work fine in Vista

Yet some warn it's premature to call Vista a flop with developers. Despite the 140 million copies Microsoft claims to have shipped, the market hasn't reached a tipping point yet, they say.

To explore the ups and downs of Vista:
- see this infoworld.com article

Parallels adds Leopard Server support

Mehan Jayasuriya — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:47:38 -0400

Virtualization has led to huge energy and hardware savings in a number of large enterprises and that includes Mac shops as well. After all, OS X applications like Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion have brought the benefits of virtualization into the home, so it's not surprising that Macs are seeing a lot of virtualization action, as of late. The latest news on this front is that Parallels has just released a new beta of Parallels Server that allows a single Xserve machine to run multiple copies of Leopard Server, alongside Windows and Linux. While Leopard Server VMs were removed from previous versions of Parallels Server, the company was forced to briefly remove support because of performance issues. "We worked out the technical issues, optimized performance and stability and now we're ready for our community to take a look at us and help to make it perfect," Parallels' Ben Rudolph told Ars Technica.

For more on Parallels Server:
- see this Ars Technica article

Google Docs goes offline

Mehan Jayasuriya — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:42:53 -0400

In the ongoing war between Google Docs and Microsoft Office, there was always a clear line that seperated the two competing productivity suites: Internet connectivity. See, no matter how much you like Google Docs, it required an Internet connection to use, which proved to be a deal-breaker for many. Now, however, that line of demarcation is starting to blur: Google has announced that it is bringing offline support to Google Docs, courtesy of Google Gears. Google Docs applications will now have the ability to store data locally on your machine, until you reconnect to the Internet, at which point the application will sync up with Google's servers seamlessly. Best of all, the new functionality is rolling out next week and requries no additonal software. "I don't have to remember to save my documents locally before packing my laptop for a trip," writes Google software engineer Philip Tucker. "I don't have to remember to save my changes as soon as I get back online. And I don't have to switch applications based on network connectivity."

For more on the new feature:
- see this post on the Google Docs blog

Apple seeds OS X 10.5.3 to devs

Mehan Jayasuriya — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:34:43 -0400

It might seem like Apple pushed out its last major release of OS X not too long ago but according to Mac developers, another release is in the pipeline. Apple seeded a beta of OS 10.5.3 to developers on Friday, in an attempt to test the patch before greenlighting it for public release. Among the changes included are critical memory leak fixes for CoreAnimation and iCal, in addition to a number of other minor tweaks for built-in applications. According to AppleInsider, the new release should see release in either April or May.

For more on the new beta:
- see this AppleInsider article

Gartner: Better BI tools on the way

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 07:59:58 -0400

A new Gartner study finds that the role of corporate IT units in business intelligence will be shrinking. In its place, search and collaboration tools will allow individual users and business units to build their own analytical applications, according to the study released last week. Gartner said that it expects this change to occur by 2012. By then, users will turn to interactive visualization, in-memory analytics, search integrated with BI, Software as a service and service-oriented architectures to build their own reports. Search and collaboration tools, probably off-the-shelf, will allow individual users and business units to build their own applications. "Evidence suggests that BI is used aggressively by just 15-20 percent of business users," said Kurt Schlegel, an analyst at Gartner, in a statement. "For the BI sector to thrive, it needs to overcome the fact that most business users feel BI tools are hard to use." And we bet that BI tools will get much cheaper, too.

For more on BI tools to come:
- See this ComputerWorld article