InfoWorld.com articles from January 2009

InfoWorld.com archives from January 2009

The top tech resolutions for 2009; InfoWorld's IT experts have nine goals for you and the entire technology industry.
January 1, 2009... Byline: Galen Gruman New Year's is a great occasion for taking pause to reassess priorities, needs, and wants. As we enter what looks to be a trying 2009, such a pause is even more critical. IT resources will be limited and business...

The 25 greatest blunders in tech history; Looking back, they may seem like obvious mistakes. But at the time, at least some were considered great calls.
January 1, 2009... Byline: Neil McAllister Imagine how different the tech industry might have been had Gary Kildall accepted IBM's offer, back in 1980, to license his computer operating system for a top-secret project. CP/M would have been the OS that...

The 2009 tech career planner; Although tech jobs are under increasing pressure, the IT jobs picture is still better than for other jobs.
January 2, 2009... Byline: Galen Gruman The economy is in trouble -- everywhere. Even outsourced providers are nervous. Already under stress, IT staffers see their jobs getting more and more difficult as they must do more with less, all while wondering if...

Not your father's Web: The year in RIAs; Rapidly evolving rich Internet application platforms from Adobe, Microsoft, and Sun bring a little cheer to 2008.
January 2, 2009... Byline: Doug Dineley Rich Internet application (RIA) development didn't used to be a heavyweight competition. Just a few short years ago, when developers wanted to create a browser experience beyond the ordinary -- to incorporate...

SOA gets an obituary; Burton Group analyst Anne Thomas Manes has declared SOA dead but says that offshoots like mashups and cloud computing remain alive and well.(Obituary)
January 5, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill SOA is dead but services remain alive, according to a prominent analyst who published an obituary for SOA in a blog post on Monday. In her blog, Anne Thomas Manes, vice president and research director at Burton...

Why businesses are embracing Macs; A trend of IT letting users manage their own PCs often leads to Mac adoption.
January 6, 2009... Byline: Leon Erlanger It's not your imagination. Apple Macintoshes are turning up in businesses beyond the creative departments, increasingly becoming a normal part of the IT fabric. One recent IT survey by researcher Information...

Bringing Macs into business: Real-life IT stories; Several companies share the lessons -- good and bad -- that they have learned.
January 6, 2009... Byline: Leon Erlanger As more businesses bring Apple Macintoshes into their regular operations, IT has to figure out how to ensure the Macs play well in the typical Windows-dominated environments. Several companies share the lessons --...

Curl bolsters RIA data access; Adobe's Action Message Format is a higher-performance alternative to XML, Curl says.
January 6, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Curl, maker of the Curl Rich Internet Application Platform for Internet development, on Tuesday is releasing Curl Data Kit Data Services, providing an alternative to cumbersome XML-based data access for Curl...

Avoiding the high cost of bad code; Enterprises face overbudget app dev efforts that please no one. Good management is the answer.
January 7, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill While software development technologies continue to advance on multiple fronts, the complexity of software and its management remains a complicated, expensive problem. For instance, too many developers can become...

Borland CEO leaves, joins VMware; Apps management vendor also to lay off 15 percent of staff.
January 7, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Borland Software's CEO has resigned, taking a position at EMC's VMware subsidiary. Tod Nielsen, who had served as Borland CEO since November 2005, has become the chief operating officer of VMware, a newly created...

Test Center review: The 21st-century BlackBerry; The BlackBerry Bold updates the old-school QWERTY handset with 3G, Wi-Fi, sumptuous styling, and an amazing little widescreen, but the browser is still lame.
January 8, 2009... Byline: Tom Yager The BlackBerry Bold, RIM's new executive QWERTY handset, enters the scene at a time when the utility of the fixed keyboard is under debate. This review overlapped with my longer-term evaluation of touchscreen and...

You don't know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz; Match your weekly tech news wits against our snarky quiz master.
January 9, 2009... Byline: Dan Tynan Apple and Microsoft, Macworld and CES, Shiller and Ballmer. Does it get any better than this? Well, yes, actually. But while this week was dominated by the news coming out of San Francisco and Las Vegas, there were plenty...

You don't know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz; Match your weekly tech news wits against our snarky quiz master.
January 12, 2009... Byline: Dan Tynan Apple and Microsoft, Macworld and CES, Shiller and Ballmer. Does it get any better than this? Well, yes, actually. But while this week was dominated by the news coming out of San Francisco and Las Vegas, there were plenty...

Apple IQ test; How much do you really know about Apple?
January 12, 2009... Byline: Paul Venezia You take calls on an iPhone, watch your Apple TV, never leave home without your MacBook Air, and still grin with satisfaction when you fire up your Mac Pro with dual 30-inch Apple displays. But how well do you really...

Ruby on Rails on track for major upgrades; Templates, modularity featured in roadmap that includes merger with rival Merb framework.
January 12, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill It is looking like a very busy year for the popular Ruby on Rails Web application development framework, with multiple enhancements anticipated in an upgrade due this month, followed by a merger later on with the Merb...

SCO reorganization proposed; The bankrupt company plans to sell off its OpenServer and mobile businesses.
January 12, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill As part of a proposed reorganization following its bankruptcy filing, SCO plans a public auction of its mobile business and its Unix OpenServer business, the company said on Monday. Through the auction, SCO plans to...

SOA Software touts SOA planning governance; Portfolio Manager software helps align IT investment with business objectives.
January 12, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill SOA Software is unveiling on Monday Portfolio Manager, described as an SOA planning governance product to assist in building services by aligning IT investment with business objectives. With planning governance,...

Engine Yard powers SOA for the cloud; Ruby on Rails capabilities also extended.
January 13, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Engine Yard, which has specialized in Ruby on Rails application-hosting, is introducing Wednesday a platform to extend SOA to the cloud. The company also is extending its Rails stack to the Amazon Web Services (AWS)...

Obama set to tap Julius Genachowski for FCC head; New FCC chairman has long technology resume and was chairman of the Obama committee whose plan makes a direct call for network neutrality.
January 13, 2009... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz According to reports in the Wall Street Journal and other major media outlets, President-Elect Barack Obama is set to name Julius Genachowski, a Harvard classmate and top technology campaign advisor, as chairman of...

InfoWorld's 2009 Technology of the Year Awards; Apple and Microsoft top InfoWorld's list of 40 winning hardware and software products for professional and business computing.(Awards list)
January 13, 2009... Byline: Doug Dineley Apple and Microsoft topped the list of InfoWorld's annual product award winners this year, nabbing three and four Technology of the Year Awards, respectively. Announced today, InfoWorld's 2009 Technology of the Year...

Microsoft refreshes Azure cloud tools; The updated tools have improved integration with Visual Studio as well as performance and bug fixes; Microsoft also offers source code for Silverlight 2 controls.
January 14, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Microsoft unveiled on Wednesday refreshed versions of its Windows Azure software development kit and Azure tools for Visual Studio, which support the planned Windows Azure cloud services platform. The refreshed...

Sonatype assists Maven users; Repository manager offers authentication and procurement capabilities, allowing developers to control software components and external dependencies.
January 14, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Sonatype is introducing on Thursday an enhanced, commercial version of its Nexus repository manager for the open-source Apache Maven software build manager. Serving as a GUI for Maven, Nexus Professional adds...

Cut power costs with DC power; Using DC power in the datacenter can reduce wasteful conversions and yield space.
January 14, 2009... Byline: Logan G. Harbaugh Our recent article "10 power-saving myths debunked" generated a lot of interest and controversy. One topic that sparked plenty of discussion was the use of DC power in the datacenter. Because all computers use DC...

HP injects Adaptive Infrastructure with orchestration, recovery; Company says integrating tools reduces customers' costs while increasing agility.
January 15, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan Hewlett-Packard on Thursday added tools for orchestration and recovery to its Adaptive Infrastructure portfolio. And, as with most enterprise-class technology announcements these days, HP said that the new tools...

You don't know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz; Match your weekly tech news wits against our snarky quiz master.
January 16, 2009... Byline: Dan Tynan Big changes at the top this week, as Yahoo gains a new CEO and Apple loses its fearless leader, at least for six months. But that's not the only news worth quizzing. Congress goes down the (You)Tubes, Google drops more...

Gartner's 5 predictions for BI in 2009 and beyond; Poor business decisions, SaaS, mashups, and more are on tap in the foreseeable future of business intelligence.
January 16, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan Through 2012 more than 35 percent of the largest 5,000 companies will regularly fail to make insightful decisions about significant changes in their business and markets, according to analyst house Gartner. That's...

Browser wars deemed hot again; Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, and Google debate issues of browser innovation, interoperability, and security.
January 16, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill The browser wars are back. Dignitaries from major browser makers -- including Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, and newcomer Google -- served on a panel Thursday evening that discussed the apparent re-emergence of competition...

You don't know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz; Match your weekly tech news wits against our snarky quiz master.
January 19, 2009... Byline: Dan Tynan Big changes at the top this week, as Yahoo gains a new CEO and Apple loses its fearless leader, at least for six months. But that's not the only news worth quizzing. Congress goes down the (You)Tubes, Google drops more...

Your laptop data is not safe. So fix it. Follow InfoWorld's encryption-based data-protection plan, which can safeguard your most at-risk PCs.
January 19, 2009... Byline: Mel Beckman The largest single type of security breach is the stolen or lost laptop, according to the Open Security Foundation, yet these computers are among the least protected of all IT assets. The costs of a data breach can be...

A high-tech agenda for President Obama; Here's one editor's prescription for high-tech investments, priorities, and -- yes -- legislation.
January 20, 2009... Byline: Galen Gruman Today Barack Obama becomes the 44th president of the United States, during a scary economic meltdown and at a time when America questions its role in the world and its self-perception as a champion for good and...

Adobe to publish streaming specification; The company's RTMP Flash Media Server technology will be revealed as part of the Open Screen Project in the first half of 2009.
January 20, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Adobe Systems plans to publish its RTMP (Real-Time Messaging Protocol) specification for high-performance transmission of audio, video, and data between Adobe Flash technologies, the company said Tuesday. RTMP was...

Report: Cisco to elbow into server fray; Forthcoming server will bolster company's strategy to virtualize the whole datacenter.
January 20, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan Enterprise IT shops might soon get another option for virtualizing their entire datacenter. Cisco Systems is gearing up to sell a new, possibly disruptive server in the next few months, according to one report. The...

Eclipse PHP upgrade tackles object-oriented programming; Version 2.0 of the Eclipse PDT project also offers usability enhancements.
January 20, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill The Eclipse Foundation is releasing on Wednesday version 2.0 of its Eclipse PDT (PHP Development Tools) project, which adds object-oriented programming and usability features. PDT is an open-source development tool...

Open source developers ride the cloud; Nearly half of developers working on open source projects plan cloud offerings.
January 20, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Nearly half of developers working on open source projects plan to offer applications as Web services offerings using cloud providers, according to results of an Evans Data open source development survey being released on...

A developer's-eye view of smartphone platforms; As smartphones evolve into serious computers, the worlds of iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Nokia Symbian, Palm, and Windows Mobile offer developers new possibilities. Which world should you choose?(Company overview)
January 20, 2009... Byline: Peter Wayner Smartphone programming is booming. The little leash that lets your boss reach out and ruin your time off is turning into a platform of seemingly infinite possibilities. It's more than just iPhone applications that...

The cross-platform option: Web apps for smartphones; Tailoring a Web application for iPhone, BlackBerry, and other top devices has many advantages over costly native development, and new techniques and approaches are closing the functionality gap.
January 20, 2009... Byline: Peter Wayner Fred Grott, a programmer who specializes in smartphone applications, has two models for his business: He can write specialized applications in native code that take advantage of all of the features of a specific...

Hands-on video guide to Windows 7; Take a tour through 10 areas in which Microsoft has revamped its venerable OS' workings.
January 21, 2009... Byline: J. Peter Bruzzese Now that Microsoft has made the Windows 7 beta available for public download, many people are trying to figure out what's new and different. And many others not willing to risk their PCs by installing a beta OS...

Sun's open source Java move gets mixed reviews; Two years later, availability is up, but Sun remains in charge of its future.
January 21, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill In November 2006, Sun Microsystems began making all of its Java technology implementations open source, offering them under the GPL. More than two years later, reactions are mixed as to what exactly has been the impact...

Where should Obama spend his tech stimulus? Three thought leaders suggest where the money would do the most good.
January 21, 2009... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz Now that the excitement of the inauguration of a new president is over, the anticipation begins, especially in the high-tech community. Why? Because the new administration has promised to stimulate the U.S. economy...

Java mobile platform to get widget apps; Sun officials discuss Java On Device Portal, JavaFX Mobile, and other technologies aimed at boosting apps for handhelds.
January 21, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Emphasizing the growing importance of mobile device applications, Sun Microsystems is readying technologies to better enable the mobile trend, including Java On Device Portal (ODP), for widget applications, and the...

Microsoft offers download tool for Web developers; Web Platform Installer makes access easier to technologies such as Silverlight.
January 22, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Microsoft is offering a free download manager, Web Platform Installer (PI) 1.0, intended to make it simpler to install Microsoft Web developer technologies ranging from .Net Framework 3.5 to ASP.Net to Silverlight and...

Vista main culprit in Microsoft layoffs; Enterprise products enjoyed another quarter of double-digit growth.
January 22, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan Windows Vista has been trouble for Microsoft perhaps since the operating system's beginning. And this last quarter was certainly no exception. Despite a dip in client software revenue, however, one analyst says the...

The generation gap: Windows on multicore; Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 show their multiprocessing mettle in our dual-core and quad-core performance tests.
January 22, 2009... Byline: Randall C. Kennedy They say you can never be too young, or too rich. Or too handsome or too beautiful. And in the case of Intel-architecture PCs, it also seems that you can never have too many cores. With both the industry leader...

You don't know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz; Match your weekly tech news wits against our snarky quiz master.
January 23, 2009... Byline: Dan Tynan In case you missed it, we got a new president this week -- and the impact was felt across the Web, as well as across the world. But that wasn't the only tech news worth quizzing. Among other things, a 10-year-old...

Broadband stimulus passes its first hurdle; The House Committee on Energy and Commerce has approved $2.8 billion for broadband infrastructure grants.
January 23, 2009... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz The House committee on Energy and Commerce , which has oversight on broadband and energy matters, approved its portion of the Economic Recovery Legislation this week. The broadband components of the legislation...

Sun: Look for IDEs to tackle the cloud; At the Cloud Connect event, a Sun exec predicted that IDEs will start to accommodate building and deploying cloud apps, though he noted some security issues that must be resolved.
January 23, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Look for software development environments to make accommodations for cloud deployments, a Sun Microsystems official said on Thursday. During the Cloud Connect event in Mountain View, Calif., Lew Tucker, Sun vice...

You don't know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz; Match your weekly tech news wits against our snarky quiz master.
January 26, 2009... Byline: Dan Tynan In case you missed it, we got a new president this week -- and the impact was felt across the Web, as well as across the world. But that wasn't the only tech news worth quizzing. Among other things, a 10-year-old...

Talend eyes master data management, parallelism; Open source data integrator plans product expansion.
January 26, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Open source data integration vendor Talend is planning to release a master data management product by the end of the year, as well as to offer a massively parallel processing architecture in current products, according...

Wireless app development marching on; In a trend bucking the economic tide, enterprise wireless development is expected to increase in the coming year.
January 26, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill The battered economy is not stopping wireless developers from building enterprise applications for devices, according to an Evans Data study detailed on Monday. The survey of more than 400 wireless developers...

Test Center: How secure is Google Chrome? Google's shiny new open source Web browser is a frustrating blend of excellent security model, questionable decisions, and a dearth of critical security controls.
January 26, 2009... Byline: Roger A. Grimes Google Chrome was built from the ground up to be a more secure Web browser, and Google and its Chromium developers should be applauded for the attention they have brought to browser security. Google deserves much...

A Mac user's take on the Windows 7 UI; Microsoft tried to reinvent the desktop OS interface with Vista, to little fanfare. Does Windows 7 turn its UI around?
January 27, 2009... Byline: Galen Gruman After I installed Windows Vista in November 2006, I was perplexed. Why was it suddenly so much harder for me to use my computer? I knew XP cold, and I could use it without thinking. But with Vista, I felt a little lost...

Google brings Gmail offline; The offline version of Google's Web-based e-mail will allow users to access their inboxes, read and sort e-mails, and queue messages for delivery.
January 27, 2009... Byline: Pete Babb Google on Tuesday rolled out a new wrinkle in its Gmail service: Offline e-mail for businesses using Google Apps and for consumer Gmail users. The move was announced in a posting to the Google Enterprise blog. With...

Jetty Web server flies to Eclipse; Open source project moving to Eclipse Foundation.
January 28, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill The wheels are in motion to make Jetty, an open source Java Web server, an Eclipse Foundation project, said Webtide, the main developer of Jetty. The software is used as a server for rich Internet and embedded...

Cloud computing shapes up as big trend for 2009; Vendors ponder benefits, obstacles at event.
January 28, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill It is still early in the year, but cloud computing already is shaping up as a key trend for 2009. At SoftwareAG's Cloud Computing Innovation Day in Santa Clara, Calif., on Tuesday, executives from companies...

Test Center: How secure is Opera? Opera Software's underrated browser is rich in both features and granular security controls, but misses important Windows protections.
January 28, 2009... Byline: Roger A. Grimes Opera has long been an underrated, feature-rich browser worthy of greater attention and a larger market share. It runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, mobile phones, Nintendo gaming systems, and...

Study: IT pay up in three areas, down elsewhere; Research firm's CEO says 'we've never seen anything like this before'.(Report)
January 29, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan While salaries for IT skills on the whole dropped last quarter, according to a study by Foote Partners, three areas saw an increase in pay despite the troubled economy. The recent results of Foote's Foote Partners'...

Microsoft releases Web Sandbox under open source; Microsoft's technology for securing Web content is being offered under Apache license.
January 29, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Microsoft has made source code for its Live Labs Web Sandbox project for securing Web content through isolation available via open source under the Apache License 2.0, according to a report this week on Microsoft's Port...

Microsoft, Infosys focus on supply chain; The partnership aims to help manufacturers build next-generation supply chains offering improved performance and better visibility across their enterprises and trading partners.
January 29, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Microsoft and IT services provider Infosys Technologies revealed on Thursday an alliance around improving supply chain visibility and collaboration. Announced at the Microsoft Global High Tech Summit 2009 event in...

Test Center: How secure is Internet Explorer? The world's most popular browser is also the most frequently attacked, but comes with controls and management capabilities other browsers can't match.
January 29, 2009... Byline: Roger A. Grimes Although Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) Web browser has lost market share to worthy competitors over the last few years, it is still the market leader and remains the browser to beat. IE has many significant...

You don't know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz; Match your weekly tech news wits against our snarky quiz master.
January 30, 2009... Byline: Dan Tynan Despite bearish earnings and big layoffs, any week where there're rumors of a new iPhone can't all be bad. Apple rumors, rogue road signs, new and/or improved browsers, and the ever expanding world of Google made it a...

Microsoft's advice to the Obama administration; Susie Adams discusses how Obama can bolster cloud computing and the new president's lofty tech goals.(Interview)
January 30, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan Now that the Obama administration has officially taken over, it's faced with technology problems all too common in today's enterprise. Chief among those, perhaps, is the goal of advancing the government's own IT...

IBM expands SaaS ecosystem; Big Blue builds out world of SaaS and cloud-based solutions via ISV, university partnerships.
January 30, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan IBM on Friday detailed a new ISV partnership, a move which, on the heels of cloud-related agreements penned last week with several universities, advances Big Blue's cloud and SaaS realm. "The grand vision is about...

Rails 2.3 preview eyed for Sunday; Multiple improvements planned for Web framework upgrade, including Rack integration and more efficient routing.
January 30, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill A release candidate for version 2.3 of the popular Ruby on Rails Web application development framework is being targeted for release this Sunday, the founder of the project, David Heinemeier Hansson, said on Friday. ...

Test Center: How secure is Safari? Apple's Web browser has many good protections, but lacks security zones, granular controls, and strong cipher support.
January 30, 2009... Byline: Roger A. Grimes Apple's Safari, released for the Windows platform in June 2007, is the second newest browser on Windows, behind Google's Chrome. (Naturally, Apple's browser also runs on OS X, and on iPhone and iPod Touch devices in...