InfoWorld.com articles from March 2009

InfoWorld.com archives from March 2009

You don't know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz; Match your weekly tech news wits against our snarky quiz master.
March 2, 2009... Byline: Dan Tynan It's the Land of the Lost this week here at quiz central. Among other things, a major U.S. corporation lost track of its severance payments, Congress suffered a Twitter-induced loss of attention during this week's...

Desktop Linux: Ready for the mainstream; Governments and major businesses can adopt Linux for many users, rather than pay the high costs of Vista or Windows 7.
March 2, 2009... Byline: Galen Gruman It's been a decade since Linux proponents first argued their OS was ready for mainstream adoption. Yet for all intents and purposes, Linux remains nonexistent on "regular" people's desks. Sure, developers and other...

Cloud efforts examined by Microsoft and others; Representatives of major companies like Google, Sun, and Salesforce offered perspectives on the hosted apps concept, seeing both potential and problems.
March 2, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Established vendors weighed in on cloud computing at Microsoft's Silicon Valley offices on Friday afternoon, citing it as a dramatic shift but offering caution as well. During a panel session at the TechCrunch "Whose...

Eclipse Riena offered for rich client apps; Distributed enterprise system capabilities featured, including UI development.
March 2, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill The Eclipse Foundation announced on Monday availability of Eclipse Riena 1.0, a platform for developing multitier rich client applications based on the Eclipse Rich Client Platform and the Eclipse Equinox OSGi...

Hopeful entrepreneurs look for warm reception at Demo 09; Cloud computing startups unveil new products and services at the conference in Palm Desert.(Conference news)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz Like the proverbial mail carrier who travels through rain and sleet and snow to keep their appointed rounds, entrepreneurs will not be stopped by the worst of economic storms. And so it is that more than 60...

Google sets up Code Labs for developers; API policies key to effort to allow Google engineering teams opportunities to explore ideas in their early stages, while also involving development community.
March 3, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Looking to offer assistance on APIs, Google on Tuesday announced Code Labs for early-stage developer products. The goal of Code Labs is to give Google engineering teams an opportunity to explore ideas, as well as let...

Linux Foundation moves on training; The Foundation wants to train recently laid-off developers to help them compete for the rising number of Linux-related jobs; it is also taking over the Linux.com Web site.
March 3, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill The Linux Foundation is moving on two fronts this week, offering Linux training programs for developers and administrators and taking over the Linux.com informational Web site. Noting that developers are being laid...

Test Center review: The mightiest ThinkPad; Lenovo's beastly ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation is a laptop in name only, for better and worse.
March 3, 2009... Byline: Randall C. Kennedy "The Beast" is the nickname I've picked for the Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds, which has dominated my test bench for the past two weeks. A massive machine -- my test unit measures a healthy 16.1 by 12.2 by 2.1 inches --...

The why and how of voice portals; Beyond saving money for business, IT can leverage voice portals for better functionality.
March 4, 2009... Byline: Leon Erlanger For years, IT and business have heard the sexy promise of "IP convergence," which would allow all sorts of voice- and video-enabled applications to appear in business. However, for most organizations, this...

AccuRev looks to woo ClearCase users; The ClearCase Upgrade Program will let ClearCase users adopt AccuRev's SCCM platform for less than the cost of the IBM Rational contract.
March 4, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Seeking to invade a competitor's turf in the software change and configuration management space, AccuRev unveiled this week its ClearCase Upgrade Program, enabling ClearCase users to purchase the AccuRev SCCM system for...

Schwartz: Not worried about Sun's future; Sun CEO's blog entry expresses confidence in the role of information technology and the relevance of Sun's products in the current difficult economic climate.
March 5, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Sun Microsystems President and CEO Jonathan Schwartz is not worried about the relevance of what Sun offers or about the role of information technology, despite the current difficult economic climate. In the first of...

Test Center guide: Virtualization for the rest of us; Virtualizing servers in a small to midsize business reaps many rewards, and the virtualization is free. Here's how.
March 5, 2009... Byline: Paul Venezia As the virtualization wave washes over datacenter after datacenter, it almost seems that small businesses have been left high and dry. And with licenses for enterprise-grade server virtualization solutions costing tens...

You don't know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz; Match your weekly tech news wits against our snarky quiz master.
March 6, 2009... Byline: Dan Tynan Well, at least the world didn't end this week -- no thanks to rogue asteroids and economic turmoil. In fact, there was good news to be had: Microsoft has a new search service, Facebook unveiled new features, the nation...

Netuitive integrates VMware into monitoring tools; New incarnation of Netuitive SI monitors virtual infrastructures and drills down into apps.
March 6, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan Netuitive plans to detail on Monday the latest version of its Netuitive SI, which can now operate in VMware infrastructures. "We've fully integrated all our virtualization monitoring into our core SI product, and...

Meet the nation's first CIO; Vivek Kundra's track record indicates a discipline for project ROI and a passion for making cool technologies useful.
March 6, 2009... Byline: Galen Gruman In a surprise announcement, President Obama has named the nation's first federal CIO: Vivek Kundra, CTO of the District of Columbia. (He has yet to name the position he did promise he would create: the first national...

You don't know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz; Match your weekly tech news wits against our snarky quiz master.
March 9, 2009... Byline: Dan Tynan Well, at least the world didn't end this week -- no thanks to rogue asteroids and economic turmoil. In fact, there was good news to be had: Microsoft has a new search service, Facebook unveiled new features, the nation...

10 IT agenda items for the first U.S. CIO; Obama's appointment of Vivek Kundra marks an important first step for rectifying the nation's concerns about IT.
March 9, 2009... Byline: Paul Venezia Last week, President Barack Obama made good on his promise to appoint a national tech leader for the United States. As the country's first-ever CIO, Vivek Kundra faces significant challenges modernizing the nation's IT...

Where today's datacenters have gone wrong; Afcom CEO Jill Eckhaus discusses how datacenters got so crowded and why they're finally getting the respect they deserve.(Interview)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan Today's datacenters are downright cramped, yet forced to continue absorbing more technologies and tapping into the latest trends, all while maximizing efficiency and reducing costs. The current recession makes now the...

Microsoft heralds Silverlight-Eclipse link; Plug-in technology links Eclipse open source tools platform to Silverlight multimedia application development platform.
March 9, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Microsoft is touting support for its Silverlight multimedia application technology in the Eclipse open source tools platform. In a blog post late Friday night, S. Somasegar, senior vice president of the Microsoft...

Stratus fits fault-tolerance into VMware environment; Company bundles VMware Infrastructure Foundation with its own ftServer to help customers get the most out of their servers and better manage the complexity of virtualization.
March 9, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan Stratus is aiming to offer the same high availability in one server that usually requires two by rolling VMware's Infrastructure Foundation together with its own system for fault-tolerance. The company has created...

Hewlett-Packard: Buy now to prep for recovery; Analyst: IT is being very careful about how they spend their money because being accountable is as important as being prepared for a recovery.
March 10, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan Hewlett-Packard will unwrap on Tuesday several new products and services that aim to help enterprise IT spend prudently now so it can be better prepared to profit once the economic recovery begins. A Gartner...

Intel wants developers to think parallel; Apps need to accommodate multicore and many-core CPUs and developers need to learn how to best leverage the power of parallelism, a company official stresses.
March 10, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Software developers were exhorted to "think parallel" Tuesday by an Intel official who stressed a changing paradigm in which applications accommodate many CPU cores. Speaking during a keynote presentation at the SD...

Microsoft to accelerate relational capabilities for the cloud; SQL Data Services to leverage SQL Server protocol in bid to boost functionality.
March 10, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Microsoft will expose the network protocol from its SQL Server database as the service protocol in SDS (SQL Data Services), the cloud-based version of the database, thus enabling customers to use a full relational model...

A SaaS app that's free unless it delivers value; eGain's new 'solution-as-a-service' flips the application purchasing paradigm: The vendor must demonstrate what benefits it brings to the customer.
March 10, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan Imagine an application that you don't have to pay a penny for unless it provides measurable value to your company -- and it's up to the vendor to prove that. IT shops the world over would be a lot better off, though...

SpringSource upgrades Groovy, Grails developer technologies; Improvements include performance enhancements, OSGi backing, and Java build system support.
March 10, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill SpringSource is offering on Tuesday upgrades to the Groovy dynamic language and Grails Web application framework with such features as improved performance and OSGi support. The upgrades include Groovy 1.6 and Grails...

State of SOA pondered again; Panelists at software conference consider what has transpired for services concept.(Conference news)(Discussion)
March 10, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Debate over the status of SOA continues to rage, with panelists at a Silicon Valley software conference Monday evening pondering the topic. Representatives from software designer IDesign, author and consultant...

Test Center preview: Windows Server 2008 R2; A better, stronger Hyper-V isn't the only reason to look closely at this wide-ranging Windows Server update.
March 10, 2009... Byline: Sean McCown The noisiest new feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 promises to be live virtual machine migration, as Microsoft seizes the chance to show that Hyper-V is closing the gap with VMware Infrastructure. But there are many...

Mock debate ponders developer methodologies; IBM officials push agile development as a better alternative to waterfall-style development at the SD West 2009 conference.(Conference news)
March 11, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Proponents of agile programming from IBM staged a mock debate Wednesday, pitting agile methodologies against the traditional waterfall method to stress the benefits of agile and its short, iterative development cycles as...

Update: Open source ERP on Amazon EC2? Compiere's Amazon-hosted virtual computing environment helps customers reap cloud benefits for ERP tasks.
March 11, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan Compiere stepped into the cloud by making its open source ERP wares available on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Customers can now tap into the Amazon-hosted virtual computing environment, dubbed Compiere...

IBM hashing out WebSphere plans; More componentization and additional dynamic language support eyed for the application server platform.
March 12, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill IBM plans more componentizing of its WebSphere Java application server as well as additional dynamic language support, a company executive said on Thursday. Interviewed at the SD West 2009 conference in Santa Clara,...

Soasta unwraps BrowserFarm for cloud testing; New load-testing option enables customers to gauge browsers against Web applications.
March 12, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan A little less than one month after revealing its service for Web applications, cloud testing provider Soasta announces BrowserFarm for load-testing. As part of its CloudTest On-Demand offering, BrowserFarm enables...

Test Center review: Sprint's Palm Treo Pro and the debut of Microsoft's IE Mobile 6; Microsoft's Internet Explorer Mobile 6 browser is more usable than its predecessor and a better fit with Web-based business apps, but it crashed on complex sites.
March 12, 2009... Byline: Mike Heck On March 15 the Sprint Palm Treo Pro officially goes on sale, and I've been testing a production unit for the past few weeks. It's basically the same Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone as the unlocked Treo Pro that I tested in...

You don't know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz; Match your weekly tech news wits against our snarky quiz master.
March 16, 2009... Byline: Dan Tynan Cross your fingers, toss some salt over your shoulder, and spin around three times because it's another Friday the 13th quiz. Luckily, while the questions may vex you, they won't hex you. Venerable technologies, heavenly...

16 ways IT can do less with less; Put the days of doing more with less behind you by cutting back on the overhead of IT.(Company overview)
March 16, 2009... Byline: Dan Tynan Tough times call for tough measures. Layoffs and cutbacks are rampant. Even if your IT budget is relatively stable, you will probably be asked to do more with less. But perhaps a better solution would be to do less...

How the recession is reshaping IT ops; Tight tech budgets are altering IT in perhaps permanent ways. Datacenter mangers must rethink the future.
March 16, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan Economic conditions may be even worse than they appear, and that spells significant changes for IT. Smart CTOs and CIOs are no doubt listening when the great economic minds of our times publicly predict what the...

CA unwraps storage software for cutting IT cost, complexity; New SRM wares bring the promise of easier administration and automation.
March 16, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan In keeping with the ongoing trend of IT cost-cutting, CA on Monday detailed new storage software that it claims reduces administration expenses while also improving data protection. CA's news comes after...

Microsoft to highlight Silverlight 3 technology; Mix09 conference features developer and designer offerings from software giant.(Conference news)
March 16, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Microsoft will tout at the Mix09 conference in Las Vegas this week its planned Silverlight 3 rich Internet application technology along with a host of other developer-related offerings, according to the conference Web...

Cisco Unified Computing shakes up how IT buys hardware; UCS may help Cisco gain a foothold in server and storage purchasing decisions.
March 17, 2009... Byline: Doug Dineley, Tom Sullivan Cisco Systems just might be charting the course to a new way for IT to buy servers, storage, and networking hardware. As anticipated, on Monday Cisco detailed its Unified Computing System, which...

Google boosts speed in Chrome browser; Beta release adds multiple features, including autofill and autoscroll.
March 17, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Google unveiled on Tuesday a new beta release of its Chrome browser, offering improvements in speed and capabilities, such as full page zoom. Detailed in the new Google Chrome Blog, the beta also features form...

Mainsoft links Microsoft SharePoint, IBM Jazz; Mainsoft's integration package facilitates collaboration on application development.
March 17, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill In partnership with IBM, Mainsoft on Tuesday will ship an integration package that links Microsoft's SharePoint collaboration platform and IBM's Rational Jazz system for application lifecycle management, enabling...

SpringSource offers Java tool suite; Eclipse and OSGi are leveraged in the SpringSource Tool Suite for building Spring-powered Java apps.
March 17, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill SpringSource, developer of the popular Spring Framework for Java development, on Tuesday will release SpringSource Tool Suite (STS) 2.0, an Eclipse-based platform for building Spring-powered Java applications. The...

Test Center: E-mail security services square off; From spam-busting to content management, we test the limits of hosted e-mail security offerings from AppRiver, MessageLabs, Microsoft, MX Logic, SECNAP, and Trend Micro.
March 17, 2009... Byline: Logan G. Harbaugh E-mail is the primary conduit of information for many organizations, both internally and with the outside world. Unfortunately, e-mail is also a prime channel for annoyances such as spam, as well as security...

7 easy ways to cut IT costs you may have overlooked; These methods don't require a big investment or a lot of time to try.
March 18, 2009... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz There are literally hundreds of ways to reduce IT costs, and most IT people have heard it all, from the lofty "aligning IT with business strategy" to the back-to-the-Earth "greening of the datacenter." But...

If IBM and Sun merge, watch out Oracle and SAP; Along with Sun, IBM would get Java -- and that could spell trouble for companies that rely heavily on it.
March 18, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan IBM and Sun Microsystems are said to be in acquisition talks, and if such a deal actually happens, it could change the course of not only IBM's but Oracle's and SAP's use of Java. The Wall Street Journal reported...

Microsoft cites design updates as economic booster; At Mix09 conference, company also touts offline capabilities for Silverlight 3.(Conference news)
March 18, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Rather than being a time for retreat, the current tough economy presents an opportunity for designers to shine, a Microsoft official stressed Wednesday at the company's Mix09 conference for software designers and...

Microsoft cites developer, security boosts in IE8; Company's Mix09 conference keynote stresses CSS support, malware protection.(Conference news)
March 19, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Microsoft hailed its newly released Internet Explorer 8 browser as a boon for developers and for its security measures during a presentation at the Mix09 conference on Thursday. "With IE8, developers have a great...

Microsoft opens Azure to PHP developers; Microsoft's vision is to open up its cloud platform to even more languages.
March 19, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Microsoft at the Mix09 conference on Wednesday revealed several moves intended to bolster its Windows Azure cloud computing platform, adding support for PHP application development and native code as well as full trust...

Spring founder downplays rumored IBM-Sun merger; Java platform being driven more by developers and open source these days, Spring's Rod Johnson says.
March 19, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill The founder of the popular Spring Framework for Java, Rod Johnson, said Thursday he does not anticipate much impact if a possible acquisition of Java founder Sun by Java advocate IBM comes to fruition. In an...

iPhone 3.0: An InfoWorld guided tour; Apple's forthcoming update fills a number of important holes for users; here's a sneak peek at the key new features.
March 19, 2009... Byline: Doug Dineley As much as iPhone users love their smartphone, many would like much more from it. Apple's little ball and chain has been criticized for sins ranging from the inability to cut and paste and save attachments to the...

You don't know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz; Match your weekly tech news wits against our snarky quiz master.
March 23, 2009... Byline: Dan Tynan Gotten any taxpayer-funded million-dollar bonuses lately? Neither have we. The good news is nobody wants to tar and feather us. But though it may seem like it, the AIG bonus debacle is not the only thing that happened...

How to manage Macs: An expert guide for IT; Ignore the naysayers. Today's Macintosh can fit very nicely into your business, if you follow these guidelines.
March 23, 2009... Byline: Mel Beckman Macs as desktops and servers are increasing their penetration in business, even in enterprises. Power users like Mac OS X's interface, bundled apps, and desktop and notebook hardware build quality. Application...

Why even IT pros are demanding Macs; A consistent platform, strong cloud support, and a great server all appeal to IT.
March 23, 2009... Byline: Mel Beckman The rise of the Mac in the enterprise is increasing because users are finding ever more ingenious ways to work with Apple's accommodating platform. A mid-2008 Yankee Group survey of 750 senior IT executives found nearly...

Eclipse to detail platform, SOA plans at conference; Microsoft, IBM to ponder IDEs at EclipseCon 2009, while Eclipse will show off progress of its E4 platform.(Conference news)
March 23, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill The Eclipse Foundation will cite at the EclipseCon 2009 conference this week the latest developments in areas ranging from the core Eclipse platform to SOA and modeling, including plans to make the platform available as...

Update: VMware unveils 'cost per app' calculator; Latest ROI calculator measures 'virtual machine density' rather than licensing costs.
March 23, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan VMware on Monday made available an online service that it claims can help users evaluate the true costs of server virtualization expenses. The VMware Cost-Per-Application Calculator enables users to estimate...

Microsoft, Novell ponder opportunities in sour economy; At conference, companies also cite open source efforts.(Conference news)
March 24, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill In separate discussions at InfoWorld's Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) on Tuesday, executives from Microsoft and Novell cited opportunities presented by the current down economy. At Microsoft, the vendor has...

Rhodes unifies smartphone app dev; Using HTML and Ruby, developers can build for systems including iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and Android.
March 24, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill In a move to unify software development for mobile systems, Rhomobile will launch on Tuesday version 1.0 of Rhodes, an open source framework to build applications for major smartphone operating systems. With...

Stallman looks to fight JavaScript trap; Browsers can run non-free software without users' knowledge, he stresses.
March 24, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Richard Stallman, president of the Free Software Foundation, is championing an effort to thwart the "JavaScript trap," in which users could unknowingly be running non-free programs in their browser. In an article...

Today's IT spending survey laced with a little hope; A limited number of IT shops will increase spending in 2009.
March 24, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan Wouldn't it be nice to read about an IT spending study that boasted good news? TNS Global on Tuesday published a report that it claims brings some reason to hope: A small percentage of IT shops are projecting increased...

Open source and SaaS offerings rethink the database; Key-value repositories and other alternatives take aim at simplicity, scalability, and cloud services.
March 24, 2009... Byline: Peter Wayner The world of low-rent key-value storage silos is exploding. Here's a list of some of the more prominent new projects: Thrift, a tool that Facebook.com built and donated to the Apache software project, isn't really...

Test Center: Slacker databases break all the old rules; Amazon SimpleDB, Apache CouchDB, Google App Engine, and Persevere, offering far greater simplicity than SQL, may have a better way of storing data for your Web app.
March 24, 2009... Byline: Peter Wayner So you've got some data to store. In the past, the answer was simple: Hook up an official database, pour the data into it, and let the machine sort everything out for you while you spend your time writing big checks to...

Nick Carr: The many ways cloud computing will disrupt IT; The author of "IT Doesn't Matter" and "The Big Switch" on the inevitable transition to utility computing, Web 2.0, and why IT would be wise to brace itself.(Interview)
March 25, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan Whether you prefer the term "utility computing" or "the cloud," the industry is headed in that direction, however slowly, and the transition will have a multifaceted impact on IT in some ways productive, others...

Why WiMax should be on the CIO's radar; High speeds, freedom from carriers' app limitations will be chief advantages -- when broad coverage finally arrives.
March 25, 2009... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz Despite the billions of dollars required to roll out a brand-new wireless network, the slowdown in the economy, and the reduced share price, the president of Clearwire, Barry West, is optimistic about the future...

Amazon stresses cloud opportunities for developers; EclipseCon event also features introduction of a plugin linking Amazon's cloud with Eclipse's platform.(Conference news)
March 25, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Cloud computing and opportunities it presents for application developers were stressed Wednesday by Amazon and a user of its cloud service during a presentation at the EclipseCon 2009 conference. Amazon at the Santa...

Microsoft holds hands with but won't join Eclipse; Despite another appearance at open source tool organization's conference, the software giant still will not become a member.(Conference news)
March 25, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Microsoft remains one of the few major holdouts to membership in the Eclipse Foundation for open source tooling. On Thursday at the EclipseCon 2009 conference, the company will participate in a joint presentation with...

Red Hat CEO questions desktop's relevance in Linux debate; New paradigms, such as cloud computing, are changing the desktop scene, CEO Jim Whitehurst argues.
March 25, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Linux has achieved success on servers, but can it make a go of it on the desktop? Panelists at a technical conference Tuesday evening debated the question, with a Red Hat official wondering whether the issue is even...

Test Center review: An IP KVM for the little guy; The AdderView CATxIP 1000 packs just enough punch at a sweet price for SMBs and remote offices.
March 25, 2009... Byline: Brian Chee IP KVMs have revolutionized datacenter management, granting IT unprecedented remote access to the datacenter via a Web browser. Collocation services just wouldn’t be practical without IP KVMs and other types of...

Gartner: Cloud spending to skyrocket in 2009; Cloud computing revenue will soar faster than expected and will exceed $150 billion within five years, Gartner report predicts.
March 26, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan IT shops are turning to the cloud even faster than expected, at least according to Gartner, and other firms had already predicted hearty adoption throughout the next few years. Gartner on Thursday released a report...

Microsoft, IBM: IDEs to evolve; Expect development environments to accommodate cloud computing, multiple CPUs, and other concepts, officials say at conference.(Conference news)
March 26, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill IDEs (integrated development environments) have stayed basically the same over the years and now it is time for them to evolve to accommodate concepts like cloud computing, dignitaries from Microsoft and IBM said during...

You don't know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz; Match your weekly tech news wits against our snarky quiz master.
March 27, 2009... Byline: Dan Tynan YouTube bans, Twitter breakups, and Google blues are some of the items that made up the week that just was. Also: Facebook loses face, and late-night pundits enter the space race. Are you truly in the know? Prove it by...

IBM leading 'Open Cloud Manifesto' charge; Cloud vendors confirm it was IBM that reached out seeking their participation.
March 27, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan Let's put the speculation about who's behind the Open Cloud Manifesto to rest right now: InfoWorldhas learned that IBM is the driving force. That's according to two cloud vendors who said they signed the document. ...

Ruby on Rails 2.3 arrives; The latest version of the open source Web framework is 'out the door,' according to Rails site.
March 27, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Ruby on Rails 2.3, the latest version of the popular open source Web development framework, is now available, according to the Rails Web site. A posting earlier this month revealed the release. [ InfoWorld...

You don't know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz; Match your weekly tech news wits against our snarky quiz master.
March 30, 2009... Byline: Dan Tynan YouTube bans, Twitter breakups, and Google blues are some of the items that made up the week that just was. Also: Facebook loses face, and late-night pundits enter the space race. Are you truly in the know? Prove it by...

10 sure-fire ways to kill telecommuting; IT can prevent your company from losing control or supporting slackers with these techniques.
March 30, 2009... Byline: Bob Lewis Isaac Asimov got there first. In "The Naked Sun," he envisioned Solaria, a civilization whose telepresence technologies are as good as being face-to-face -- superior, in fact, according to the Solarians, who have...

JBoss CTO leaving the company; The executive, who praised the success of the Red Hat merger, will stay on as a contractor.
March 30, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill The CTO of JBoss, Sacha Labourey, will be leaving the company Monday. In an interview on Friday, Labourey, who is based in Switzerland, said he will leave the Red Hat-owned JBoss organization after having helped...

Test Center: Intel's Nehalem simply sizzles; In a range of tests, the new quad-core Xeon processor shows huuuuge performance gains.
March 30, 2009... Byline: Paul Venezia Intel's new Nehalem Xeon CPUs, which are being introduced in countless one- and two-socket servers and workstations today, have already generated a lot of heat. While introducing the new processors to technical...

Reporter's notebook: Sundown for Sun? A brash upstart-turned-industry-stalwart has provided drama over the years, but became too tied to its technology.
March 31, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill It looks like an old friend of mine, Sun Microsystems, may be going the way of the dinosaur. Sort of, anyway. Or maybe just transformed. We all have to wait and see. With continued rumors floating around that IBM may...

HP unwraps Cloud Assure; Hewlett-Packard unveils new products and services to help customers with the availability, performance, and security of cloud-based resources.
March 31, 2009... Byline: Tom Sullivan Hewlett-Packard on Tuesday detailed new services and software that it claims can help businesses turn to the cloud, namely by boosting security, performance, and availability. HP put the new offerings under the...

Microsoft bolsters cloud app development; .Net Services cloud app dev platform enhancements focus on standards.
March 31, 2009... Byline: Paul Krill Microsoft began offering Tuesday a preview of enhancements to the company's .Net Services platform for building cloud-based applications, focusing on Web standards and interoperability, the company said. .Net...