Application development

MySQL diaspora

It’s been 13 months since Sun Microsystems announced its  plan for a $1 billion buyout of MySQL and almost a year to the date since the deal closed. Now, the MySQL executive diaspora is on. Monty Widenius, one of the tech geniuses behind the open source oriented database left last week. Former MySQL CEO and front man Marten Mickos soon followed. (David Axmark, Widenius’ co-founder, had already hit the trail last October.) Continued »

Microsoft fills in some cloudware bits with Azure

As expected, Microsoft started to talk up some details of its cloud computing strategy Monday at its Professional Developers Conference.

Amidst all the cloud talk, there were a few deliverables mentioned in Monday’s keynotes including activation codes for four new Azure Services outlined by Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie on Monday morning. Developers and VARs can use those codes to poke around and try out the hosted services.

Continued »

Salesforce.com crashes Microsoft’s party

After successfully pulling off a guerrilla marketing stunt at VMworld last month, Microsoft is now finding out what it’s like to be on the other end of such a campaign.

As the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference kicked off this morning in Los Angeles, bicycle riders outside the convention center distributed T-shirts and fliers promoting the Salesforce.com development platform, Force.com, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Microsoft Blog. They also gave out donuts.

Mmm, donuts.
 Windows Azure. Azure, formerly referred to as Windows Cloud, will also face competition from the Google App Engine and Amazon Web Services.

Could hosted services spur tension between distributor and partner?

San Diego — Ingram Micro CEO Greg Spierkel faced a funny question from partners at the VentureTech Network (VTN) conference here Thursday morning: “What do we do that drives you crazy?”

Spierkel’s answer?

“Buying from my competitors.” Continued »

Cisco’s Jabber acquisition heats up the collaboration race

Cisco Systems has acquired open source instant messaging and presence company Jabber less than a month after it picked up e-mail and calendaring software provider PostPath. The move signifies Cisco’s ongoing moves to reach out of the network and onto the desktop.

Terms of the deal have not yet been announced. Cisco executives were unavailable to discuss the impact of the deal on Cisco or Jabber partners.

Though Cisco already owns instant messaging and presence features, Jabber’s applications are open source and based on its own Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). These applications are therefore easier to integrate into emailing, calendaring and other Web 2.0 software across the board, giving Cisco a leg up in the collaboration race against Microsoft and IBM. Continued »

Ubuntu goes mobile

Canonical on Tuesday posted its Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device (MID) Edition to its website.

This is a developers’ release based on the desktop edition of the Linux fan-favorite Ubuntu operating system. The release should help developers tailor apps to smaller screens

Ubuntu MID will start to follow the usual Ubuntu six-month release cycle starting with the Ubuntu 8.10 release.

MySQL switches version control

MySQL is switching version control ships, leaving BitKeeper for Bazaar, an open-source version control system.

“Both the main MySQL server code and the code for many ancillary projects have been converted to Bazaar and are published on Launchpad,” blogged Kaj Arno, MySQL’s vice president of community. (Sun Microsystems bought MySQL earlier this year.) Continued »

The impending cloud

For many VARs, cloud-based computing is a worrisome prospect.

The notion of functions served up direct to users from a vendor-owned-and-operated cloud poses a huge disintermediation threat to partners, as Richard Warren, of North Carolina Technologies told SearchITChannel.com, earlier this week.

 But the cloud vendors still need to prove themselves able to fully compete in a world where 99.9% of users need remote or offline capabilities. They need to work on their data and apps even if they’re not (gasp) connected to the Web.

Google execs say they will prove their technology worthy of the enterprise, blazing the trail with the Google Appliance. Google Gears is starting to bring offline capability to the company’s consumer and business services — Google Reader is “Gears enabled” as is Google Docs. (The spreadsheet and presentations so far  support just view-only offline access.) Continued »

Next from Dan Bricklin: A wiki-spreadsheet combo

Spreadsheet pioneer Dan Bricklin is at it again. The father of VisiCalc is now working to bring the spreadsheet’s productivity to workgroups.

Bricklin, in his trademark flannel shirt (it’s nearly 100 degrees out!) said hello before heading into Ross Mayfield’s Enterprise 2.0 keynote. Mayfield is chairman, prez and co-founder of Socialtext– the company working on Bricklin’s “Social Spreadsheet.” Continued »

Some takeaways from Bill Gates’ finale

Bill Gates just finished what Microsoft has billed as his last public speech as a company full timer. Gates is stepping down from day-to-day involvement as of July 1.

At TechEd 2008 part one (for developers) Gates hit on some familiar themes and presided over demos of upcoming modeling, database, and development technologies. Continued »