Google is following a common pattern used in the IT industry - get something out there and then tweak it as necessary. I'm not sure how all of this will play out. I do know that when the elephants start fighting a lot of dust will be raised. Only when that dust settles will we have a b...Sep. 15, 2008 11:54 AM EDT Reads: 5,791
Cloud computing is an emerging technology in which data – documents, email messages, photographs, etc. – and applications – word processing and spreadsheets, for instance – are stored in cyberspace and not on an individual’s computer. So if you use a web-based email, like Yahoo, Gmail,...
Gartner now says worldwide IT spending should be up 8% this year to $3.4 trillion. But if you factor out the vagaries in the US dollar the number is closer to 4.5%. Gartner figures software should be up 10% and service up 9.4%. It reckons that “Software-as-a-service/cloud computing, Se...
Why are Hollywood blockbusters so expensive to produce? Hollywood studios often have to create everything from scratch, and most of the time, have to recreate entire worlds for every different movie. That might work in the entertainment industry or in art, but if IT services outside co...
We are seeing more being written about Cloud computing and cloud platforms today, and there is strong validation that the future of computing will include significant innovation and value in web/cloud platforms. Microsoft’s Cloud strategy is materializing, and as part of our overall So...
Google opened its doors in September 1998. But, as the Google official site phrases it, "The exact date when we celebrate our birthday has moved around over the years, depending on when people feel like having cake." Maybe, now that Chrome is released, instead of waiting till the 27th ...
Andy Warhol's prophecy was fulfilled with the advent of MTV's programming and widespread reality television. We're now seeing a new kind of micro-fame which lasts well beyond 15 minutes. You don't have to have thousands of friends on My Space, Facebook or Twitter to feel like a "Webleb...
Last week we launched a new column called “Web API Expert,” in essence, to provide a deeper focus on the emerging number of Web APIs out there, and show how to leverage them for mashups or other applications. This is the most exciting and interesting area of the emerging Web right now,...
Having your brand name used as a generic term, is of course, a mixed blessing for a company. On the one hand, it’s great to have your name become the common shorthand for an entire category. It implies acceptance that your product is the standard by which all others in the category are...
Over the past five years, the anti-virus market has experienced tremendous growth as many new technologies have emerged in response to current threat conditions. What was once a market consisting of very few players is now a multi-billion dollar enterprise consisting of numerous compan...
As many e-commerce sites celebrate their 10th birthday, web stores are facing the reality that the Internet is changing and current sites need to be refurbished. From left-hand navigation and search to product catalog and product detail, from the cart and check out to the general desig...
This Session will demonstrate why social networking is more than just marketing buzz; it is a relational model that has been used for years to define the way human beings interact, and it is the next step in the natural evolution of the Web. 
ActivIdentity announced that Jacques Kerrest has accepted the position of Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. In this capacity, Mr. Kerrest will oversee all of ActivIdentity’s financial and operational functions, including finance and accounting, financial planning and...
One of the things I like most about working at Facebook is the ability to launch products that are (almost) immediately used by millions of people. Unlike a three-guys-in-a-garage startup, we don't have the luxury of scaling out infrastructure to keep pace with user growth; when your f...
In its relatively short lifetime, the World Wide Web has had a dramatic impact on the way information is presented and shared. Before the Internet and the Web were available, "big media" companies invested heavily in expensive research, writing, editorial, printing, post-production, an...
I've noticed the Twitter API is very slow and unreliable. Requests often take 10+ seconds to return. Sometimes they timeout with no response at all. I put together some monitoring tools to see exactly how slow and unreliable the API really is (when it is even available!). This is obvio...
We've seen the hype – dynamic applications created by combining remote services that combine both application behavior and data into on-demand business applications that are as easy to change as they are to create. The reality was more evolutionary than revolutionary, but today we are ...
Do Google's servers dream at night? That's a question raised by a fascinating short story just published by George Dyson, the author of "Darwin Among the Machines" and a well-known futurist. The story just appeared online in Edge, having not found a publisher in a fiction venue because...
The pressure is on to keep pace with Web 2.0 entrants into the marketplace. Rewriting is expensive; adding AJAX widgets results in a complex, unmaintainable application. Both require you to hire scarce JavaScript developers. Google Web Toolkit -- the SDK that allows you to write AJAX i...
Is Web 3.0 yet another buzzword, or is it a real turnaround in our industry? Web 1.0 was the good old web of the 1990s. In those times, all client-side changes were the result of a server round-trip. The Internet was ramping up in popularity. Web 2.0 has been a little more than just a ...
When talking about the 'web' what are we referring to? For most people it's what can be experienced through their web browser including HTML, audio and video streaming, Flash-based animation, or rich Internet Application (RIA) interfaces. The key to this perspective is the web browser,...
It's what you don't see about the emerging Web that has everyone excited these days. Namely, it's the powerful application programming interfaces, or APIs. APIs are nothing new and have been traditionally cryptic and difficult to use. However, the advent of Web services along with the ...
With cloud computing becoming ever more prevalent in the consumer space for rapidly scaling Web 2.0 applications, grid computing finally delivers similarly efficient scalability to the business world. Grid computing is an impressive, confident, powerful technology model, winning high-p...
As I've been stating for the past five years: if you want to provide real value to your enterprise, SOA should extend out of the firewall and into the Internet. However, this was not universally accepted by the rank-and-file SOA guys. Generally speaking, most viewed SOA as something th...
