RIM BlackBerry Bold Comes Up a Little Short

RIM's BlackBerry Bold smartphone is a powerful device with a lot of storage, rich multimedia capabilities and excellent audio. But the BlackBerry Bold disappoints in several areas and, in a highly competitive smartphone space, falls behind other devices, such as the Apple iPhone and the Android-based T1 smartphone from T-Mobile and Google.The article demonstrates vividly how competitive the smart phone market is. When BlackBerry Bold was pre-released,it looked like a winner, but now Nokia, Apple etc. have brought new future device releases to the public and Bold does not look so cool anymore. Consumers should love this type of competition.

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The Future of Open Source based on 11 leaders

11 leaders outline the challenges and opportunities ahead in an article from CIO.com. This article discusses about possible issues around open source, trends, the costs, missteps and lesssons learned and many other things. As a business owner, I am very sceptical about the whole notion of "open" as in the end of the day, somebody has to pay for the development and when somebody innovates, there will be people that want to be part of it. That is why there are lawsuits right and left as people claim it to be their IP.

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What future is in store for Microsoft based on InfoWorld article

InfoWorld Galen Gruman makes predictions on Microsoft future based on five different scenarios (from worst to best). There is a sea of change in software business models taking place and this is impacting all of the vendors, including Microsoft. I also read today that Microsoft is contemplating charging for use, which is the analogy of switching lights on and off. In my doctoral speech in 2004 (during my defense) I made an analogy to electricity in software product platform use and I am convinced that we are going towards that sooner than we think.

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Dollar Shift: Chinese Pockets Filled as Americans’ Emp

China, some economists say, lulled U.S. consumers, and their leaders, into complacency about their spendthrift ways. New York Times explains in a pretty interesting way how the American Bubble was created. This quote explains it:The problem, he said, was not that Americans spend too much, but that foreigners save too much. The Chinese have piled up so much excess savings that they lend money to the United States at low rates, underwriting American consumption.

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The Danger of the New iPhone

Harvard Law School professor and tech guru Jonathan Zittrain warns of trouble in Apple's strategy. According to the professor, appliances like the iPhone and walled gardens such as Facebook will stifle the creativity that has fueled the development of the Internet.

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Total Smartphone Domination - Could MS buy RIM?

In last week's column, Eight Tech Predictions for 2009, I ended my list by making what I clearly labeled an outrageous prediction. I predicted that if the stars aligned just right, Microsoft could make a bid for RIM and its BlackBerry business, integrating them into Redmond's long-term mobile-services strategy. This article explains why PCMag.com article author predicts that Microsoft might be interested in acquiring RIM business. This is highly unlikely though....

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8 Tech Predictions for 2009

The current economic crisis makes forecasting much more difficult this year than in the past, yet December still seems like a good time to ponder the year ahead. To that end, I've compiled a list of seven tech predictions—things I believe will happen over the next 12 months, plus one perhaps outrageous bonus prediction that could happen…The article from PCmag.com predicts following trends for 2009:1) Windows 7 will boost the technology market2) Tech industry will be the first one to recover3) The unemployed will start small businesses to survive4) Netbook sales will double5) Smartphones will gain market share.6) Android will expand its reach7) Apple market share in PCs and smart phones will grow8) Microsoft makes a play to purchase RIM.The last one is kind of interesting claim and this is something that will be interesting to see what happens. Android, Symbian, Linux with a combination of Windows Mobile and RIM... hmm.. interesting...

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Sony Reader Digital Book (PRS-700)

The Amazon Kindle may be one of Oprah's favorite things, but Sony has been making e-book readers longer, and the sophisticated design of its latest, the Reader Digital Book PRS-700 ($399.99 direct) clearly displays this experience. However, I do not believe Sony will survive in the competition with Amazon Kindle as the latter has more than 200.000 books available and Sony can not meet this amount of variety in any shape or form. For readers that do not care to have a selection, Sony is very good, but for professinal people that need books to be readily available, this is not a good choice.

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Advertisers Face Hurdles on Social Networking Sites: consumers can not be fooled

For some time, Procter&Gamble, the world’s largest advertiser, has been dipping its big toes into the vast pool of Facebook, now the world’s largest social network. This article from The New York Times demonstrates well that the consumers can not be fooled... Brand marketing is not what is used to be and brands need to realize this.

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BizTalk 2009 beta shows off ALM support, failover clustering

December 11, 2008 — Microsoft says that the next version of BizTalk Server is on schedule, and a public beta indicates that the company will deliver promised functionality, an analyst says. With this release, Microsoft is building on its 2008 wave of server infrastructure products to provide for application life-cycle management, added connectivity, failover clustering and virtualization. BizTalk's support of RFID technologies has been expanded as well. It has been interesting to see how Biztalk has evolved from its incarnation, from Biztalk 2002, to Biztalk 2004 and Biztalk 2006. I feel that Biztalk has become an elementary part of Microsoft infrastructure strategy, no question about it.

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LinkedIn Etiquette: Five Dos and Don'ts

Creating a useful LinkedIn profile, and knowing how to interact with your connections on the professional social network, isn't always as straightforward as it seems. This write-up from CIO.com seems to be a good one to read.

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Top Database Stories of 2008

The big stories in the database arena in 2008 included cloud databases, the release of SQL Server 2008 and acquisitions, most notably Sun Microsystems’ purchase of MySQL. One full year is almost over and now vendors are working their plans for 2009. Sun specifically is probably wondering how to position MySQL from a profitability perspective as industry pundits are talking that it is not paying off like it should have.....

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The Road to 'Oslo':

When Microsoft Product Unit Manager Doug Purdy gave his introductory presentation on the "Oslo" modeling project, he didn't have very high expectations. Oslo is the ambitious Microsoft platform for enabling model-driven development and domain-specific language (DSL) development. The discussion of a wider use of domain-specific modeling (DSM) as well as DSL is getting heated and in this article from Redmond Developer, Oslo is explained as well as how it might link into Microsoft Biztalk future. Interesting read.

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Advice for startups seeking venture capital. BusinessWeek.

The financial crisis makes it harder to get funding, but those that prove themselves during this period will be better positioned to thrive.Landing venture capital is tough for startups (BusinessWeek, 2/1/08), even in a good economy. But given the ongoing financial crisis, how hard is it for early-stage companies to get funded right now? The article points out quite a few important things that companies/start-ups should look into such as cash flow proof business and overall understanding of cash flow.

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No Leaders Yet in Gartner's Social Software Magic Quadrant: why is Ning.com and Kickapps.com missign from the list?

Magic Quadrant for Social Software '08: New report shows an immature and clustered marketplace for collaborative and social tools. Gartner has listed Microsoft and IBM as challengers, and Atlassian, Jive Software and Socialtext as visionaries. They have quite a few niche players listed but both Ning.com and Kickapps.com are not even listed. This puts me to wonder why these two very popular social networking sites are not part of their study or did Destinationcrm.com misquote the GartnerGroup data? I need to explore this more.

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Move Over, Open Source, Lean Software Is the New acronym

Lean software is an approach to building software that promotes simplicity and minimizes resource usage. Forrester analyst John Rymer says he believes the application development industry must move to lean software as the next development paradigm in order to move ahead.The fact that software development is still cumbersome, complicated and lags behind physical manufacturing has led to lots of new acronyms, concepts etc... I love to track this development trends. My strong belief is that software development is going to utilize strong software platforms in the cloud and less on proprieatory things that companies are still working on. I predicted this move in 2004 and it is now finally happening. I hope that the hype on new acronyms does not lead to assuming that development of applications is easy, because it is not. There are very efficient software development approaches on the market such as domain-specific modeling (DSM) that has proved not only from practical perspective, but also in academic research that DSM works and can be used effectively with software platforms.

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IBM Blue Spruce Hints at Future of Web Collaboration

IBM demonstrates for eWEEK a new Web collaboration project called Blue Spruce. This coup in application development lets multiple users work together through what look like shared screens and communicate via telepresence. Though only at a proof-of-concept stage, the IBM Blue Spruce messaging and collaboration solution could be a big step toward more collaborative Web services. Questions remain: Will Blue Spruce appear in Lotus or WebSphere? Will Microsoft respond via Silverlight or Adobe via Flash? These are the questions that Clint Boulton is posing in his eWeek article. New innovation for collaboration is something that I believe is on the rise. This is one example of such initiative.

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Camtasia Moves Demos to HD: Best software tool to create presentations

A longtime player in screen recording products is TechSmith, which recently released version 6 of their Camtasia Studio. Camtasia Studio 6 builds on the product's already good usability and functionality by adding several interesting new features, including the ability to create high-definition video presentations. My company uses this product when creating presentations and such and it is one of the best tools that one can find for the purpose of creating great presentations. Techsmith has also another product Snagit that is a must have as tool to crab images of any screen or web page.

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Enterprises Should Consider Gradual Approach to Cloud DB's according to Forrester Research

As vendors such as Microsoft and Amazon.com push databases into the cloud, enterprises should consider database-as-a-service as part of a DBMS strategy, according to a new Forrester Research report. However, a number of challenges remain before cloud databases can be widely adopted by enterprises. Cloud computing is a very heated topic and it seems that there is a writeup of it almost every day. Enterprises are also wondering how to position the whole cloud computing concept and many are asking whether anything has changed. Is this something that we can discuss later as one of those new hypes.

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Images of Microsoft Office Web Applications

Cloud Computing Slideshow: Images of Microsoft Office Web ApplicationsAs part of a strategic companywide shift toward embracing Web-based solutions, Microsoft announced plans to deliver Office Web applications, lightweight versions of Office, delivered through browsers. The slideshows shows user interface images of the main Office applications such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM as software platform for Indenpendent Software Vendors (ISVs)

Jay Manley, principal technologist sits down with Sumit Virmani, principal technologist on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM team to talk about the CRM platform and the opportunities for partners to build on… My company is using the latest release of Dynamics CRM 4.0 online version that is sold directly by Microsoft and we have been very happy. From an ISV perspective, this is not just a CRM solution, it is a platform to build additional applications. This is something that many ISV organizations do not understand and the ones that do, will appreciated the power and flexibility of it.

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Open Source: The Model Is Broken: Comments from the field.

The open-source business model that relies solely on support and service revenue streams is failing to meet the expectations of investors. This is what Stuart Cohen from Collaborative Software Intiative claims in a recent BusinessWeek article. I seriously believe it has been a fallacy from many software entreprenours to believe that Open Source will somehow save them or make it more affordable to build software.

According to the article, even Sun will soon realize that they paid a premium of MySQL and will never gain the back the expected revenue that they thought to achieve by buying them. When I look at software products development, it has changed forever. Software is no longer bought with the same reasons as before, end user organizations are much more selective in their approach and people and organizations are buying value, and value of use. This will change and take down many software organizations that are on the old bandwagon of building infrastructure.

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