6460119
submission
jg21 writes:
With $20BN about to be spent by the Federal Government on IT infrastructure investments, this highly analytical article by two Booz Allen Hamilton associates makes it clear that Cloud computing has now received full executive backing and offers clear opportunities for agencies to significantly reduce their growing data center and IT hardware expenditures. President Obama's America is going distinctly cloudy! [From the article: "A few agencies are already moving quickly to explore cloud computing solutions and are even redirecting existing funds to begin implementations ... Agencies should identify the aspects of their current IT workload that can be transitioned to the cloud in the near term to yield "early wins" to help build momentum and support for the migration to cloud computing."]
783137
submission
jg21 writes:
As previously discussed on Slashdot, the new tendency to speak of "The Cloud" or "Cloud Computing" often seems to generate more heat than light, but one familiar industry fault line is becoming clear — those who believe clouds can be proprietary vs. those who believe they should be free. One CEO who sides with open clouds in order that companies can pick and choose from vendors depending on precisely what they need has written a detailed article in which he outlines how, in his opinion, Platform-as-a-Service should work. He identifies nine features of "an ideal PaaS cloud" including the requirement that "Developers should be able to interact with the cloud computer, to do business with it, without having to get on the phone with a sales person, or submit a help ticket." [From the article: 'I think this means that cloud computing companies will, just like banks, begin more and more to "loan" each other infrastructure to handle our own peaks and valleys, But in order for this to happen we'd need the next requirement.']
775529
submission
jg21 writes:
Even though IBM's Irving Wladawsky Berger reports a leading analyst as having said recently that "There is a clear consensus that there is no real consensus on what cloud computing is," no fewer than twenty attempts at a definition of the infrastructural paradigm shift that is sweeping across the Enterprise IT world can be found here — some of them really quite good. [From the article: '"Cloud computing is...the user-friendly version of grid computing.' (Trevor Doerksen) and 'Cloud computing really is accessing resources and services needed to perform functions with dynamically changing needs. An application or service developer requests access from the cloud rather than a specific endpoint or named resource.' (Kevin Hartig)]
751053
submission
jg21 writes:
Ever since Fortune wrote an article about it, mentions have been occurring hither and yon about how Google is having problems retaining employees, and the latest comes in Web 2.0 Journal, where Dare Obasanjo interestingly tracks and interprets a couple of blog entries that he says leads him to hypothesize that "Google's big problem is that the company hasn't realized that it isn't a startup anymore." Of course Obasanjo works for Microsoft; it will be interesting to see if an equally prominent Googler posts a counter-theory.
417161
submission
jg21 writes:
This AJAXWorld Magazine article indicates how far AJAX has come since devs complained here that it sucked all the time. Eight experts were asked what questions we should now all be asking, with 2008 just around the corner, about where AJAX is headed next. The suggested questions are refreshingly hard-headed, including: "How are we to fix the web?" (Douglas Crockford, JSON inventor), "When will AJAX development finally be easy?" (Google's Christian Schalk), and "Do we really need JavaScript 2.0? Won't it be somewhat irrelevant by the time it becomes commonplace and thus usable?" (Josh Gertzen, lead developer of the ThinWire AJAX Framework). One of the most interesting questions came from Kevin Hakman, co-founder of TIBCO's General Interface: "On what timeline will AJAX skills become commoditized like HTML skills became?" With a question like that, one is reminded that AJAX has come a very long way in a very short time.
403313
submission
jg21 writes:
Web 2.0 Journal brings to our attention Yahoo! Architect and JSON inventor Douglas Crockford's latest ideas to fix HTML. Not a fan of HTML 5, which is still just an Editor's Draft and not endorsed by W3C yet, Crock puts forward ten ideas that in his view would provide extensibility without complexity, adding that the simplification of HTML he is proposing would reduce the cost of training of web developers and incorporates the best practices of AJAX development. [From the article: "The problems with HTML will not be solved by making it bigger and more complicated. I think instead we should generalize what it does well, while excising features that are problematic. HTML can be made into a general application delivery format without disrupting its original role as a document format."]
363337
submission
jg21 writes:
It is probably coincidental, but two responses to OpenSocial from well-respected members of the Microsoft blogging community have each in their own way come out against Google's OpenSocial initiative, Dare Osabanjo because in his view OpenSocial while billed as a standardized widget platform for the Web, actually isn't. And Don Dodge because his claim is that fifty million Facebook developers "don't know what OpenSocial APIs are...and don't care."
217415
submission
jg21 writes:
In this analysis of the pyschology of Facebook, a British FB user makes some telling points about how simple the reasons behind its success are. Among them, fear of "online social failure" features prominently. [From the article: 'Facebook also digs away at the insecurities in people...your peers can see your profile on Facebook, and while they may have 50, 100, 200 friends they will mockingly see that you have a pathetically small number, confirming your worst fears about the low opinion they have probably held of you over all those years etc.']
215317
submission
jg21 writes:
Social Computing Magazine has just published a list of thirty-five perspectives on online social networking reflecting how protean and difficult to pin down the phenomenon is. It was compiled by Malene Charlotte Larsen, a PhD student at Aalborg University in Denmark, who has been doing research on Danish youngsters and online social networking. She ends with an open request for further perspectives.
[From the article "I must say that I certainly do not agree with all of the mentioned perspectives, but some of them do represent the opinions (or prejudices) I hear when I am out giving lectures to adults."]
100350
submission
jg21 writes:
In this follow-up article — sparked by Nat Torkington's rhetorical question "Is 'Open Source' Now Completely Meaningless?" — Sun's Chief Open Source Officer, IONA's Director of Open Source Programs, Hyperic's community manager and Interface21's CEO and founder Rod Johnson express their views, joined by the Executive Director of the Center for Open Source Investigation at Carnegie Mellon West, the CTO of Hippo, analyst Raven Zachary from The 451 Group, and others. [From the article: "In order to describe itself as an 'open source' company, need a company merely be 'a company that will help you make the switch to open source in your company' — or does it have to be one that lets users feely download, compile, and use the software in question? Where is the dividing line? How open is 'open'?"]
89278
submission
jg21 writes:
It looks like Bruce Eckel has hit the nail on the head again. No sooner did he finish stirring debate by writing about the "departure of the Java hyper-enthusiasts," previously discussed here on Slashdot, than he now rubs salt in the wound by highlighting in AJAXWorld Magazine how and why Java missed its golden opportunity to become the language undergirding Rich Internet Applications. [From the article: "We must ask why Java applets haven't become ubiquitous on the internet as the client-side standard for RIAs....This is an especially poignant question because Gosling and team justified rushing Java out the door (thus casting in stone many poorly-considered decisions) so that it could enable the internet revolution. That's why the AWT and Applets were thrown in at the last second, reportedly taking a month from conception to completion."]
73580
submission
jg21 writes:
.NET Developer's Journal is reporting that the "Father of WebSphere," Don Ferguson, has left IBM to join Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie's office. Ozzie, who efforts to rebuild Microsoft have been discussed previously on Slashdot, is gaining a man who while at Blue championed were Web services, patterns, Web 2.0 and business-driven development, a potent combo for the future that Microsoft is trying to bring into being.
59126
submission
jg21 writes:
Java Developer's Journal has published the results of its end-of-year poll of various Internet technology players, from its own internal editors to industry high-ups like the founder of Apress, Gary Cornell, and including too the thoughts of professor Tony Wasserman of Carnegie Mellon West. Participants were asked to foretell what they saw happening in 2007. Among the predictions...Cornell: 'The open-sourcing of Java will have no effect whatsoever on Java's slow decline in favor of dynamic languages (Ruby, Python) and C#;' Wasserman: 'The use of the GPL 2 for open-sourcing Java will inhibit the completion and acceptance of the GPL 3 proposal;' and Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson: 'The stigma of being a Web programmer still using Windows will increase.'
22531
submission
jg21 writes:
Web 2.0 Journal has an essay on "The Post-Modern Rhetoric of High Technology" in which the author contends that Web 2.0 is nothing less than "the advent of the Post-Modern Internet." Will Web 2.0 be a revolution or a mere rebellion? [From the article] "Web 2.0 can take two distinct directions ... [it] can be the French Revolution of Technology or it can be the American Revolution of Technology."
