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CNET is reporting that on Monday Orbitz will announce the creation and release of two open-source projects, Extremely Reusable Monitoring API (ERMA) and Graphite, both "part of a Complex Event Processing system designed to monitor large distributed applications, analyze the data that is gathered and display that data in real-time graphs." The projects apply far beyond the travel industry. Though there were hints of these projects at JavaOne earlier this year, Monday's announcement adds significant context to the work Orbitz has done to create two highly compelling open-source projects, whose applicability extends far beyond the travel industry. In particular, it highlights Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst's vision that enterprise IT needs to open up and collaborate. However, as Orbitz's development team notes, it's easier said than done to participate in open source, especially when creating projects rather than simply contributing to existing projects.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9979041-16.html

CWmike writes "Hush! Google has quietly begun limited testing of several new social features created for its iGoogle personalized start page. Expected to be rolled out next month, the updates include chat, activity streaming and a new interface for the gadgets offered on the start page. Developers can take advantage of the new Canvas interface to display more information and make their gadgets more interactive, noted Ionut Alex Chitu, a blogger at Google Operating System."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9104258

CWmike writes "Computerworld's Preston Gralla writes, the news that Intel has decided it won't upgrade its PCs to Vista must be especially bitter for Microsoft. As Gralla has reported in his blog, Microsoft's "Vista Capable PC" scheme may have been launched specifically to help Intel meet its quarterly earnings by selling older Intel chipsets that couldn't properly run Vista. Is this the kind of payback that Microsoft expected?"
http://blogs.computerworld.com/intel_backstabs_microsoft_by_abandoning_vista

CWmike writes "Juan-Carlos Perez reports that MySpace will open up its data portability project broadly, after launching it with a handpicked set of partners last month. Any Web site will be able to participate. MySpace expects to release the data APIs and publish documentation on its developer site on Thursday. The move is part of working with Google's OpenSocial initiative, which '[MySpace is doing] because every time we locked down a new JavaScript exploit we were sad, because we knew that legitimate application developers were getting hobbled as a result. For every ten spammers we blocked, we were blocking at least a few people trying to make a living by entertaining our users in a positive way. The OpenSocial platform gives us a chance to let MySpace users play again — this time in a safer, more structured, but at the same time more flexible way,' the MySpace Developer Platform sites says."
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=009104038

CWmike writes "Senate legislation to address the housing crisis by helping homeowners who face foreclosure contains a measure that has nothing to do with housing, and could harm millions of small merchants, privacy and small business groups say. The housing bill calls for credit card companies as well as Internet companies such as eBay, PayPal, Google and Amazon.com, which electronically process payments for merchants, to track, aggregate and report information such as Social Security numbers to the IRS on the payments they make to merchants. Ari Schwartz, vice president and chief operating officer for the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) said "Today, those companies don't keep merchants' Social Security numbers," he said. "Some credit card companies or banks require them when you set up an account, but the typical course is for them to then set up a merchant identification number and get rid of those Social Security numbers. That storage does not take place today." But it will take place if the bill is passed, raising the risk of identity theft if the information is misused, Schwartz said."
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9103858

CWmike writes "Unlike the strain Windows faces today, Microsoft's OS was once on top of the desktop world. That fact led to the antitrust fight that would roil Microsoft for years, a fight that was personified on the company's side by its leader. Before that agreement was finalized in court, Gates, after refusing to appear years earlier, took the stand. In 2002, one of the points he raised concerned the future. "Ten years is a very long time in the software industry," he wrote. "Ten years ago, Windows was just beginning to become broadly successful, even as many ISVs focused on writing applications for MS-DOS and IBM's OS/2. Ten years before that, the PC industry barely existed. Given the constantly accelerating pace of innovation, I expect we will see more changes in the computing landscape in the next 10 years than in any prior 10-year period." Six years after the finding, Windows — though still dominant — is facing new platform threats, and a renewed browser war is brewing, thanks to Firefox. Meanwhile, Google looms as an ever-larger threat, as Microsoft has sought — so far unsuccessfully — to scoop up an Internet search company to better fit in with a new age. And Gates, his company intact, is moving on to other endeavors, looking less like Rockefeller the oil baron and more like Rockefeller the philanthropist."
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9103578

jcatcw writes "The Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum is merging into the LiMo (Linux Mobile) Foundation in a move aimed at consolidating efforts to support Linux on mobile phones. The two groups — consortiums of suppliers of components such as chip sets, Linux operating systems, mobile application stacks and handsets, as well as regional and global wireless service providers — said they hope that joining forces will make the platform stronger. The move comes just two days after Nokia Corp. announced that it's creating the Symbian Foundation, which will make the competing Symbian mobile operating system an open platform with royalty-free licenses."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9103518

jcatcw writes "Computerworld's annual list of best IT workplaces is out for 2008. The list of 100 companies is based on responses from over 30,000 IT employees, selected for diversity, training, career development, retention and benefits. The top 5: The Capital Group (retirement benefits), Quicken Loans (for the second year in the top 3), General Mills (recognition programs), Mitre (training), and the SAS Institute (flexible schedules and comp time). Do you work at one of the best or one of worst?"
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9099638

Tyler Boudreau, a Marine veteran of the war in Iraq and a blogger, has written an interesting analysis of the impact of email, IM, and other digital devices upon 'ground-pounders' and their commanders in the field. These innovations were introduced in hopes of increasing situational awareness, rapidly gathering data, analyzing it, organizing it, and then pushing it back out to operators as actionable intelligence. They also provide commanders with the freshest possible information and aid them in their moment-to-moment decision-making. However, Boudreau found that the technologies can lead to micromanagement and deep frustration, trends that he illustrates by describing a shooting incident in al Anbar and its aftermath. He also warns that soldiers can become too dependent upon headquarters for critical decisions, which can lead to dangerous situations when communications get cut off.
http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/06/25/it-vs-initiative-internet-age-comes-battlefield

CWmike writes "Your laptop is likely to soon go the way of 5.25-in. floppy disks, made obsolete by smaller, more useful technology: the smart phone. Based on current trends for low-power chips used in devices like cell phones and iPods, we're likely to see eight times the CPU power in handheld devices by 2010 that we have today, computer architecture enthusiast Adrian Cockcroft told the Usenix '08 technical conferencein Boston on Wednesday. "I wouldn't need a laptop if I had that kind of performance," said Cockcroft, who envisions an always-on device that can connect wirelessly (and seamlessly) to your car while you're driving, a desktop monitor and keyboard when you're working, and other devices such as a projection system at meetings or a 3-D portable display, no matter where you are. Would you ever give up your laptop for a very smart phone?"
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9103538

CWmike writes "Computerworld asked a dozen designers and industry leaders from around the world how mobile phones will change in the next few years. They gave us their predictions, and some provided peeks at concept phones that embody those new ideas. Like concept cars — and concept laptops — these concept phones are aimed more at demonstrating new ideas than at being prototypes of actual soon-to-be-released devices. One of the most striking: Nokia's Morph. Made of flexible materials that mimic the suppleness of spider's silk, the handset will — as the name implies — morph between what looks like a traditional mobile phone and a bracelet. Tapani Ryhanen, head of strategic research at the Nokia Research Center in Ruoholahti, Finland, calls Morph a shape shifter. "By using nanotechnology," Ryhanen says, "the phone can change its personality to become whatever is most suitable for the task at hand.""
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9100098

jcatcw writes "Computerworld reports that Imation Corp. has unveiled a 1.5-in. long portable storage device that is no larger than a paper clip and can store up to 8GB of digital files. Called the Atom Flash Drive, it weighs less than one ounce and measures a half-inch wide. The Atom Flash Drive is the storage vendor's smallest USB flash drive. Imation's Atom Flash Drive provides password protection and drive partitioning capabilities to secure data. It supports Windows Vista and is also compatible with Windows Vista ReadyBoost technology."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9103418

CWmike writes "ICANN, the nonprofit group that manages the Internet domain name system, will vote at its meeting in Paris on Thursday on whether to relax domain name rules to allow companies to be able to buy generic top-level domain names ending in whatever they want. That means, for example, that eBay could add its company name to the end of its URL and become eBay.ebay and Microsoft could become Microsoft.microsoft. ICANN CEO Paul Twomey told BBC News that relaxing the rules would be the biggest change to the way the Internet works in decades. "The impact of this will be different in different parts of the world. But it will allow groups, communities and business to express their identities online," Twomey said. "Like the United States in the 19th century, we are in the process of opening up new real estate, new land. And people will go out and claim parts of that land and use it for various reasons they have. It's a massive increase in the geography of the real estate of the Internet.""
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9102940

CWmike writes "A perfect storm is brewing ahead and, like a fishing captain who doesn't get that a plummeting barometer means stay at port, VMware is persisting in sailing into disaster, writes Stephen J. Vaughn-Nicholls writes, who provides his case for why we'll be saying good-bye to former industry leader VMware's rump. Number One on that list: Microsoft is about to roll out its Hyper-V virtualization in Server 2008 this August. I am no friend to Microsoft, but every now and again, as they did with Excel, the boys from Redmond get something right. I've used beta of Hyper-V on Server 2008. In a word, it's 'impressive.' And, it will come to Windows shops ready to go in the server."
http://blogs.computerworld.com/kiss_vmwares_rump_good_bye

CWmike writes "Ballmer and Gates have been joined at the hip, but once Gates leaves as a full-time employee, Ballmer told the WSJ: "I'm not going to need him for anything. That's the principle ... Use him, yes, need him, no." Meanwhile, Ballmer said this month that he plans to run Microsoft for another nine or 10 years. He will be 62 years old in 2018, and if he's still running Microsoft then, he will have been atop the company for 18 years — an extremely long run compared to most Fortune 500 CEOs. Some think he's sill got it: "Ballmer is a competition addict," noted journalist Fredric Alan Maxwell, author of the 2002 unauthorized biography "Bad Boy Ballmer". "I see him giving up the helm akin to Charlton Heston giving up his gun — 'from my cold, dead hands.'" Others are not so sure that cuts it: "Why hasn't Microsoft caught Google? Why has Steve Jobs clawed his way out of his grave to be adored once again?" asks Forrester CEO George Colony in a recent blog post. "It's because Gates over the last five years has moved on to philanthropy — and taken his formidable legacy with him." Computerworld blogger Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols made his feelings know with Five reasons to fire Ballmer. What do you think (read and weigh in)? Is Ballmer the right man for Microsoft — for another 10 years?"
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9103038