snydeq - Slashdot User

Submission + - The Three Golden Paths To Mobile Business App Development (infoworld.com)

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snydeq

on Monday October 08, 2012 @12:18PM

snydeq writes: "Native, Web, or hybrid — choosing the right path for mobile business app development can be tricky business, as no one tool offers the trifecta of fast, cheap, feature-rich app delivery, writes Mel Beckman in a primer for IT organizations in choosing the right mobile development kit for your needs. 'Carefully assessing your prospective app's current and future requirements is key, as is balancing those requirements with the time it takes to get your app to market. Don't feel you have to choose a single platform for every app. It's reasonable to employ multiple development platforms to meet a variety of delivery requirements.'"

Submission + - Which PaaS Is Best For Legacy Java Apps? (infoworld.com)

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snydeq

on Monday October 08, 2012 @12:09PM

snydeq writes: "Andrew C. Oliver and Lifford Pinto detail the ups, downs, ins, and outs of deploying a legacy Java application to 7 leading platform-as-a-service clouds, including Amazon Elastic Beanstalk, CloudBees, Google App Engine, Heroku, Microsoft Azure, Red Hat OpenShift, and VMware Cloud Foundry. The writeup includes a look at key differentiating features, lock-in, security, and the kinds of companies using each PaaS. 'It's still a bit early in the PaaS space, but you can already begin porting legacy apps to some cloud platforms with only minor changes or possibly none at all. Big companies and small companies alike may find a PaaS to be a compelling way to deploy applications and cut capital expenditures. This market isn't as crowded as it might seem, as many of the big players aren't yet out of beta. But in the coming months we can expect that to change.'"

Submission + - Why Oracle's Cloud Service Will Fail (infoworld.com)

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snydeq

on Friday October 05, 2012 @04:07PM

snydeq writes: "Oracle is jumping in as a public IaaS provider, which means another large company is taking a swing at Amazon Web Services, writes Cloud Computing's David Linthicum. 'Like their counterparts at Hewlett-Packard, Oracle execs believe that just saying they'll be able to take over a market will make it so. It won't, and I suspect that even tried-and-true Oracle shops will push back on this offering. In my days as a CTO at big technology companies, I entered markets defined and dominated by other tech providers. I quickly discovered that I needed to find another way in; simply replicating their technology didn't work as a strategy. Oracle has not learned that lesson. Perhaps it believes its large user base will accept Oracle's pronouncements without thought. If so, the tech industry is littered with failures based on that assumption.'"

Submission + - Biggest Lie On The Web: I Have Read Your ToS (infoworld.com)

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snydeq

on Friday October 05, 2012 @04:04PM

snydeq writes: "A group of privacy enthusiasts has launched a free, open-source-inspired project called Terms of Service; Didn't Read (ToS;DR) in the hopes of helping users make better-informed choices before blithely clicking Agree when presented with those walls of legalese. By the group's assessment, clicking "I have read and agree to the terms of service" is the "biggest lie on the Web." In its current form, ToS;DR provides class ratings and reviews for several sites. The reviews include specific breakdowns on what a particular site is doing well and where it may be falling short."

Submission + - The Coming Internet Video Crash (infoworld.com)

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snydeq

on Friday October 05, 2012 @03:57PM

snydeq writes: "First, it was data caps on cellular, and now caps on wired broadband — welcome to the end of the rich Internet, writes Galen Gruman. 'People are still getting used to the notion that unlimited data plans are dead and gone for their smartphones. The option wasn't even offered for tablets. Now, we're beginning to see the eradication of the unlimited data plan in our broadband lines, such as cable and DSL connections. It's a dangerous trend that will threaten the budding Internet-based video business — whether from Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, Windows Store, or Google Play — then jeopardize Internet services of all sorts. It's a complex issue, and though the villains are obvious — the telecom carriers and cable providers — the solutions are not. The result will be a metered Internet that discourages use of the services so valuable for work and play.'"

Submission + - Dysfunctional IT Relationships (infoworld.com) 1

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snydeq

on Monday October 01, 2012 @08:01PM

snydeq writes: "In large technology departments, dysfunctional relationships breed like mushrooms in a dank basement. 'Your dev and ops teams are no longer on speaking terms, while your junior and senior developers can't seem to agree on anything. IT and legal are constantly at each other's throats. Storage wonks are ready to declare war on the database admins, while sys admins seem to be on everyone's bad side.' InfoWorld's Dan Tynan takes a look at how to rectify tensions that often arise when conflicting demands are placed on the same IT systems. How does your IT department handle friction?"

Submission + - Review: VMware Workstation 9 vs. VirtualBox 4.2 (infoworld.com)

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snydeq

on Wednesday September 26, 2012 @02:44PM

snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Serdar Yegalulp provides an in-depth comparison of VMware Workstation 9 and VirtualBox 4.2, finding that while VMware Workstation is richer in features and polish than ever, VirtualBox is still both capable and free. 'For those willing to put their money down, VMware Workstation is the easy winner. It isn't just the performance, but the polish and the cross-integration with other VMware products that make Workstation worth the money. That said, VirtualBox is no slouch, and it has a few useful items that aren't available in either Workstation or VMware Player.'"

Submission + - The Cloud Is Hiring (infoworld.com)

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snydeq

on Monday September 24, 2012 @06:00PM

snydeq writes: "IT is moving to the cloud — and so are the jobs, InfoWorld reports. 'In the last eight months or so, "the light has gone on in the heads of CIOs and CEOs, and a gap between supply [of IT personnel with skills for the cloud] and demand has opened up," says David Foote, whose consultancy, Foote Partners, keeps close track of IT compensation, certifications, and employment. Although salaries aren't spiking at the pace of the old dot-com days, times are good for those with the right skills and the flexibility to learn how to develop, deploy, and manage applications and services in the cloud. Foote's observation regarding the limited supply of top-flight engineers and developers to work on cloud-related projects is borne out by interviews with six of the leading public cloud providers. All are hiring rapidly; all say talent is now at a premium.'"

Submission + - Top 20 OS X Command-Line Utilities (infoworld.com)

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snydeq

on Thursday September 20, 2012 @01:10PM

snydeq writes: "Mel Beckman offers a rundown of the 20 most useful command-line utilities for Mac OS X power users and system administrators. 'OS X brings its unique capabilities to the command-line table, in the form of utilities that leverage OS X's user interface, file system, and security capabilities. I've scoured the Internet for the best of the best of these utilities. Some you may already know, but others are sure to make you sit up and exclaim, "Sweet!"'"

Submission + - Best Open Source Software of the Year (infoworld.com)

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snydeq

on Tuesday September 18, 2012 @04:23PM

snydeq writes: "InfoWorld has announced the winners of its sixth annual Best of Open Source Software Awards, including more than 100 worthy projects across seven categories, from desktop apps, to databases, to application development tools. 'We've taken it upon ourselves to plow through all that frenetic activity and dig up the juiciest, smartest, and most useful open source software available. If you'd just like to page through from beginning to end, start here. Stick around in this article and you'll get a tour of the important trends in open source this year.'"

Submission + - 9 Key Career Issues Software Developers Face (infoworld.com)

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snydeq

on Monday September 17, 2012 @01:51PM

snydeq writes: "Peter Wayner outlines nine concerns today's developers face in charting out a career path, from certifications, to the value of a computer science degree, to how to deal with ageism and the offshoring threat. 'Whether you're an independent contractor or a cubicle loyalist with a wandering eye, programming want ads abound, each stirring its own set of questions about how best to steer your career. For some, this is entirely new territory, having fallen into employment with computers simply as a means to scratch an itch. The following nine concerns are central to charting your career path. Some target the résumé. Others offer opportunities for career growth in themselves. Then there are questions of how to navigate unfortunate employment issues particular to IT. Thinking about your answers to these questions is more than a way of preparing for when someone comes to ask them. It is the first step in making the most of your interests and skills.'"

Submission + - The 12 Most Dreaded Help Desk Requests (infoworld.com)

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snydeq

on Thursday September 13, 2012 @11:09AM

snydeq writes: "'Working on an IT help desk can feel like an endless case of déjà vu. Let's face it: Computer users are damn predictable. If you've heard a problem once, you've heard it a thousand times before. Some things, though, have been said so many times that they've practically become help desk clichés — and the very sound of them is enough to make any IT pro want to smack his or her head with the nearest blunt object.'"

Submission + - Is a Computer Science Degree Worth Getting Anymore? (infoworld.com) 1

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snydeq

on Tuesday September 11, 2012 @07:04PM

snydeq writes: "Self-taught technologists are almost always better hires than those with a bachelor's degree in computer science and a huge student loan, writes Andrew Oliver. 'A recruiter recently asked me why employers are so picky. I explained that of the people who earned a computer science degree, most don't know any theory and can't code. Instead, they succeed at putting things on their resume that match keywords. Plus, companies don't consider it their responsibility to provide training or mentoring. In fairness, that's because the scarcity of talent has created a mercenary culture: "Now that my employer paid me to learn a new skill, let me check to see if there's an ad for it on Dice or Craigslist with a higher rate of pay." When searching for talent, I've stopped relying on computer science degrees as an indicator of anything except a general interest in the field. Most schools suck at teaching theory and aren't great at Java instruction, either. Granted, they're not much better with any other language, but most of them teach Java.'"

Submission + - When Virtualization Becomes Your Worst Enemy (infoworld.com)

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snydeq

on Tuesday September 04, 2012 @04:57PM

snydeq writes: "Virtualization makes hard tasks easy and big problems bigger, writes Deep End's Paul Venezia. 'Try as we might to keep chaos at bay, there will come a time when the perfect storm hits and everything falls apart. Usually a confluence of elements triggers total meltdown, but sometimes one overlooked weak link fails and causes a cascade of problems that takes an entire network offline. These situations are never easy to deal with and are generally compounded by the fact that admins are feverishly working to fix problems while being bombarded with alarms from other systems that are also failing due to the initial outage. It’s like trying to rebuild a house while it's falling down on top of you.'"

Submission + - App.net's Crowdfunders: Taken For A Ride? (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

snydeq

on Friday August 31, 2012 @04:06PM

snydeq writes: "At least 10,000 people believe in App.net's vision of a messaging platform for Web apps — but it's unclear whether those people will be peers or sharecroppers, writes Simon Phipps. 'Last week App.net reached the milestone of 10,000 users who signed up for a new — mostly yet to be written — social network that looks like an early reimplementation of Twitter. Signing up people to claim user names on an (not vaporware) alpha Web service may not seem surprising or novel, but this time there's a difference: Everyone who signed up for App.net paid $50 for the privilege,' Phipps writes. 'App.net has used the crowdfunding approach, but it's not the same kind of project. While superficially similar — there's an offer of immediate use of its Twitter-clone service and reservation of the user ID of your choice — it's much more speculative. It's crowdsourcing the seed capital for a new venture, crowdsourcing the design, crowdsourcing the testing, and crowdsourcing most of the software that interacts with the venture, all without actually giving anyone but the founder a true stake in the outcome.'"

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