Since many IT solution providers who poke around in this blog are themselves small businesses, it will not be a major shocker to hear that a recent survey shows that smaller companies are latching onto the benefits of Web 2.0 less quickly than larger ones. Then, again, I’d bet that many of those same companies ARE using some aspect of Web 2.0 — which I count as blogs, software as a service, social networks, online collaboration services, and “presence” applications — without realizing it.

Here’s the data I’m referring to, courtesy of CDW, which polled 1,060 IT decision makers about Web 2.0 between March 27 and April 4 of this year. Read more »

Canonical on Tuesday posted its Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device (MID) Edition to its website.

This is a developers’ release based on the desktop edition of the Linux fan-favorite Ubuntu operating system. The release should help developers tailor apps to smaller screens

Ubuntu MID will start to follow the usual Ubuntu six-month release cycle starting with the Ubuntu 8.10 release.

I have become so hopelessly addicted to my Apple iPhone for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that it has saved my butt on more than one occasion when I have been unable to get to my notebook to update this and my other way-to-many blogs. Indeed, when my laptop crashed a few weeks back on a trip for TechTarget to Chicago, I even submitted the repair request using the built-in Safari Web browser.

Needless to say, I am HUNGRY for the July 11 update iPhone software, which will mean that I can download e-mail from my work accounts transparently. But I am dreading the onslaught which MUST becoming of security threats released by both the nefarious and naughty. Data from the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) suggests that my feeling of dread is not unfounded. Here’s the blog entry that I wrote last month.

Read more »

MySQL is switching version control ships, leaving BitKeeper for Bazaar, an open-source version control system.

“Both the main MySQL server code and the code for many ancillary projects have been converted to Bazaar and are published on Launchpad,” blogged Kaj Arno, MySQL’s vice president of community. (Sun Microsystems bought MySQL earlier this year.) Read more »

For many VARs, cloud-based computing is a worrisome prospect.

The notion of functions served up direct to users from a vendor-owned-and-operated cloud poses a huge disintermediation threat to partners, as Richard Warren, of North Carolina Technologies told SearchITChannel.com, earlier this week.

 But the cloud vendors still need to prove themselves able to fully compete in a world where 99.9% of users need remote or offline capabilities. They need to work on their data and apps even if they’re not (gasp) connected to the Web.

Google execs say they will prove their technology worthy of the enterprise, blazing the trail with the Google Appliance. Google Gears is starting to bring offline capability to the company’s consumer and business services — Google Reader is “Gears enabled” as is Google Docs. (The spreadsheet and presentations so far  support just view-only offline access.) Read more »

Spreadsheet pioneer Dan Bricklin is at it again. The father of VisiCalc is now working to bring the spreadsheet’s productivity to workgroups.

Bricklin, in his trademark flannel shirt (it’s nearly 100 degrees out!) said hello before heading into Ross Mayfield’s Enterprise 2.0 keynote. Mayfield is chairman, prez and co-founder of Socialtext– the company working on Bricklin’s “Social Spreadsheet.” Read more »

What the heck does a network integrator intend to do with a interactive multimedia company?

That was my first reaction when I heard the news that network integrator and managed service provider Atrion Networking (based in Warwick, R.I., and a company I know well), is buying Shazamm (a company I’ve never heard of—but one that is apparently an Atrion neighbor in Providence, R.I.) I have no idea what Atrion paid, but after thinking about the whole situation for a few minutes late tonight and checking out the Shazamm Web site, I think I do know what Atrion is after: Shazamm’s digital signage management and distribution application called Z-One and a Web asset management system called Z-Media. Read more »

Bill Gates just finished what Microsoft has billed as his last public speech as a company full timer. Gates is stepping down from day-to-day involvement as of July 1.

At TechEd 2008 part one (for developers) Gates hit on some familiar themes and presided over demos of upcoming modeling, database, and development technologies. Read more »

Google has said it wants developers to write apps to run in its “cloud.” Now, on the eve of the Google I/O conference, it disclosed how it will charge developers for the use of its server- and storage-farms and related infrastructure.

Developers can use Google App Engine free for up to 500MB of storage and enough CPU cycles to power five million page views per month. Google says 150,000 developers have already signed up.

Above and beyond the 500MB, five-million-page-view cut off, Google will charge ten cents to 12 cents per additional core CPU hour; 15 cents to 18 cents per GB storage; 11 cents to 13 cents per GB of outgoing bandwidth; and 9 cents to 11 cents per GB of incoming bandwidth.

That might sound confusing, but the race is on among vendors to lure developers into their own ecosystem with a pay-as-you-go model. eBay, Amazon.com, Google are among the Web 2.0 giants vying for developers’ attention. Meanwhile, Microsoft is trying to balance its existing .Net development dominance in the on-premise software world with a more Web-savvy Live efforts.

For its part, Google will also soon furnish the new Google Web Tookit 1.5 as well as two new APIs. The first API promises to enable developers to scale, rotate, and crop images on the server. The second, a memcache API , a high-performance caching layer to speed up page rendering.

Barbara Darrow can be reached at bdarrow@techtarget.com.

A new version of the Google Web Toolkit (Gwit to Google insiders), promises full support for the latest Java language as well as faster-running apps at the end of the process.

GWT 1.5 will be formally introduced by Google’s top engineer Vic Gundotra Wednesday at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco and be available for download within days.
“The biggest news is the Java 5 language support. Java itself has evolved a lot in the last few yeas and GWT 1.5 supports those new language features including the more modern syntax, generics and enumerated types,” said Google engineering manager Bruce Johnson.
As before, the goal of GWT is to make it easier for developers to create JavaScript code that can run on a wide variety of devices.

Johnson said early testers report better application performance. “Additional compiler optimizations in 1.5 result in noticeable application performance improvement,’ Johnson claimed.
Alex Moffat , engineering manager at Lombardi, Austin, Texas, is fully aboard. “The big benefit in 1.5, he says, is the support for all the new Java 5 syntax improvements. “They’ve added support for generics so you can write code that gives the compiler more information so you can catch more errors at compile time. You can now avoid a whole class of mistakes,” Moffat said.
Much of Lombardi’s Blueprint document discovery tool’s front end was written in GWT while the backend is all Java.

“If you are a Java shop, you’d have to be an idiot not to use GWT for the Web front end these days,” Moffat said. Non Java (i.e. .Net) shops would have to acquire Java expertise before venturing in.

With GWT, Google is making a play for business developers. Companies like Queplix, Contact Office, DoubleCheck LLC and Lombardi Software all use the current GWT 1.4 to develop applications ranging from customer care to business process management. 

This year Google  is even charging conference admission fee for the first time,  apparently trying to weed out non-serious programmers.  

Barbara Darrow can be reached at bdarrow@techtarget.com.