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.

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 »

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.

Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) have always had a complicated relationship with Microsoft.

They build on Microsoft’s OS-and-tool platform. They also keep a wary eye as the software behemoth keeps adding to that platform. The “white space” at the top keeps getting higher and higher. That becomes ever more evident as the company pitches not just Windows and VB as a platform but Office, CRM and ERP as well. That’s one deep, (fat?) platform.

Josh Swihart, vice president of corporate marketing for K2 is in a unique position to comment on this. K2 is a Microsoft-aligned ISV that happened to specialize in workflow and business process management before Microsoft had much of its own workflow and process management embedded in products. And K2, based in Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash. backyard, remains an ISV with expertise in workflow and business process management that remains viable and growing after Microsoft put its own workflow framework into .Net 3.0.

Swihart’s got some suggestions for fruitful coexistence. (Full disclosure: this blog headline was lifted from original K2 pitch. Who could resist?)

One: Don’t always go into Redmond hat in hand. ISVs, like Microsoft, must act out of enlightened self interest. That means finding ways for the ISV — and Microsoft — to profit from their interaction.

“People are always going into Microsoft looking for money and information. If you instead go in with a plan to drive sales, that’s a much better entry,” he said

Two: Decide whether you’re going to be company that offers tools that plug into Microsoft’s platform, which is a relatively safe bet. Or,  you can position yourself as a platform provider in your own right, as K2 has done. “It’s a much bigger struggle to be a platform player but with bigger possible upside.” Swihart says.

Three: Take advantage of the huge Microsoft installed base. If a company’s product owns, say, 90% of a given market, doesn’t it make sense to work with that product? So integrate with Windows or Office if you can. And integrate well.  ”If it looks like a kluge, it won’t work,” Swihart said.

Four: Let Microsoft’s field force work for you. If your product fills a gap and is aligned with Microsoft technology, and you work your relationships, you can benefit from Microsoft’s feet on the street.

Small ISVs enamored of their own cleverness, have to remember they ” don’t carry the weight of Microsoft,” Swihart said.

Microsoft recently brought K2 in to help pitch a major oil and gas company. “They wanted to get to the line-of-business folks with a problem/solution type of deck in that space so they brought us in,” he noted.

Microsoft’s typically enters larger companies through IT but in many cases, that’s overkill. For many applications, it’s better for get in front of the actual departments. And that is where ISVs with domain-expertise can help the software giant.

Five: Plug into the rest of Microsoft’s partner ecosystem. ISVs need VARs and integrators to incorporate their bits into solutions. VARs and integrators need complete soluions, not piece parts. Match made in heaven. Let Microsoft’s investment in these partners help you. Find the partners in areas where your offering makes sense and cultivate them.

Six: Assess the Microsoft portfolio and “bet where it makes sense and with the product teams that make sense for you.”

Seven: Offer customer choice. Balance the Microsoft integration with the customer’s need to work outside the stack. “We’re into the operating system and core .Net environment and the database, although there are ways around that. But beyond that, our customers can integrate with the Microsoft technologies they want to but don’t have to.

No ISV should depend wholly on Microsoft. “In cases where we have relationships that extend beyond the Microsoft stack, we’re a part of a bigger story.”

Eight: Stay ahead of the Microsoft curve. Swihart says two to five years is good. He likens this to running in front of the afore mentioned bulldozer.

The fact that some Microsoft product managers make promises in public forums that aren’t always kept can panic customers and ISVs needlessly. The razzle-dazzle PDC promises about Vista I witnessed years ago have taken their toll on ISV partners and customers ever since.

ISVs need to keep close tabs on relevant product groups. One advantage of a close working relationship with the vendor is they clue you in as to where they’re going so you can adapt.

Nine: Remember that Microsoft is big company with many fiefdoms. One group can be your best friend. Another maybe not so friendly at all. Be advised.

Ten: Remember. Things happen. Microsoft may be your ally today, then buy a competitor (or build one) and be a rival tomorrow. Forewarned is forearmed.

Many ISVs plug gaps and hope that Microsoft will buy them. Swihart says K2 wants to remain independent and focus on customer needs.

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

PayPal, the online payment power, wants developers to integrate its payment system into more websites.

And it’s going to show them love at the upcoming EBay Developers Conference in Chicago, says Glenn Lim, head of PayPal’s Developer Network. EBay bought PayPal in 2003.

According to company stats, website developers have a big say in what payment system gets tied into an e-commerce site. In 45% of the cases, a developer actually makes that decision and in another 44%, the developer influences that decision. No wonder PayPal likes developers.

“Payment processing is a relatively small part of the website development process but it’s a really important part,” Lim joked. Apparently people like to get paid. Shocker.

One in four websites already accept PayPal, although many offer alternative Visa, BillMeLater or other payment systems as well, Lim said, And, perhaps most ominously for PayPal, Google is making noises about its own Google Checkout

Given that the guts of a payment system– the transaction handling and security –have to be baked in, it might seem that developers can’t do much in terms of customization. But you’d be surprised, Lim said. The core payment system is really locked down but through open APIs you can develop hooks into QuickBooks so you can pull transactions into QuickBooks or hooks into TurboTax or Excel for inventory monitoring or other purposes.

Will Blanchard, owner of New York -based Lambcast Ltd., makes his living by knowing all about payment systems. With most PayPal alternatives the website would have to get a merchant account, a business license or a line of credit and many people don’t have the proper credit for that. With PayPal, you can set up using an email address and a regular bank account, Blanchard said.

PayPal provides a simple front end to its services but more important are the backend web services and programmable interfaces, Blanchard said. PayPal makes it “drop-dead easy” to add payment options to sites and it also takes care of such worrisome details as fraud detection. Things no developer really wants to worry about.

One Lambcast product lets content creators sell their wares using email or from their blog or other channel. “If you author an ebook and want to sell it for $10 from your blog, we create a new zip format with PayPal embedded in it. Our toolset lets you zip up your ebook at a price and then distribute it however you want,”  Blanchard said.

It’s also more flexible than Google Checkout in that you can split the payments in the case of an ebook or other content with multiple authors. That can be done with Amazon’s FPS system as well, although Amazon supports fewer authors than PayPal.

To be clear, Lambcast works with all of the above options. Face it: If you want to sell stuff online, you need to make it as easy as possible for customers to buy the way they want to buy.

Another PayPal plus Lim cites is that at any given moment, $3 billion is sitting in PayPal accounts and that trove turns over every two weeks.

Not to reiterate the obvious, but if  you’re an online merchant, you want to make it as easy as possible for customers to spend that money with you and not the other guy.

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

If you’re an ISV in the era of Saas vs. on-premise delivery models, the stack question has never been bigger.

If you’re going the on-premises route for your applications you must weigh the whole Java/Eclipse vs. .Net/Windows issue. If you’re going to SaaS, there are SaaS-based alternatives including Salesforce.com’s heavily touted environment to be considered.

Narinder Singh, founder of Appirio, says it’s cheaper and less risky to use someone else’s already-built-and-tested services stack to build and field your own software services. He’s cast his lot with Salesforce.com and Google toward that end. Singh was a featured speaker on Salesforce.com’s recent ‘Tour de force’ road show, so his preference is understandable.

At the Boston event last week,  Singh said Appirio saved $300,000 to $500,000 last year in IT costs alone by using Salesforce.com  (and Google infrastructure) as a foundation. It’s not coincidental that Appirio’s services–a CRM dashboard, calendar synchronization, online storage, are for Salesforce.com and Google universes.

The company, now up to 60 employees from ten or 15 a few years ago, uses exactly zero servers for development. It has no servers at all. Singh estimates that the company’s entire IT spend (not including laptops) is in the “hundreds of dollars per year per user.” That includes $50 per user per year for Google apps, $40 per user per year for the Salesforce.com platform license. Oh, and “we give everyone Microsoft Office” because they have to work with outsiders. So that’s probalby the biggest chunk of change outside the laptop. Appirio uses its own internal builds for recruiting, HR at very low cost compared to what he said could be $6,000 to $12,000 per user if SAP were used. (Singh used to be with SAP).

So Appirio gets all that foundational stuff and Salesforce.com doesn’t even get a cut of the action on Appirio’s sales. Hmm. Guess the upside for Salesforce.com is platform credibility and more application choices in its stable.

But Singh also says partners on Salesforce.com side of the fence can win deals by saving corporate customers significant money. He cited one unnamed Midwestern company that evaluated a Microsoft Dynamics on premises financial solution and a Salesforce.com competitor for about 1,000 users. The Microsoft software and services would have been over $4 million. The winning Salesforce.com/Appirio deal came in at between $1.2 and $1.5 million — roughly a third the cost.

The burning question then becomes whether that’s enough money for a services partner. “It’s enough for us to make money. It’s not clear whether it’s enough for Accenture,” Singh said. Accenture is a large services partner often aligned with Microsoft.

Another featured Salesforce.com partner paints a more nuanced picture because the ISV, Coda Financials, is both a Microsoft Gold ISV partner and a fairly new Salesforce.com partner. It’s upcoming on-demand financial services software, coda2go, build on Salesforce.com, will launch in June.

The speed of development was fairly dizzying using Salesforce.com, said Coda CTO Jeremy Roche. “From the minute we committed [to building the app services]  to cutting the actual application took three weeks. Now Coda’s been writing finance systems for 30 years so we know what we’re trying to do in terms of business requirements, but that’s still pretty fast.”

There was some retraining for developers in Apex vs. Java although even that learning curve was short because Salesforce.com’s Apex supports the Eclipse IDE which most of its developers already know.

Coda will continue to work with Microsoft for its on-premises implementations. But as a point of comparison, the company runs something like 356 servers for development of its Microsoft-based on-premise financial software compared to no servers for Salesforce.com.

Of course, with its mesh strategy, Microsoft will no doubt come up with a development platform for SaaS rather than the ad hoc toolsets it now offers, but no one expects deliverables any time soon.

Coda2go users will need a Salesforce.com license or Coda will OEM with Salesforce.com but again, Salesforce.com doesn’t get a piece of each sale.

Roche says the mixed stack mirrors his customer base. Some businesses are “actively moving to on demand. Some aren’t.” For companies wanting to deploy a a mix of both models, Coda will supply a connector to link on-premise and on-demand iterations.

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