software

Microsoft's two faces of SharePoint

If this hasn't come through in my blog, I have a sincere respect for Microsoft. I particularly appreciate what it has done with SharePoint. Microsoft has grown a lightweight collaboration portal into $800 million in revenue in just a few short years. It is the fastest-growing product in Microsoft's history.

Microsoft being Microsoft, it is sharing the wealth with its partner ecosystem. Yes, Microsoft routinely runs roughshod over its partners but, to be fair, it's hard for a company that size to do much of anything without squashing partners in the process. But in the case of SharePoint, partners will help to drive SharePoint into all sizes of enterprises and into all kinds of applications, according to an article on CMP Channel.

This is where things get interesting, because what's good for Microsoft and its partners is not necessarily good for Microsoft's customers. … Read more

Open-source companies to be acquired by proprietary vendors?

I will predict that virtually every open-source company (including Red Hat) will eventually be acquired by a big proprietary software company.

Thus spake Tim O'Reilly in the comments to one of his other posts. Tim believes that open source, at least as defined by open-source licensing, has a short shelf life that will be consumed by Web 2.0 (i.e., Web companies hijacking open-source software to deliver proprietary Web services) or by traditional proprietary software vendors.

In other words, why don't I just give up, sell out, and go home? I guess I would if I thought that Tim were right. He's not, not in this instance.… Read more

Free 'World' mentality: WorldMate now free for Nokia S60s

It's not uncommon for publishers to start nailing dollar signs on freeware products or release a pro version requiring some financial obligation. It's a little more rare, and always refreshing, to see publishers introduce a free version of a commercial product. PK Ware did it with SecureZIP back in April, and MobiMate is doing it now with WorldMate S60, all-in-one travel software that incorporates a world clock, global currency converter, weather forecaster, and time zone map that tracks night and day around the globe.

The limited-feature release offers users free reign over five WorldMate capabilities, but dangles flight … Read more

Intuit building Quicken Online

Intuit is planning to release a Web-based edition of its leading personal finance application this winter, possibly early in 2008. Quicken Online marks a key transition for a company that has made its bones selling new versions of its boxed software each year.

I've wondered for a while when a big software brand would offer online financial software with some measure of security and a respectable amount of features beyond basic bank account check-ins. The few that I tested late last year were woefully inadequate. Few people seem willing to trust their personal finances with an unknown brand, for … Read more

AMD helping developers get ready for octo-core

It seems only fair that since the hardware side of the computing world plowed ahead with parallelized computing, they should help out the software development community.

In that spirit, AMD plans to let developers take a crack at its Light-Weight Profiler Tuesday as a possible assist for the growing problem faced by PC software developers: just how the hell are we going to effectively use processors with multiple cores? AMD's LWP could let applications written for runtime environments like Java or .Net interact directly with hardware to know how much performance is available across a series of cores, said … Read more

DropMyRights part 2: Installing and configuring

This is a follow-up to my previous posting about DropMyRights, where I tried to make the case that every Windows XP user should use it.

You can download DropMyRights either from Microsoft or from CNET's Download.com.

What is downloaded is an MSI file rather than the usual EXE. Double-click on the MSI file to start the DropMyRights setup wizard. The wizard is pretty standard--you agree to the license, then select an installation folder. Interestingly, it defaults to installing DropMyRights in a subdirectory of My Documents (MSDN\DropMyRights) rather than the usual C:\Program Files.

After final … Read more

Every Windows XP user should drop their rights

If you are running Windows XP, you should install the free DropMyRights program. Hopefully this posting will convince you of this.

DropMyRights is a free program that greatly increases the security of Windows XP and has not gotten the attention that I think it deserves. Everyone running Windows XP should use it. Yes, everyone.

Windows, Macs and Linux all support the concept of restricted and unrestricted users. Restricted users are limited in the changes they can make to the system, perhaps the biggest restriction being on installing software. Windows unrestricted users are called Administrators, with Macs and Linux the sole … Read more

Find friends online

There may be an excess of social-networking sites starting up these days, but the concept seems to be a permanent fixture on the Web landscape. Whether it's MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, LinkedIn, or your own network, people love connecting with old friends and finding new ones online.

Most social-networking occurs via Web-based software in your browser, but there are several cool downloadable tools that you can also use to connect and communicate with friends and strangers online.… Read more

Task Manager - useful enough to run all the time

In Windows XP, Task Manager is like the dashboard of a car. It's your interface into what's going on under the hood. It can tell you things such as: what programs are running in the background that you can't see, how busy the processor (CPU) is, which programs are making the greatest demands on the processor, how much ram is free, the number of hard disk reads/writes by each program, etc. etc. When your computer is running slow, or seemingly frozen, Task Manager should be the first thing you turn to.

For whatever reason, Microsoft has … Read more

The juiciest iPhone apps for you

The glossy hype over the Apple iPhone has certainly faded some, but that hasn't bothered the independent and corporate third-party developers that have been polishing up iPhone apps to run over the device's mobile Safari browser.

There's some sweet, juicy webware out there, including iPhone-friendly versions of multinetwork IM giant Trillian, and Twitter, the social-microblogging upstart.

There are also some lesser known but no less deserving offerings, like the Mobile Home headline feed, Box.net Web storage, and eBuddy IM, a Trillian and Meebo IM competitor.

Check out the CNET editors' roll call on iPhone Approll, and … Read more