Information Manager Journal

London Stock Exchange outage blamed on Microsoft

This September 9 story hasn't been fully explored by the press, and with the collapse of Lehman Brothers yesterday, is now in danger of being forgotten. But in the midst of rocky financial times, to have your institution relying on Microsoft technology for high-volume trading has to be seen as risky behavior.

Literacy Bridge: Building a really cheap digital audio device

Cliff Schmidt is leading an effort by Literacy Bridge to build a very inexpensive MP3 player for the developing world. I spoke with him for my latest Opening Move podcast.

Virtual battle

At last, the fundamental technology battle of our time is at hand. Will you want a virtual version of your Web stuff on your desktop or your handheld device -- the way Google will serve it up -- or will you want a virtual version of your desktop or handheld device on the Web -- the way Microsoft will serve it up?

I'm betting on Microsoft's approach, but only because Google's privacy assurances aren't very convincing, and the Web is subject to reliability problems, as anyone who's ever tried to watch a Netflix movie online can confirm. But millions of others will opt for Google, because of the continuing headaches of deploying and patching desktops like Windows.

Finally, which side will Apple take?

Opening up software testing with video

The details of software testing inside big companies tend to be locked away in some vault. Novell is doing something different at its Better Desktop Web site. They've posted lots of videos of people using Mozilla Firefox, Evolution, Open Office, Banshee, F-Spot and other applications. The videos are organized by task -- that is, you can watch the way various people try to perform the same task, viewing their on-screen actions, their comments and their facial expressions all at the same time.

I applaud Novell for opening up the process of software testing in this fashion.

Gary Cornell says SOA is CORBA done right

Gary Cornell of Apress says service-oriented architecture (SOA) is CORBA done right. If you are old enough to remember CORBA, or even if you aren't, you'll probably find the rest of his comments interesting too, in this conversation I recorded for Opening Move at IT Converssations.

Feedster link claim

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster

Search: Will all roads lead to Rome?

Matt Hindman: "Because of link/traffic patterns, we may be facing a situation in which all search engines are returning the same results." Time ran out before I could ask this question of Matt: What do you think of the Amazon A9 search engine idea, that “people like you found search engine results like these to be useful”? Won't that create a new, more personalized search alternative? UPDATE: Five seconds after I wrote this, Stewart Baker suggested in a later session that law enforcement could use something very much like A9 to get better results while better protecting privacy.

Avoid Gateway

John Walkenbach comes down hard on the way Gateway forced him to buy a second copy of Windows XP to easily restore his PC after a power outage crashed his PC. Microsoft should not allow its OEMs to treat their customers so shabbily. Meanwhile, avoid Gateway.

Pocket PC not ready for prime time

One thought leads to another this afternoon. I downloaded Larry Lessig's new book, Free Culture, as a PDF file. Then I downloaded Adobe Reader for the Pocket PC. Then I opened the 352-page PDF on the Pocket PC. First, I was warned that the file wasn't properly tagged for viewing on the Pocket PC, and I had to tell it to do its best. Then, it ran short of memory (I was listening to an IT Conversations audio interview at the same time on this device) and the Pocket PC asked me to let it steal some storage memory to use as program memory. (Why couldn't it do this dynamically?) Finally, it just stopped loading the PDF. At least the audio file kept playing until it finished. (Then, promptly, I got a "crash" with random graphic garbage overwriting a pop-up menu). This is the software that will power millions of 1GB cell phones in the next few years? UPDATE: I tried to read Lessig's book on my Palm Tungsten C. It doesn't try nearly as hard to display the text using pretty fonts, but it did load the document successfully, unlike the Pocket PC.

Ease of use vs. 1GB gizmos

Charles Cooper: "You don't log onto your television or boot up your phone. Is it entirely unreasonable to believe that people should be able to use technology tools with similar ease?" Unfortunately, it's far more reasonable to expect that a 1GB TV or phone will be a device you do have to log onto. Not that I think this is progress!