Two important products were introduced this week. One was the new iPad from Apple. The other was SQL Server 2012 from Microsoft. With all the coverage of Apple’s third-generation tablet, everything else in the tech industry ground to a halt. Not just the tech industry. Heck, even general interest media sent out alerts: From: CNN […]
Would you believe that 18.0% of developers that SD Times surveyed said that their organizations are running J2EE 1.4 in production environments? That’s the version of the Java server-side platform that was officially released in November 2003. That shows the persistence of deployed platforms. If it ain’t broke, don’t upgrade it. What about new versions? […]
The message popped up in my email last week: Canon was offering a firmware upgrade for my DSLR. Why was I in such a hurry to download and install it? Why do I get such pleasure from updating firmware, such delight in seeing new versions of mobile apps for my Android, iOS and Windows Phone […]
For a while, mobile devices were expanding to become more like desktop computers. They gained real web browsers, full-featured email clients, installable applications, oodles of functionality. The pendulum has turned, and now desktops/notebooks are constricting to become more like mobile devices. This is not good news. The most common examples, of course, are the Windows […]
What’s the traffic like? No, not on the notoriously backlogged US-101 cutting through Silicon Valley, not on Route 128 around Boston, not even “The Four Oh Five” in Los Angeles. I mean the traffic through your office’s Internet connection. A friend of mine who administers a mid-size business network says the lion’s share of traffic […]
Hard to believe it’s been 15 years since “Men in Black” appeared in theatres. The movie is one of my favorites, and a wonderful scene is when an Army officer observes that in its recruiting efforts, the Men in Black is looking for “the best of the best of the best.” The editors of SD […]
Want to pick a little fight? Talk about football. If you’re in most of the world, the 2014 World Cup is already looming on your horizon. If you’re in the United States, then you’re probably thinking about next month’s Super Bowl XLVI, the big matchup between American Football teams. (This year, I’m rooting for my […]
The smell of fresh ink. The source-code listings. The structure. The structure! I am thoroughly enjoying my review copy of “Modern Fortran: Style and Usage,” by Norman S. Clerman and Walter Spector. FORTRAN (or as it’s now called, Fortran) was one of the first programming languages I learned and later taught. In my mainframe environment, […]
Toys, toys, toys. I love to read about new toys, especially sleek sports cars and nifty computerized gadgets. This week has been a bonanza – from two different directions. You might think my focus would be on the big annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Actually, I’ve been more keenly following the happenings at […]
Whose fault is it when data is stolen? It’s rarely blamed on the programmers. If a company executive leaves a laptop filled with confidential data in a taxicab, you probably wouldn’t blame a software developer. Instead, you’d presumably ask, why was that data on the laptop to begin with? I’ve often wondered why corporate executives […]
Computer scientist John McCarthy passed away in October 2011. In an SD Times end-of-year retrospective, cryptographer Whitfield Diffie wrote a personal essay focusing on McCarthy’s work on the creation of public-key crypto. Diffie’s presented a different side of McCarthy, whom I knew mainly for his pioneering work on artificial intelligence and the LISP programming language. […]
AnDevCon III – the third iteration of our Android Developer Conference – will be coming back to the San Francisco Bay Area from May 14-17, 2012. We had some excitement scheduling this conference, as those who attended AnDevCon II in November observed. At first, we scheduled AnDevCon III for April 2012 (and publicized that in […]
Video conferencing is difficult. Whether you’re using a phone, tablet, desktop or laptop, there are challenges everywhere. • Video conferencing requires that all participants use the same service. Whether it’s Skype, Oovoo, FaceTime, AIM, Tango, Fring, Google Talk, WebEx, GoToMeeting, AnyMeeting or whatever, that means a plethora of accounts – and of course, not all […]
As you may have seen a few weeks ago, Adobe is giving up on Flash for mobile devices, and is embracing HTML5. Flash doesn’t run on Apple’s iOS devices. That’s not news, of course. Flash has never run on the iPhone, iPod touch or the iPad. This was a big deal several years ago, especially […]
A four-day weekend doesn’t mean four days without work, not in today’s modern economy. However, a holiday does offer a nice healthy opportunity for improving my life/work balance. Although I spent a lot of time in the office over this year’s Thanksgiving holiday, it also meant time pursuing various hobbies – specifically photography. On one […]
This is one of a series of articles I wrote for the monthly Bulletin of Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame, Calif. In our haste to get to services, classes or committee meetings, we sometimes forget to appreciate the beautiful physical environment at Peninsula Temple Sholom. Next time you visit the Temple, please take a moment […]
You are undoubtedly wondering, “What’s going on with the SD Times team? What are those editors up to?” Let’s find out: • Do you like tribbles? Read our new online column by David Gerrold, a longtime programmer and writer of the landmark episode of Star Trek, “The Trouble with Tribbles.” See his introductory piece, “Looking […]
Wait, oh yes, wait a minute Mister Tweetman Wait Mister Tweetman. Mister Tweetman refresh and see If there’s a Twitter in your queue for me I been waiting such a long time Since I was DM’d from that girl of mine. There must be some tweets today From my girlfriend so far away Please Mister […]
What does mobility mean to you? To many of us, it means smartphones like Android devices, the iPhone, a Windows Phone, or even a BlackBerry. For others, particularly those who live in the past, it means a slide rule. The notion of mobility came up at AnDevCon II – the Android Developer Conference put on […]
Oh, the joy of random Google searches! Earlier today I was looking for something regarding software testing – the details don’t matter to this story. But one of the Google search results brought up a 2008 issue of an English-language Romanian publication called Journal of Applied Quantitative Methods – and the reference had my name […]
Every time I make a restaurant reservation online, I am sent an email survey after the meal. Every time I get my car serviced, I’m asked about my satisfaction. After I buy something from an increasing number of online merchants, I’m asked to rate the transaction. Stay at a hotel. Watch a movie. Send an […]
Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick
If you don’t measure, you don’t know how you’re doing. You don’t know what works and what doesn’t. You can’t figure out what to fix. And you can’t determine if your fixes actually work. Or, as the well-known but oft-ignored saying goes, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” Do you make coffee? Every morning […]
My mind is filled with little green robots… who are they, and where are they going? Earlier this week I attended O’Reilly Media’s debut Android Open conference, a “big tent” gathering that brought together a wide swath of the open-source ecosystem – from game developers to marketers, from chip manufactures to venture capitalists. It was […]
A moment of silence, please, for Steve Jobs. I’m sure that many of you are – to be blunt – tired of reading about him already. The number of obituaries, tweets, Facebook posts, columns and remembrances treats Steve Jobs like he was a head of state, a major movie star, a world leader. He was, […]
A friend of mine, Michael Willems, posted onto his blog, “…the more I see OS X Lion, Apple’s new OS, the less I like it. No – the more I hate it. It is a dumb downgrade, designed to make your powerful computer into a dumb iPad.” Meanwhile, it’s clear that the user interface design […]
Something funny happened to me down at Microsoft’s Build conference, held this week in Anaheim, Calif. Something rare. Something unusual. I wanted what I saw on the keynote stage, and I wanted it bad. I’m talking about the new look-and-feel of Windows 8. The Metro user interface. The seamless transition that it encourages between devices […]
Last week I had a great hands-on demo of Mango, the forthcoming update to Windows 7 Phone. The user interface is stunning. The integration of social media into the user experience is fast and intuitive. The incorporation of functions like OCR, barcode scanning and even speech-to-text is seamless. I love how you can “pin” information […]
We wish Steve Jobs good health and speedy recovery — but for the tech industry, his era is over. Jobs is arguably the most influential computer-industry executive alive today. While he certainly shares the top shelf with the likes of Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Google’s Larry Page, IBM’s Sam Palmisano and Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, for years […]
Google – the company behind Android – is buying Motorola Mobility for US$12.5 billion. Motorola, a U.S.-based telecommunications infrastructure equipment maker formed in the 1930s, spun off its Mobility handset subsidiary in January 2011. Perhaps the Google deal was in the cards all along. In any case, here are my first thoughts upon hearing about […]