Z Trek: The Alan Zeichick Weblog

Java, the Smithsonian, and Android Honeycomb

Archeologists criticize Smithsonian over Java Objects.That headline in the New York Times’s Arts Beat section gave me pause. What type of Java objects are the historians upset about? Are Lara Croft or Indiana Jones going after some valuable…

iPad 2, Android, mobile platform fragmentation and abstraction

Earlier this week, Apple announced the iPad 1.1, the long-awaited successor to its magical tablet.The iPad 1.1 is very similar to the original iPad (which I’ll call the “iPad 1”), except that it's available in white. It’s a bit thinner.…

My recommendation for learning: Pair Conferencing

It’s great to get out of the office and go to conferences, learn new stuff and blow the cobwebs away. And it’s even better to do it with a friend.About two or three times a year, I get the opportunity to attend a professional conference…

Remembering DEC and Ken Olsen

I never spent any time with towering figure behind Digital Equipment Corp., but I remember seeing Ken Olsen speak on several occasions. Sadly, the details of those talks are vague. But certainly the story of Kenneth H. Olsen, who died on Sunday,…

I feel really stupid!

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Super-Geek!Like many techies, my self esteem is pretty high. There’s no run-of-the-mill tech problem I can’t solve. Networking? Operating systems? Application crashes? Crazy error messages? Bring ‘em…

Is Microsoft a fuddy-duddy company? Passé? Over the hill?

On January 27, Microsoft released its latest quarterly financial reports, showing that its net income was US$6.6 billion – more than 10% above analyst estimates. Total quarterly revenue was $19.95 billion, compared to analyst estimates of…

Keep the codecs free — and in the public domain

Proprietary multimedia formats annoy me. I don’t care if it’s DOCX or SWF or WMV or H.264 or CR2. I don’t like them, and wish they’d go away. Or at least, I wish they’d stay off the public Internet.Software developers should not have…

Let it code, let it code, let it code

Winter time, Long Island, New York. Storm after storm means office closures, lost productivity, missed ship dates.Visiting SD Times’ New York office this week, I enjoyed a few decent snowfalls. That reminded me of why I moved from New England…

No more adult supervision on the Starship Google

Larry Page is taking over the command chair of the Starship Google. He replaces Eric Schmidt in the CEO role, who was brought in a decade ago to provide adult supervision, and who moves into an advisory position as executive chairman.Before…

The wonderful world of platform fragmentation

Look at all the wonderful new toys announced last week at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Tablet computers and lots of things running Android. Internet-connected televisions that have browsers and apps, such as Samsung’s…

2010 and 2000 in Review: XML, Dot-Coms, Microsoft Dominate Headlines

What a year that just past in 2010 – and what a year we can look forward to. Can you believe that the iPad only came out last year? That Oracle hasn’t always owned Sun and Java? That Microsoft used to be a powerhouse in consumer technologies?…

Where does identity live?

I’m having an identity crisis. Please feel free to join me.When I wake up my laptop, it asks for a username and password. The right answer provides access not only to the machine and its locally stored applications and data, but also my keychain…

Forget Java, what we really need is coffee

Some software developers manage without 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione. I have no idea how they do it. Haven’t they read the requirements document, which clearly states that all IT professionals must consistently consume massive…

Attachmate buys Novell, but Microsoft is the big winner

Microsoft has many, many enemies. Microsoft is threatened on the Internet front by Google, on smartphones by Apple, on developer tools by IBM Rational, on databases by Oracle, and on game platforms by Sony and Nintendo.Yet the earliest Undesirable…

Developer jobs and the market

What a day I’ve chosen to write this Take – it’s late afternoon on Thursday, Aug. 26, and today the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed below 10,000 again. Coincidentally, we’ve been sweltering here in the San Francisco Bay Area with…

Android? iPhone? Let’s try both.

Like many of my friends and colleagues, I’ve got two smartphones. One of them is an Apple iPhone 4. Oooh. The other is an HTC EVO running Android. Aaah.Both of those smartphones are great to use (though it’s sometimes disconcerting when…

Exciting changes coming to BZ Media’s SD Times

SD Times is changing to a monthly publishing schedule, and is being redesigned into a standard magazine size.When we launched SD Times in February 2000, it was as the first-ever newspaper of record for the software development industry. Being…

Watts Humphrey and a commitment to quality

I don’t know a single software developer who doesn’t process a commitment to quality – and who believes anything except that he or she designs, writes and publishes solid, secure applications filled with clean, efficient code.I don’t…

Hackers and scammers and spammers, oh my

An alarming message came in today from a cousin's email address — and freaked out some members of my extended family. However, it's a total scam. Someone hacked in my cousin's email address (either by guessing her password or by phishing…

Lasers. They’re not just for Dr. Evil any more.

It’s amazing to believe the laser has only been around for about 50 years. So much depends on lasers, from the read/write heads in our optical drives (think CDs and DVDs) to laser printers to laser pointers to laser eye surgery to lasers driving…

Whose job is it to maintain Java?

Apple makes really cool, really sexy notebook computers. Last week, the company unveiled two models of its ultra-lightweight MacBook Air – one weighing a featherweight 2.3 pounds, the other a mere 2.9 pounds. The emotional right side of my…

Pondering the future of Java and the JCP

We’re long past the simplify and naivety of Java's “write once, run anywhere,” and of a vision for a universal programming language.Java was always about business. The Java Community Process wasn’t never forum for interested parties…

Celebrating the 100,000,00th issue of SD Times

One hundred million issues of SD Times! That’s one heck of a milestone.For many developers and IT professionals, it’s easy to forget the low-level underpinnings of today’s computers. A personal computer isn’t a computation device. It’s…

Starting a week on a mobile high

Last week was incredible. We held our debut iPhone/iPad DevCon last week in beautiful La Jolla, a village in San Diego. So, please forgive me if I’m on a bit of a mobile high.(As I write this, it’s Friday, and I’m both working my way through…

This is the 1000th posting on the ZTrek blog

The first ZTrek post was on Sept. 22, 2006. The 500th was on May 9, 2008. In that post, entitled "Opus 500," I calculated that post #1000 would be on Dec. 25, 2009. Whoops.The pace has slowed for several reasons.1. I'm so busy!2. Because I share…

Oracle’s Tent City, San Francisco, U.S.A.

OOW + OD + J1 = Big. Wow. This week was the Oracle triple play – Oracle OpenWorld, Oracle Develop and JavaOne. This is the first year, of course, that Java is owned by Oracle, and therefore, it’s the first year that JavaOne is an Oracle…

Read SD Times on your iPad

My head is full of mobility – and that’s a good thing. But sometimes juggling all the technology can be a bit overwhelming. In one pocket, you’ll often find a new Apple iPhone 4, newly upgraded to iOS 4.1. In another pocket, an HTC Evo…

Photos from the San Bruno Fire scene

Yesterday afternoon, I walked through the neighborhood devastated by last week's gas-main explosion in San Bruno. (It's close to my house.) The governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, coincidentally was there doing a press conference. You…

Disasters and the comfort of modern technology

It’s scary watching water-tankers flying over your house… and dropping their loads only a couple of blocks away onto a towering ball of flame that we could see – and feel.My home is less than a mile from the gas-line explosion that happened…

Developer jobs and the market

It’s late afternoon on Thursday, Aug. 26, and today the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed below 10,000 again. Coincidentally, we’ve been sweltering here in the San Francisco Bay Area with a unusual heat wave (bring me lemonade, stat!),…