Z Trek: The Alan Zeichick Weblog

Big companies behaving oddly

It seems as if all the major IT companies are going bonkers. What’s going on? Is there something in the water?Think about all the odd behavior that we’ve seen lately. Is there a pattern? To mention just a few, in alphabetical order:Apple…

AnDevCon focuses on the Android open smartphone platform

The Android platform is gaining market share and mindshare with amazing speed. While it’s clearly trailing iPhone’s large head start, in terms of installed base and number of independent applications, Android is sprinting to make up the…

Thinking big – as in big projects

We talk so much about agile processes, which are clearly well-suited to small and mid-sized projects. But what about scaling agile for big projects? This is a topic that’s often debated, but in my opinion at least, hasn’t been completely…

Mainframe are not legacy systems!

I’m a mainframe guy. Cut my teeth writing COBOL, PL/I and FORTRAN on the IBM System/370. CICS is my friend. Was playing with virtual machines long, long before there was anything called “DOS” or Windows” or Linux.” My office closet…

Celebrate 250 issues of SD Times by looking forward to the year 2020

What will software development be like in the year 2020? It would be easy to draw a straight line from ten years ago through today, and see where it goes a decade from now. Ten years ago: Hosted applications through ASPs (application service…

The danger of monocultures

When you think about a modern software monoculture, which company do you think of first? Chances are that it’s Apple. However, if I asked that question between, say, 1995 and 2007, you probably would have said Microsoft.In agriculture, a monoculture…

Cloud this, cloud that

Is literally everything about the cloud? You’d think so, going by the chatter from the biggest industry players. It seems that every company that wants to talk to be is pushing something to do with cloud computing. New service offerings from…

Securing the applications

IBM Rational has written a solid white paper on software security, focusing on improving code reviews. Although I rarely (very rarely) endorse a vendor white paper, this is one that’s worth reading.Written in December 2009 by Ryan Berg, a…

The modern programmable portable sensor pack

Battery-powered. Built-in satellite-based Global Positioning System receiver. Accelerometer. Ambient light sensor. High-resolution camera. Powerful processor. Gigabytes of storage. Radios for communicating with Bluetooth devices, WiFi networks…

Is Continuous Deployment the next step forward in agile development?

Speed matters. With most agile development methodologies, the faster you can push new code out into the source-code management system, into builds and onto servers, the faster you can evaluate your progress and chart your next moves. From monthly…

Making sense of Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com intrigues me, and that’s a positive thing. The company keeps reinventing itself, and shows the type of innovation that used to be more common in Silicon Valley.If you thought that Salesforce was in the business of hosting customer…

Get ready for the SD Times 100

It’s almost time to unveil the SD Times 100 – the top 100 companies, project and movements that are demonstrating innovation and leadership in the software development industry.This year, the SD Times 100 will be “officially” published…

Computer Associates does it again

Computer Associates. CA. CA Technologies.What are they thinking over there in Islandia? When Computer Associates changed its name to CA in 2006, it seemed like a lame move at the time. And indeed, while some people do refer the computer as CA,…

Do you share an email address with your spouse?

Those of us in the technology world – call us nerds, geeks or software developers – expect a 1:1 ratio between personal email addresses and people.I’m not talking about business or workgroup addresses. I mean your home, non-business address,…

iPhone, iPhone/iPad DevCon and iPad

There are three separate vectors relating to Apple’s mobile platforms buzzing in my cranium. They're the SD Times iPhone application, the technical program for iPhone/iPad DevCon and my barely used iPad.I'm very proud of our new SD Times Newsreader…

With VMforce, Java enters the Cloud

VMforce is a good idea. Java is perfect for cloud computing: As the original “run once, run anywhere” platform, what VMware and Salesforce have announced has the potential to revolutionize the Cloud, and offer arguably the most compelling…
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Celestial navigation, driving by GPS and agile development

Going agile makes sense. Navigating with traditional methodologies doesn’t make sense. I don’t know about you, but nothing sucks the life out of a software development project faster having to fully flesh out all the requirements before…

B-to-B magazines dropping like flies

If you follow the business-to-business publishing market, you know that last week Reed Business Information announced the closure of 23 publications. The company claimed that it couldn't sell them… but it's not clear if it really tried.Not…

Ads in the apps? Love them – if the apps are free

Free mobile applications are great. If those free apps are supported by advertising, that’s a trade-off that I’m willing to make – and I suspect many users that would agree with me.Our feelings about advertising in software have changed.…

iPhone geeking in the South Bay

Yesterday was a great day — I got out of the office and spent the day down at 360iDev in San Jose. This is a grass-roots conference dedicated to iPhone developers; most of the couple-hundred folks in attendance seemed to be "indie" entrepreneurs.…

No winners in the Apple-Adobe imbroglio over Flash and HTML5

Web developers like using Adobe’s Flash technology to deliver video, animations and interactive content over the Web. Apple doesn’t like Flash because it’s a proprietary system and because the runtime environment can be a resource hog.Apple,…

The jury has spoken, but SCO is still here

“My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.” Gerald Ford spoke those words on Aug. 9, 1974, when taking the oath of office as President of the United States, after the resignation of Richard Nixon.The phrase, “Our long nightmare…

The must-attend conference for all :CueCat developers

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

It’s April 1st, and you know what that means!

It's April 1st, and you know what that means! It means that SD Times annual contributor I.B. Phoolen has made his, well, editorially questionable annual contributions.RAG unveils Mystic SextantMac developers embrace .NET with Visual Objective-CYou…

How to recycle your old computer and other unwanted electronics

What can you do with an old dead computer? A family member asked me how to dispose of his ancient no-longer-functioning Dell desktop PC. The good news is that it's easy, and usually free, to recycle unwanted electronics, whether it's a computer…

With mobile apps, it’s indies, corporate and enterprise IT

If you’re building applications for mobile devices, are you an indie, a corporate or an enterprise IT developer? The mobile world is trifurcating into those specific communities.I spent most of this week at Microsoft MIX, the company’s annual…

Beware of fake Amazon order confirmations

If you buy lots of stuff from Amazon.com — as I do — you might be fooled by receiving a message like the one below. It certainly looks real, as it came from a legitimate-looking email address. However, a real Amazon order confirmation lists…

SPTechCon Boston coming Oct. 20-22

Our next SharePoint Technology Conference will be Oct. 20-22, 2010, at the Hyatt Regency Cambridge.We are conservatively projecting 750-800 registrants for SPTechCon Boston, but given the incredible growth of SPTechCon San Francisco from 2009…

Final SPTechCon tally: More than 1,000 registrants

SPTechCon San Francisco (Feb. 10-12) had more than 1,000 registrants. That made the conference nearly twice the size of our previous SPTechCon San Francisco, held in January 2009.Attendees were drawn to SPTechCon’s outstanding faculty. While…

Crossing the Dreaded Chasm of Chaos

Let’s say that you can type 15 words per minute using a two-fingered method. You want to get faster, perhaps up to 40 wpm, using all ten fingers. During the learning process, as you suffer through unfamiliar motions, your typing speed and…