Z Trek: The Alan Zeichick Weblog
eFax customer disservice, part 2
As mentioned in Part 1, my wife asked me to cancel her eFax account, and it seems that the only way to do that is to telephone the company or engage in a live chat. This is unacceptable: I was able to sign up for the account entirely online,…
eFax customer disservice, part 1
My wife, Carole, had been using an eFax account for a few years, but decided to it just wasn’t worth continuing. She asked me to cancel it for her, since I was the one who set it up in the first place. Sounds easy, right? Of course not.Step…
The Europa, iPhone and GPLv3 Trifecta
Last week was a big one for technology enthusiasts and software developers.The Eclipse Foundation shipped Europa, the huge simultaneous upgrade/release of 21 open-source projects. Apple shipped the iPhone, its groundbreaking multi-purpose mobile…
Traveling Wilburys CD set is an audio treat
The Traveling Wilburys released their two official albums in 1988 and 1990. Ever since then, my wife and I have listened to the cassettes we bought nearly two decades ago, later supplanted by a "rip" of those cassettes onto CD-R discs.But now,…
There’s more to open source than Linux
To many people, it seems that open source software movement begins and ends with Linux. Take, for example, the popular news Web site, NewsForge, which has done a good job of covering the entire open source universe. Last week, its owners, SourceForge…
Getting more applications on Linux
A highlight of the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit (which I attended on June 13) was an afternoon panel entitled “How do we get more applications on Linux?”Moderated by Dan Kohn, COO of the Linux Foundation, the panelist were Mike…
Mark Shuttleworth’s Ubuntu perspective
If the Linux community has a hero other than Linus Torvalds, it’s Mark Shuttleworth, a dot-com gazillionaire who started the Ubuntu Project, and who funds it out of his own pocket. If you’re not familiar with Ubuntu, it’s a distro based…
Chill about GPL v3
If you talk to anyone about open source software these days, the topic of the Free Software Foundation's General Public License v3 is sure to come up. People – or rather, those people who think about open source licenses – generally fall…
Where Linux will dominate, and not dominate
At the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit (which I attended on June 13), Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, accurately portrayed that the Linux movement has changed. He stated that, from the enterprise perspective at…
Blame the software for IT failures
According to Managed Objects, a company that sells software service management software, software is at the root of all evil.Managed Objects has conducted a survey of 200 IT managers in the United States, and report that 61% of those IT managers…
HP buys SPI Dynamics: The trend continues
The software security tools market has been ripe for picking, for two reasons:• We had a lot of small, privately held companies developing exciting, but in many cases, overlapping, technology, but those companies had trouble finding customers…
Lean development, agile development
A great article, for all you methodology fans, is a cover story in today's SD Times: "It's Lean, But Is It Agile?," written by Jennifer deJong.As Jenn writes,Are lean software development and agile software development—of which XP is the most…
New David I vs. David I Classic
This morning, CodeGear sent me a new picture of David Intersimone, to replace the several-years-old file photo that I used in my previous blog posting and on our conference Web site. David I, as he's widely known, is an incredibly well-respected…
Had to uninstall Safari 3 beta
"Life's too short to run beta software." That's long been my philosophy, specifically in regard to my own personal workstation.Back when I did a lot of hardware and software testing, there were servers and workstations designated as testbeds,…
CMP whacks Network Computing, Optimize
It’s an incredible coincidence. The same day that BZ Media put out a press release about the record-setting June 1 issue of SD Times, CMP Media put out a press release about its continuing shift to an online media company. That involves laying…
Robert Martin joins EclipseWorld keynotes
We just announced a second keynote for the EclipseWorld 2007 conference: Robert C. Martin, founder and CEO of Object Mentor. "Uncle Bob" is a top expert in object-oriented design, with tremendous expertise in C++ and Java, and also speaks and…
Not much wow at Apple WWDC
Steve Jobs' keynote at the Apple World Wide Developers Conference is sometimes huge with news, sometimes less so. This year’s news was weaker than most. Jobs didn’t unveil new hardware or new developer tools. He didn’t announce new software,…
The IBM spending spree
Today, IBM announced that it’s buying Telelogic, a leading company in the modeling space, specifically a leader in model-driven development. Last week, IBM announced that it’s buying Watchfire, a mid-sized innovator in security and software…
Recycle that computer, for free
If your house or office is anything like mine, there are dead computer bits lying around everywhere. Desktop PCs, old notebook PCs, the occasional server, monitors, keyboards, even a pile of 36GB Ultra2 SCSI hard drives. I’m buried in computer…
The Europa World Tour at EclipseWorld 2007
I’m delighted to report that registration is now open for EclipseWorld 2007, coming in early November to Reston, Va. This is the third annual EclipseWorld, an independent conference produced by BZ Media.This year’s conference, scheduled…
SCO loses more money
It’s time for our regular quarterly look at the SCO Group, which released its fiscal second-quarter financials today. The quarter ended on April 30.SCO’s revenue continues to fall. Total top-line revenue for this quarter was US$6,014,000,…
Viruses on programmable calculators
Computers, yes. PDAs, yes. Cell phones, yes. But programmable calculators as virus targets? Amazingly, yes. According to Symantec, the popular Texas Instruments TI-89 calculator can be infected by a virus named TIOS.Tigraa. (Credit to eWeek's…
New tools from Sun, Microsoft
It’s a good week for developers: Sun pushes its compilers to do more with Linux and multi-core systems, while Microsoft unveiled more about the next version of Visual Studio.Sun’s developer toolchain for native (C/C++ and FORTRAN) code is…
And they say print is dead…
I'm delighted that despite all predictions to the contrary, print publications are doing just great. The June 1, 2007, issue of SD Times is the biggest in our seven-year history. The 60-page issue has more articles, and more advertisements,…
Bam! Pow! SD Times 100!
The winners are.... YOU! If you're a software developer, or development manager, you'll want to read SD Times' fifth annual SD Times 100, a listing of the most important companies, people and projects in the software development industry.The…
A Mac converter for Office Open XML
Ever since Microsoft shipped Office 2007 for Windows, Mac users have been at a disadvantage. Office 2004 for the Mac (the current version) can't read and write the new file format used by Office 2007. Microsoft didn't place the creation of file-format…
Microsoft nukes PDC 2007
Microsoft TechEd, the company's top training event for developers and systems administrators, is coming up in a few weeks: June 4-8, in Orlando. TechEd is focused tightly on currently shipping Microsoft tools, platforms and applications, so…
Betting and the U.S. military
I have nothing against gambling. I enjoy playing blackjack from time to time in places like Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe, and even turned a nice profit once at the Monte Carlo Casino in Monaco playing craps and roulette.However, we should all be…
Gigabit to the Laptop
Renee Bader Niemi, I owe you dinner!I’ve known Renee for nearly two decades, starting from when she worked on the launch of the Poqet PC, the first MS-DOS palmtop around 1989. At the time, I was executive editor of IDG's Portable Computing…
Guy Kawasaki: The funnest entrepreneur
When Guy Kawasaki became a technology evangelist for Apple, the world lost a wonderful stand-up comic. To wit: The audience for his half-hour keynote address at the Salesforce Developer Conference was in stitches for about, oh, 30 minutes.Guy…