4G Performance: 3 Hoaxes vs 1 Real Deal
A number of benchmark test have just become available on the performance of 4G networks in the US. And the major vendors are all tested – AT+T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon. And the results speak much louder than any press releases or WormTongue Mobile Phone Company advertisements. There is the real deal , Verizon, and […]
Google Gmail Motion Mocks Microsoft Kinect
After taking a slap on the face from Microsoft with Redmond’s antitrust complaint yesterday, , Google returns fire with its superior GMail Motion on April 1. The Redmond UI experts who are working feverishly on a Wii to get Kinect into the Windows UI will be weeping and gnashing their teeth – or just LOLing […]
Switching to Chrome Browser from Firefox
The strip above tells a good part of the reason this Web Developer is switching. First important note, ye Editor barely bothers to use any Firefox or Chrome extensions/plugins nor Firefox themes – so loyalty is not effected by these important factors in favor of Firefox. But during any day there is a gravitational pull […]
Steve Jobs Post-PC Era:The Computing Divides
Steve Jobs in his announcement of the Apple iPad 2 emphasized that client computing has reached a Post-PC era. In fact, Jobs cited the complete product line of Apple iDevices as leading the way into the new Post-PC era of computing . Nowhere has this Computing Divide of the Post-PC Era been made more apparent than in a […]
New Operating Systems Birth Pangs
Twenty Years after Windows emergence as the number one Personal Computer Operating System, who would have guessed that their would be birth pangs for new PC OSes? But in loud headlines you have all the detailed scream and angst. Mobile connected devices with ever higher battery life and CPU power[Quad core chips are coming to […]
Mobile Tablet Race Update for iPad2
2010 was supposed to be the Year of the Tablet. 2011 will truly be the year of the tablet as a)Apple and Steve Jobs have put their imprimatur on tablets with the iPad and its 15million unit sales; b)there is a dirty dozen IT players that don’t want to be iPhone-ed out of the market; […]
The Beastly Browser Market
Depending on who is doing the counting Microsoft’s IE Browser is starting to drop below 50% market share for all its versions – IE9, IE8, IE7, IE6 and IE5. This has been long overdue since IE has been one of the worst browsers for the past 8++ years. Only now does IE9 comes close to […]
Android Ascendant
The following graphic tells the story – Google’s Android may not be much of a direct money-maker for Google; but it certainly has made Google a major player in the fast emerging mobile market of smartphones and tablets: Certainly Motorola has a turnaround story based on Android. So now the question is what does Google […]
Client Software Development – 3 Added Degrees of Complexity
There is no doubt that the classic Computing World is fragmenting. No more the Wintel monopoly as it is losing its 90% market share dominance of the personal computing client scene to upstart Apple iDevices, Android smartphones plus a wave of RIM,Dell, Samsung, Archos and other tablets. The PC, even in laptop form, is no […]
PC Market Fragmentation
The PC market is seeing a profound split or forking in the road on how Computing is served to the public. It is heavy-creative versus mobile-utility usage – PCs vs Tablets. Marketwatch catches this trend and its implications for the broad PC markets. The result should see in the next 2-3 years a profound drop […]
IE9: Such a Disappointment
IEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE9, what a disappointment! It would not be so bad if Microsoft had managed expectations better. But the ACID3 scores going from 55% to 95%. And all the accelerated graphics routines. And the promise of Canvas, SVG, and HTML5 support. Shades of Windows 3.1 days when the Redmond boys won on glitz over substance[a foreshadowing […]
Linux Wins on the Desktop
Linux is poised to win big market share on the desktop with Google Android Linux. The proof is the spectacular success of Android smartphones in the market place where it has passed Apple in the latest quarterly sales numbers. There is a tidal wave of Android and Chrome Os[ also based on Linux] devices coming […]
Falls PC Hopes
Every year around August early September your Keep an Open Eye editor gets requests from friends and family to make recommendations regarding back to school PC purchases. This year, instead of the usual recommendations, PC Prospects looked different. First, Apple did with the iPad what Microsoft had failed to do with its tablets – deliver […]
Google Android Scales Consumer OS Peak!?
Okay, a slight exaggeration; but the announcement this last Thursday that Google Android [a Linux variant] has won the top spot among smartphone OS may be a precursor of what is to come. This Fall, a wave of Android slates, netbooks, pads and tablets are going to arrive on the scene – and change the […]
Google Outages: Cloud Computing Implications
For the past half year at least, Google Search and often all of Google services have been “out” – just not available while other search engine and Web services such as Yahoo, Bing, Ask, Yahoo Mail and others are up and running. This has implications for Cloud Computing adoption. It also has to be of […]
HTML 5 DevTools: Sencha Touch
EXTjs is now Sencha -and I am not sure the new moniker is much ahead of the old name. But EXT.js uhhhh.. Sencha really knows how to turn out good JavaScript code. If you are into Java web development, EXT.GWT is very strong, gets Java to JavaScript and is well worth the look. On the […]
How Google Beats Microsoft
Everybody and his brother know that Apple and Google are beating Microsoft and its latest yet-to-appear Phone 7 in the mobile market. You don’t need a table, but just in case here is the latest comparative numbers available from Gartner – note the Microsoft market share is for Windows Mobile 6.x and other Microsoft phone […]
iPhone 3Gs $97 at Walmart
Walmart knocked down the prices again – by more than 50% to $97 for an Apple iPhone 3Gs as of last Tuesday. So the gadget press churned out the obvious – Apple was allowing Walmart to clear out the iPhone 3Gs stock for the upcoming iPhone 4 likely to be announced at the Apple Worldwide […]
Declarations of OS Independence
Dell and HP have recently made very strong declarations of OS independence from Microsoft. Take HP first. With the buying of Palm for its webOS and the annoucement by HP that webOS would be used in not only its mobile phones [displacing Microsoft Windows Mobile] but also some of its tablets and notepads including the […]
Turmoil at the Redmond Bigtop
Flash Player 9 or higher is required to view the chartClick here to download Flash Player now View the full MSFT chart at Wikinvest There are large changes at the executive suite of Microsoft [key management J.Allard and Robbie Bach are out] as the Mobile and Internet divisions continue to flounder while Apple and Google […]
Whats in Firefox 4
Firefox 4: fast, powerful and empowering View more presentations from Mike Beltzner. The people at Mozilla who are responsible for Firefox deserve admiration. They were the first organization to take on the IE monopoly effectively in the early 2000 time frame by targeting better standards adherence and strong JavaScript support. True, Opera had been battling […]
Google’s New Look. Bing.
Google has finally released on a regular basis the New Look of its Search Results. Bing. Now I don’t want to imply that Microsoft or AskUs had any influence on this new look. Bing. But clearly Google is out to make its search page results as attractive as its search engine savvy. Bing. Also the […]
Steve Jobs Explains No Flash
ReadWriteWeb was the first major tech blog off the mark to get the story on Steve Job’s explanation of why he is excluding Flash on the iPlatforms. RWW nicely summarizes the Flash points and then rightly raises the issue of Google’s Android and its support of Flash. RWW asks is Androids more flexible approach to […]
Apple Cuts the RIA Field Down
Apple has cut the RIA field down to one for now – HTML5. With Apple’s iPhone OS4 announcement of what software development tools would be acceptable on the Apple Mobile Lineup, Apple has said NYET, NEIN, NO to Flash in any way shape or form and to Java too. And NON, NOPE, NIX to Microsoft […]
Apple’s Move to a Mobile Monopoly
Apple is moving inexorably to a Mobile Monopoly – it is the Apple mobile line up: iPod, iPhone, iPad, and iGiveUpWhatsNext. The Apple mobile lineup is closed ecosystem in which all plugins, extensions and apps must go through Apple approved software process. And those extensions and apps/plugins must use Apple approved software development tools. Hence […]
Unix/Linux Lineage and Directions
2011 will mark the 20th year of Linux and close to the 40th anniversary of Unix and its worthwhile The Unix/Linux Family Tree noting the family tree and who is who among the operating system players of note in their use of Unix/Linux. Apple MacOS = has strong Unix/Linux heritage through NextStep and Andrew HPUX […]
Google Ads
Be honest now, how many times have you seen an ad for a Google product – magazine, newspaper, web banner – any and all media accepted?? Okay, 10 years ago there were the ads for the Google Search appliance, a server box loaded up with Google search goodies that could be plugged into your network.But […]
5 Viewpoints on Apple’s iPad
iPad Viewpoint 1 – the Gadgeterati Snub iPad After much speculation, Apple’s iPad hit the Gadget Mindscape market with a thud. To say that the Gadgeterati did not like the iPad is, unfortunately for Apple, an understatement: Gizmodo – 8 things about the iPad that sucks – No Thanks Apple PCWorld – Apple’s iPad mistakes […]
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer on Censorship
The Guardian and Financial Times in England have been covering the China vs Google story much more closely than US media. So when the Guardian published a story about Bill Gates reactions to the conflict , curious, I took a look: After pouring billions of dollars into the global fight against malaria and rebranding Microsoft […]
NYTimes Gets Web 2.0 Technology; But …
Over the past two years the NYTimes has been showing an evergrowing Web 2.0 savvy. Like many of its large newspaper cohorts, the NYTimes is using such Web 2.0 fixtures as tabs, scrollers and accordions to make quick access to multiple stories on a single page. Its photo galleries use nifty Flash-enabled slideshow viewers. But […]
Google Go
As a developer I have always anticipated programming languages adding 3D operations or APL-like vector and array operations or event handling [more beyond the current Try-Catch paradigm]. Extensions that would become universal. But that has not happened except in a perverse way – the huge functional libraries associated with all the major languages from C/Pascal/ […]
Just Good Enough 2: Google Android
New York Times writer Saul Hansell has a fascinating piece here about why Google Android is being pushed into the smartphone OS market. Saul argues that its more than just making room for more Google ads on smartphones – but rather, not to allows one or two players [read currently Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s Blackberry] […]
Browser Negligence: What to Do About Microsoft
In the previous posting showing two online and live Paint programs developed by Finnish University professors, one can get an idea of which browser vendors are supporting SVG vectore graphic and HTML5’s bitmap canvas commands. These capabilities are key to Web 2.0 flourishing. Here are the results using the latest browser versions from all the […]
Chrome Frame Opportunity
I have been having an extended discussion on this blog about the role of Web writers and savvy developers in allowing Microsoft to be very abusive of Web standards. Microsoft is simply refusing to implement CSS, DOM, HTML, and JavaScript standards [many of which they pledged to do over 10 years ago] or are prolonging […]
CSS:The Missing Facts
I have just been sent CSS: The Missing Manual by David McFarland at O’Reilly Press to review. So I am scouting through the manual to see how informative it is and to get first impressions. And I come across a sidebar comment – Should I Care About IE6. As readers who have visited this site […]
Google Translations II: See It Here!
I have been following the Google Translations API rather closely with remarks already in this blog. But recently Google made Translations for Web pages so easy to do it seemed worth while to try it out.The screen capture to the left can be seen in the upper right corner of this blog.Go ahead and try […]
The Old Lady Sings
Many people have written off magazines and newspaper publishers as ante-diluvian and Waiting for Godot. Watch it. There is more to publishing on the Web than the technology – it also call for great editorial skills and a feel for good stories or story telling – a business that newspapers and magazines have been in […]
Google Responds to Microsoft’s Bing
For the last 10 years, Google’s display of search results has seen a slow, gradual [some would say glacial] movement. Yes there have been improvements – the display of search results with similar and then cached options allowing for different views of the search results. Or users could resort to Advanced Search – but Advanced […]
What is a better Web Browser?
I thought the answer to the question would be obvious – not so as the people at Slate point out. This would help explain why Internet Explorer 8 has managed to maintain market share despite being the worst browser for features, standards compliance and performance. So what does Google do – create Chrome Frame – […]
Google Shakes the Web Again: Sidewiki
Google is up to its innovation tricks, proving once again that it is master of Web 2.0 Interface Innovations with Sidewiki – a post-a-comment on any Web page system [and its a Wiki no less]. Google once again is proving that it is taking Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Twitter and the Web 2.0 horde seriously. Facebook […]
More on Google’s Chrome OS
Google promised a beta release of its Chrome OS before 2010. Google’s Android OS is just starting to appear for some netbooks and with mixed reviews so far. the OS has already garnered a number of unofficial blogs, here is a typical one , that appear to be trlling mightily for more than tidbits of […]
Simple: Google’s Basic
I could not believe what I saw on the code.google.com site – Simple, a Google version of Basic, really VB/VBA, for the Google Android OS. So it appears the battle between Google Android versus Google Chrome OS may well be a real brouhaha. But even more important is the fact that Google Android for the […]
Gaming Widgets and the Change in the RAIA Race
Get the <a href=”http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/bubbles-game” mce_href=”http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/bubbles-game”>Bubbles</a> widget and many other <a href=”http://www.widgetbox.com/” mce_href=”http://www.widgetbox.com/”>great free widgets</a> at <a href=”http://www.widgetbox.com” mce_href=”http://www.widgetbox.com”>Widgetbox</a>! The following game widget can be found here. What is interesting is that it is available in 3 formats: 1)JavaScript – as used just above here 2)Flash – which can embed on just about any website 3)MySpace […]
A Look at Mozilla Firefox
The NYTimes Technology section has a 3 page story on Mozilla and its most important product, the Firefox browser. This story is notable for 3 reasons. First, it acknowledges the signifigance of Mozilla’s Firefox which has a)become the most popular Open Source software with more than 300 million downloads and b) wrested 25% of the […]
JavaScript to Duplicate Java Speeds?
With the browser wars fully engaged – the improvements in JavaScript speed has been no less than astonishing. But now its not just Mozilla versus Microsoft but also Google, Apple Safari, and Opera are in the mix. Just a couple of years ago, IE7 used to lead the parade with the fastest JavaScript performance in […]
Bing’s Advantage
The following NYTimes story shows the impact that Microsoft’s newly re-relaunched search engine, Bing, is having in the search engine wars. Instead of being a hapless me-too, Bing brings real innovation and a competitive advantage in search results display to BING over Google. But the writing was on the wall – Google’s frugal search result […]
The Death of XHTML2
Go to the W3C Web standards website and see the following headline posting: XHTML 2 Working Group Expected to Stop Work End of 2009, W3C to Increase Resources on HTML 5 2009-07-02: Today the Director announces that when the XHTML 2 Working Group charter expires as scheduled at the end of 2009, the charter will […]
Goggle Chrome OS Commentary
Google Chrome OS has provoked a lot of commentary. This posting will be updated over the next month or two. Here is the best seen so far: July 8th Information Week by Art Wittman – catches the nature of the opportunity very well. July 8th by Jeff Bertolucci at PCWorld – proposes a series of […]
Bing to Google: Its Serial
After 10 years of playing increasingly third fiddle to Google’s search engine Microsoft’s Search Engine , Bing, has turned an important corner. It is garnering ravish reviews – the game is on. As we previously reported the reaction to Bing is increasingly positive particularly the innovations on displayed results where About.com and others have done […]
Google Chrome OS: Pivotal Player
Google will have not one but two OS available for Netbooks and PCs by this time next year. Google Android has already been adopted for smartphones and is also being used on a number of Netbooks for introduction this Fall. But now Google has officially announced the Google Chrome OS – which is a new […]