Michael Dolan Dot Com

Archive for June, 2008

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

Acer is betting big on Linux for portables

It looks like Acer is going big for Linux in its portables lineup. This is great news and offers greater options. The big question is when will ISVs start porting their commercial apps over… come on Adobe – it’s time for CS5 to support Linux!

Acer describes its 3 motivations as follows:

“We have shifted towards Linux because of Microsoft,” he said. “Microsoft has a lot of power and it is going to be difficult, but we will be working hard to develop the Linux market.”

Acer sees two killer apps with Linux on computers: operation and cost. Its flavour of Linux will boot in 15 seconds compared to minutes for Windows, and the open source operating system can extend battery life from five to seven hours.

At the same time, the company expects that the price differential of Linux will make the offering attractive for consumers at the low-cost end of the market.

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

Google Gadgets for Linux Open Sourced / Reviewed

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080605-google-gadgets-open-sourced-for-linux.html

Google has announced the official release of Desktop Gadgets for Linux and is distributing the source code under the open-source Apache software license. Although there are still bugs and the implementation is not yet entirely complete, it works well enough for day-to-day use.

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

Linux to outship Windows by 2013 (Windows Mobile that is)

Wow; just how far has Linux come in the mobile space? It will outship Windows for smartphones in the next 5 years. Consider that smartphones may not even include the Motorola lines that run Linux (but are not “smartphones”).

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/06/05/smartphone_os_linux/

Smartphones running Linux look set to become far more commonplace within the next five years, market watcher ABI Research has forecast.

The firm’s VP, Stuart Carlaw, reckons that Linux will feature on 23 per cent of smartphones by 2013. He added that that share of the market will put the open source operating system in second place in the smartphone popularity stakes, putting it behind Symbian and ahead of Microsoft’s Windows Mobile worldwide.

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

Spamalot?

What’s with the sudden surge in WordPress comment spam this week? If I didn’t have Akismet, I’d probably turn commenting/trackbacks/etc completely off.

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

Congrats to those who deserve it: Redmonk

It’s rare that I congratulate anyone on my blog for any reason other than making a “dumb” move in the market. Today is not another one of those days.

I’ll diverge for today as I noticed the Redmonk team made quite a dent in the AR world with a #4 WW and #3 in US finish. They truly deserve it – and if they add a stats/KPO group and about 100 other analysts, maybe we’ll see them even higher in the future. I don’t know if they’re still reading my blog, but if they do – congrats gentleman (and have a beer – or two).

One thing that impresses me about Redmonk is they have a Google-ish mantra. Similar to “do no evil”, the Redmonk guys say what they actually believe. Now that might sound odd to say, but they do participate in a marketplace with competitors that perform a practice called “say what you’re paid to discuss in the best light possible”. Now both do have value – one helps vendors speak to customers in a more refined and balanced outside perspective – but the Redmonk model is more disruptive. Sure, they may miss out on some of the other engagements too, but I love watching market disruptions – especially those with open access.

http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2008/06/02/iiar_awards/

http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2008/06/02/redmonk-cote-recognised-in-analyst-of-the-year-survey/

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

Register: “Windows experiment meets the bottom line”

There are cases where this just makes perfect sense. I think the Linux ISV or open source apps/middleware community could use a dose of attention to the integration and ease of implementation across products. That’s clearly a strength of Microsoft. I’ve always been a fan of SQL Server and Visual Studio – for an average developer working on a small-mid sized project, it’s tough beat the rapid setup and time to live value. Now, those who know their way around could do better with a LAMP stack, but for the average programmer, Windows to Windows upgrades significantly lessens the transition costs.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/02/project_watch_eight/

Where was the horror typically associated with migration, where was the pain? I was expecting – not to say looking forward – to writing about the hair-tearing frustrations and incandescent rages attendant upon working with Microsoft’s community technology previews (CTPs) and early releases of new software. But it was not to be.

Apart from the software installation the project has been pretty much drama-free: the operating system hasn’t crashed, the database hasn’t crashed, stuff just works. As a developer, I am delighted the project has gone so well.