Enterprise 2.0 by Any Other Name ...

The West Coast edition of the annual Enterprise 2.0 Conference earlier this month generated some noteworthy debate about the evolution and efficacy of social software in enterprise environments -- debate corporate coders would be wise to track.

Start with the opposing views of Martijn Linssen in his blog post, "Enterprise 2.0: the Prodigal Parent," and Andrew McAffee's post, "'Social Business' is Past Retirement Age." ZDNet's Dennis Howlett weighs in on that discussion on his "Irregular Enterprise" blog. So does Bob Warfield's, who analyses on his "Enterprise Irregulars" blog. All worth reading.

Posted by John K. Waters on November 26, 20100 comments

Enterprise 2.0 Rife with 'Social Business' Annos

Vendor announcements were flying fast and furious at the recent second edition of the Northern California Enterprise 2.0 Conference.

The conference, which "explores the integration of Web 2.0 technologies in the enterprise, from both strategic and tactical perspectives," drew an estimated 1,400 attendees to the Santa Clara Convention Center. The Boston edition has been running for 6 years.

Posted by John K. Waters on November 18, 20101 comments

Fighting Firesheep with Firesheep

When software developers Ian Gallagher and Eric Butler unleashed "Firesheep," an add-on they developed for the Firefox Web browser that allows users on unsecured Wi-Fi networks to identify and capture the social networking sessions of others on that network, Butler declared on his blog that their intention was to throw a spotlight on the lack of effective security among popular social media Web sites, such as Facebook and Twitter.

Posted by John K. Waters on November 17, 20100 comments

Scary Times in Java Land?: The Apple Mess, Impact on Eclipse, JCP's Future, More

Halloween may have passed, but some of last week's Java news is still casting a creepy pall on the Java landscape. Last week I reported on Apple's decision to deprecate Java on Mac OS X and Doug Lea's departure from the JCP's Executive Committee, but as my conversations with analyst and industry watchers continued, and I thought the additional insights were worth sharing.

Forrester Research Senior Analyst Jeffrey S. Hammond, for example, reminded me that the rules for the upcoming Mac App Store reject deprecated or "optionally installed technologies."

"What we're seeing here is the emergence of the application store as the new strategic control point for platforms," Hammond said. "From my perspective, Apple's decision is an extension of its low-intensity warfare against the Java platform, the Flash platform, and everything else that allows people to do cross-platform work in their ecosystem."

Which made me wonder if maybe a zombifying virus had gotten loose in Cupertino and caused Apple management to go crazy. The numbers vary from analyst firm to analyst firm, but the basic picture of the developer world going forward includes a steadily expanding community of Java jocks for around a decade before we even see a plateau. And I know a bunch of developers who consider the Mac to be a great machine to code on. How can Apple just dismiss so many Java-loving codederos?

"Here's your choice as a developer," he said. "You can write in Java as you've always done and have it ported to the Mac through third-party efforts, or you can write in Objective C and go directly to the consumer and make more money. Which would you chose?"

Ovum Senior Analyst Tony Baer's assessment was no more comforting. "It's all about making the Mac more iOS like," Baer said. "Jobs may talk up an HTML5 storm, but what he's really saying is: 'Develop natively for the Apple platform.' Java is not part that plan.' More

Posted by John K. Waters on November 1, 20108 comments

QCon -- It's Not Just for Architects!

QCon, my very favorite tech conference, is right around the corner and I'm already wishing I had the powers of The X-Men's Multiple Man, so that I could get to more sessions! (I actually wish that a lot.)

I've been to quite a few trade shows and user conferences in my 15-plus years on the tech beat. I don't mean to sound pollyanna, but most of them have been pretty good events. But in terms of the quality and scope of its content, QCon stands out. Conference organizers characterize it as a "practitioner-driven event." I think of it as the Cornucopia Conference.

Posted by John K. Waters on October 26, 20100 comments

Adobe: It's About the User Experience, Even in the Enterprise

Big announcements coming out of the annual Adobe MAX conference, underway this week in L.A. Lots of talk about the "multiscreen revolution," of course, and how to get your apps and your content to work across PCs, smart phones, tablets and TVs. Adobe is touting its Flash platform as well as HTML5 for Web sites, digital publishing, online video, gaming and even enterprise apps.

Posted by John K. Waters on October 25, 20100 comments

Friday Blog-o-Sphere Watch: Oracle, IBM and the Probably-Not-Going-to-Fork-Now Future of Java

The big news this week for developers was the revelation that the new keeper of the Java flame, Oracle, is getting into bed with IBM on the OpenJDK project. The blogosphere was buzzing with the news, but a few posts stood out, reminding me to make sure I follow these guys.

Bob Sutor, vice president of Open Systems and Linux in IBM's Software Group, posted a widely quoted commentary on the partnership on his blog. This is where the news broke that IBM would be "shifting its development effort from the Apache Project Harmony to OpenJDK." Sutor is an IBMer, but his blog is thoughtful and worth reading. He also maintains a great list of other bloggers under "People and Places."

Mark Reinhold, chief architect of Oracle's Java Platform Group, also blogged about the announcement. Reinhold handled Oracle's side of the story, but also offered his own predictions and expectations about who'll be doing what. Reinhold's blog is worth following for the news he provides, but also for the feedback he gets. Good conversations that include some questions and comments from the likes of another favorite blogger, Simon Phipps, and a bunch of first-string Java jocks More

Posted by John K. Waters on October 15, 20100 comments

App Creators Talk App Engine at Google Lunch

Google treated a group of reporters to lunch last Friday in its San Francisco offices (sushi and pizza -- yum!), and we got to meet some happy users of the App Engine and chat with the Google team behind it.

Google's App Engine is a suite of the tools and services for building and scaling Web apps on the company's infrastructure. Applications developed using the App Engine Software Development Kit (SDK) can be uploaded and hosted by Google, and those apps can then utilize Google's bandwidth and computing power. That's a big selling point, Google argues, given Big G's vast, road-tested infrastructure, which is also hosting its own apps.

Posted by John K. Waters on October 15, 20101 comments

Microsoft vs. Motorola

Microsoft has been lobbing water balloons at Google's Android mobile operating system for months now, but on Friday the Redmond software maker tossed a Molotov cocktail in the form of a lawsuit alleging infringement of nine of its patents by Motorola's Android-based smartphones. Microsoft filed in the International Trade Commission and in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.

Posted by John K. Waters on October 4, 20105 comments