Business Intelligence

The short answer is: nothing. And that's a problem, not only for large companies that are trying to make plans, but equally for Microsoft's credibility in the small-business and consumer markets.

Consultant pilot fish gets the order to build an online store for a major client. "When I ask for the specifications, I'm told it's a basic shopping cart, nothing special. This worries me."

John Nack, Senior Product Manager, Adobe Photoshop at Adobe waxes about the upcoming Photoshop CS4 in his blog. The show-stopper is that the Macintosh version of CS4 will be only available in 32-bit form while the Windows version will run in full 64-bit mode.

Census Bureau, Harris Corp. fail to resolve requirements dilemma

Rabbits, white rabb-it's IT Blogwatch: in which the world goes to heck in a handbasket. Not to mention Portal in Flash...

Sir Richard Branson is over the moon:

I'm delighted today to announce Virgle, Inc., a joint venture between the Virgin Group and Google ... [its] goal is simple: the establishment of a permanent human settlement on Mars. Larry Page, Sergey Brin and I feel strongly that contemporary technology is sufficiently advanced to make such an effort both successful and economical, and that it's high time that humanity moved beyond Earth and began our great, long journey to explore the stars and establish our first lasting foothold on another world ...

By many measures, Blackberry seems to be heading toward a pretty big battle with Apple's iPhone in the coming months.  So it comes as a big surprise that they've basically taken the iPhone's look and feel and put it on their new flagship product like they were some cheap knock-off shop in Shenzen.

Remember back in June when all of the analysts told Enterprise IT not to touch the iPhone? One of those analysts, Ken Dulaney, said of it,

"We're telling IT executives to not support it because Apple has no intentions of supporting [iPhone use in] the enterprise. This is basically a cellular iPod with some other capabilities, and it's important that it be recognized as such."

Oh man. How about some fries and a coke with those words?

As far as Apple is concerned, Windows Vista appears to be the gift that keeps on giving. Apple snagged an astonishing 14 percent of U.S. computer sales last month, and its sales were up 64 percent from a year earlier. This confirms my own Coffeeshop Index survey and, points to some really, really ugly turf wars in enterprise computing in the near future.

As expected, the executive board of INCITS, the group representing U.S. interests in ISO, voted in favor of Microsoft Corp.'s Office Open XML specification.

Predictive analytics is a core part of many politicians' election strategies.

Apple, today, sent out invitations to the 2008 World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC). The invitation included an image with two Golden Gate Bridges.

I am postulating that 'Landmark' has something to do with  the location bsed APIs that come with the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK).

Once again, we're provided assurances that our personal information will be protected, but there are no details and again, no standards or protocols for privacy protection

The news from Eastern Europe yesterday was that the Cold War is heating up again – the Cold War between IBM and Microsoft. Big Blue is working with system-integrator partners to supply a "Microsoft-free" desktop PC to large customers like Aeroflot, the Russian state airline.

K.I.S.S.I.N.G. IT Blogwatch: in which Google finally buys DoubleClick after regulators click the thumbs-up. Not to mention the kid who crashes any computer he uses...

Here's Linda Rosencrance, alive and kicking: [You're fired -Ed.]

Google Inc. today said it officially closed the deal on acquiring online advertising company DoubleClick Inc. for $3.1 billion after receiving approval from ... the European Commission ... [which ruled] that the acquisition didn't pose a significant threat to competition in the European online advertising market ...

If you thought Microsoft Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie's announcement at the Mix conference that the company has ″decided to make our most current standards-based mode the default″ in the new beta of Internet Explorer 8 was curious, you're half-right. It was more than that. It was a major tipping point.