ODBMS Industry Watch @ OPEN SOURCE MAGAZINE

SELECTED INDUSTRY BLOGS

Ridemakerz Builds a Virtual World For Boys Filled With Its Toy Cars

Larry Andreini thinks he can take on Pixar. The founder and CEO of Ridemakerz, a rapidly growing chain of stores where boys can custom-build their own toy cars, is building a virtual world for his 6-to-12-year-old customers and their cars. This virtual world is in closed beta right now, and will launch early next year. So will Pixar’s World of Cars and startup Webcarzz (here’s some good background). There is a gap on the Web between Webkinz and Club Penguin and the more adult so

Dec. 4, 2008 12:10 PM

PocketBuilder is a nominee for the Developer.com Product of the Year 2009!

The finalists have been chosen. Now is your chance to vote for the technology or product that you think is the best in its category. Voting is now underway and will end on Monday, December 15, 2008.

Dec. 4, 2008 04:52 AM

Comparing A Woman To Monica Lewinsky Is Libelous In Italy

I wonder if Monica can sue for being compared to this woman? Lewinsky comparison grounds for libel Comparing a woman to Monica Lewinsky is an egregious enough offense to be grounds for libel, Italy’s high court says. The Cessation Court ruled Tuesday such is the reputation of the former White House intern for U.S. President Bill Clinton that [...]

Dec. 3, 2008 10:38 PM

Stack Overflow Podcast #32

This week Jeff and I talk about software piracy, some performance improvements on the site, dealing with criticism, great programmer’s offices, and more, in Stack Overflow Podcast #32. Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

Dec. 3, 2008 09:04 PM

Creative Commons gov

Change.gov, the transition site, has moved its content to a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license. So, anyone can use it so long as they attribute it back to its source. Very cool. Open content is, of course, a creativity magnet. Already, apps have sprung up that let you get Change.gov content on your iPhone and as a widget elsewhere. A government whose first instinct is toward openness! What a difference a mere 69 million votes can make! Next: Putting government under revision control, as T

Dec. 3, 2008 08:31 PM

TechCrunch federates with Facebook

TechCrunch: "TechCrunch readers can now use their Facebook accounts to sign in before leaving comments." Interesting. And it integrates with Facebook's news feed. I left a comment suggesting they do the same for Twitter, FriendFeed and Identi.ca. Very easy to validate a name with any of those services, though the companies didn't make a big deal about it. I'd like to see some of the smaller developers get a chance to play in league with the big guys. They could also share a pointer to your comm

Dec. 3, 2008 01:59 PM

“Mashup” presentation at Rome Enterprise 2.0 conference

I’m presenting a talk on “Mashups as an Enterprise 2.0 Strategy” in Rome on December 4, 2008, as one of several speakers covering a wide variety of topics related to Enterprise 2.0. You can download the 3.1-megabyte PDF file by clicking on the icon below; a couple of the slides will seem rather cryptic and mysterious, but if you’re actually attending the conference, then hopefully my verbal presentation will make everything crystal-clear. While I’ve been here this

Dec. 3, 2008 01:44 PM

10 Reasons to be a PowerBuilder developer!

** 10 reasons you should be a PowerBuilder developer ** 1) PowerBuilder positively impacts your bottom line. Simply put, PowerBuilder is a smart business decision. Many companies have a significant amount of existing PowerBuilder code (in

Dec. 3, 2008 12:29 PM

Have you had any issues with Adobe AIR 1.5?

The title pretty much sums it up. Have you run into any new issues in Adobe AIR 1.5? Specifically, I am looking for anything that may have worked in AIR 1.1, which no longer works in AIR 1.5. For example: SHIFT + SPACE doesn’t work correctly in AIR 1.5, but worked fine in AIR 1.1. (Bug #1932338). Just post the info in the comments (including OS info), and please leave your email address in case the team needs to get in touch with you for more information. Please keep comments on topic.

Dec. 3, 2008 11:55 AM

The 5 Most Common Mashup Mistakes

Mashups are a popular topic lately, in both IT and business circles. Gartner recently named them a ‘Top 10 IT Technology for 2009’. But if your organization is thinking about ‘getting mashy’, here are five common pitfalls that you can avoid with just a little education and forethought:The ‘Fall for the Buzz’ Mistake: Misunderstanding what a ‘mashup’ is. Everyone wants to be associated with the hot buzzword and mashups are hot. Unfortunately, ‘mashup’ is a term that has al

Dec. 3, 2008 09:44 AM

Two Additional Dojo Books

Our English language Dojo book total is now up to at least six, with more books on the way. Peter Svensson has released Learning Dojo, which includes coverage of the new Dojo grid, and numerous DojoX examples. There’s an example chapter on Layout available for free. Leslie Orchard has released the Concise Guide to Dojo. I do not yet know anything about this book, other than knowing that it is on the market and that it weighs in at exactly the same number of pages, 264, as Peter Svensson

Dec. 3, 2008 08:46 AM

How to Use Twitter as a Twool

I may get more value out of Twitter than anyone else on the planet because I use Twitter as a tool—specifically as a marketing tool—for my website Alltop and my book, Reality Check. If the concept of using Twitter in a commercial manner interests you, keep reading. If it doesn’t, then you can continue to send and receive tweets about how cats are rolling over and the line at Starbucks. Forget the “influentials.” You must buy into the theory that products and servic

Dec. 2, 2008 08:57 PM

Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing through Microblogging

You have most likely heard of the microblogging site, Twitter.com. Twitter allows you to create short (160 char limit) frequent posts. Any Twitter user who chooses to “follow” you will see the messages you post. Twitter now has over

Dec. 2, 2008 08:47 PM

Things I Leaned As A Kid (#3 in a series)

A 5 year old Russian girl can beat up an 8 year old American boy. I learned this from a red-hating cold war calisthenics instructor who was trying to motivate a bunch of 8 year old televisionlanders at a YMCA summer day camp at the Dad's Club in Houston, Texas. It is sort of exciting to imagine that WWIII would be settled by hand-to-hand combat with girls. The calisthenics instructor invented that fact in order to support his well-intentioned argument. Was that dishonest? No,

Dec. 2, 2008 02:32 PM

TIBCO BusinessEvents 3.0.1 available for download

TIBCO BusinessEvents 3.0.1 is now shipping. This includes a few niceties for complex event processing needs such as extreme performance and better business control: More platform support: x86 platforms can now use Solaris 10 64′, Windows Server 2008 32′ and 64′, Vista 32′ HP-PA-RISC servers can now use HP-UX-11i Java 6 JVMs Some Decision Manager and Rule Management Server extensions, for example allowing multiple decision tables to be associated with a “decision

Dec. 2, 2008 08:14 AM

Agile SOA Across the Lifecycle - Part Five: IT and SOA Governance

This is the fifth of a six part series of posts on the Agile SOA life cycle. Here we will at look at IT and SOA Governance. With the introduction of agile, spiral, and scrum development methodologies, the traditional waterfall development approach of testing a near-finished app at the end of many Agile development cycles won't be agile at all, as the elements of the application are constantly changing. Traditional models of IT governance will also not work. To aggravate testing, the service-or

Dec. 1, 2008 08:06 AM

Linux Ported to iPhone

You can now put linux onto your shiny iPhone. Linux Kernel 2.6 has been ported across and it will work on the 1st / 2nd Generation iPhone / Touch devices.It is still does not have many drivers but it seems that the Frame buffer driver, Serial Driver driver, Serial over USB and a few others are now working. Right now at this early stage wireless networking also does not work but it is a work in progress. Once installed you can boot into the iPhone OS or the Linux OS using a

Nov. 30, 2008 10:22 AM

Øredev, Oracle, Kaazing, and WebSockets - the true story ;)

This was my second time at the Swedish conference Øredev and, whaoo, it has grown in both size and content. As with many of the top tier conferences you meet the regular suspects, but at Øredev you will also meet new faces and new interesting companies. There were several interesting companies there presenting their technologies, solutions, and services, such as JavaBlaokBelt and JayWay. We also met with former colleagues and friends from Oracle, and here is a classical picture from an encou

Nov. 28, 2008 03:16 AM

iPhone SDK Development Training

Unless you've been in a cave for the last few months, you'll know that Apple's iPhone Platform is one of the most exciting Mobile Platforms for the last few years, not only for consumers but now for business.

Nov. 27, 2008 09:45 PM

Social Media and the Making of a President

According to Arianna Huffington, editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, “Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be president.” In his presidential campaign, United States President-elect Barack Obama made use of social-networking in a way that was unheard of. As a result of this non-traditional approach, his team managed to shatter all previous fundraising [...]

Nov. 27, 2008 06:55 AM

Satisfying unmet needs versus creating needs

For a proposal I’m drafting, I wrote: “It’s important to recognize that successful innovations do not create needs—they satisfy unmet needs. The trick is figuring out what needs are going unmet.” Is that true?

Nov. 25, 2008 04:38 PM

Open Source Cloud Tools

I was going through my email today and found a recent email from Matt Rechenburg of OpenQRM who just released OpenQRM version 4.2. In the latest addition OpenQRM has support for provisioning server images in the cloud. Here’s the list of features: This new version comes with additional support for VMware ESX, an integration with Puppet for automated configuration management, improvements for the high-availability mechanism and, last but not least, a Cloud-plugin. This new Cloud-plugin prov

Nov. 25, 2008 12:43 PM

HBR on Susceptibility to Fads (like SOA)

The December issue of the Harvard Business Review contains a compelling article on "Why You Shouldn't Go Global" ( excerpeted here for free ). While the article is worth reading, a sidebar in the article raises some excellent points which we might be...(read more)

Nov. 25, 2008 08:28 AM

Carl Olofson on Innovation

Here is another interview on Innovation. This time with Carl Olofson, IDC. Carl Olofson performs research and analysis for IDC’s Information Management and Data Integration Software service within the Application Development and Deployment research group. Mr. Olofson’s research involves following sales and technical developments in the information and data management (IDM) markets, database management systems (DBMS) markets, data movement and replication software, data management software, m

Nov. 24, 2008 09:07 AM

Congratulations to JUG Lugano

About 40 attendees at the very first meeting is really a good start. And the discussions, both at the end of my speech and at the restaurant, were pretty pretty interesting. Technorati Tags: JUG Lugano...

Nov. 21, 2008 05:25 AM

ODBMS Industry Watch

Carl Olofson on Innovation

Posted: Nov. 24, 2008 09:07 AM

The OMG is hosting an Object Database Standard Definition Scope meeting in Santa Clara

I have received a note from Mike Card that I would like to share with you. Please note that the registration link sent by Mike (see below) is not yet active...."The OMG is hosting an Object Database Standard Definition Scope meeting in Santa Clara, C

Posted: Nov. 15, 2008 10:15 AM

ICOODB 2009: Call for Contributions

ODBMS.ORG is supporting the International Conference on Object Databases (ICOODB) 2009.ICOODB 2009, to be held 1-3 July 2009, at ETH, in Zurich (Switzerland), is the second in a series of international conferences aimed at promoting the exchange of i

Posted: Nov. 15, 2008 10:01 AM

Ted Selker On Innovation.

This time I had the pleasure to interview Ted Selker. Dr. Ted Selker develops and tests new user experiences. He spent ten years as an associate professor at the MIT Media Laboratory where he ran the Context Aware Computing group, co-directed the C

Posted: Oct. 27, 2008 02:06 AM

O/R Impedance Mismatch? Users Speak Up! Third Series of User Reports published.

I have published the third series of user reports on using technologies for storing and handling persistent objects.I have defined "users" in a very broad sense, including: CTOs, Technical Directors, Software Architects, Consultants, Developers, and

Posted: Oct. 23, 2008 04:12 AM

Is really LINQ the best option for a future Java query API?

My interview to Mike Card has triggered an intense discussion ongoing, on the pros and cons of considering LINQ as the best option for a future Java query API. You can follow the discussion here.

Posted: Oct. 7, 2008 06:49 AM

More Impedance mismatch: Cloude Computing

I noticed a news on an additional source of Impedance mismatch: Cloude Computing...Geir Magnusson, vice president of engineering and co-founder of 10gen, presented at a conference called Web 2.0 Expo, a talk: "The Sequel to SQL: Why You Won't Find Yo

Posted: Oct. 4, 2008 07:59 AM

10+ Questions On Innovation to Dennis Tsichritzis

I am interested to learn how innovaton can be supported and if possible created. Large research centers do (sometimes) innovate and/or facilitate individual innovation. Read what Dennis Tsichritzis has to say on this. Dennis was previously President

Posted: Sep. 23, 2008 04:57 AM

Do you have an impedance mismatch problem? Users speak up! Second series of user reports published.

I have started a new series of interviews with users of technologies for storing and handling persistent objects, around the globe.6 additional user reports (12-17/08) have been published, from the following users: • Ajay Deshpande, P

Posted: Sep. 4, 2008 07:03 AM

LINQ is the best option for a future Java query API

A conversation with Mike Card.I have interviewed Mike Card on the latest development of the OMG working group which aims at defining a new standards for Object Database Systems.Mike works with Syracuse Research Corporation (SRC) and is involved in

Posted: Aug. 27, 2008 02:26 PM