Stories by: Mitchell Ashley

Did you know that by converting from Windows XP to Windows Vista, you are helping the environment?

Delivered promptly in my email inbox this morning was a Micro Center ad heralding the availability of Intel's new generation of desktop CPUs, the Core i7. Get them starting today, Sunday, and Monday at retail locations (in-store pickup only).

Social networking is the killer Internet app, but it can also lead directly to identity theft.

We're all too familiar with outages in Google's Gmail, Salesforce.com and the RIM BlackBerry network. Recent failures by Apple MobileMe, Jott and Cuil online-delivered software demonstrate that software-as-a-service -- or Software+Services, as Microsoft would call it -- isn't just a matter of putting your software up on the Internet, gathering users and declaring your Version 1.0 ready so you can start charging for services. The three recent examples of MobileMe, Jott and Cuil clearly demonstrate other major pitfalls in trying to deliver online software. Are all online software services destined to repeat these same mistakes, or will we learn from the mistakes of others? I certainly hope the latter.

You knew the argument had to come up sometime: survive the economic down turn by using open source to help you save money. Now Computer World's Steve J. Vaughan-Nichols makes that claim in Linux Will Save Us'.

With the economic downturn on everyone's mind, assumptions about job security come under question, and everyone starts reexamining their skills. There are lots and lots of valuable jobs performed in IT, but some skills are valued even more highly than others. With all the upheaval we're experiencing in IT, many new skills are in high demand or rapidly increasing in value. Here are my Top 7 skills that could help you not only keep that job, but secure an even better new job, positioning you to work on the next generation of IT applications and software products in the era of Web-delivered online applications.

The Blackberry Bold (9000) was announced last week, with a plethora of new and upgraded hardware and software features. If the Apple iPhone has done nothing else, it's causing RIM to raise its game and bring out even better devices. The net-net on the Blackberry 9000 is a beautiful 480x320 display, 3.5G / Bluetooth / GPS network support, upgraded apps, better media / music apps, and iPhone-ish stylized case. An iPhone killer? No, but it's feature and upgrades are rich enough to keep many existing or new Blackberry users happy, and possibly stave off running down to get the new iPhone 3G this year... maybe.

I really enjoy analysts' predictions, especially when they foretell a major shift in the market. It's not that often a major analyst firm like Gartner steps out of the "$xx billion in 5 years" mold and actually puts it on the line with a whopper statement. (Don't worry Richard, I won't bring up the "death of IPS" prediction.) Gartner's Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald have done just that, calling Microsoft's gluttonous collection of legacy code untenable, expecting Windows to cave in on itself by 2011. The "comet" striking Microsoft is the rise of the web application to dominance. Most of their argument rests on the failures of Vista and the rise of the OS-agnostic web app. I can't say that I disagree with either arguments, but they forgot to predict how Ray Ozzie and his mesh strategy would either make or break Microsoft. That's the real question, isn't it? I think so.

Wayne Kelly, leader of the open source Ruby.Net development project, announced last week that he intends to discontinue development of Ruby.Net and join up with Microsoft's IronRuby open source efforts. This might sound good on the surface, but it is a bad idea.