Microsoft yesterday made significant announcements around its Azure cloud platform, notably improved experiences for Node.js, MongoDB, Hadoop, Solr and Memcached. The goal, Microsoft said on its Port25 blog, is to allow developers to continue "to work in the languages and frameworks they already know." The company has created a new open-source Azure SDK for node.js, and has put Azure libraries for .NET, Java and node.js hosted on GitHub. Another highlight of the release is the limited preview of the Apache Hadoop distribution service on Azure. Many more details on the release can be found on the Azure team's blog.

Poor RIM. The maker of the BlackBerry smartphone has seen its market share steadily decline, and its attempt to engage in the tablet wars have been largely underwhelming to this point. Now, on top of

that -- which more significantly has pushed RIM's stock price down into the range of its five-year low as of today -- the company has had to abandon the BBX name it gave it new operating system in October due to a trademark suit. It seems some small software company in New Mexico had already trademarked BBX, and a temporary restraining order was issued to prevent RIM from using BBX.

So now its next-generation operating system will henceforth be known as BlackBerry10, which the company says “reflects the significance of the new platform and will leverage the global strength of the BlackBerry brand while also aligning perfectly with RIM’s device branding.” BBX, of course, was the company's attempt to tie BlackBerry to the underlying QNX operating system on which it is based.

Blackberry's 52-week high was over $70; it was trading today at about $16.81. It has bigger fish to fry, frankly, than the name of its operating system.

In a move that should surprise no one, Adobe today announced it will stop development of its Flash player for mobile devices. In his blog, vice president and general manager of interactive development Danny Winokur reiterated what the company told SD Times in September -- that the company is backing HTML5 for browsers and mobile devices, but will continue to build out Flash for advanced gaming and premium video. This would appear to mark the beginning of the end of browser plug-ins for rich Web applications as companies through money and effort behind the HTML5 standard. Microsoft faces a similar fate for its Silverlight technology; the company did not mention much about it at its BUILD conference in September but has voiced its support for HTML5 as well. Flash and Silverlight are further along than HTML5 right now (the spec is, after all, still in draft form, with W3C recommendation not expected until 2014), but as it gains momentum, the functionality will follow.

Developers are now writing more applications in Apple's Macintosh environment than they are in Linux, according to a June survey by research firm Evans Data Corp. Both still lag far behind Microsoft's Windows platform, though, the study noted. More than 80 percent of the 400 North American professional software developers responding to the survey said they program on Windows, while 7.9 percent now use Mac OS and 5.6 percent prefer Linux. The survey also found that Linux still leads Mac OS as a development target, with more than twice as many developers targeting Linux as Mac OS. "Windows firmly remains king, but developers are obviously attracted to Apple's devices, while at the same time Linux has lost some of its luster after years of only single-digit adoption," said Janel Garvin CEO of Evans Data Corp. Among the other findings:

* Mobile and cloud development will increase in importance over the next three years, while the DevOps movement will be least important, developers said.

* Nearly half of the respondents said they use or expect to use Java ME for development.

What does this mean? The findings most likely reflect the fact that developers are writing apps for more than the desktop, and Apple is leading the way for smartphone and tablet development. Is it simply that Apple has all the momentum right now, and Linux gives the appearance of having stalled (only recently being upgraded to version 3 to reflect some minor tinkering with the kernel)? Perhaps. But the key word here is "professional." These are developers working for companies that are willing to spend for the latest technology, that want to go where the pack is heading, and that want to be seen as ahead of the curve (or at least on top of it). Does it mean Mac OS is better or more stable than Linux? No. It simply means more companies are spending on iMacs, that come preloaded with lots of cool applications. Less bother, less DIY means more productive programmers.

Universal Description, Discovery and Integration.

I hadn't thought of nor heard anyone speak of this early Web services standard since, oh, 2001 or so. In fact, when Paul Fremantle of WSO2 mentioned the recent release of their Carbon framework supported UDDI 3.0, I felt like Cabbie talking to Snake Pliskin in "Escape from New York," when he uttered the immortal line: "I thought you (DDI) was dead!" I might digress here for a moment to say that Ernest Borgnine's performance as Cabbie was sadly overlooked by the Academy!!

UDDI was created as a means of -- that's right -- describing Web services (using the Web Services Description Language -- WSDL), discovering them and integrating them into applications. UDDI was quite complex in its architecture, and limited by the fact that WSDL seemed to create a unique interface for every Web service, and seemed to fall by the wayside as RESTful Web services superceded SOAP, WSDL and UDDI.

Paul said he was not a fan of UDDI. "I felt that UDDI was broken, difficult, complex and it wasn't flexible. We added support for completeness, rather than the architectural correctness of the model." He further said he doesn't like to build software to a checklist, but had some key customers who needed the UDDI support for interoperability with legacy systems.

Perhaps the next iteration can add support for CORBA!

In case you've been living under a rock for the last year, Microsoft executives spoke the company's going-forwardstrategy loud and clear: Cloud, and devices. It also announced the next version of Windows Phone 7, codenamed Mango, will be out late in the year, around the holiday season.

Robert Wahbe, Microsoft vice president and head of the Server and Tools Division, reminded the attendees (who numbered in the thousands for the keynote) that "people expect data from the business to be available on the device they want, optimized for that device, with security, control and visibility." During his presentaiton, he showed the run rate for physical servers at 7.8 million, but for virtual servers, it was 10.7 million. This sets up for the next, bigger inflection point, which he said is the cloud -- "taking virtualized resources and pulling them together for dynamic provisioning and scaling."

Microsoft, he said, offers the broadest public cloud offering, with Windows Azure and SQL Azure, as well as Office 365 productivity suite, Dynamics CRM and Windows Intune for management. For private clouds, Microsfot offers Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center, which Wahbe said is the base infrastructure to run the workloads business need, including their own servers and custom applications. Microsoft provides the common elements across identity, virtualization, management and deployment for either public or private clouds, he said.

As for devices, Wahbe showed a stat that showed in 2011, the average number of connected devices per adult is 4.3. Projected smartphone growht between 2011 and 2014 is 81 percent he said, and as industry, more smartphones than PCs are shipping now -- 453 millino to 372 million. The

Microsoft demonstrated access of Office 365 from the phone, with Lync Light offering secure communication via email (Outlook and Exchange) and support for IRM for protected emails.

Finally, Kinect technology was displayed as a way to bring computing power into places it hasn't been, such as third-world health clinics, where ultrasounds can be performed using inexpensive tablet devices, and operating rooms, where surgeons can manipulate CT images without affecting the sterile environment in which they work.

Had a chance today to "Skype" with David Stone, communications manager at Nokia's Qt, about yesterday's release of the Qt SDK 1.1, which he said brings libraries, tool chains and IDEs for both mobile and desktop development. Also new in the release is Qt Quick, which features a declarative language -- QML -- that he said makes it faster and easier for non-C++ developers to create user interfaces. Qt is the development framework Nokia's Symbian and MeeGo smartphone platforms, but he said the future smartphone strategy is all about Windows Phone 7, what with former Microsoft exec Stephen Elop at the helm of Nokia. He noted that Qt will NOT be ported to Windows Phone. Also, he said, Nokia could potentially use Qt in its "feature phone" line of less-sophisticated devices with smaller screens, cheaper hardware and a physical dial pad/keyboard. Stone said there remain millions upon millions of people around the world who do not currently have mobile phones and that non-smartphones remain a great entry point where Internet and wireless networks are limited.  Further, he said Qt will continue to have a future in embedded devices. He said, "There's a strong push to get MeeGo into cars for 'infotainment.' It's likely you'll see Qt behind satnav screens or the TV screens behind the headrests." On the desktop, Stone said Qt will be bundled into the next 10.x release of Ubuntu Linux, and that Qt remains the backbone of KDE. Finally, with Qt 4.7, the framework is more modular and will have a more open governance structure, which will allow for even more contribution and ownership in the community. Already, he said, individual developers have created a port to put Qt applications on Android. "Qt still has independence and a life outside Nokia," Stone said. As it is now licensed under the LGPL, Stone pointed out that downloads went from 400,000 in 2008 to 1.5 million in 2010. Lastly, the company announced there will be Qt Developer Days, in late October in Munich, Germany.

On the heels of the announcement that Oracle will begin the process of moving the Hudson CI project to Eclipse, Koshuke Kawaguchi, the creator of Hudson, posted on his blog that he was 'surprised' by the announcement. Instead of saying it's a good idea or bad idea, he emphasized he tried speaking to Oracle about such a move in the past but was rebuffed. Then, on the thread that emerged, Ian Skerritt of the Eclipse Foundation admitted a "communication oversight" but said the move to Eclipse would be a good thing. Oracle's Ted Farrell also weighed in, saying the company proposed the move to Eclipse in December but was rebuffed by the Jenkins. There's a lot of bruised feelings and jockeying for moral high ground going on, so I posed this question on Kawaguchi's blog: "So let me ask point-blank.. will the Hudson and Jenkins sides be able to put aside their differences over project leadership and work together, bringing the forks together again? Are talks happening beyond the exchange about poor communication on this blog? That’s what people want to know!" Of course, there was no direct response; instead, there was much back-and-forth about licensing issues, and the rights under the various licenses involved. It's clear the Jenkins crew believes it is the rightful heir to the project, as its creator is on their side. Yet Oracle owns the Hudson name from its acquisition of Sun. The initial squabble was a difference over rapid releases (Jenkins side) vs. stability (Hudson side). By bringing Hudson into Eclipse, which has a great record of building community around open-source projects (rapid releases) that are then productized (stability), both sides should be satisfied. Oracle's announcement is but a first step, but one that should properly be explored, and ultimately chosen. Let the two sides check their egos at the door and work for the betterment of the community by bringing the forks together and creating something that both keeps pace with changes in the field and provides the stability enterprises require to deploy such software.

The Apache Software Foundation today received a subpoena to produce documents as they relate to Apache Harmony code appearing in the Android platform, as well as its failed attempt to secure a TCK for Java SE, in the Oracle v. Google lawsuit.

Apache's statement can be read here.

As an ardent hockey fan, I've enjoyed the recent commercials showing Wayne Gretzky skating while some fans see it as the first step in a comeback by "The Great One." So, I was equally pleased to read Forrester analyst Mike Gualtieri's blog post that opens with a Gretzky quote and a photo from his days as an Edmonton Oiler -' "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been." (Here, of course, we show him in the vastly more appealing sweater of ... YOUR... NEW YORK RANGERS!) His point is that developers need to see where business is going, where user expectations are going, and where development technology is headed.

Gualtieri uses the Gretzky quote to set up his blog, "Three Megatrends to Master for Application Development." Simply stated, they are: Go faster, create better user experiences, and "do mobile."

See, that wasn't so hard, was it?  :-)

Of course, there's more to it than that. If there weren't, we'd all be developing apps right now. Mike will be elaborating on these thoughts in the May issue of SD Times.