By David Worthington

Microsoft receives feedback through many channels, but it chose to place itself in the hot seat in May at a closed-door meeting of its Interoperability Customer Executive Council (ICEC).  The feedback that it received helped Microsoft form a more pragmatic approach to interoperability that focused on customer scenarios, two executives said, but critics maintain that Microsoft is not entirely sincere in its efforts.

Discussions at the ICEC event were "robust" and helped Microsoft understand what its customers really need, said Craig Shank, general manager of the interoperability group at Microsoft. As a consequence of that meeting, the company started various work streams, including meetings between its product architects and those customers, he added.  READ MORE

By Alex Handy

Clouds have been hanging over San Francisco all week, both metaphorically and in reality. At the Mission Bay Conference Center, the Structure 09 conference, held last week, focused on redesigning IT for cloud-based computing. Also last week, at Microsoft's offices downtown, the more informal CloudCamp took place. Both events focused on lessons learned after one official year of cloud computing.

Structure 09 is the second such show from the GigaOM Network, and the event features talks from the likes of Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, AMD director of commercial solutions and software Margaret Lewis, and James Urquhart, technology strategist for cloud computing and data center virtualization for Cisco.  READ MORE

By Jeff Feinman

There are as many issues involved in safely guiding an airplane to its destination as there are in software product development.

Michael James travels throughout the United States and Europe talking with agile teams about common themes between agile development and flying planes. Some of those themes are situational awareness, or knowing exactly what’s going on at any given time or iteration; and assertiveness, or being assertive when making decisions.  READ MORE

By David Worthington

Over the past 25 years, business process management (BPM) software maker IDS Scheer has witnessed the fallout of unmanaged process change. In response, it has introduced a governance engine that will automate control processes, making change a far less risky proposition, the company says.

The company delivered a product called ARIS Governance Engine (AGE) last week. AGE is designed so that departments can define and execute governance processes independently without asking for IT support.  READ MORE

Today, we inspect the many languages supported in the new Parrot runtime. There're an awful lot of them already.

The Parrot Project…

BC…

Befunge…

Markdown…

Ook…

Lua…

Today's Random Wikipedia Entry: Scandium

Bill Gates had a dream. Described at the huge computer-industry trade show, Comdex, in November 1990, his Information at Your Fingertips keynote speech seemed audacious and pure science fiction to this young technology journalist covering the event.

I’ve been searching for a transcript, but in vain. However, Gates’ speech came to mind while demonstrating my new iPhone 3GS to a smartphone-less friend. When challenged to explain value of the device beyond just being cool, my response slipped out: "It puts information at your fingertips."

According to a 2005 retrospective on that speech by Adam Barr that I found on the Web, Gates laid out four possible scenarios for Information at Your Fingertips: desktop computers with integrated e-mail, voice recorder and document search; a mobile tablet computer for delivery drivers; home appliances with motion video; and a multimedia encyclopedia with audio and video clips.

Those don’t sound like science fiction any more. Desktop users have had access to all those things for quite a few years now.

In his keynote, according to Barr, "Gates then summarizes the five things needed: a more 'personal' personal computer; transparent application integration; integrated fax, voice and e-mail; company-wide networks without complexity; and easy access to a broad range of information. His goal is to 'make the network an asset, not a liability.' "

In 1990, everyone assumed that Gates' more "personal" personal computer was a desktop computer. Desktop PCs were beginning to be networked in a significant way, even though there weren’t many services beyond file and print sharing to connect them to. At that time, laptops weren’t connected to anything, except by modem to CompuServe or a few other online services.

The growth of the Internet and the Web, and the emergence of services like Google, YouTube and Wikipedia, have brought Information at Your Fingertips to every personal computer. High-speed LANs and T1 lines brought it to the office and school; cable modems and DSL brought it to the home; and WiFi brought it to the notebook at Starbucks. But that was just Round 1.

Who would have imagined that the true Information at Your Fingertips device would be a cellular telephone? Whether it’s the iPhone, Windows Mobile, Android, Pre or BlackBerry, a 3G-empowered smartphone, with a fast processor, large high-resolution screen, standard browser, custom applications and day-long battery life, is what Bill Gates was talking about...even if he didn’t know it at the time.

Alan Zeichick is editorial director of SD Times. Follow on Twitter at twitter.com/zeichick. Read his blog at ztrek.blogspot.com.

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Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conf.
Microsoft
New Orleans

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OSCON (Open Source Convention)
O'Reilly Media
San Jose