News (505)

Ballmer hints at 'Windows Cloud'

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told a crowd in London this week that Microsoft this month will show off its new development environment for internet-based applications, dubbed "Windows Cloud". Read more »

Is Microsoft a threat to VMware?

The talk of this year's VMworld conference in Las Vegas was how much of a competitive threat Microsoft, which weeks earlier announced the free release of its hypervisor product, will prove to virtualisation leader VMware. Read more »

OLPC rivals get 'vicious'

When the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organisation first mooted the idea of a super low cost laptop aimed at schoolchildren in the developing world some years ago, it was arguably on its own in the market. Read more »

Microsoft offers Hyper-V for free

Microsoft began a major virtualisation push late yesterday, with the introduction of new virtualisation tools and by making its core hypervisor product free of charge. Read more »

In China, Microsoft eyes innovation

Innovation can often come unexpectedly, so researchers should be given the freedom and opportunity to explore new ideas, says the head of Microsoft's research lab in Beijing. Read more »

Interview: Red Hat's new CEO

Red Hat's new chief executive officer, Jim Whitehurst, talks about the Linux maker in an extensive interview with ZDNet Australia sister site CNet News. Read more »

When worlds collide: Microsoft funds Apache

Microsoft, one of the biggest rivals to open source programming, has begun funding the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), one of open source software's biggest supporters. Read more »

Microsoft's online strategy: Trust us

Microsoft went into more detail Thursday about its online spending plans, but offered few new details on just how it plans to catch Google. Read more »

No Yahoo talks; Windows 7 on track

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Thursday in the US that its on-again, off-again talks with Yahoo were firmly in the "off-again" phase. Read more »

Unisys wants AU$250k open source advocate

The Australian arm of IT services multinational Unisys has placed an advertisement for an evangelist to plug open source software locally, with a potential pay packet of AU$250,000 per year. Read more »

Features (286)

The top four mistakes organisations make when building datacentres

Etienne Guerou, vice president of Chloride South East Asia, shares some of his 20 years worth of expertise in building datacentres. Read more »

How start-ups can survive

Here we go again: Another boom, another bust. But we've learned something from the last time, haven't we? Read more »

Why Chrome will win and why it will lose

Google dipped its mighty toe into the increasingly crowded world of internet browsers today with the announcement of Chrome. We spoke to industry experts and Google's new rivals to find out why Chrome matters and whether the browser reality can deliver on the hype. Read more »

Sleep deprivation can spell big trouble

Most of us operate on short sleep from time to time -- it's the nature of our profession and modern lifestyles. But if skimping on sleep is a way of life for you, watch out: you could wind up functioning below par and incur some serious health problems. Read more »

Getting to grips with parallelism

Although parallelism may be a new concept for many programmers, there are some for whom the concept is a part of their daily responsibilities. Read more »

Programming for Cell

As the Cell has seven usable cores and some exotic memory features, it can offer more parallelism than other chips in the marketplace but it comes at the cost of ease of programming. We discuss the challenges faced by this difficult yet highly parallel architecture. Read more »

My five favourite success strategies

Difficult times call for new approaches. Here are five strategies used successfully by many individuals. If you're open to new ideas or approaches you haven't tried before, check these out. Read more »

What does a DBA do all day?

Data integrity is a DBA's number one responsibility, but do you know what else they do all day? Read more »

How to beat other candidates to an IT manager job

Your experience and technology credentials alone might make you a strong candidate for an IT manager position, but the chief information officer may be looking for something more. Playing up certain non-technical attributes can help you stand out from the competition and turn the hiring decision-makers in your favour. Read more »

The value of IT in tough times

It has been said that in the face of adversity one can determine the true character of an individual. I believe the same can be said of an organisation's senior leadership. Read more »

Video (5)

Ballmer's quest to compete with Google

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer explains his long-term strategy to battle Google in the search market. Read more »

Google looks to the cloud

CNET News.com's Charlie Cooper and Stephen Shankland discuss the search giant's cloud strategy and how it affects enterprise computing. Are the next 10 years going to witness a revolutionary technology transition? Read more »

RSA 2008: Microsoft outlines Internet security strategy

At the RSA 2008 conference in San Francisco, Microsoft Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie describes a new plan for Internet security that includes the creation of a trusted stack. Each element can be authenticated, from the operating system to applications, people, and data. Read more »

Ballmer's big Yahoo vision

ZDNet Editor in Chief Dan Farber talks about Microsoft's $44.6 billion cash-and-stock bid to acquire Yahoo. He analyses Microsoft's strategy in search, the potential impact on chief rival Google, and what it would mean, overall, in the competitive online-search market. Read more »

Microsoft CEO talks Google, SaaS

At the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando, Fla., Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talks to Gartner research analysts, Yvonne Genovese and David Mitchell Smith about the company's strategy regarding software as a service, or SaaS, as well as its competition with Google in the office productivity and advertising markets. Read more »

Blog (27)

The good and truly awful celluloid depictions of computers

Chris Duckett [blogs:betaliving] -- Ever wonder why your lawyer uncle leaves the room whenever you turn over to Boston Legal? Or why your forensic science cousin can't stand crime drama? You know the answer: it’s the horrid trivialisation and dumbing down of an occupation to make it appear entertaining. Sometimes it is so unbelievable that it actually hurts and yelling at the screen is the only outlet. Read more »

Scott McNealy's tips for a successful start-up

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- If you're itching to take your struggling start-up to the big time, you could do worse than take Sun Microsystems' Chairman and co-founder Scott McNealy advice to heart. Read more »

10 PR 2.0 tips for startups

Brendon Chase [blogs:codemonkeybusiness] -- You’ve got a great product and spent much of your budget on developing your software or service and now you’re left with a marginal budget for marketing and PR. Sound familiar? Read more »

Software in the courts

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- In week's Roundup explores Google's assertion that privacy no longer exists, the UK-based NASA hacker loses his extradition appeal, Microsoft becomes a sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation and the Australian Tax Office chooses Windows and only Windows, again, for electronic submissions. Read more »

Omnidrive: Alive and kicking?

[blogs:bootstrappr] -- Troubled online storage start-up Omnidrive late last week said it was continuing to develop its products and was examining the potential to merge its technology with that of other companies. Read more »

Jonathan Schwartz's free software foundation

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- Sun has become its own free software foundation, open sourcing everything from Java to Solaris, and acquiring the open source MySQL database for $1 billion in January of this year, as a way to grow its revenue. Read more »

Google: Don't give up on OpenSocial

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- When Google unveiled its OpenSocial developer initiative at the end of October, observers hailed it as the future of the social Web. But is the search king already too late to the party? Read more »

No, you can't have private attributes in Python

Nick Gibson [blogs:byteclub] -- Is the lack of privacy a real shortcoming of the language, or is our judgment clouded by the old conventions of C++ and Java? Why do we need private variables anyway -- at what point does defensive programming become paranoia? Read more »

The most interesting Web OS experiment yet

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- I still don't fully get the whole Web operating system concept. Why run an OS inside a browser when your browser is running in an OS to begin with? But AjaxWindows, a Web OS and application suite that launched today, makes a very good case for the Web OS. Read more »

How Microsoft dealt with GPLv3

Chris Duckett [blogs:betaliving] -- The easiest way for Microsoft to avoid the snare of the Free Software Foundation is to step around GPLv3 and leave it to their partners -- this is certainly the case for Silverlight. Read more »

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  • Staff XP stays on life support for longer

    This week's Roundup looks at Microsoft's decision to extend the life of Windows XP, the release of Microsoft Surface SDK, Firefox's new Geode plug-in, Yahoo's new tool -- Smush It and more. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Chris Duckett The good and truly awful celluloid depictions of computers

    Ever wonder why your lawyer uncle leaves the room whenever you turn over to Boston Legal? Or why your forensic science cousin can't stand crime drama? You know the answer: it’s the horrid trivialisation and dumbing down of an occupation to make it appear entertaining. Sometimes it is so unbelievable that it actually hurts and yelling at the screen is the only outlet. Read more »

    -- posted by Chris Duckett

  • Brendon Chase Apple's iPhone engineers to tour Sydney, Melbourne

    Aussie developers will be able to get up close and personal with some of the iPhone engineers in November to learn how to build applications for the platform. Read more »

    -- posted by Brendon Chase

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