Darryl K. Taft

Microsoft has published the patent covenant that will cover third-party distributions of Moonlight, the open-source implementation of Microsoft’s Silverlight rich Internet application platform that runs on Linux. Novell and the Mono Project announced the release of Moonlight 2 on Dec. 17. At the same time Microsoft announced that it would extend the reach of its […]

In time for the spate of end-of-year speculation, IBM on Dec. 17 offered a series of five predictions about how cities will grow smarter and what technologies will aid in that transformation over the next five years. Indeed, with an estimated 60 million people around the world moving into cities each year, experts predict that […]

Opera has released a pre-alpha version of its Opera 10.5 browser for testers. According to Opera officials, the pre-alpha technology is based on the Evenes branch of the Opera browser software and includes Windows and Mac builds, with a UNIX/Linux version coming later. In a post about the new release, Roberto Mateu, a product analyst […]

Red Hat reported financial results for its fiscal year 2010 third quarter, showing revenues up 18 percent. For its third quarter ended November 30, 2009, Red Hat reported revenues of $194.3 million, up 18 percent over the same period a year ago and beating expectations. Meanwhile, the open source software company reported that subscription revenue […]

Palm on Dec. 17 announced the public beta availability of Project Ares, which the company called “the first complete set of integrated mobile development tools hosted entirely in the browser.” The goal of the new Palm development platform is to lower the barriers keeping Web developers from getting involved in mobile development. Palm Ares makes […]

Top 5 Mobile Apps for Holiday Shoppers by Darryl Taft WootWatch WootWatch, although not Woot’s official app, is a great way to bring the essential Woot.com information to a mobile device screen and make purchases easy. Its tagline: “We keep track of your favorite one item per day Website so you won’t miss out on […]

Microsoft has decided to push back the launch of Visual Studio 2010 in order to deliver another interim release of the technology. The software giant released Beta 2 of its flagship developer tools suite in October, along with the second beta of the .NET Framework 4. And the company said then that it was on […]

Canonical, the sponsor of Ubuntu Linux, has announced that Mark Shuttleworth will be stepping down as CEO of the company and will next year be replaced by Jane Silber, who is currently Canonical’s chief operating officer. In a call with press and analysts on Dec. 17, Shuttleworth said he will be stepping down from his […]

The Mono Project, an open-source initiative sponsored by Novell, has announced the release of Moonlight 2, an open-source Linux implementation of Microsoft’s Silverlight cross-platform browser plug-in and rich Internet application platform. In addition to announcing the release of Moonlight 2, Microsoft and Novell also announced the expansion of their collaboration agreement on Moonlight to include […]

Engine Yard, a provider of Ruby on Rails automation and management technologies, today announced that more than 50 companies have joined the Engine Yard Partner Network in its first 50 days, including Premier members, Hashrocket and Pivotal Labs. Indeed, with the increase in the number of Ruby on Rails development firms, Engine Yard launched the […]

Amazon Web Services has announced streaming media delivery for Amazon CloudFront, the company’s content delivery service. The new feature, announced Dec. 16, enables streaming delivery of audio and video content, providing an alternative to progressive download where end users download a full media file. Indeed, Amazon officials said Amazon CloudFront streams content from a worldwide […]

IBM announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Lombardi, a privately held Business Process Management software company based in Austin, Texas. Lombardi’s BPM software and services helps organizations automate and integrate business processes to increase efficiencies and reduce costs. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The Dec. 16 announcement reinforces […]