Darryl K. Taft

Microsoft has shipped the Release Candidate of Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. In a Feb. 25 blog post, Brandon LeBlanc, a Windows communications manager on Microsoft’s Windows Client Communications Team, said as of Feb. 25 the RC of SP2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 will be available to […]

The concept of community-source development is catching on with enterprise organizations, both inside and outside of corporate and organizational walls for its ability to cut costs, increase collaboration and avoid vendor lock-in. Community source is a hybrid development model that blends elements of directed development-in the classic sense of an organization employing staff and resources […]

The Open Services Gateway Initiative Service Platform is catching on as a platform of choice for enterprise service bus solutions. The OSGi Alliance announced that many leading ESB providers in the market have demonstrated their commitment to the platform through the current or planned employment of OSGi technology in their ESBs and products that utilize […]

Google announced Feb. 24 that the company has added billing to the Google App Engine cloud computing platform so developers can exceed the free usage quotas that have been in place. Google also said it will soon be reducing, but not eliminating, the free quotas. With the new billing capability, “developers can now purchase additional […]

Microsoft has implemented the design-by-contract approach to software development for .Net developers. In a solution called Code Contracts for .Net, which came out of Microsoft Research, Microsoft is providing a design-by-contract mechanism for .Net programmers. Design by Contract (DbC) is an approach to designing that proposes that software designers should define formal, precise and verifiable […]

Borland Software has announced TeamInspector, which the company says is a “release readiness” system that provides key metrics-code analysis, test coverage, standards compliance and build trends-ensuring development managers that the software they build is ready for customer use. TeamInspector is the newest addition to BMS (Borland Management Solutions), the software delivery management platform that enables […]

Microsoft has taken a page out of the Spike Lee playbook and done the right thing. The software giant has done an about-face on asking laid-off employees to pay back overpayments in severance made due to a clerical error on the company’s part. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Microsoft’s senior vice president of human resources, […]

How was Microsoft able to go from zero to 60 on a brand-new cloud operating system in only two years? Well, ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley appears to have some insight into that based on a Feb. 23 post that looks like it will be the first of a series. Microsoft apparently granted Foley access to […]

In what appears to be a clear sign of the times, Microsoft is reportedly asking laid off employees to return portions of their severance pay that the company apparently overpaid. TechCrunch has an item stating that Microsoft has contacted some of its former employees and is asking them to repay the software giant for overpayment […]

Microsoft is considering whether to participate in a Web services standards effort called the Web Services Test Forum, which is backed by IBM, Oracle and others, but the software giant has indicated it may be redundant. In a blog post entitled “Higher Standards for Web Standards,” Steven Martin, Microsoft’s senior director of developer platform product […]

NEW YORK — Developers of applications for Google’s Android phone are gearing up for increased customer demand for applications, even as some continue to create apps for the competing Apple iPhone. At a meeting of the New York Linux Users Group (NYLUG) here, Nathan Freitas, a partner with Oliver Coady, a New York-based consulting and […]

Social networking applications are driving the use of Adobe Systems’ Flash Lite technology, according to a study by Strategy Analytics. The company said in a news release: “The popularity of social networking sites like YouTube and MySpace is driving the success of Adobe’s Flash Lite technology on mobile handsets.Flash Lite’s Version 3.0, which enables mobile […]