Darryl K. Taft

IBM is opening up its collaborative development platform, known as Jazz, to the community at large. In addition, IBM also is rolling out a new beta release of a key product based on its Jazz technology, as well as a research project to create a virtual world for Jazz developers. “We’re continuing with the drumbeat […]

Joel Spolsky, a popular blogger and software development guru, has called for changes in the way programmers are educated. In essence, Spolsky, who is CEO of Fog Creek Software, and author of the popular “Joel on Software” blog, said he believes there ought to be the equivalent of “a Julliard for programmers” so that talented […]

For the 15th consecutive year, IBM in 2007 grabbed the top spot for the most patents. According to IFI Patent Intelligence, IBM stayed in the top spot with 3,148 patents granted the company. However, that number is down more than 500 grants from 2006. Samsung came in behind IBM at number two with 2,725 patents, […]

Benchmark Capital on Jan. 11 announced a $3.5 million investment in Engine Yard, a provider of Ruby on Rails application deployment and support. Engine Yard CEO Lance Walley said the funds will be used to expand the company’s operations, strengthen its customer service organization, enhance Ruby on Rails tooling and help support community projects based […]

Jim Douglas, CEO of CodeGear, says the tool maker is picking up steam. According to Douglas, the company is poised to capitalize on opportunities in the open-source and Web development spaces. Borland Software spun off its core developer tools business into the separate entity known as CodeGear in November 2006. Douglas, who took over as […]

Microsoft has been taking heat for promoting its Silverlight technology. And along with the heat Microsoft also is racking up some customer wins. At the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show on Jan. 6, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates announced an exclusive agreement with the NBC network where NBC will deliver NBCOlympics.com on MSN, and the video, more […]

IBM is reorganizing its hardware group to focus more on specific market segments, particularly the small and midsize business market. In an internal memo sent to employees in the company’s Systems and Technology Group on Jan. 3, William Zeitler, senior vice president and group executive of that unit, said the company will focus on four […]

Microsoft is working on a project that would essentially bring the functionality of the Emacs text editor to .Net. Microsoft software architect Don Box on Dec. 29 posted a blog entry stating that his colleague, Douglas Purdy, was hiring people to work on a new extensible text editor. Boxs post pointed to a Purdy blog […]

With Christmas right around the corner, SpringSource is planning to give its users a shiny new train. It may not arrive in time for the holiday, but it won’t be far behind. Taking a page from the Eclipse Foundation playbook, SpringSource is working on delivering a release train of all-or mostly all-of the components in […]

Dave Wolf has been a longtime user of Adobe Systems’ technologies, most recently its Flex offering. But when Wolf, vice president of Cynergy Systems, an RIA (rich Internet application) development company, looks into the future, he sees Microsoft’s Silverlight. After working with a version of Microsoft’s cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for generating RIAs and Web content, […]

The business intelligence story of 2007 was consolidation. Large players have acquired specialty houses to shore up their BI strategies. This year alone, SAP acquired Business Objects, Oracle acquired Hyperion, and IBM acquired Cognos—which all followed Microsoft’s acquisition of ProClarity last year. MicroStrategy remains an independent BI software provider, but that doesn’t mean they have […]

HOLLYWOOD, Fla.—Consolidation will continue in the enterprise software space over the next three years, Microsoft’s influence will grow and IBM will get into the enterprise applications business. Those were among several scenarios Forrester Research analyst John Rymer laid out Dec. 13 during a talk at the Spring Experience show here. As far as consolidation goes, […]