John Taschek

At Internet World in New York, Microsoft launched its next version of Windows Media services, code-named Corona. As is typical lately, Microsoft is aiming at the consumer, promising a more TV-like experience. Demonstrations showed Microsoft has almost mastered the audio portions—even in alpha code, Corona streamed Dolby 5.1 stereo thats virtually indistinguishable from normally encoded […]

If Real Application Clusters isnt the breakthrough database technology that Larry Ellison said it is, hes going to take up sailing full time. Ellison may well be sailing more next year, when the Ellison-sponsored Oracle racing team vies for the Americas Cup. Interestingly, the focus of Oracle OpenWorld earlier this month was not on RAC […]

Who would have thought that technology that helps rip off the record companies and keeps some artists starving would be a boon to the tech world? It appears that MP3 and the peer-to-peer technologies that replaced Napster have created a surge in the need for network bandwidth management packages at universities. Those universities are struggling […]

Admirers call it patriotic. Detractors say it reeks of jingoism. Others, including myself, say its marketing. The “it” in this case is the brazen display of the American flag by computer technology companies in response to the Sept. 11 attacks. The most ostentatious display is by Siebel, which hung an 85-foot-high flag on its building […]

I knew Comdex had changed forever when my cell phone worked and, surprisingly, never stopped working—I received calls and called others without fail. My success rate at previous Comdex shows was 1 in 5 calls at best. But the lack of crowds left hotels with vacancies, restaurants open, taxi companies with a huge loss of […]

Whatever happened to data mining? Three years ago, it was the hottest thing since VisiCalc. IBM posted TV ads showing how companies could target their customers with pinpoint accuracy by knowing what type of fruit they ate. Statistics companies rebranded themselves as data mining companies, and new ones sprang forth, all claiming to be the […]

As biometric security goes, fingerprint recognition systems may be less expensive, but the eyes have it. The iris is the most unique identifier on the human body, but it has been the focus of few biometric efforts. The reason: Iris scanning systems have been expensive, slow and often cant work easily in networked environments. The […]

Contrary to popular opinion, IT is not in a meltdown. There are fewer companies out there to do IT buying and all of our egos may have been fractured, but were still doing all right—or we will be fairly soon. Thats the news from Techtel (www.techtel.com), a company that for 17 years has surveyed what […]

Sun quietly rolled out Sun One a couple of weeks ago. The Sun Open Net Environment comprises Suns software products, professional services, education practice and at least some marketing. In concept, its similar to Microsofts .Net. There was little fanfare, though, perhaps because the official launch of Sun ONE occurred after a series of unofficial […]

With the Sun ONE Starter Kit, Sun has officially kicked off the companys answer to Web services development, the Microsoft Developer Network and Microsofts .Net. Included in the kit are full-fledged versions of heavy-duty software, including Forte for Java Enterprise Edition (which costs some $2,000 for the licensed version) and all the iPlanet products, such […]