John Taschek

Not long ago, Palm had it all, including soaring income, innovations and interesting handheld devices. Then, in a flash, it was gone—not just edged out by PDAs based on Microsofts CE and Pocket PC operating systems, but absolutely crushed. It was the biggest computing industry blowout in years. Now that Palm has released the Palm […]

With Intel Corp.s forthcoming Banias processor, the chip giant might be taking a step back to go forward. No one outside of Intel knows for sure how fast Banias is, but its widely believed to be running at sub-2GHz speeds (likely in the 1.4GHz-to-1.6GHz area). Its also rumored that Banias, expected in the first half […]

The strategic alliance between Siebel and Microsoft has been called (by Tom Siebel) one of the largest in computing history. Microsoft is a Siebel customer. Siebels backing of .Net is a huge vote of confidence for Microsofts architecture. The Siebel-Microsoft alliance also comes at a critical time in the industry, when IT purchases have stagnated […]

Some people are surprised that Microsoft is opening up the Passport source code, as if the technology had a chance of success without drastic changes. Others—mainly those who work at Microsoft—say Passport has been wildly successful. Passport is integrated into Windows XP, and its required for users to log in to Hotmail and MSN—which means […]

“Unbreakable” Oracle running with J2EE and Microsofts .Net are two of the most important computing platforms of the 21st century. The problem is that the other important computing environment is cyber-crime—something that unfortunately has more market penetration than any single technology ever will. Thats one reason eWeek runs the annual OpenHack contest; this years challenge […]

Well all eventually tire of the term “Web services,” and it will go away. Until then, it will be used by every surviving tech company dozens of times per day. Then someone will figure out what the term actually means. But the date for the disappearance is beyond my powers of prognostication. In the meantime, […]

Three powerful video editing applications—Adobes Premiere 6.5, Pinnacles Edition and Avids Xpress—make a good corporate fit. Of the three, Premiere 6.5 is the most corporate-ready. It fully integrates with other Adobe products, including Photoshop and Illustrator, allowing users to create mattes and textures in these applications and drag them into Premiere. Premiere 6.5, released in […]

Sun officials are quick to point out the history of the companys disruptive technology. It disrupted IBM, Digital and Hewlett-Packard in the 1980s, and it disrupted Microsoft with Java in the mid-1990s. Unfortunately, the company itself got disrupted recently by the economic climate. The company said its latest disruptive technology is based on the Linux […]

Its a two-horse race in the application server world. IBM admits it. BEA admits it. Even PeopleSoft CEO Craig Conway mentioned it in a conference last month. Oracle and Sun, of course, have other ideas. But what was once the most important new category in the application stack has been reduced to a catfight between […]

DemoMobiles theme this year was all about “unwiring the planet,” a kowtow to all things wireless, ranging from cell phone technology to complete replacements of 3G networks. The shows venue, the Hilton Torrey Pines near San Diego, was a bizarre place to host such an event since the only wireless provider with reasonable coverage in […]

There was no subtlety in the Hollywood launch of Windows Media Player 9, the audiophile-quality upgrade of Microsofts media player. Windows Media Player 9 has dozens of enhancements, none of them readily apparent to 99 percent of the population. MP3s dont sound better, and most videos still begin the buffer process before playing. I suppose […]

CRM is dead. “Its not there,” said Tom Siebel. This is a shocking statement coming from a person who built a multibillion-dollar organization on the customer relationship framework. Its moderately shocking that it came at the DCI Customer Relationship Management Conference, held recently in New York. The future, Siebel said, is in vertical business processes […]