Peter Coffee

Microsofts Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, held last week in Seattle, emphasizes the still-growing importance of PC technologies in areas other than personal computing. The continuing convergence of entertainment, personal productivity and enterprise management is going to change our expectations and habits in each of those domains. /zimages/4/28571.gifMicrosoft offered a glimpse into the future of the […]

When Im pressed for time on a Monday, I remind myself that this newsletter column is really only supposed to be about 250 words of commentary on current topics that are addressed at greater length by the hard-working news staff of Yeah, right. By the time I try to put those events into my own, […]

Sun Microsystems Inc. finds itself lately in growing agreement with Microsoft Corp. on interoperability goals and with IBM on the significance of open-source offerings. Its good news for developers that Suns new sociability is taking tangible shape in its trio of new or updated Java tool sets. In a three-month span, beginning last month and […]

I hate to find myself helping to perpetuate a myth. But thats what happened when I trusted a panel of software security experts who asserted that programmers in India do better work than their U.S. counterparts. As it turns out, there is ample evidence that these offshore coders are not more capable than U.S. coders, […]

NetBeans 3.6, released last month by the NetBeans.org open-source community, offers Java developers an attractive and capable programming environment that features a native look and feel on a variety of popular platforms. Click here to read the full review of NetBeans 3.6. 2 NetBeans 3.6, released last month by the NetBeans.org open-source community, offers Java […]

Its hard to remember a time before the advent of drag-and-drop application development. In many Java tools, however, a facade of component assembly has done a poor job of concealing the reality of cumbersome and easily corrupted code behind the scenes. Click here to read the full review of Java Studio Creator. 2 Its hard […]

Sun Microsystems Inc.s Java Studio Enterprise 6 combines innovative, comprehensive packaging of developer technologies and supporting services with an easy-to-swallow subscription-based model of pricing and delivery. Click here to read the full review of Java Studio Enterprise 6. 2 Sun Microsystems Inc.s Java Studio Enterprise 6 combines innovative, comprehensive packaging of developer technologies and supporting […]

When I wrote in my letter of March 15 about an upcoming conference panel discussion, several readers asked me if Id be providing details of that planned session on SQL, XML, Web services and grid computing. Im overdue in letting you know about some multimedia links and commentaries that have been posted concerning that session, […]

The number of printers shipped last year actually fell. It wasnt a huge decline—a little less than 2 percent—but I hope it says something about future reduction of paper in the workplace. The Association for Computing Machinery reminded me of the pursuit of the paperless lifestyle with its choice last week of Hewlett-Packard Labs Senior […]

I feel as if I could get an entire years worth of columns, or perhaps even build my next career, out of the material in a Task Force Report that was issued at the beginning of this month by the National Cyber Security Partnership. The NCSP formed in response to last years White House National […]

During a briefing on RFID tags at Sun Microsystems Menlo Park, Calif., facility late last month, Director of Advanced Development Juan Carlos Soto passed around a vial containing 150 nearly microscopic tagging chips, barely visible as sandlike grains on the bottom of the container. These are, of course, the passive type of radio-frequency identification tags, […]

Environmental effects of computer manufacturing and disposal will soon become part of the price of maintaining the enterprise IT portfolio, under legislative efforts gaining momentum throughout the world. Manufacturers face technical challenges, and buyers may need to reconsider accounting methods and timetables for equipment replacement as ITs environmental costs come home to roost. In its […]