Peter Coffee

Microsoft Opens New Studio The first time you see a dancing bear, youre likely to be impressed that it can dance at all; you probably wont cavil if it steps on its trainers toes once or twice. Microsoft Corp.s Visual Studio .Net, launched last week after what has sometimes seemed an endless wait, dances fairly […]

The inexcusable sin of any so-called information technology is failure to pay attention. The 1950s or 1960s model, where jobs get fed to big, dumb beasts that answer when theyre good and ready, must not sneak back into our lives as part of the baggage of distributed services. I recently made the mistake of clicking […]

The first time you see a dancing bear, youre likely to be impressed that it can dance at all; you probably wont cavil if it steps on its trainers toes once or twice. Microsoft Corp.s Visual Studio .Net, launched today in San Francisco after what has sometimes seemed an endless wait, dances fairly well–and our […]

Tool Set Eases Integration Sybase Inc.s Sybase PowerDesigner 9.0, released last month, does more than any other tool set eWeek Labs has seen to coordinate the definition of business goals, the specification of enterprise systems, and the development of specific database designs and application logic. Developers who fear the overhead of a modeling tool will […]

If anyone wants a candidate for a web service that everyone needs, I propose spell checking. This function demands regular updates, not to mention punctilious debugging. Word 97, for example, still used by many eWeek readers, can be the worst kind of back-seat driver: It interrupts you to give you wrong directions (see screen, right). […]

Do you remember the “magic slate” devices that you probably used as a child? A translucent sheet, attached to a black, waxy background, with a stylus that made lines by pressing the top sheet against that foundation? When you pulled up the sheet, whatever you had written or drawn disappeared. When I recently wrote about […]

Microsoft Corp.s Visual Studio .Net, making its formal debut this week, is a good news/bad news proposition for app developers. The good news, as well discuss in a review next week, is that Visual Studio .Net provides impressively transparent facilities for creating and deploying Web services. Even better are the new language-level facilities—such as structured […]

Ive often predicted that Amazon.com would never turn a profit. Ill continue to say that the company will never yield a competitive return, but Im not going to hedge: I said that it would never make money, and I was wrong. Never mind that a penny per share puts Amazon at an annualized price/ earnings […]

Prepare for a year in which application development tools demand your most careful attention. The opportunities and challenges of building and buying Web services are nearing the tip-over point: Anything else that you do this year will merely maintain your museum of how you used to be competitive. Development tools dont evolve in a steady, […]

Many readers shared their reactions to last weeks epistle on the need for more restraint in resource use by applications. Comments fell into three distinct groups. First, and most reproving, were the reminders I received about the proper role of the operating system. As I told reader Lou Solomon, Senior Technical Manager at Intercounty Clearance […]

In 1989, I reviewed Prowares $50 PC-MIX (Multitasking Interactive Executive), which brought astonishing concurrent capability to 8088-based DOS PCs. It created virtual machines that provided even more usable memory than bare-metal DOS on a 386 with memory management software. Thirteen years later, modern utilities finally offer even greater control of both personal and enterprise computing. […]

These three power connectors for AC adapter/rechargers reveal rather different ideas of good design. Apples connector (left) looks a little too much like an audio or video plug—although the diameter is actually slightly smaller, and that scary-looking exposed center pin doesnt carry above-ground potential. The translucent ring glows green or orange to indicate charger activity. […]