Peter Coffee

Like the first attempts at a “horseless carriage,” the “Internet shopping” that weve seen so far is only an incremental update of something we already knew and understood—not something fundamentally new. You can easily imagine a wooden wagon that moves without a horse in front of it, but that wont make you think of the […]

The recent brouhaha concerning whether Pluto is a planet included arguments that reminded me of errors often made by the techno-elite. Im talking about the kinds of errors that shift the definition of success, turning an IT departments focus away from meeting the real needs of real users. For those whove been more troubled lately […]

A U.S. Government order for “several million” RFID chips puts Infineon Technologies on the pointy end of the international push for standardized electronic passports. Infineons Aug. 21 announcement has driven home the scale of this massive rollout, with 15 million logo-bearing U.S. e-passports expected to be issued in their first year of general use. The […]

Looking at the prospect of a Google office suite, and at how that package might competition with Microsofts Office, requires at least a five-point examination. A credible competitor for Microsofts Office must offer good answers to questions concerning application design, user training, enterprise process customization, data control and client computer support. Whatever Microsofts recent sins […]

For any organization or IT professional involved in application development, few things are more costly and frustrating than delivering to users exactly what you thought theyd agreed they wanted—only to find their reaction lukewarm, or even negative. An Aug. 28 announcement by Capgemini U.S. and iRise highlights the potential of simulation tools to close the […]

Editors note: The following blog entry is the most read and commented post to date at eWEEK.com Weblog. In view of the apparent passion and questions it has stoked, weve decided to share it here in print. Tell us what you think at www.blog.eweek.com/blogs/eweek_labs. Like a train wreck happening in slow motion, the end of […]

SQL Anywhere 10, whose Beta code eWEEK Labs looked at this past April, is now on my test bench in the form that buyers will see in September—and it shows the results of the three-year effort thats gone into updating iAnywhere Solutions flagship product. My review of SQL Anywhere 10 will appear at about the […]

When a complex system is finally deployed, the last thing that its financiers want to hear is that its costs have barely begun to take flight. The time to think about your next-generation system, though, is certainly no later than the day that the current state of the art goes live—and there are good reasons […]

As I walked into the lobby of the San Francisco Hilton last Wednesday, it certainly didnt feel like the dog days of ITs summer. The hotel was hosting the Shared Insights conference on Customer Self Service technology and practice, where I gave an afternoon session on security issues for customer- and partner-facing sites—which I summarized […]

When president Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair got caught with their microphones on in July in St. Petersburg, Russia, The New York Times blogger Virginia Heffernan posted a clip of CNN video that included their conversation on the soundtrack. Most of the subsequent comments posted on The Times site concerned peoples thoughts on […]

Were coming up on the seventh anniversary of John Hennessys clarion call to coders, telling them that their skills are exhibiting a slower rate of improvement than the hardware that one might think would take longer to turn over. The Stanford University professor, a pioneer of early RISC chip design, gave a stirring keynote speech […]

It cant be much fun to be a vendor of a mainstream desktop operating system. On any given day, one might face reports of a new security vulnerability. One might be accused of harboring, or even authoring, spyware. One might hear complaints that ones pace of innovation had slowed, with more time elapsing between less […]