Scot Petersen

I spent much of December putting together a list of the biggest technology stories of 2004, only to have the biggest ones unfold all around me in the last few days before our year-end issue went to press. IBM selling its PC business was a big deal, but so were the other acquisitions of last […]

Like your average NBA game, 2004 came down to the last 2 minutes before things really got interesting. Following the resurgent growth that capped 2003, 2004 opened with the promise of a banner year. But the technology industry spent most of the year going sideways. But what a finish: IBM sold its PC business to […]

We tend to take for granted all that is done without much fanfare behind the scenes, yet without which we could not enjoy the benefits of advancing technology and society. The creation of computing standards is a perfect example. Tim Berners-Lee, at the World Wide Web Consortium Tenth Anniversary meeting this month, said he considers […]

Whats a long time in the technology business? Is it 18 months, as in Moores Law? Is it two years, which is the least amount of time before “Longhorn” comes out? Some might even say 30 seconds is a long time, if thats how long it takes to open the fantasy-football scoreboard Web page on […]

In many fast-growing companies, with multiple technology platforms and myriad workers and customers needing access to data and applications, IT problems can mount quickly. Solving them takes innovation, perseverance and a plan for the future. In a word—integration. Thats what Steve Polaski, senior enterprise IT architect for Qualcomm Corp., faced three years ago when he […]

You have no doubt heard and probably used the phrase “Think outside the box.” It has become something of a cliché, but it still works to describe the search for solutions that are not mired in a “Thats the way weve always done it” quagmire. These days, almost everyone is talking about taking innovation out […]

The first signs of Googles successful IPO are reverberating through the tech industry. The search companys first public earnings report showed that profits jumped more than 150 percent over last years third quarter and shot the stock price up to $190 last Monday. Thats more than double the August offering price of $85. So much […]

The phrase “since Sept. 11” has been repeated countless times in the last three-plus years. That has been so because, in fact, since Sept. 11, 2001, our world has changed radically. The number and variety of Opinions that have completed the first part of that sentence, Im sure, could fill a book, but Id like […]

Theres a joke going around that our lives have become so boring that weve taken up watching people play cards on TV. In fact, one of TVs latest phenomenons, all-star and celebrity poker, has joined reality TV as our latest diversion. Not so amusing is that observing the IT industry has become something like watching […]

The newly hatched Linux Standard Base 2.0, and the support from much of the industry that the Free Standards Group announced last week, are significant for many reasons, but they should not be confused as a new united front against Microsoft. The FSGs LSB 2.0, which was released late last month, gives Linux platform vendors […]

I didnt plan to write this week about my recent 10-day vacation to the hinterlands of Wisconsin, mainly because nothing much happened to write about, which is a good thing. But upon returning, a Wall Street Journal column caught my eye. Jared Sandbergs weekly Cubicle Culture column is always interesting, and the Aug. 25 edition […]

By the time this column is published, Google may or may not have launched its initial public offering, which may or may not have gone out at more than $100 per share and which may or may not have either fallen drastically or spiked upward during its first days of trading. Stock market investing is […]