The Open Road

Open source is liberal? Nah

Matt Asay — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:20:00 GMT

BusinessWeek's Steve Hamm quotes David Kralik, director of Internet strategy for American Solutions, who believes that Republicans are gun-shy of open-source software:

Open source is a powerful force, but a lot of people on the right think it's liberal, and they don't want to be involved with ...

Sun gets its marketing right with 'Open Web'

Matt Asay — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:42:00 GMT

I just received an e-mail from Sun Microsystems' marketing department, and I really like the message:

Very clear, and something Sun is particularly well-suited to deliver. The question for me is, what comes next? Right now its message mostly centers around MySQL, and that's great. But there's more ...

Vietnam: 100 percent open source by 2010?

Matt Asay — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:09:00 GMT

Market research firm Gartner recently surveyed enterprises throughout the world and found that 85 percent are using open-source software.

Using open source for isolated applications, however, is not nearly ambitious enough, according to the Vietnamese government, which is now setting a target of 100 percent open-source adoption within the government ...

This is not your father's Cisco

Matt Asay — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:07:00 GMT

I admit that I can't figure out the new Cisco Systems. It's making a big push into consumer electronics, as reported by CNET, adding things like home audio systems to its portfolio of products.

In tandem, it's building out a corporate collaboration story, complemented by things like ...

Looking to the wrong Web paymasters

Matt Asay — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:07:00 GMT

A recent post on Techdirt offers provocative food for thought on how to monetize media in the digital world, but the implications run well beyond journalists scrapping for a living.

Using Mark Cuban's suggestion that sports leagues fund journalists (instead of newspapers funding them), Techdirt makes the following observation:...

Time for vendors to stop foisting IE onto consumers

Matt Asay — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:07:00 GMT

In a late-night Twitter rant, CNET's Stephen Shankland uncovers a significant error in judgment by software vendors like Adobe Systems: vendors continue to default to Internet Explorer, even as consumers increasingly do not:

Why the hell do Adobe CS4 help and Lightroom geotag links launch Internet Explorer? It's ...

Soccer video goes online with Kaltura

Matt Asay — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 17:37:00 GMT

Kaltura is an open-source video application server that competes with the likes of Brightcove. In a nutshell, it helps companies put video on their Web sites.

Kaltura recently released an integration of its product for Drupal, which was a great way to quickly enable its technology for broad distribution. Of ...

Satyam: $1 billion of our cash doesn't exist

Matt Asay — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:24:00 GMT

Wow. Satyam Computer Services, the world's fourth-largest systems integrator, just declared that $1 billion, or roughly 95 percent, of its Q2 cash...isn't.

Despite using PricewaterhouseCoopers as its accounting firm, Satyam's chairman, Ramalinga Raju, today declared that he has "systematically falsified accounts," as reported in The New York Times....

Redmond's roost: Most Mac owners still buy Office

Matt Asay — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:37:00 GMT

Apple may be the poster child for showing the industry how to compete effectively with Microsoft, but the company isn't free of Redmond's long arm just yet.

Despite spending years, and millions of dollars in research and development, on its own suite ...

M&A market may be dead, but Sun's still buying

Matt Asay — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:37:00 GMT

Apparently, someone forgot to tell Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz that the market for tech mergers and acquisitions is dead.

On Wednesday, Sun announced that it has acquired Q-layer, a cloud-computing management and automation company (see CNET's coverage here):

Imagine scaling up instantly to massive capacities to meet changing ...