CrossTech Connect

How to be Microsoft in a World of Web Applications
Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Microsoft has just announced a reduction in the price of Windows Vista ( Ultimate from $400 to $320 USD, upgrade of Home Premium from $160 to $130). In an article on Nicholas Carr's Rough Type blog, he points out that these price points are usually signs of a weakening of the market overall. If Carr is right, it makes you wonder where the next play is, especially where Microsoft is also signaling its intention to purchase Yahoo.

Dig Deep Into the Semantic Web
Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Looking to better understand how data will work in the coming years? Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who you might remember as the inventor of the World Wide Web, was recently interviewed in a podcast with a leading semantic web company, Talis, in a podcast. In it, Berners-Lee, points out that the value of data is in its freedom to be moved and ported between platforms (in this case, he was talking about social networking information, but we could apply some of this to your enterprise data as well, insofar as it can be used behind the firewall in more than one way).

Big Blue Goes Green: IBM Shows Off High Speed Low Power Optical Chipsets
Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Building on last year's release of optical transceivers, IBM has released an optical network prototype that transfers 8 terabits of data (read: huge) for the electricity output of only a single hundred watt lightbulb. Not only is this a power savings for people who seek to "green" up their data centers and spend less on power output, but it's also a potential opening to deliver much more data faster to different end points.

Sprint Goes All In for $99
Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

IT managers seeking ways to tame the mobile budget just got a reason to raise their eyebrows. Both of them. Sprint has announced a new plan called Simply Everything that throws in voice, data, text, web, gps, direct connect, group connect, TV, and music all into one plan. There are three things to consider with this announcement. If you're a Sprint customer already, does your corporate plan match this, or should you shift? If you're NOT a Sprint customer, is this a reason to move? If you're not a Sprint customer, how long before your carrier has to play catch up and match this?

VMWare Opens API to Security Companies
Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Protection for virtual systems is on the front burner, after a small issue was discovered in VMWare for Windows recently. Instead of simply patching the hole, VMWare took this opportunity to roll out a new product with API called VMSafe. More than 20 firms took them up on the offer and are expected to build products to mitigate these and other exposures quickly.