Software Development

Java increasingly threatened by new app dev frameworks

Is Java slipping into second-tier status in the application development space? All the attention being given to its rivals these days might give off that impression.

Confessions of a Cobol programmer

Last year, Michael Vu, a 40-year-old independent IT consultant, found himself in a wholly unexpected place midway through his career.

Office Live Small Business goes a la carte

Microsoft's Office Live Web service was designed for small businesses that needed an easy, low-cost solution for creating and hosting Web sites and business-branded e-mails. When it was first introduced in November 2006, there were three versions: Ba...

The best Internet Explorer add-ins

A browser by itself is a poor thing, letting you browse the Web, but little else. To get the most out of the Web, you need add-ins that give your browser plenty of extra features.

Who's behind Wikipedia?

In January 2001 the English language version of Wikipedia opened for business, and was quickly followed by versions in French, German, Catalan and Swedish. Over the past seven years it has grown to include over 250 language editions with more than ei...

The Microsoft-Yahoo deal: How does it compare?

Even by the bloated standards of high-tech mergers and acquisitions, Microsoft's proposed purchase of Yahoo appears to be the largest ever among technology firms. It is certainly Microsoft's largest. The company mostly buys smaller firms for less tha...

Vista SP1 is ready -- or is it?

Just a little more than a year after its first crack at Vista, Microsoft Monday announced that Vista 2.0 -- officially Service Pack 1, or SP1 -- has gone final -- just as had been rumored over the weekend. Officially it's gone RTM, which is Microsoft...

Review: Visual Studio 2008 advances with few missteps

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (VS08) is the current incarnation of the company's long line of IDEs. It's the premier IDE for developing applications with the Microsoft .Net Framework and, at least, a contender for the best Windows-hosted C/C++ IDE. Of...

Rock star coders

"You sound great singing in the shower, but there's a rock star inside you!" So read the first line of a job posting placed by Viget Labs in December, in its attempt to fill a junior-level position for a Ruby on Rails "would-be rock star programmer."

Book review: Google Web Toolkit Solutions

Ajax is everywhere these days, and although Ajax can simplify and improve user experience, the experience of Ajax developers is often far from simple and could stand improvement. Perhaps the biggest headache Ajax developers face is the painful world ...