ubitechnology.com

The company on Tuesday started taking invitations for a beta program for EnterpriseDB Cloud Edition that will launch in March. The final product should be available this summer, according to EnterpriseDB Chief Technology Officer Bob Zurek, who spearheaded the initiative.

Potential customers are either enterprises that have custom applications that run on EntrerpriseDB or Web 2.0 start-ups that only want to pay for computing power as needed, Zurek said. He said tests show that application performance over the Internet does not degrade substantially.

Amazon already offers a hosted database, called SimpleDB, but Zurek said that its database is designed for transactions and industrial-strength applications.

EnterpriseDB has not announced pricing, but the company is looking at usage models in which customers pay for use of the database by the hour or by the month.

He argued that the offering will make EnterpriseDB more competitive against MySQL, the leading open-source database provider which is widely used by Web companies. MySQL was acquired by Sun Microsystems for $1 billion earlier this month.

The service works with clustering software from Elastra, which means that servers and storage are quickly brought online to meet changes in computing demand, he explained. It taps into Amazon’s Web services for hosted servers and storage, called Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).

EnterpriseDB has ported its Oracle-compatible PostgreSQL database to a new platform: Amazon.com’s hosted compute cloud.

Wow. Sun is acquiring MySQL for about $1 billion. I think it’s a huge win for both companies–and while it would have been nice to see another open source IPO this is a great outcome for a great company.

So what are we announcing today? That in addition to acquiring MySQL, Sun will be unveiling new global support offerings into the MySQL marketplace. We’ll be investing in both the community, and the marketplace - to accelerate the industry’s phase change away from proprietary technology to the new world of open web platforms.

MySQL’s Kaj Arno gives the community perspective here.

As more of my friends become wealthy, my bitterness and jealousy only grows :> Congrats to Marten and the team!

Read all about it on Jonathan’s blog.

Members of the No Video on Flickr group have posted hundreds of images protesting the photo-sharing site's inclusion of video.

The No Video on Flickr group amassed more than 4,000 members just a few hours after the new feature launched.

And I suspect video is likely to dilute the great photography that’s available on Flickr much less than the vast oceans of mediocre snapshots on the site. The days of Flickr being a haven solely for refined, high-grade photography are long gone if indeed they ever existed. Also, who knows? Maybe the addition of video will help improve Flickr’s business so it can be overhauled with a better user interface.

Flickr member Haeretik posted a petition, so far signed by hundreds of members, that states, “We all joined Flickr because of its dedication to photography and photographers, and we want Flickr to remain true to this dedication. It is our request that this feature and addition to Flickr be removed.”

“I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been,” the group description said. “We don’t need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don’t want to see all the $*#% that’s on there to wind up on here!”

Personally, I find the concerns overblown, though it might have been judicious of Flickr to add an opt-out option for those who don’t want video. A lot of people react unfavorably to change–think film buffs who don’t care for digital cameras, for one example.

(Via Thomas Hawk)

Some discussion on the gripe group has been constructive. For those who don’t want videos to play, there is a Flickr configuration setting that lets users reverse the default behavior that the video will play automatically when its page is opened, and
Firefox users can add extensions that block Flash videos.

(Credit:
Flickr)

Shortly after Flickr added videos to its photo-sharing site, a number of users are up in arms.

IT spending is expected to grow 2.3 percent next year, a figure that’s down from earlier projections of 5.8 percent growth, according to Gartner. The lowered forecast comes as the markets have been whacked particularly hard over the past two weeks and the credit market has tightened.

And within the software sector, security software is expected to actually post double-digit gains this year, as well as next.

Two key trends driving spend lower include: 1) revenue pressures, write-offs and cash conservation that are causing financial institutions to look at technology spending for savings as it typically accounts for the largest non-personnel expense on the P&L and 2) people are thinking about buying less yet still being able to do more. Looking out to the December quarter, while the year end is typically the busiest period to close deals with vendors, expectations are that there are not likely to be purchases of any meaningful size in 4Q this year suggesting that the typical Q4 budget flush is unlikely to occur.

UBS expects security software spending to rise 10 percent this year, over the previous year and jump to an additional 15 percent increase next year over the current year.

“Developed economies, especially in the United States and Western Europe, will be the worst affected, but emerging regions will not be immune. Europe will experience negative growth in 2009, the United States and Japan will be flat,” Peter Sondergaard, global head of research at Gartner, said in a statement.

And 2009 may not fare any better, with UBS analysts noting while it is difficult to access the year at this point in time, the research firm would not be surprised to see IT spending fall by a similar 5 to 15 percent next year.

And here’s why:

Growth in information technology spending next year is expected to go from a modest uptick to a virtual blip, according to a report released Monday by Gartner Research. Meanwhile UBS Securities predicts a more dire outcome.

Within the hardware sector, UBS expects to see storage demand drop next year, but not to the same degree as servers, which tend to have excess capacity at companies, followed by desktops, which are viewed as purchases that can easily be delayed.

UBS, however, has a different assessment on IT spending. In a research note released Monday, it forecasts a 5 percent to 15 percent drop in IT spending in 2008, over last year.

The reasoning relates to the economy and layoffs that are expected to ensue across the corporate landscape.

Companies tend to ramp up on security software during times of layoffs, in a move to prevent soon-to-be ex-employees from walking off with corporate secrets and customer lists. Businesses also tend to ramp up on security software during economic downturns to prevent hackers from taking down their operations, notes UBS.

And while Gartner expects IT spending will be greatly affected in the fourth quarter as the economic climate has taken a toll in the past two weeks, the research firm does not believe the full year outlook will substantially change for IT spending.

Making changes, creating new documents, and searching through items while offline is what makes the idea behind Gears so enticing to road warriors and the dwindling population of dial-up users. Gears would make Google Docs and Spreadsheets more like a local software application than a Web application. Google Reader, which lets you read up to 2000 blog posts from various RSS feeds, has had this feature since late May of last year, when Gears was first introduced. There has also been talk of Gears integrating with Google Calendar, and even Gmail, although there haven’t been many signs from Google that the feature is forthcoming besides a small blip back in October.

Ruscoe’s not letting anyone in on how he managed to do it (the comments uncover talk of secret URLs), but from his results, it seems there’s not much there yet.

One of our hits from 2007 was Google Gears, and our predictions for it was that many Web applications would begin to integrate it over the course of 2008. Already that prediction looks to be coming true, with what appears to be the first signs that Gears is coming to Google Docs and Spreadsheets. The discovery was made earlier this week by Google Blogoscoped’s Tony Ruscoe. He was able to edit document names and star them, but not open or create any documents without getting sent to blank browser pages.

Online office competitor Zoho has had Gears integrated with its word processor since November of last year, and it works surprisingly well. Users can download a large number of their documents, and make changes locally before syncing back up.

Designer Li Jianye has come up with a great twist on the typical humdrum doorbell: the Enterbell, which riffs on a keyboard’s Enter key. We bet many a computer user would be tickled to come upon a ringer that honors this everyday key in such a creative way.

(Credit:
Li Jianye)

Hopefully it won’t be long before this one moves past the concept stage.

(Via Designzen)

Toshiba Satellite T135, starting at $599

The 13-inch T135

Toshiba Satellite T115, starting at $449

Here are some basic specs for the two new models, and stay tuned for a full review of the 13-inch T135, currently undergoing testing in the CNET Labs. Both will be available starting October 22.

The 11.6-inch T115

(Credit:
Toshiba) 13.3-inch diagonal widescreen HD TruBrite LED Backlit display Windows 7 Home Premium operating system Intel Pentium SU4100 processor or Intel Pentium SU2700 processor DDR3 RAM, upgradeable to 8GB Starting at 250GB (5400 RPM) HDD 802.11b/g/n wireless and 10/100 Ethernet Bluetooth V2.1 + EDR (available on select models) Toshiba Hard Drive Impact Sensor Touch Pad with Multi-touch Control 3.88 lbs. 6-cell battery eSATA/USB combo port with USB Sleep-and-Charge HDMI port Built-in Webcam with Toshiba Face Recognition, stereo speakers and microphone 5-in-1 Memory Card Reader Slot

Like other recent Toshiba laptops, they have the useful sleep-and-charge feature, which lets you use a USB port to charge iPods and other devices, even when the system is asleep or off.

Just in time for the Windows 7 invasion, Toshiba has announced a new line of slim laptops, dubbed the T100 series. With Intel ultra-low-voltage processors (or ULV), the 13.3-inch T135 and 11.6-inch T115 are both less than one inch thick, have LED displays, and multi-touch touchpads.

(Credit:
Toshiba) 11.6-inch diagonal widescreen HD TruBrite LED Backlit display Windows 7 Home Premium operating system Intel Pentium processor SU4100 or Intel Celeron processor 7435 Starting at 250GB (5400 RPM) HDD7 802.11b/g/n wireless8 10/100 Ethernet Toshiba Hard Drive Impact Sensor Touch Pad with Multi-touch Control 3.49 lbs. 6-cell battery eSATA/USB combo port with USB Sleep-and-Charge HDMI port Built-in Webcam with Toshiba Face Recognition, stereo speakers and microphone 5-in-1 Memory Card Reader Slot

And what better way to cut through the hype over the so-called green aspects of SaaS than to assemble veteran technologists who might share their experiences with the uninitiated? That’s the usual format: People ready to impart knowledge to people eager to receive knowledge.

He was followed on stage by Adrian Bowles, a director at Datamonitor, who was equally eloquent about why there are compelling business reasons to rip up the procedures of hardware provisioning that IT followed until the recession (some call it a depression) hit. “The old days of ‘buy it, plug it in, and run it’ are probably gone forever,” Bowles said, proceeding to lay out a hard-headed case on behalf of going green.

But this much is clear: telling the boss that you’re saving the environment in the process is not likely to be the clincher. Ever.

As I sat in a cavernous ballroom in San Francisco’s Westin St. Francis Hotel scribbling down notes, it dawned on me that I was one of, literally, a handful of people listening to the lecturer. At most, there were 10 or 15 of us–a pity because as he faced a sea of mostly empty seats, Randy Bias, a technology strategist for GoGrid, a supplier of cloud computing infrastructure, offered up a convincing brief on the energy-saving advantages of virtualization and why it makes sense to offload server functions to the cloud.

As they used to say back in my Brooklyn neighborhood, whaddya gonna do? But truth be told, I was puzzled by all the no-shows. It wasn’t as if the other sessions being held at the same time–”SaaS marketing in a downturn” and “Architecting and delivery for SaaS success”–were so much more thrilling.

(Credit:
CNET News)

I heard it said at one of the sessions how IT compensation plans now hinge on how successful you are doing projects faster and doing them more inexpensively. That’s why SaaS advocates believe their timing couldn’t be any better. Maybe that’s misplaced optimism; we’ll see as the year progresses.

Good idea but, well, maybe another day.

Could it be that “green” remains too squishy a concept for most of these red-blooded show-me-the-money types? I buttonholed one attendee in a hallway, who agreed as he was munching down a free ice cream provided by the show’s sponsors. But the proverbial man on the street interview doesn’t suffice.

By then, I counted eight people–eight–in the ballroom (not including the speaker). Most of the folks attending this two-day kaffeeklatsch couldn’t be bothered with a topic that obviously bored them silly. No matter that
green tech at its most basic is technology done with a low environmental impact. For some reason, a discussion of low-energy technologies, virtualization, and improved cooling techniques weren’t enough to hook them.

OpSource is hosting a very timely conference in San Francisco this week on software-as-a-service. What with the meltdown in the economy and continuing concern about the cost and environmental impact of energy use, there’s interest in how cloud computing will impact the IT world.

But a person very familiar with the matter told CNET News.com that Ask.com will stick with Teoma.

Ask.com has undergone so many makeovers it’s hard to keep track. A site redesign last year, along with management changes in the past few years, has failed to significantly change its market share.

Ask.com spokesman Nicholas Graham declined to comment on the potential for layoffs.

Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that there could be layoffs at Ask.com and that IAC is thinking about dumping the Teoma search engine in favor of Google.

Puma-based products will also come with Wi-Fi and an optional graphics card. In other words, a complete solution similar to Intel’s Centrino.

AMD roadmap dating back to 2006

The problem is that AMD has been announcing Puma since the “launch” in April 2007. That’s almost a year ago. At that time, DigiTimes–a nuts-and-bolts hardware technology news publication that rarely editorializes–reprimanded
AMD, saying: “It is questionable whether…Puma will meet the hype AMD is currently trying to generate though these early announcements.” And AMD has been trying to sell Puma ever since.

(Credit:
AMD)

On Tuesday, the news headlines for AMD’s Puma mobile technology demonstration at CeBit used words like “launches”
and “formally announces.” But this is neither a launch nor a formal announcement.

To be fair to AMD, spokesman Scott Carroll said this Tuesday: “No, it hasn’t been launched and won’t be launched until Q2.” And he added: “Today at CeBit we unveiled our first working demo of a Puma platform and demonstrated its graphics capabilities vs. our existing mobile platform and vs. Intel’s.”

Things got a little more real–and more dicey–at the financial analyst day in December when AMD said Puma would be delayed until the second quarter of 2008. But AMD hit its Puma promotional stride again at CES in January.

So, what’s new at CeBit? AMD’s Carroll said that Puma has garnered over 100 design wins from original equipment manufacturers around the world and expects to have systems available for launch in Q2 2008. The price of Puma-based systems will range from $699 to $2,500.

Almost all other information about Puma is not new. It has been repeated in many forums that Puma uses the RS780M chipset and is based on AMD’s dual-core Griffin processor–now called the Turion Ultra–and integrates 1MB of L2 cache. To reduce power consumption, each core can run at different frequencies and can dynamically shift frequency levels while executing a thread. The RS780M integrates a Direct X 10 graphics controller, which AMD claims is up to five times faster than Intel’s X3100 integrated graphics.

AMD is announcing its future Puma mobile technology yet again. This time at CeBit.

Some Turion Ultra notebooks will also have the ability to turn on the more powerful discrete graphics chip and then turn it off when the extra oomph isn’t needed in order to save power, as explained by AMD at CES, among other forums.