Sun enters a suddenly crowded virtualization market
Virtualization was the huge topic during Oracle OpenWorld 2007, and Sun Microsystems kept it going on Wednesday, using Oracle's own show to announce its own virtualization tool to compete with it.
Sun said yesterday it will spend at least $2 billion towards supporting xVM, the company's own virtualization software offering that its executive vice president of software, Rich Green, described as a "complete suite of data center automation technology,"
Apple's eye isn't off Tiger just yet
In a somewhat surprising move, Apple pushed its eleventh and likely final update to Mac OS X 10.4, before devoting itself to Leopard.
As is typical with Apple's regular updates to its operating system, the patch includes a bevy of fixes for various issues. However, in somewhat of a break from the norm, the update also includes a new feature: Safari 3 for Tiger.
Texting your next pizza order
One of the lasting contributions of the "dot-com" era, the way consumers interact with retailers, is changing, as evidenced by online pizza ordering.
Papa John's International Inc. first rolled out its online ordering option in 2001, and it now accounts for almost 20% of the company's domestic sales. Competitors Pizza Hut Express and Domino's Pizza Inc., which began to offer comparable services shortly after, are also seeing the option more frequently used.
Microsoft refreshes Vista's value proposition
Vista's Software Assurance customers need more value from Vista more often, and now the company has a plan for addressing their needs come next spring.
A growing number of Microsoft's business customers for Windows Vista are subscribers - customers who've signed onto the company's Software Assurance program. As such, they want their money's worth, which means Microsoft finds itself in the position of having to deploy noticeable improvements to the operating system at least every eight to ten months...as opposed to every five years.
Sony capitalizes on Wii's supply shortage
Lowering price and making the best of its competitors' slip-ups are how the PS3 will come back from the brink, its CEO says.
The discounting of its PlayStation 3 by $100 and the introduction of a cheaper model has caused sales in the US to double, CEO Sir Howard Stringer told the Associated Press on Wednesday.
SanDisk wants to hybridize your hard drive
SanDisk has announced the upcoming availability of Vaulter, a solid state memory chip that will be able to turn standard HDDs into hybrid hard drives.
The flash-based PCI express module operates in parallel with the system's hard drive, with the duty of storing and launching the operating system and user-defined applications. By doing this, Vaulter relegates the hard drive to "cold storage," where the system can draw from only when needed.
Microsoft expands its Vista SP1 beta
Microsoft has released yet another build of its first planned service pack for Windows Vista on Wednesday, opening up the patch to a broader base of testers. While the first public beta of SP1 was shipped to 12,000 testers, this latest build opened up the test to 3,000 additional people. Smaller groups have been receiving private builds since the spring of this year.
The targeted release date still seems to remain as the first quarter of 2008, although the Redmond company is so far staying silent on any word when wider public betas will be available. Details on exactly what will be included are somewhat scarce, although Microsoft is promising to include all fixes issued since the release of Vista last fall plus several new features.
OpenDocument Foundation Dissolves, Leaving Projects in Disarray
After warning just two weeks ago that the conversion of workplaces' information infrastructure to XML "must not be disruptive," the open source group that helped catalyze that conversion has apparently ceased to exist.
The OpenDocument Foundation has disappeared, taking with it its Web site and having deleted pages Google had been hosting for it, including news on its Compound Document Format translator project.
Creative Ships 25 Millionth MP3 Player
Beleaguered electronics company Creative took a moment to toot its own horn on Wednesday, saying it had recently shipped its 25 millionth player.
Even though Creative was in the digital music market two years before the first iPod even shipped, it took the company eight years to get to this level, whereas Apple passed the same milestone in 2006, in only five years.
VeriSign to Focus on its Traditional Businesses
VeriSign is exiting the business sector, instead opting to focus on its core businesses of running the .com and .net registries and securing online transactions.
The announcement was made during a conference for analysts in New York Wednesday. CEO Bill Roper said that the company had reviewed its business and made changes to improve returns for its shareholders.
Sun, Dell Announce Solaris 10 Distribution Agreement
During the opening keynote of Oracle OpenWorld today in San Francisco, Dell and Sun Microsystems announced a multi-year distribution agreement in which Dell will provide OEM support for Sun's Solaris 10 operating system.
Once considered an arch competitor in the hardware field, Dell will now be working more closely with Sun to provide Solaris support, as well as to give new Dell customers an intriguing alternative.
Microsoft to Sell Downloadable Full Xbox Games
To celebrate the fifth anniversary of Xbox Live, Microsoft is preparing a system update that will be delivered to users starting December 4 and bring support for downloading full versions of older Xbox titles such as "Halo," "Psychonauts" and "Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge."
While Microsoft has long offered downloads of arcade games via Xbox Live, this will be the first time it is offering full titles. The company says it is planning to sell a library of titles spanning the most popular genres in gaming. The capability is similar to that offered by Nintendo's Wii, which lets gamers buy and download games made for older Nintendo consoles.
Comcast, Microsoft Team on SMB Services
Comcast said Wednesday that it had teamed with Microsoft to offer its small and medium-sized business customers new Internet-based communications services built on the Redmond company's productivity platform.
The services include the same Microsoft Communication Services that are now mostly used by larger companies with dedicated IT staffs. Now SMBs can utilize the same e-mail, calendaring, and document sharing.
Microsoft Embedded R2 OS to Extend PC Networking to Devices
In a news conference slated for tomorrow morning, Pacific Time, Microsoft plans to introduce the R2 release of its Windows Embedded CE 6.0 operating system for embedded devices. Prominent among its new features, according to the company this afternoon, will be a new implementation of Web services on devices, whose aim will be to enable small devices to serve as networked clients in a localized PC environment driven by Windows Vista.
This part gets misinterpreted quite often, and Microsoft is withholding many details until tomorrow. But the early impression the company is giving is that small devices will act as network clients when connected to a Vista-based PC, in a miniature form of the relationship between a Vista PC and a Windows Server.
Nokia's N82 5-Megapixel Handset Launches Worldwide
Nokia is hosting a "virtual launch" of its high-end N82 handset today. So the device whose specs have been floating around since May will now actually be made available - it's just the fanfare and events that are virtual.
For approximately €450 before subsidies and taxes, the N82 supplies a 5 megapixel camera with a xenon flash and Carl Zeiss zoom, A-GPS, Wi-Fi connectivity, and standard 2 GB microSD memory. The candy bar-style handset is 112 x 50.2 x 17.33 mm and weighs 114 grams, with a 16.7 million color 240x320 screen.
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