Articles about Standards

Many companies are currently undertaking digital transformation projects, but while customers are quick to embrace the benefits of a customer experience reshaped by technology they have little patience when that technology doesn't work as expected.

To allow teams to define, monitor and manage modern app stacks to ensure they meet service level objectives (SLOs), Sumo Logic is launching a Reliability Management tool.

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Project OpenBytes, announced today by The Linux Foundation, is dedicated to making open data more available and accessible through the creation of new standards and formats.

It will enable a community of developers and data scientists, led by Graviti, to create data standards and formats that enable contributions by anyone.

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Microsoft shows no signs of slowing down. After unveiling a major update to Office Web Apps, today the software giant releases the stable version of Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 7. The latest iteration of the popular browser debuted alongside Windows 8.1 in mid-October and like its predecessor it forgoes supporting older versions of the operating system.

And because Windows 8.1 is being offered as a free upgrade to Windows 8 users, and Microsoft expects everyone to take this step, Internet Explorer 11 is not officially available for the latter OS either. It is a Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 affair only, which speaks volumes of Microsoft's ongoing efforts to drastically reduce Windows XP's market share and push the two Internet Explorer 11-supported operating systems to the forefront.

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Update: Or was it mine? I read the support document to mean "download" as "open" rather than "save". If that's the case I stand corrected, not something you see often in my stories. Damn, who's the jackass now? :)

Some days feel like I live in a parallel universe. How did I miss this? On October 1, Google Apps drops support for Office 2003-07 formats. That means no way to download .doc, .ppt or .xls documents. Am I the only person thinking this ranks among the mothers of jackass ideas?

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Google is the center of a controversy about Acer's cancelled Aliyun OS phone launch, and there is seemingly no end to punditry about the search giant applying pressure, possibly even making threats. At the end of the day the whole mess has very little to do with whether or not Google is tightening its leash or if the issues at hand are all about piracy, as Google Android chief Andy Rubin claims.

Acer openly violated rules set forth by the Open Handset Alliance, and Google made the device manufacturer aware of the consequences. Unfortunately, Google being the one to speak shines a spotlight on a much deeper issue with the Open Handset Alliance.

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Several big tech influencers are joining not-for-profit OASIS to standardize REST-based Open Data Protocol. OData is an open web protocol for both updating and querying data over HTTP. It can return back formatted results that can easily be displayed in both web pages and native apps using ATOM, JSON, and plain XML with included pagination, ordering, and filtering of data.

Supporters include CA Technologies, Citrix, IBM, Microsoft, Progress Software and Red Hat. Fifty-seven officers are OASIS OData Technical Committee members. They currently represent SAP AG, IBM, Perficient Inc, Northeastern University and Microsoft. In a recent meeting the current committee welcomed the new supporters to the initiative.

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Earlier this week, consumer electronics superstar Apple announced none of its products would be included in the EPEAT federal registry of green computer products.

Friday, Apple reversed its decision and instead said it would work to meet the soon-to-be-changed IEEE 1680.1 standard that is the basis for EPEAT's ratings.

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This week, the Green Electronics Council announced that Apple will no longer submit any of its products to EPEAT, the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool, for environmental rating, removing all of its products from the standardized green ratings system used by all US federal agencies.

Naturally, the subject of Apple rejecting compliance with anyone would generate a lot of discussion. However, there are some major pieces of information that get lost in the shuffle of news and the rush toward instant partisanship and polarization to sell a story. Below, we'll look at some of the basics of the story without dipping too far into the horribly overplayed "Apple vs. The World" trope that populates the Web.

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Last week, the Wi-Fi Alliance announced a certification program that assures devices will be able to seamlessly hand off their mobile data connection to a Wi-Fi connection and vice-versa. This program is called Wi-Fi certified Passpoint, and it was defined by service providers who desperately need a way to ease traffic on their congested mobile broadband networks. With devices that can automatically pair and connect over Wi-Fi, mobile networks can spare themselves some traffic.

The first devices certified in the the Passpoint test bed included: Access points from BelAir, Broadcom, Cisco, Ruckus Wireless, XSpan, and Qualcomm, as well as chips from Intel and Marvell. Included in the announcement last week was MediaTek's Hotspot 2.0 Client V1, which today the company said is the first (and only) smartphone system-on-a-chip to be involved in the project, and it's for mid- and entry-level dual-SIM Android devices.

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