Latest News from Adrian Bridgwater

New Eco-Aware Data Center in Mauritius

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:45:00 EDT

Mauritius may soon emerge as the next ecologically aware data center of choice for companies from the United States to Australia, due to its progressive approach to technological investment and overall national stability. Using an innovative Sea Water Air Conditioning (SWAC) system pumping cool jets of ocean water from nearly 2000 meters down, this Indian Ocean island nation offers appealing corporate taxation and investment opportunities and boasts geo-political stability making it an attractive option for disaster recovery and business continuity planning.

Fixing the UK Government's IT Woes

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 03:06:00 EDT

The NHS seems to think that all us journalists ever want to do is knock it. That's not true. When I was treated in Poole Hospital for an arm fracture the nurses asked me what I did for a living, so I told them and they immediately recoiled. I had to expla...

Recession-driven development testing blindness syndrome

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 07:40:50 EDT

Im busy. I mean really busy. This tough market means I work every hour I can, including weekends and late into the evening to share time with our American cousins. Companies are busy too, maybe too busy perhaps? So much so that application development te...

Australian Collaboration Situation

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 05:02:58 EDT

Collaborative Australian and Kiwi software application development has always benefitted from the nine to ten-hour time difference we share with the boys and girls down under when it comes to development projects built around a follow-the-sun approach. As...

White-Labeling the 'Managed' Cloud

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 03:55:00 EDT

Would it be true to suggest that a product only truly comes of age when it can be re-packaged, re-labeled or re-purposed in a simple to manage context that boosts its proliferation and sales potential? Would it also be true to suggest that cloud computing...

Do we need a multi-touch gesture alphabet?

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 03:55:39 EDT

Developers working in the touch screen arena are, it appears to me, wielding some of the greatest wow-factor breakthroughs around at the moment. It was only at Microsofts ReMIX 08 rich media conference last September that I first saw the company exhibit ...

Lazy developers throw clunky applications over the wall

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 04:09:29 EDT

Go to any large-scale developer event these days and chances are there will be an operations track focused on trying to provide programmers with an insight into what they should be thinking about before they throw applications over the wall. The poor ...

Embarcadero's new IDE enhancements a sneaky peak

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 03:56:38 EDT

Its not just Microsoft Office making waves with a 2010 release product push just now you know? Database tools player Embarcadero is currently showcasing sneaky peaks of its RAD Studio 2010 IDE enhancements, which it hopes will up the ante in developer ...

Gandis mantra for cloud computing

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:11:44 EDT

As the cloud computing space grows up faster than a bamboo plant on steroids, so arguably does the sophistication of the management tools that aim to serve it. But with these tools in mind, isnt a good proportion of what we read about the cloud right now...

Massive but Agile: next-gen databases prepare for battle

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:38:05 EDT

My Economics teacher once told me that if I wanted a job for life, then I should be an undertaker. Demand is always assured, he said. If there were a single database guru out there to deliver the same sagacious type of advice, he or she would surely say, ...

Novell aims to support mission-critical cloud stacks

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:34:04 EDT

Novells SUSE Appliance Programme launches this afternoon; buoyant on the promise of giving ISVs the ability to create fully supported software and virtual appliances. So what you say right? Well, its a platform for creating a virtualised OS with a compl...

The application is becoming more fragile

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 03:51:06 EDT

Last week I met with a company called dynaTrace, an organisation that labels itself as practitioners in the art of Continuous Application Performance Management, or APM if you prefer. I actually http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,100...

Trade show freebies: a user guide

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 08:14:37 EDT

Having been lucky enough to attend countless trade shows, symposia, developer conferences and exhibitions over the last decade, the allure of a free T-shirt has long since worn off. Somehow though I still seem to pick up pens, USB sticks and all manner of...

Huddle.net launches on XING business social network

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:33:45 EDT

Having built up a fairly apoplectic level of irritation with social network Plaxo despite having stuck with LinkedIn, I was initially deflated to be targeted with yet more news of a so-called business social network this time in the shape of XING. F...

Micro Focus tables Tech-Manifesto at House of Lords

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 08:42:24 EDT

After accepting an invite to the House of Lords I would expect more than just a press release; thankfully I did get a little more than that yesterday morning. Micro Focus used the Cholmondeley Room on Westminster Terrace to launch its Technology Manifesto...

Software Change Management: The Multimedia Movie

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 03:39:35 EDT

It had to happen, logically speaking I mean. Software change and configuration management (SCCM or SCM depending on your preferred acronym) probably needed to offer more advanced web and multimedia visualisation capabilities. I mention this because Ive r...

Borlands virtual reality requirements simulator

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 05:30:41 EDT

You know that thing where developers complain about clients and requirements? I think its probably one of the most emotive areas of software application development in some ways; its the point at which I think we ought to be able to empathise with the d...

Sybase breaks new ground with In-Database business analytics

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:00:44 EDT

Breaking at 2pm UK time this afternoon is news that Sybases IQ 15.1 column-based analytics server will ship with in-database analytics functionality to allow developers and DBAs to run predictive analytics business logic directly inside the database. ...

Is this the start-up silly season?

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 03:38:25 EDT

Just like a London bus, you dont hear too much about start-ups and entrepreneur initiatives for a few months and then three come along at once. From developer competitions, to entrepreneur events, right through to almost eighties-esque dotcom start ups...

Have Open Source Management Tools Come of Age?

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:03:53 EDT

I was lucky enough to meet a chap called Johan Sørensen recently. Hes the guy behind Gitorious, which is the open source infrastructure for hosting open source projects that use the Git version control system. Having tried to cover the highly popular Per...

Is over-engineering of applications becoming endemic?

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 04:29:35 EDT

Sitting squarely in the firing line for news announcements heralding the next breakthrough application update is a tiring business sometimes. So many improvements, augmentations and enhancements seem to constantly be rolled out, it just makes me wonder ...

Increase Your Performance! No, I didn't mean it like that

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:51:37 EDT

Usually whenever I get an email with a subject line that contains the term Increase Your Performance - I tend to file it under junk, spam and filth if it hasn´t been directed towards that route automatically. So it was only by a whisper that I managed ...

Windows Embedded: Seeds of Hope for Student Developers?

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:34:01 EDT

Back in 2003 when we all had travel budgets and that sort of thing, Microsoft would fly journalists out to locations like Brazil to cover the finals of its student developer competition which it calls the Imagine Cup. ...

A Norwegian Technology Odyssey

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:09:38 EDT

I've spent a couple of days in Oslo, Norway this week meeting with a few local IT companies and have been profoundly impressed by the country's attitude to technology and the way it works to develop it. IT is now the second largest land-based industry ...

Web Middleware The Next Great Developer Cash Cow?

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:48:21 EDT

I was in a meeting with a web design and development company on Monday who has produced a forms-based data management solution. This product interfaces between a site's core customer facing forms and the data (in this case in the form of emails) that are ...

Is Website-Envy Provoking Digital Plagiarism?

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 03:51:48 EDT

Programmers involved in web design and development are arguably somewhat distanced from the nature, form and origin of much of the content that they make sparkle and shine. Should we be surprised then by news of data that shows an 89 per cent rise in the ...

Nokia’s Qt and the Open Road to Code

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:00:00 EDT

With the pending acquisition of Sun by Oracle and speculation over whether a new stream of monetization is about to tarnish and dishonor the good name of open source, industry eyes are watching the open code zone more keenly than ever to try and gauge whether a new playing field is about to surface.

Web 3.0 Community Launched for Semantic Web Developers

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:18:00 EDT

As we all know, Web 1.0 was where it all started in a totally non-dynamic dial-up go and look for it kind of a way. Web 2.0 is pretty much where we are now with blogs, social media, push content, broadband, streaming and interconnectivity at every level...

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and IT survey statistics

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 02:49:48 EDT

I would have though that given the number of IT surveys we see floating past us these days that more tech bloggers would have referenced the phrase attributed to Benjamin Disraeli and also associated with Mark Twain when we look at these things, There ar...

Gartners Magic Roundabout

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 10:03:55 EDT

I spent part of this weekend pondering the values of the Gartner Magic Quadrant and trying to elucidate for myself just who buys into this scorecard smorgasbord other than the companies who pay for Gartners venerable services. As you may know, Gartne...

JavaOne: What Sun didnt say

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:16:31 EDT

As is always the way with these things, attending a big show like JavaOne means you do tend to focus on what Sun Microsystems itself had to say especially when the company has just been bought by the fourth richest man in the world. What they didnt get...

Sun’s JavaOne 2009: Business As Usual

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:15:00 EDT

New product announcements this year included JavaFX 1.2, which includes new cross platform User Interface (UI) controls, faster application start-up, streaming media support and other performance enhancements across desktop, browser and mobile.

Channel hopping to third party virtualisation

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 11:14:31 EDT

Ive never claimed to be an IT channel journalist. In fact, I was at a lunch with the newly reborn Gateway (no longer 2000) recently alongside some tech channel press and was suitably impressed by their array questions most of which were completely alien ...

Microsoft at JavaOne 2009: We come in peace

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:47:30 EDT

If listening to Microsoft talk about openness and interoperability sounds weird, then it shouldn't really, not if we're being relaxed enough. If listening to Microsoft talk about openness and interoperability at a JavaOne keynote sounds weird, then I gran...

JavaOne Keynote: Live Blog Feed

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:47:38 EDT

#08.51 PST - I'm sat in row 2 in the main auditorium at San Francisco's Moscone Centre for Sun Microsystems' JavaOne event. Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz has taken the stage and has not mentioned the Oracle acquisition even in passing as yet. #08.56 PST ...

Sun Stays Open: JavaOne Attendees Welcome OpenSolaris 2009.06

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:42:21 EDT

With critics inevitably drawing conclusions over a more corporate and newly monetised version of Sun Microsystems emerging from the Oracle acquisition, the company used its 'day zero' Community One day at JavaOne 2009 to champion the cause of the open rel...

What to expect from Sun's JavaOne 2009

Sun, 31 May 2009 20:11:21 EDT

Sun Microsystems didn't let a little thing like being acquired by Oracle get in the way of hosting its annual JavaOne developer conference in San Francisco from June 2 to 5 this year. Thankfully, it is pretty much business as usual, so I jumped at the cha...

The Twitter Book: worth a quick look if you're hooked

Thu, 28 May 2009 20:57:27 EDT

So there I was just about to take a flight to the US. Leafing through my as yet unread Bill Bryson books that I have left, I was about to dive headfirst into A Short History of Nearly Everything, when thud went my door mat and a complimentary copy of

Eliminating Toxic Technology

Wed, 27 May 2009 02:04:28 EDT

I've just finished up editing a feature for a DBA community portal that examines the current wastage elements in typical technology deployments - a scenario the author described as 'toxic technology'. So what I hear you say right? Another droning account ...

Stream Computing - not just a load of babble

Tue, 26 May 2009 03:18:59 EDT

It was 8am on a bank holiday Monday morning that I was watching the IT news feeds and started seeing mentions of Stream Computing coming to the fore. Being a bank holiday, I though yes very good cloud computing, waterfall methods, scrum practices (they ...

IBM: Linux Desktops Bucking the Recession

Thu, 21 May 2009 04:19:00 EDT

IBM put out a study datelined one minute past midnight this Thursday morning commenting on the fact that outside of netbooks, the recession has largely put the kibosh on PC growth...

New free public WiFi for UK based on open source

Wed, 20 May 2009 06:47:22 EDT

Today sees a new free public WiFi network launched in the UK. Targeting underserved and digitally remote areas of the UK, free to use access points in both public and commercial venues will be largely funded by the venue and its partners. This has go...

Qt Software Opens Its Source Code Repositories

Tue, 19 May 2009 12:45:00 EDT

Qt Software has completed its plans to release the Qt source code repositories to the developer community. This news opens the door to software engineers who want to help guide and shape the future development of Qt with code contributions, translations, examples, and other offerings.

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 now available to MSDN developers

Mon, 18 May 2009 03:09:29 EDT

This weekend saw a blog post go up by Microsoft tools guru Jihad Dannawi who detailed the news that Monday ...

Will Adobe's 'Strobe' Light up Custom Media Player Development?

Fri, 15 May 2009 18:15:00 EDT

Being a big fan of streaming media, I have quite a selection on my desktop from RealPlayer, to Windows Media, to YouTube favourites, to Adobes quite interesting Media Player and even Miro. I would have Hulu too if it supported content streaming outside t...

Qt opens source code repositories

Fri, 15 May 2009 10:28:28 EDT

Since attending the companys developer days event in Munich in late Autumn of last year, Ive been keeping an inquisitive eye open for news emanating from Nokia, Qt Software. Also, with Suns JavaOne conference right up ahead on my to do list, I am kee...

Work Wise Week Worries

Thu, 14 May 2009 03:13:41 EDT

Its personal productivity-themed "Work Wise Week" this week and this immediately makes me sceptical. Are online work management tool companies going to start trying to ply me with their wares? Are we about to be bombarded with top ten lists of tips for p...

Symbian Foundation 2010 roadmap: the open route to openness

Mon, 11 May 2009 04:22:41 EDT

Formed in June 2008 after a Nokia buyout, the Symbian Foundation is an organisation that aims to fully open up the mobile operating system. David Wood is a key member of the organisations new leadership team and I have a meeting with him this Wednesday. ...

IBM announces Rational Team Webtop

Thu, 07 May 2009 09:00:51 EDT

With IBM's Rational Software Developer Conference 2009 less than a month away now, the company is making reasonably enthusiastic noises about its new software platform (and related services no less) for product manufacturers and designers. In a disappo...

RIM gets Pushy over new BlackBerry developer APIs

Thu, 07 May 2009 02:41:49 EDT

Research In Motion (RIM) has been talking publicly about push application programming interface (API) technologies for some time now, it was back in 2007 that we last hear...