Computer Technology Today

The Intangibles: 5 Things That Aren't on the CRM Data Sheets

CRM has been around for a long time now -- more than 25 years. Amazingly, many businesses, including large businesses with revenue in excess of US$100 million, still operate without it. That's amazing, because to many business leaders, CRM has become table stakes when it comes to creating a software infrastructure. Within CRM, many of the features have become table stakes, too.
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IBM Begins New Email Chapter With Intelligent Verse

IBM on Tuesday introduced Verse, its entry into the reinventing email derby. Verse, which will be available in both an enterprise and freemium edition, integrates the many ways people communicate with each other every day -- email, meetings, calendars, file sharing, instant messaging, social media, video chats and more -- into a single collaboration environment.
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Salesforce1 Lightning Connect Aims to End the Long CRM Integration Nightmare

Salesforce.com has unveiled Salesforce1 Lightning Connect, a new component for its Lightning Platform as a Service for mobile developers, which it introduced last month. Lightning Connect, which is available immediately, is an integration tool that moves data in real time from back-end legacy systems to the Salesforce.com mobile offering. Its purpose is to make the data migration easy for users.
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The US Government's Tenuous Relationship With Open Source

The amount of open source software used by the U.S. government might be one of the biggest secrets in Washington. Not even purveyors of FOSS, as in free and open source software, know the extent of federal agency adoption of nonproprietary software. Some in the Beltway Loop contend that open source is very prevalent. Others suggest that it's avoided because its code is exposed for anyone to see.
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Kano: The Can-Do Coding Kit for Kids of All Ages "So simple a child could do it" -- I have heard that expression abused often in advertising. Yet it aptly applies to the Kano computer kit. Kano is a computer and coding kit that is suitable for all ages. Well, to be truthful, Kano's step-by-step instructions in the included booklets and its simplified Linux-based operating system target kids aged 6 to 14.

Dropbox, Microsoft Gang Up on Google Microsoft on Tuesday announced a strategic partnership with Dropbox -- only eight days after announcing unlimited cloud storage for Office 365 subscribers in a move widely seen as a frontal attack on Dropbox and Google. The companies will integrate their services forphones, tablets and the Internet, so that users can access and collaborate on Office files either from Dropbox or Microsoft Office.

Mobile Database Management's Coming of Age The push is on for mobile database management tools built from the ground up to run directly inside phones, tablets and wearables. These mobile database solutions are being designed to do what heavyweight open source solutions like SQLite, Cord Data, MySQL and PostgreSQL were not designed to do. Some 4.55 billion people worldwide are using mobile phones this year.

Evernote Aims to Bring All the Loose Bits Together Evernote CEO Phil Libin on Thursday announced major expansions of the company's note-taking application. The new features are designed to build Evernote's business presence and keep users connected to its services. Some of the best business-oriented and social media features will roll out as premium buy-ins. Other product tweaks will give users more efficient note-taking and organizational tools.

Scribbleton Has a Ton of Potential Scribbleton is a very infant -- as in alpha -- release of an innovative note-taking app for Linux that provides cross-platform access with Windows and Apple computers. It creates a personal wiki for storing everything from quick notes to detailed checklists to outlines. It creates links between pages in Scribbleton. Think of this as an easy-to-use database to link words, phrases and pages.

Dan Allen and Sarah White: Documentation Dearth Dooms Open Source Projects One of the essential draws to open source software should be superior product documentation. Well-written user guidelines are a key strategy that software developers should use to increase an open source project's growth and user adoption. All too often, programmers finish their last line of code and shove the open source software out the door. Documentation is often an afterthought, if that.

Hacker Gives Google a Hand With Chrome-Android Compatibility An unplanned convergence of Android apps and the Chrome OS may be setting the stage for a wide-open cross-platform architecture that combines Android and Chrome. Freelance programmer Vlad Filippov, aka "Vladikoff," discovered a way around Google's limitations on its ARC, or App Runtime for Chrome, which is essentially a Chrome extension application programming interface.

7 Crazy-Named, Crazy Good Open Source Enterprise IT Tools Enterprise IT is a very serious matter, but you might not know it judging by the software tools that are often integral to its operations. The list of odd names in today's data centers and enterprise IT shops also highlights the ongoing trend of polyglot programming. Today's applications and services are based on a wider variety of application components and run on a wider array of infrastructure.

The Importance of Openness to the Internet of Things Consumers today are in an awkward position. Personal privacy is being wiped out by the Internet. At the same time, new technologies that interconnect our devices, homes and offices are offering stupendous advantages. Welcome to the new Internet of Things' open world. "Openness" means something different depending on whether you're basking in the convenience or contributing to a vendor's cash flow.

HP's 'Chromebook Killer' Delivers a Jolt of Sticker Shock HP on Monday unveiled the Windows-based Stream laptop some have referred to as a "Chromebook killer," but instead of sporting the $199 price that was expected, it will cost $299. Featuring a 1366 x 768 display, 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of local storage, the new 14-inch machine is powered by an AMD A4 Micro processor with a fanless design. It comes with 100 GB of space on Microsoft's OneDrive service.

Matthew Miller: The Remaking of Fedora 1, 2, 3 Fedora is perhaps one of the hallmark Linux distributions. It is sponsored by Red Hat, the commercial developer of RHEL. Red Hat's investment in the Fedora community is collaborative. Fedora Linux releases often provide RHEL developers with a field test environment that incubates innovative open source software technologies. Red Hat Linux 1.0 was released in late 1994 as Red Hat Commercial Linux.

Google Gives Glass a Good Polish An update to the software that runs Glass gives users of Google's wearable computing device more control over their interactions with contacts. The latest version of the software -- also known as version XE20.1 -- adds the flexibility to choose how to reach out to a contact after selecting the person from the contacts list. Users now can swipe between Hangouts, email or SMS.

FOSS' Documentation Dilemma Hang around for any length of time in the seedy bars and watering holes of the Linux blogosphere, and you'll soon realize that certain topics tend to recur with surprising frequency. The most obvious example, of course, is the Year of Linux on the Desktop -- a topic scientists have determined will surely outlive us all. The latest example to rear its head? FOSS documentation.

Taking the Temperature of Java App Security Current approaches to Java application protection place security at the application or the network layer, both of which are problematic. The first approach has proven to be too complex, too time consuming and too risky -- in other words, "too hot." Meanwhile, network level security that consists of perimeter devices lacks the intelligence to know what's going on inside the application.

A Fresh Look at OpenStack The OpenStack project continues to be something of a lightning rod and also something of a dichotomy in the industry. On one hand, it has drawn the involvement of hundreds of supporting vendors and more than 17,000 individual members. It ranks highly among priorities, particularly for private clouds. Yet critics are quick to point out issues, such as installation and implementation difficulties.

MyNotex Strikes an Almost Perfect Note Note-taking applications in Linux are a dime a dozen. It can be difficult to sort through the feature sets to find the best solution. MyNotex has a near-perfect combination of features and uniqueness to put it into a class of its own. MyNotex is a multipurpose tool to take notes, file documents, and manage information or research. It is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit Deb and RPM packages.

China Trumps Up Anti-Monopoly Charges Against Microsoft China's State Administration for Industry & Commerce on Tuesday announced it has launched an investigation into Microsoft under the country's antimonopoly laws, according to press reports. The announcement comes days after SAIC officials reportedly raided Microsoft offices in four cities, seizing documents, emails and other data from servers and computers, among other things.

KaOS Calms Down KDE KaOS is an interesting and very efficient Linux distribution built around a refined KDE desktop environment. The KDE integration is much more controlled in KaOS than in other Linux choices. The latest release for this 14-month young Linux distro came in late June. KaOS is a bit of a rarity. It is independent of other distros -- not a direct relative of other Linux offshoots.

New IoT Group to Get Devices Talking Among Themselves Half a dozen companies this week launched the Open Interconnect Consortium to define the connectivity requirements and improve the interoperability of the 200 billion devices that will make up the Internet of Things by 2020. The consortium aims to define a common communications framework based on industry standard technologies, regardless of form factor, operating system or service provider.

Nadella Spells Out Microsoft's Bold Ambitions Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Thursday mapped out his vision for the company's future, emphasizing cloud and mobile computing, in a letter to all employees. "More recently, we have described ourselves as a 'devices and services' company. While the devices and services description was helpful in starting our transformation, we now need to hone in on our unique strategy," Nadella wrote.

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