Increasingly, it looks like Weight Watchers has gotten hold of the Semantic Web. Fat is out. Thin is in. And while no one’s counting points, it certainly looks like, thin clients will increasingly play a central roles in attracting organizations to the 3-D web. A number of companies are enabling organizations and users to build their own virtual worlds with little more than a browser, much the way Ning, GoingOn, HiveLive, Flux, Me.com, and BricaBox has done for social networks. These instant-virtual-world companies include Vivaty, Altadyn with 3dxplorer, and to a lesser extent ScreenCaster and VastPark. With browser only virtual worlds, organizations can engage the largest market of users today – the Web user. Even Second Life, arguably the largest…

The Zenith DTT900 DTV converter box has an easy-to-use design and solid video quality, but buyers should be aware of cheaper–and possibly better–alternatives coming in the future.

The Zenith DTT900 DTV converter box has an easy-to-use design and solid video quality, but buyers should be aware of cheaper–and possibly better–alternatives coming in the future.

HP markets the Officejet H470wbt to the mobile business professional, but it chose aesthetics over performance. The sleek design and cost-effective cartridges give its rating a slight boost, but the degradation of print quality from the previous model is definitely a deal breaker.

HP markets the Officejet H470wbt to the mobile business professional, but it chose aesthetics over performance. The sleek design and cost-effective cartridges give its rating a slight boost, but the degradation of print quality from the previous model is definitely a deal breaker.

What do Microsoft storage heavies say when the suits let them off leash? Microsoft engineers at the ubergeek Usenix FAST 08 conference last month talked about Microsoft’s storage intentions to a crowd of PhDs - and a stray storage blogger. Soft sell Understand that Microsoft was recruiting. So was Google, IBM, NetApp, Seagate, Sun, HP, Yahoo and niche companies like Cleversafe and Marvell. That is real competition. Interesting work is the big motivator for these guys, not money or security. Selling them isn’t easy. Avoiding boredom is key. Touch lightly on many topics so listeners hear something that interests them. The people Speakers were from Microsoft Research and product development. In off-line conversations the ’softies impressed. Despite all the problems…

“Contract first” or “code first?” Spring developers now have a choice with WSO2’s release of Web Services Framework (WSF) for Spring 1.0. The new WSF/Spring 1.0 integrates the Apache Axis2 /Java Web services engine into the Spring Framework, giving Spring users full control from within the Spring configuration model. The existing SpringWebServices (SWS) within Spring supports Web services through the contract-first model, by which users start with XML schema and WSDL definitions of their service. WSF/Spring 1.0 adds code-first support, by which users can start with existing Spring beans and offer them as Web services with a simple Spring configuration. Paul Freemantle, co-founder and VP of sales at WSO2, the open-source SOA company located in Mountain View, Calif., and Sri…

So, I’ve been pretty surprised by the response to the discussion of the Flash flaw that allowed the Vista machine to be compromised in the Pwn2Own contest.  I’m working on getting an interview with Alexander Sotirov and Shane Macaulay (see image, courtesy of ZDI’s official site) to discuss the issue, but in the meantime, I think we can make some reasonable assumptions from the details that have been released in an InfoWorld article: Macaulay, who was a co-winner of last year’s hacking contest, needed a few hacking tricks courtesy of VMware researcher Alexander Sotirov to make his bug work. That’s because Macaulay hadn’t been expecting to attack the Service Pack 1 version of Vista, which comes with additional security measures… For…

In the third of a series of interviews by Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin, Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian (right) insisted his company is not being hurt by its association with Microsoft. “Novell grew 200% in the SUSE Linux marketplace year-over-year from an invoicing perspective,” he said. The overall market is growing at 22% according to IDC,” and “we’re taking some market share from our competitors. “The key to that success has been better Windows co-existance, he insisted. “The realities of a customer’s world is that they’re going to live with both for a long time in our lifetime,” and the Microsoft relationship helps with that. Hovsepian said Novell has “doubled down” on Mono, the .Net implementation led by Miguel de…

Analyst reiterates prediction and lays out how he thinks 45 million iPhones will be sold annually, beginning next year.