12-11-07
SaaS (software as a service)applications can be accessed via a Web browser from virtually any client operating system, and beyond that, from a lot more devices than just PCs. While SaaS won't ultimately take over all software, it will have a major impact on business applications and help trigger an era of OS and device agnosticism.
The smartphone is the new PC. For the next generation of knowledge workers, the smartphone threatens to become their primary computing device. That doesn't mean that everyone will work on small screens - far from it. Screens are getting larger, large screens are getting cheaper, and the line between TV and computer screens is blurring.
It's very conceivable that smartphones will soon plug into docks and then provide full PC-like capability with a standard keyboard, mouse, and large screen LCD.
22-1-05 Internet Operating System
The Internet itself is, in effect, becoming a giant software platform. As tech publisher and pundit Tim O'Reilly puts it, "The real race over the next decade will be over who puts together the operating system for the Internet." However, unlike the Windows PC operating system -- which acts as a translator between software applications, peripheral devices, and the PC's hardware -- an Internet operating system would act as a translator between different databases on the Net. These databases are already becoming the foundation for the latest Web-based software. Top
New applications are possible because more websites are being written in a programming language called XML which is much more rich with data than its predecessor HTML, XML allows you to strip the underlying data away from the visual presentation of that data, mix it with data from another source, and then present it again any way (and anywhere) you want.
Thanks to XML, there will soon be no practical limit to the data and content that software and website developers can take advantage of. For consumers, this promises a far richer Web experience. But for businesses and software developers, it also promises a whole new set of headaches.
Each data source requires its own application programming interface.
If you are drawing from dozens of data sources, keeping track of every time one of them changes its API could easily become overwhelming. Here's where an Internet operating system could come in handy: It could manage the translation between all the moving parts. Top
An Internet operating system could keep those APIs updated, enabling software developers to focus on doing new and interesting things with all of the data instead of spending their time figuring out how to access it. This would be analogous to how the Windows operating system incorporates the drivers for peripheral devices like printers, monitors, and digital cameras. (In computer parlance, a driver is a set of instructions that lets a software program control a peripheral device.) Marc Andreessen once dismissively said, "Windows is just a bag of drivers." And that's true. "But a bag of drivers is a very powerful thing," O'Reilly points out. By incorporating the drivers for hundreds of peripheral devices into Windows, Microsoft saved PC software developers the hassle of including all of those drivers in each new PC program. Top
When Vista launched, Microsoft made available 30,000 drivers, serving 1.7 million devices, said Dave Wascha, the company's director of platform partner product management.
Google will also participate in a "bundle" of consumer software that will be offered free over the internet, marking an attempt by Microsoft rivals to cement their position on the PC desktop before the launch of the next version of the Windows operating system.
"I can imagine an operating system that some day does a better job storing your data, using (a) network," Mayer said in a barb clearly aimed at Microsoft. Top
Een website die niet dynamisch is bestaat uit een verzameling van HTML pagina's. Een webapplicatie die gemaakt is in ASP.NET bestaat in principe uit een verzameling ASP.NET pagina's. Wanneer een ASP.NET pagina opgevraagd wordt met een webbrowser, dan wordt de ASP.NET pagina eerst op de webserver uitgevoerd en wordt het resultaat naar de webbrowser teruggestuurd. Dit resultaat is gewone HTML dat door iedere webbrowser weergegeven kan worden. Dit betekent dat er voor een webbrowser geen verschil bestaat tussen een website die uit HTML pagina's bestaat en een website die uit ASP.NET pagina's bestaat. De webbrowser hoeft dus alleen HTML weer te geven, en u hoeft dus geen extra software te installeren om een ASP.NET pagina te bekijken. Omdat een pagina elke keer dat deze opgevraagd wordt opnieuw HTML genereert, kan het resultaat van de pagina keer op keer verschillen. Die verschillen kunnen bijvoorbeeld het gevolg zijn van keuzes die door de gebruiker gemaakt zijn, of omdat sinds de vorige keer dat de pagina werd opgevraagd gegevens uit een gegevensbron veranderd zijn. Als een pagina een formulier bevat waar een gebruiker gegevens in in kan vullen, dan kunnen die gegevens gebruikt worden om bijvoorbeeld een gegevensbron te wijzigen, een email te versturen, of iets op te zoeken. Door een aaneenschakeling van pagina's ontstaat zo een applicatie die te vergelijken is met applicaties die op uw eigen systeem werken. De pagina's vervullen daarin de rol van vensters in een 'normale' applicatie. Top
Webapplicaties bestaan uit meer dan HTML alleen. HTML verzorgt over het algemeen wel het uiterlijk, maar meer kan het ook niet, want het is alleen bedoeld om pagina's op te maken. Voor een webapplicatie is daarom ook een platform nodig waarop de functionaliteit ontwikkeld en uitgevoerd kan worden, en ASP.NET is zo'n platform. Het is ontwikkeld door Microsoft als opvolger van Active Server Pages (ASP), dat in 1997 geïntroduceerd werd. ASP.NET is echter tot veel meer in staat dan ASP en is bovendien veel makkelijker te gebruiken.
"Software as a service" is a term for Web-based, hosted software--which can reduce ownership costs, implementation risks and IT resource needs.
Subscribers can simply use a Web browser to access the service through a private, secure connection. Top
7:18 25-6-06
By pursuing Web-based applications, Maritz is pursuing the same notion as Google and Yahoo! . Those companies are rolling out new applications like word processors, spreadsheets and calendaring, where the information is stored on the Web and accessed and modified through a browser.
"The battle is shifting beyond Windows and Linux," he says. "Google isn't concerned about what executes down on the client machine, whether it's Windows or Linux. The action has moved up a level. The real innovation in software is not occurring in the context of the 1980s and 1990s PC. It's occurring in applications that reside in the broader Web. The interesting innovations are going to occur around different ways to organize and share and access information." Top
Maritz worked at Microsoft from 1986 to 2000, an era that saw the incredible rise of Windows, which today powers 95% of the world's desktop PCs. He says that while he is proud of Windows, the environment has run up against its limitations.
"There was a platform that gave birth to a huge economic community, and I take satisfaction in having done the enabling technology that let so many people do interesting things," he says. "But things move on. There is always a more interesting and better way of doing things."
Maritz views PI as part of a sea change that is sweeping across the computer industry, driven by access to high-speed network bandwidth at low cost.
"Windows was enabled by this amazing gift from the hardware community of virtually free computing cycles from the microprocessor," he says. "Now technology is giving us another such gift: ubiquitous bandwidth. And we can once again use that gift to do things in a more satisfying way. Just like the PC was more satisfying than the minicomputer. Now we need to rethink things again."
And as the technology is changing, so are business models, as companies like Google try to find ways to make money by providing applications over the Internet. Top
10-8-06 AOL said Wednesday it will make personalized e-mail domains available for free to all Internet users beginning next month.
The My eAddress service will be available in September at www.aol.com.
9:06 11-4-07
The Internet era has been good to makers of printers so far. H.P.'s numbers show that half the printing done in homes is material from the Internet, like e-mail and Web pages, while software like Microsoft Word accounts for just under 20 percent of printouts.
Software creates templates that reorganize the photos and text blocks on a Web page to fit standard sizes of paper. H.P. wants to make the software a standard by making it ubiquitous, like Adobe's Flash and Reader or Sun Microsystems' Java.Top
If it creates the printing engine of the Web, H.P. will help all printer companies.
Cartridges were failing after firing only 600,000 drops. He figured out a way to make them fire 45 million drops. That meant a cartridge would run out of ink long before failing, which, he jokes, opened the door for the cartridge refilling industry, the bane of H.P.'s business model.
It looks like the Web operating system is becoming more than just a concept and an argument for marginalizing desktop OSes.
And there are others, like YouOs and Xcerion, which have the more ambitious goal of recreating a desktop operating system on the Internet. Even desktop software giant Microsoft is building Windows Live Core, a set of services for building and running services in the "cloud."
25-7-07
A thin client computer is managed and controlled remotely by centrally managed servers, instead of by software on the machine's hard drive, as a PC is operated.Top
25-1-08
HP plans to release a set of "thin client" computers that are designed to function as lightweight terminals for accessing computing systems hosted on servers. Though the new PCs have more processing power than older HP thin clients and are equipped with wireless connectivity, they have no hard drive and carry just enough flash memory to host the software necessary to wirelessly connect to a data center or to the Internet.
HP is hoping to tap into a growing trend sparked by software offerings from companies such as VMware and Microsoft: virtualization.
Instead of one PC client hosted on one server, virtualization software allows companies to host many PCs on a single server, cutting total IT energy costs.Top
31-1-08
As the world becomes more networked, computing power is undergoing the Big Switch, moving off of desktops and into massive data centers, where it's cheaper and more efficient.
In a traditional data center, data storage devices and servers have been connected via Fibre Channel and Infiniband cables that can only move data over short distances. A third kind of cable, Ethernet, is needed to connect them to Internet networks that bring data to faraway users. Cisco's Nexus 7000 is designed to combine those three types of cables in a new, smarter form of Ethernet cable. Without the old layer of short-distance cables, this new Ethernet system will connect servers and storage drives directly to long-distance networks, making them accessible to each other from hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Any network switch, is a device designed to control and direct the flow of data between connected computers.
But the Nexus 7000 really gets interesting, when it's combined with another revolutionary IT innovation: virtualization.Top
Today, virtualization allows servers to be converted to software "images" that can be consolidated and hosted on a single physical server, increasing a data center's efficiency by about 25%, estimated. But in combination with a switch like the Nexus, virtualization could mean cooperation between multipurpose servers across cities and time zones.
A banking firm, for instance, might have one server in New York that deals with online transactions and another in Boston that deals with bill processing. During the day, the New York server runs at capacity while the Boston server sits idle. At night, when most users stop performing online transactions, the New York server goes quiet while the Boston machine chugs away. In each case, the idle server continues to chew up power.
Virtualization allows each of those machines to host "virtual" servers that are capable of both online banking and bill processing. If they were then connected with a Nexus switch, the online banking application in New York could pull computing power from virtual servers in Boston during the day and the bill processing application could tap into virtual servers in New York at night. Both physical machines could be accessed from a distance and used to full capacity at any time, doubling the bank's efficiency.
The Sun's DCX, like the Nexus, handles large amounts of bandwidth and is designed to integrate storage and servers.Top
28-3-2008
Many kinds of software are available for use online in a trend known as "software as a service," or "cloud computing." The earliest were e-mail programs, but they now include services to create and manage content and even whole operating systems. And they don't require time-consuming upgrades because they're maintained by the service provider.
7-5-2008
A PC consumes 77.1 watt while in an active state, compared to the 13.6 watt consumed by thin clients.
Toekomst van gmail Google heeft een tweesporen-beleid te aanzien van het Internet, 1) Google ontwikkelt programma's die in de browser draaien 2) programma's die op de server draaien.
Recently news has come that the a person has found in the GMail JavaScript code some code snippets for features that've not yet included in GMail. The report says that it is likely that Google will include a new feature in GMail in Future that allows anyone with a domain to use GMail as server.
20-6-2008
The problem stems from the fact that Microsoft, in it's infinite wisdom,
decided that it could improve on the standards set by the world body.
They incorporated a load of tags that will only display correctly in
Internet Explorer into IE and it's Office product line. The rest of the
world, all other browsers, stayed with the standards set by the world
body. Now Microsoft "says" they will rewrite IE to obey the standards.
When creating pages for genealgy sites keep the pages as simple and clean as possible. Use mostly basic HTML tags. These tags are the most likely to outlive us all, and any number of browser wars. Genealogy pages are for the dissimination of information. They don't need to be flashy and fancy. If you want a personal page go ahead and show off your personality. Put in all the flash and eye candy you want. All that stuff just takes away from a genealogy site IMHO.
Use the K.I.S.S. Principle. Even the OLD deprecated tags on my pages still work in any browser you can throw at them. Every page looks exactly the same in every browser out there.Top
Here's part of my reasoning.
Go to any place that sells computers and see how many have a floppy drive. Floppies are fast becoming another casuality of progress. In just a few years CD's and DVD's will go the way of the floppy. Blueray is the next step forward. Hard drives, while they are getting larger and larger will soon go away to. They already have taken the memory stick technology and use it for hard drives in some HIGH END laptops. PCMCIA cards for laptops are pretty much history in new laptops. We now have the "Express Card". My new laptop even has "PCIExpress" card slots to add features. Something that was unthinkable just a couple models ago.
Just a few short years ago a 12 MHz computer with a hundred megs of ram was a monster machine. The entire World Wide Web was all text. There were no fancy graphics. No style sheets. So where does the next great step in web pages lead us?
Twenty, thirty, forty years from now just about anything we can do right now will probably be unreadable in a modern computer. Plain text format will most likely survive because it is pretty much the most basic form possible. I feel like basic HTML tags, because they are the most basic, will survive also. One hundred years from now it's a virtual certainty that everything we do today will not be accessable on a modern computer. If you want all those CD's you've created to be readable you had better pack in a computer to read them with.
Remember. Any computer you can buy off the shelf right now is obsolete. The next one is already on the assembly line.
As for completely redoing your pages.........................well......................
Back in 2003, OH so long ago, the availability of decent HTML editors was strictly limited to text based editors. Every, EVERY, WYSIWYG editor created garbage. NVU was the first WYSIWYG editor that I found that didn't. I thought it was quite amazing that someone had FINALLY written a decent ( good ) WYSIWYG editor. No need to feel bad about the method you used. Unless you wanted to do it in a text based editor you had no choice.
IF you want your pages to out live you it might be a good idea.Top
21-6-2008
As the Web transforms from a static repository of content into a foundation for applications such as word processors and graphics editors, browsers are growing up from mere gateways into the tool that makes those applications possible. In this new era, it's Firefox--the heir to the Netscape legacy--that's going up against the victor of the last era, Internet Explorer.
25-7-2008 Yahoo: E-mail Zimbra webmail met offline mogelijkheid
20:11 30-7-2008
Cloud computing is het huidige buzzword in de IT. Geen software meer op je computer, maar via internet worden ergens uit een anoniem datacentrum (the cloud) programma’s opgehaald. De term SaaS wordt in deze context ook vaak genoemd, afkorting voor Software-as-a-Service.
18:23 1-8-2008
Het nieuwe besturingssysteem Midori zou afrekenen met typische Windowsproblemen, zoals vastlopers, traagheid en virussen. Volgens SD-Times, dat zegt interne documenten van Windows te hebben ingezien, wordt Midori een internetgedreven systeem. Internet is dus het netwerk dat alle hardware koppelt.
Microsoft zou met Midori voortborduren op zijn Research’s Singularity besturingssysteem, waarin internet centraal staat.
De overstap naar een webgedreven systeem zou een logische zijn: de eerste versie van Windows werd ontworpen toen internet nog niet bestond.Top
9:56 4-10-2008
Windows Cloud is een besturingssysteem voor servers die desktoptoepassingen op afstand draaien.
Ballmer vindt het nu te moeilijk om toepassingen te schrijven die voor de 'wolk' bestemd zijn. Een programmeur moet volgens hem een applicatie kunnen schrijven die zo naar de wolk kan. Dat terwijl het besturingssysteem zelf zorgt voor services, schaalbaarheid, fouttolerantie en andere aspecten van cloud computing. (Het principe van cloud computing houdt in dat rekenkracht en opslagruimte zich ergens onzichtbaar 'achter de schermen', ver weg in een datacenter bevinden.)
Desktoptoepassingen zullen volgens Microsoft ook breken met de normale werkwijze waarbij software geïnstalleerd moet worden. In plaats daarvan zullen programma’s eerder als webtoepassingen aanklikbaar zijn en zonder installatie draaien op de desktop. Top
Na Windows 7, dat wellicht eind 2009 in de handel komt, volgt Azure, ook in 2009.
Waar Windows 7 een verbeterde versie van Vista moet worden, belooft Azure een revolutie te zijn, zowel voor Microsoft als voor de gebruikers.
Azure zal niet meer op de pc bij mensen thuis of op kantoor geïnstalleerd staan. Het besturingssysteem staat op internet, op de computers van Microsoft.
Via een webbrowser roept de gebruiker allerlei diensten op vanaf het web, zoals tekstverwerking, databanken en e-mail.
Nieuw is het idee niet. Microsoft werkt zelf al jaren met Hotmail als webdienst vanaf zijn computers. Ook Google en webwarenhuis Amazon zijn al jaren actief met cloud computing, zoals deze softwarediensten via internet heten.
Voor bedrijven en consumenten heeft cloud computing grote gevolgen. Zij hoeven geen zware pc's met grote geheugens en harde schijven meer aan te schaffen. De hardwarefabrikanten hebben het nakijken.
Voor Microsoft is Azure ook een revolutie: het concern stapt deels af van zijn grootste melkkoe: de verkoop van software. De klant moet straks een abonnement nemen op deze diensten.
Voor datacenters en systeembeheerders is Azure slecht nieuws: zij worden op den duur overbodig. Hoe snel Azure de pc thuis verdringt laat Microsoft afhangen van de reacties van zijn klanten en programmeurs.
8-5-2009 The equivalent of the assembly line is industry standard hardware, the components used to build the backbone of the largest Internet companies on the planet. Standardized hardware has unshackled the computing power once trapped in mainframe computers, democratizing it so that all can share. More recently, software has been developed that virtualizes, automates and differentiates this hardware to enable a configure-to-order model for the IT industry.
Even better: The "cloud" can deliver these capabilities and offer a new level of customization and efficiency at affordable prices and on a massive scale.
To say it simply, the cloud is the next stage in the evolution of the Internet. Its impact, however, will be sweeping, fundamentally changing the way we connect with each other and with information.
The cloud is making once-expensive information technology available to a mass market through a pay-per-use model. This promises to increase productivity and drive growth. Small and medium-sized businesses can leverage data to drive efficiencies and improve products and services. Large companies can shift applications to the cloud and so spend their resources on the technology that gives them a competitive advantage.
Here's one example:
HP has a cloud service, called MagCloud, that makes it possible for anyone to publish a professional-quality magazine and print, promote, sell and deliver it on demand. Printing on demand means no large press runs, no pre-publication expense, no waste.
By eliminating substantial pieces of the physical supply chain, we can offer professional-quality print to a mass audience while reducing the impact on the environment. The same on-demand technology can be extended to book publishing and allow individuals to print customized books, mixing their own content with that of professionals.
Russ Daniels is Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Cloud Services Strategy at Hewlett-Packard.
9-11-2008 (artikel van Martin Gijzemijter) Ballmer deed deze opmerkelijke uitlating tijdens een developer conferentie in Sydney, Australië, naar aanleiding van een vraag van een student.
Deze verraste de Microsoft CEO met de vraag waarom Internet Explorer nog relevant genoemd kan worden en waarom het nog zin heeft om geld te besteden aan gesloten rendering engines terwijl er ook gratis open-source alternatieven beschikbaar zijn en die zich bovendien sneller kunnen aanpassen aan veranderende webstandaarden.
"Dat is brutaal, maar een goede vraag ", antwoordde Ballmer, "maar brutaal." Volgens de CEO zou Microsoft dan eerst naar de toekomst van de browser moeten kijken om te zien of er nog ruimte is voor innovatie binnen het browserconcept als geheel. Ballmer stelde dat er nog veel gesloten innovatie voor IE8 mogelijk is.
Daarentegen gaf hij direct toe dat hij open source zeker niet wegwuift: "Open source is zeer interessant. Apple heeft WebKit al omarmd en wij zullen daar mogelijk ook naar kijken. Maar we zullen in ieder geval niet stoppen met het bouwen van onze eigen extensies voor IE8."
De ontwikkeling van IE
Het is niet zo vreemd dat Microsoft naar de concurrentie kijkt als het gaat om beslissingen met betrekking tot de ontwikkeling van z'n eigen software. De ontwikkeling van Internet Explorer is sinds versie zes altijd gekoppeld geweest aan de handelingen van concurrenten. In 2001 lanceerde het bedrijf Internet Explorer zes, maar zette de doorontwikkeling daarvan op een laag pitje omdat de browser van de grootste concurrent, Netscape, tussen 2000 en 2001 was gesneuveld .
De ontwikkeling stond echter niet stil en Mozilla bouwde de Netscape code om tot Firefox, welke in 2003 werd gelanceerd. Daarnaast werd in dezelfde periode de KHTML browser engine van KDE gelanceerd, die door Apple werd gebruikt om WebKit te bouwen, die als engine werd gebruikt voor Safari 1.0.
Waar Microsoft in 2001 nagenoeg geen concurrentie meer had op het browservlak, vormden Apple en Mozilla in 2003 ineens twee grote concurrenten. Microsoft moest weer aan de bak, en in 2006 werd IE7 geïntroduceerd.
Voordelen van WebKit
Er wordt momenteel nog gesleuteld aan IE8, maar Microsoft gebruikt nog altijd haar eigen rendering engine, Trident, maar heeft het wel beloofd dat IE8 webstandaarden beter ondersteund. Firefox draait op een andere open source engine, Gecko. En Opera heeft ook een eigen gesloten engine, Presto.
WebKit mag zich echter op een groeiende populariteit verheugen. Naast de mobiele versie van Safari voor de iPhone, maken ook de mobiele browser van Nokia en Google's Chrome gebruik van de open source engine.
Zou Microsoft ook kiezen voor WebKit, dan zou het ook de mogelijkheid hebben om de sterk verouderde mobiele versie van IE te vervangen voor een betere versie. Ontwikkelaars zouden daarnaast op den duur verlost zijn van de noodzaak om hun producten te testen op twee verschillende webstandaarden en daarnaast nog eens op verschillende versies van Internet Explorer, die allemaal anders reageren.