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'Technically, there is no resignation letter'
MySQL co-founder Micheal "Monty" Widenius may quit Sun Microsystems, less than seven months after Sun paid $1bn for his free database outfit.…
Login problems at launch
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Polishes up its EULA
Google has acted with speed and retracted the objectional sentences in Chrome's EULA, so that any content you post via Chrome is yours and yours alone.…
See-through acquisition
Oracle has bought SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) business software maker ClearApp for an undisclosed sum.…
Jobs' past revisited
Mac secrets One of the most frequently used Cocoa classes is NSImage which, as the name suggests, is all about displaying and manipulating image data. The imageNamed: method of this class retrieves an image reference for you - provided that you know the name of the image you're after.…
Skymarket to challenge iTunes?
Microsoft is looking like it may launch an application repository in response to the success of Apple's iTunes application store and Google's announcement that Android will be similarly endowed. Or is it?…
Erm, doesn't that kind of defeat the iPoint?
Google has angered some of its personalised homepage users by running tests of an apparently unpopular experimental layout, and refusing to let them opt out or tell them how long the tests will last.…
Learn now, pays later
Web bling tone Extensible Application Markup Language, or XAML, lies at the heart of Microsoft's rich-client strategy. The user interface for both Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight, which is mostly a subset of WPF, is typically defined in XAML.…
'Mememoir' tech to make Wikipedia obsolete?
An American psychologist has invented a new form of wiki in which every word is directly linked to its author. He believes the so-called "mememoir"* project will "revolutionize publishing in all of science".…
Can we gift-wrap that for you, Sir?
Microsoft is splashing nearly $500m in cash on a price comparison and survey company, most of which it is going to immediately sell on.…
If the wind changes, you'll stay like that
Windows XP fans who have installed Service Pack 3 (SP3) after downloading Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) beta 1 won’t be able to downgrade their browser if they subsequently install IE8 beta 2.…
Would also be good for flying cars
Good news today for people who like flying cars or flying robots, but clouds on the horizon for professional pilots and air-traffic controllers. Trials by US aerospace colossus Lockheed have shown that lightweight, distributed, automated systems can easily deconflict pilotless aircraft operating in crowded airspace.…
Playing catchup with IE8 beta 2
Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 has been released, and it certainly makes for better browsing than the rough-around-the-edges beta 1 build.…
'Off the record' browsing is go
Updated Microsoft has outlined the new privacy tools available in its forthcoming browser Internet Explorer 8 (IE8).…
Jesusphone fails ASA test
The Advertising Standards Authority has told Apple UK not to show an advert which suggested the iPhone contained "all parts of the internet" any more.…
Murders Murderdrome
Murderdrome is a comic published exclusively for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which makes its removal from iTunes something of a problem for publishers Infurious and bodes badly for their comic-rendering application.…
Delivers media browser for all
A team of former Apple engineers are promising to bring TV-like simplicity and some iPhone touches to the task of finding and consuming media on any smart phone.…
Hunts for replacement
The veteran head of MySQL's Japan business has quit less than six months after the completion of Sun Microsystems' acquisition of the database company.…
Nomadic volumes
Amazon.com continues to offer deeper penetration into its cloud. The company this week unfurled a storage service for hard-core users that will let you keep data and file systems in separate piles.…
'A little overwhelmed'
Updated Microsoft today released a free photo-stitching tool that runs in the cloud – sadly for Redmond, at time of writing Photosynth is having a little lie-down.…
50 per cent Q2 growth won't cut it
Software as a service poster-child Salesforce.com today dished out second quarter results that showed a massive rise in revenue, which did absolutely nothing to impress investors.…
IE porn medical research mode
Microsoft's been accused of many things in its time, but guardian of porn hunters has never been one. That could change with Internet Explorer 8, however.…
20,000 applications, one open phone
Olympics aside, summer 2008 will be remembered for at least two other reasons. It will be seen as a time when the noise over Linux as a platform for mobile devices reached a crescendo. Second: it marked Debian's fifteenth anniversary.…
2008 sticking around
Microsoft has re-committed itself to an interim release of its Windows server operating system, countering reports it had planned to go straight to a major release instead.…
You just can't give it away
Apple has added 60 days onto the end of every MobileMe subscription, in another attempt to pacify punters still unhappy with the online synchronisation service.…
This topic really got you going
New research alert You, the fine Reg readers, recently regaled us with the gory details of your application failures - and it ain't too pretty. It turns out that a large majority of you find business is disrupted by app failure way too often.…
Four-letter word
A year or so ago I wrote a post called Adobe AIR: 10 reasons to love it, 10 reasons to hate it. Here’s the same kind of list for Microsoft’s Silverlight, based on the forthcoming Silverlight 2.0 rather than the current version. The items are not in any kind of order - they also reflect my interest in application development rather than design. It is not a definitive list, so there are many more points you could make - by all means comment - and it will be interesting to have another look a year from now when the real thing has been out for a while.…
Pro-Scientology ads decorating anti-Scientology sites. Wah?
Exclusive Google has shutdown the AdSense account of another anti-Scientology site.…
Adobe dons brave face
Adobe Systems appears to have been wrong footed and Microsoft left crowing on JavaScript’s evolution, following a decision by the ECMA.…
Don't tie me up with those ties, Ty
It may have finally dawned on Microsoft that its current software licensing restrictions kill one of the major benefits of virtualization — the ability to move a virtual machine freely about physical servers.…
Olympic performance gets tested
That's really the question John Markoff is asking in this New York Times piece about the way the NBC Olympics streaming video is putting Microsoft's browser plug-in on the map. Someone has even popped up to state that this is another go at technology monopoly:…
More supply chain consolidation
JDA Software is buying i2 Technologies for $346m in borrowed cash.…
'We feel your pain'
Google has apologised to users unable to get into their Gmail accounts last night.…
(Fe)atures power management goodies
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Can its willpower hold?
Microsoft's "milestone" first-service pack for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 has been released as the company shows concern over growing code bloat.…
Who's biting?
Yes, Apple has a lot to answer for. Having hooked the iPhone into Microsoft's Exchange email server, so business types can now read corporate emails horizontally, more tried-and-tested enterprise vendors are revisiting the concept of mobile business computing.…
Answer: FREE NEW HOT STEAMY SEX
Beware social network denizens, you are being watched and your wallets measured.…
It’s not you, it’s the BI and database engine
Review Microsoft's SQL Server 2008 is now upon us. More than a year after its initial planned delivery date, Microsoft Wednesday released to manufacturing code for a new version of its database that's almost as significant as its last great release - SQL Server 2005, three years ago.…
New dawn please
Mozilla Labs is inviting industry wonks, higher education types and ordinary bods to contribute ideas on its new concept browser, Aurora.…
No Symbian monogamy
LinuxWorld Nokia-owned Trolltech has re-committed its Qt cross-platform application framework and toolkit to Windows.…
We nailed another late product
Microsoft's SQL Server 2008 has finally found its way into the daylight.…
Not a measure of true popularity
An advert that claimed a website received over five million 'hits' every month has been banned because the metric is likely to mislead readers. The UK's advertising watchdog said that 'hits' is an unreliable measure of website popularity.…
Again, with the Linux desktop
LinuxWorld Ubuntu is the latest Linux distro to fall under the loving gaze of systems giant IBM, in its endless march to unseat Microsoft from business desktops and servers.…
Canonical offers Office 'alternative'
LinuxWorld IBM is today expected to announce expanded backing for Ubuntu in a desktop and collaboration software deal to challenge Microsoft's Windows and Office.…
False positives lock blogs
Google-owned Blogger has apologised for wrongly locking user accounts for being suspected spammers.…
Cloud database says 'no' to Windows and SQL compliance
A new database management system (DBMS) designed for web applications and cloud computing could be the start of a new direction in DBMS development and, indeed, in software as a whole.…
All corporate news is six steps away from reality
Microsoft researchers claim to have proved the pop-social-psychology shibboleth that we are no more that six degrees of separation removed from any other human being on the planet.…
The Worldwide Quantum Porn Pun Off
Cuil - still pronounced "Cool" - has apologized for its quantum porn, blaming the incident on "a serious corruption of [its] files."…
With great programming comes great responsibility
All web applications allow some form of rich data, but that rich data has become a key part of Web 2.0. Data is "rich" if it allows markup, special characters, images, formatting, and other complex syntax. This richness allows users create new and innovative content and services.…
Just cautiously browsing...
Microsoft is looking for additional testers for the second beta of its upcoming Internet Explorer 8 browser, while Mozilla has reached the first developer milestone of the next release of Firefox.…