Business Tech

It's getting harder to focus on the vision of cloud computing these days. While there are still plenty of critical and complex problems to solve, and many, many implications of this disruptive operations model that have yet to be understood, the truth is that we've entered a new phase in the evolution of cloud adoption. Real work now exceeds theory when it comes to both new online content and work produced.

This kind of snuck up on me, but it shouldn't have. I myself witnessed many of the early events that greased the skids for real cloud success: the introduction of revolutionary products from Salesforce.com and Amazon Web Services; great blogs that discussed practical applications of early cloud environments, followed by books that explained step-by-step what should be considered in application architectures destined for the cloud.

The rapid adoption of "software as a service"-style offerings from the likes of Salesforce.com, Google, Zoho, and a wide variety of others in both the consumer and business markets belied new computing options delivered at Internet scale.

However, what really made me aware of the changing cloud buzz is what's happening in the software development space. I was shaken awake by Microsoft's brilliant launch of its Azure cloud service. I loved almost everything about how Ray Ozzie and crew positioned and discussed Azure's services to its target market: developers of the next generation of business applications.

The recent (re)unveiling at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles included an impressive array of services, customer testimonials, and partner announcements. If it had stopped at that, I would have assumed it was just "Mister Softy's" massive marketing machine in action.

However, I began following the "#azure" tag on Twitter from that day forward, and I've been blown away by the amount of content being generated by developers for developers. For example, this step-by-step guide to installing SQL Server on Azure. Or, how about this list of sessions from PDC from a variety of vendor and customer presenters, covering topics ranging from development basics to "making sense out of ambient data".

But it's not just Microsoft. Other cloud platform and infrastructure service vendors are building significant volume. Ruby on Rails platform service vendor Heroku reportedly hosts more than 40,000 applications now. At their Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, Salesforce.com mentioned they had approximately 135,000 applications running on their Force.com platform. (Of course, the number of these respective applications that are generating revenue or even used on a regular basis was not disclosed. Still, these numbers are impressive.)

Amazon Web Services has seen tens of billions of objects stored in its S3 environment (64 billion as of August 2009), and reportedly has several hundred thousand instances running at any given time. Google App Engine doesn't seem to do much marketing, but anecdotal evidence suggests there is a large body of Web application developers running on both the Java and Python instances.

Development and test services, such as SkyTap and Soasta, are thriving. The cloud model really works well for the dynamic resource usage model of software engineering. In fact, it works so well that IBM is putting some real muscle into the game.

There is other evidence that cloud is seeping into mainstream IT thought. This year's Gartner Data Center conference has a "virtual track" dedicated to cloud computing and its impact on the data center. Several vendor conferences leaned heavily on cloud computing in the last year. Professional associations are getting into the act by considering the impact of the cloud on their respective best practices and standards.

There is growing evidence that new and existing independent software vendors and consultancies are finding the cloud to be fertile ground. Of course, that could be a double-edged sword, as some firms will try to use the cloud as leverage to pry their way into otherwise closed doors. However, real projects do exist, and there are signs that that opportunity is growing.

If you are wondering if cloud computing is a fad, the evidence to the contrary is all around you. I heartily recommend that you really listen to what is being said, understand how the cloud is being used, and seriously evaluate how this disruptive model will change your projects, your organization, and even your career. Clearly, there are many technologists who already have.

Microsoft has begun a campaign to actively urge users of its 8-year-old Internet Explorer 6 browser to upgrade.

After launching IE 8 in March, Micosoft has concurred with critics that IE 6 is outdated. Many people have dropped the older browser, but the remaining users are often the tough cases--those who don't have a choice because of corporate computing policy or who aren't tech-savvy enough to realize there's a reason to move on.

This eBay 'Web slice'--basically a live bookmark in Internet Explorer 8--is part of Microsoft's effort to get people to upgrade from IE 6.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

It's this latter population Microsoft is targeting with a campaign that runs through June 2010 that touts its own IE 8 as a better alternative. The campaign's first visible elements are a video aimed at online holiday shoppers and a Web slice to promote daily deals at eBay. Web slices are basically live bookmarks that can show miniature Web pages in the browser.

"What we're doing with the outreach is help users understand how to protect themselves against social engineering threats that exist and to help people understand how Internet Explorer 8 puts people in control of their own privacy online," said Ryan Servatius, senior product manager for Internet Explorer. Security was one of the big problems with IE 6, and Microsoft now boasts that security features in IE 8 block 2 million malware sites a day.

According to Net Applications' statistics, Internet Explorer 6 is still the most widely used browser, with 23.3 percent share of usage in October, followed by IE 7 at 18.2 percent and IE 8 at 18.1 percent. The newer browsers are gaining on IE 6, but so are rivals including Mozilla's Firefox, Apple's Safari, and Google's Chrome.

Web developers often gripe about having to support IE 6, which doesn't support many modern features for more sophisticated Web sites and even applications. Microsoft acknowledges that it's holding back development of the Internet, too.

"The best thing a user can do to advance the Web is to help move people off IE 6," Servatius said.

Of course, many will upgrade to IE 8 by buying Windows 7. IE 6 was the browser that shipped with Windows XP, which remains entrenched, but there are signs Windows 7 is a more compelling successor than Windows Vista. That could help the corporate customers move away from IE 6, Servatius said.

"As enterprises migrate from whatever operating system they're using today to Windows 7, that's going to help deprecate IE 6," he said. "What we're doing is working both with consumers worldwide and IT professionals to help them understand what the benefits of a modern browser are."

eBay is criticizing a French court's ruling that orders the company to pay a $2.55 million fine to European conglomerate LVMH.

The auction giant and its European unit were fined 1.7 million euros on Monday by the Commercial Court of Paris, which ruled that the company violated a 2008 court order by not preventing the sale of legitimate LVMH perfumes and cosmetics. LVMH's brands include Christian Dior, Guerlain, and Givenchy perfumes.

In June 2008, the Commercial Court fined eBay $61 million in a lawsuit filed by the conglomerate, which is officially known as LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton. LVMH had asserted that eBay had not done enough to stamp out the sale of fake LVMH goods on its site. The court went a step further, ruling that eBay-traded LVMH products--even authentic ones--were not being sold by an authorized reseller. As a result, eBay was ordered to remove all listings of these products.

eBay criticized the ruling then, saying it was an attempt by LVMH to "protect uncompetitive commercial practices." eBay likewise condemned the new ruling.

"Today's outcome hurts consumers by preventing them from buying and selling authentic items online," Alex von Schirmeister, general manager of eBay in France, said in a statement. "The injunction is an abuse of 'selective distribution.' It effectively enforces restrictive distribution contracts, which is anti-competitive."

Despite its objections, eBay argued that it has complied with the 2008 court order. The company said it has used state-of-the-art filtering software to check millions of listings each day, making thousands of authentic LVMH products invisible or inaccessible to French eBay users.

eBay also discounted the proof brought against it, claiming that LVMH offered details on only 1,341 listings out of 200 million posted on the auction site each day. eBay believes those listings were deliberately posted by people to sneak past the filters. In 1,091 of the listings targeted by LVMH, the seller did not accurately describe the item, using misspelled brand names, no brand names at all, or only pictures to describe the product.

As a result, eBay asserts that both the fine and ruling are unjustified. The fine itself is disproportionate given that eBay complied with the injunction," said von Schirmeister. "It is out of step with our legal victories in France, U.K., Germany, Belgium and the U.S."

eBay plans to appeal the new ruling and two other cases tied to LVMH. "We believe that the higher courts will overturn this ruling and ensure that e-commerce companies such as eBay will continue to provide a platform for buyers and sellers to trade authentic goods," said von Schirmeister.

eBay has been in and out of U.S. and European courtrooms for years, sued by companies trying to clamp down on the sale of fake versions of their legitimate products. It's faced courtroom battles with several European powerhouses, winning cases against L'Oreal and Tiffany, but losing suits filed by LVMH.

Mozilla, determined to release Firefox 3.6 before year's end, is also determined to squeeze as many features as possible into the new browser.

The latest example: support for the File interface that adds more sophistication to uploading and some other chores.

Support for the feature is one of the 133 changes that arrived in Firefox 3.6 beta 4, which the Mozilla project released Thursday for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

The File API (application programming interface), a draft standard at the World Wide Web consortium, lets browsers handle files better. Among its abilities are uploading multiple files at once, showing thumbnail previews of images that have been selected for upload, breaking a long video upload up into chunks to protect against network interruption problems, and integrating with drag-and-drop Web applications.

While many software projects use beta testing periods to shake down their code, Mozilla isn't afraid to add new features as it goes. That can mean new ideas arrive sooner, of course, but it also can delay the completion date of the new version. What was to have been a quick Firefox 3.1 release was pushed back months as new features were added and the version ultimately was renamed Firefox 3.5.

For those who want to dig into the File interface, Mozilla offers a Web developer guide to using it.

The beta-testing periods aren't just important for debugging Firefox itself. New versions often don't work with older add-ons that people install to customize the browser, so beta testing gives some time for programmers to update those add-ons. Mike Belzner, Mozilla's director of Firefox, said 70 percent of add-ons are now compatible with Firefox 3.6.

Neelie Kroes

(Credit: EC)

Competition commissioner Neelie Kroes and telecommunications commissioner Viviane Reding will take on new duties under a European Commission lineup announced Friday.

Kroes is designated as the digital agenda commissioner, with oversight of the European Network and Information Security Agency (Enisa) and the Information Society Directorate General, which supports IT activities. As such, she is responsible for increasing online access to content and for the digital economy. She has also been named a vice president of the European College, the group of all the commissioners.

At the start of her five years as competition commissioner, Kroes handled the EU's antitrust investigation into Microsoft, which ended in a 497 million euro fine for the software giant.

Read more of "EC reshuffle bumps Kroes out of antitrust seat" at ZDNet UK.

The Hewlett-Packard Envy 13 offers an excellent example of what a cutting-edge ultraportable should be--and it moves past the Apple MacBook Air in some important respects, despite its overly ambitious price tag.

First, let me say that I use a MacBook Air as my main machine and am well aware of its merits. That said, it is beginning to look a little long in the tooth when juxtaposed with the Envy 13--which, like the Air, offers an aluminum chassis. I will also draw comparisons with 13-inch MacBook Pro since the Envy seems to fall somewhere between this and the Air.

(See CNET review of Envy 13.)

Let's start with the Envy's engine. The Envy offers a ULV (ultra-low-voltage) processor option that you won't find in any Apple MacBook: a 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo SU9600 that draws a mere 10 watts. This is Intel's highest-performance 10-watt dual-core processor--a crucial power-saving and heat-reducing option for ultra-thin designs like the Envy or MacBook Air. The more widely used SL9600 (which many reviewers mistakenly refer to as ultra low voltage) draws 17 watts.

But HP charges a premium for this processor, too. Selecting the power-sipping SU9600 adds $200 to the cost of the Envy. But at least it's an option.

HP Envy 13 is more advanced than the MacBook in some important respects.

(Credit: Hewlett-Packard)

Next, graphics. The Envy has switchable graphics. What does this get you? More battery life. When plugged in, the Envy uses the "discrete" (standalone) ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 graphics processor. When unplugged it switches to the less-power-hungry--and lower performance--Intel integrated graphics.

The truth be told, most of the time users don't need discrete graphics. But it can be a godsend in Windows 7, for example, when doing transcoding--which converts, for instance, a movie on a PC to a format that makes it viewable on an iPhone or iPod. And, of course, discrete graphics is needed for playing demanding games.

The ATI 4330 graphics seem to be more capable than ... Read more

Come early December, Oracle will meet with European Commission regulators to urge their approval of its merger with Sun Microsystems. "Two people with knowledge of the matter" tell Reuters that "Oracle has asked for a hearing which has been fixed for December 10."

Should make for an interesting meeting given Oracle's refusal to take the EC's concerns about the future of Sun's MySQL database seriously. Certainly, it's difficult to imagine Oracle caving to the Commission's demands when it has criticized the group's findings as a "profound misunderstanding" of the database market and open source.

And if not that, then what? Would Oracle abandon the deal instead? That too seems unlikely because it would mean delaying CEO Larry Ellison's plan to transform Oracle into the next IBM. As Ellison said in October, "T. J. Watson's IBM was the greatest company in the history of enterprise in America because its combination of hardware and software was running most of the enterprises on the planet. We think with the combination of Sun technology and Oracle technology we can succeed and beat IBM. That's our goal."

Given the EC's concerns about the Sun acquisition and Oracle's refusal to address them, what other option is there?

Story Copyright (c) 2009 AllThingsD. All rights reserved.

Sometimes it's the little things that count.

The most prominent feature of Firefox 3.6 is Personas, which let you reskin the browser with thousands of different looks. But my single favorite change is a subtler change to the open-source browser's user interface.

Specifically, when you open a link in a new tab, it appears immediately to the right of the active tab. Before, the new tabs would appear to the far right of the strip of tabs.

Yup, that's it. For those of us who spend hours a day in a browser, though, the new tab behavior helps group related tasks together. I constantly shuffle among dozens of tabs, and the new approach automatically brings some organization to my cluttered life.

However, I know it's not everybody's favorite browser behavior. So along with explaining why I like it, I'll also take some potshots and share instructions on how to get the old way back.

Why it's better
The more things I do with a browser--and the number has increased steadily for years now--the more important it becomes to be able to find different tasks amid the chaos. Microsoft and Apple understand this, as evidenced by the new taskbar features in Windows 7 and dock expose in Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard. Those features make it easier to pluck out the one window you need from among the many you may have open.

There's a pattern to how I spawn the dozens of tabs I use as a day progresses. On a variety of pages--Gmail, Google Reader, Yahoo Finance, somebody's blog post--I'll encounter a host of links to other pages. I'll middle-click my mouse button to open interesting pages as background tabs, then use Ctrl-Tab to switch to the new pages when I'm ready. I repeat this pattern many times a day.

With the old behavior, each tab appeared to the far right of the tab strip. That's fine when getting started, but when I've moved halfway across the list and want to open another batch, I want the new ones--call them children--to open next to their parent tab. When I go away and come back, or when I lose place juggling tasks, it's easier to find my bearings again.

It's like being in a library. When you're in the European history section, you don't want to find books on rewiring your house and on vegetarian cooking.

As a longtime Firefox user, I didn't realize tab positioning could be better. When I started using Google's Chrome, which introduced the new tab behavior to me, the scales were lifted from my eyes. I immediately could get to the next tab with a quick press of Ctrl-Tab on the keyboard rather than have to use the mouse to click over to the far end of the list. I use both browsers daily, but until the Firefox 3.6 beta arrived, the new-tab position had become a sore point for me when in Firefox.

The change is actually a big deal in a couple ways. First, even seemingly minor changes in software can be disruptive. Old habits die hard, and computer users wrestling with constant change can get angry when more is foisted upon them.

Second, though, browsers are assuming an ever greater role in what people do in their personal and professional lives, and keeping one's bearings is commensurately important. That's especially true for those people for whom a gaggle of browser tabs represents a collection of chores going on in parallel.

Internet Explorer 8 categorizes related tabs by color.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

How the competition handles it
Tabs are now universal among browsers, but new-tab behavior isn't. Firefox and Chrome handle it the way I like best, but how do others tackle the issue?

First, let's look at Internet Explorer 8. Microsoft showed it understands some of the challenges of tab management in its latest version of its browser by coloring child tabs the same hue as their parents, but I have a gripe with how it works. Specifically, although child tabs get the same color as their parents for easy grouping and arrive to the right, grandchild tabs are the same color as child tabs. Similarly, grandchild tabs appear to the far right of the whole group of child tabs.

In my mind, I consider grandchild tabs a separate group from the child tabs. But with IE, grandchildren get the same color and position treatment as children. The only way to get a new color is to start a fresh empty tab There's no easy way to give grandchildren a new color without causing some confusion, though--should the child be the same color as the original parent or change color to be grouped with the grandchildren?

Next is Opera, which gives users a choice. By default, it opens new tabs to the far right, which I don't like, but in the Advanced|Tabs section of the preferences dialog box, you can check "Open new tab next to active." Huzzah!

There's a subtle change here I don't care for, though. Tabs always appear immediately to the right of the active tab. I'd rather have all one tab's children appear in sequence to the right. For example, if a parent tab is in position 1, then the first child would be in position 2, the second in position 3, and the third in position 4. Opening three child tabs in Opera leaves the parent in position 1, the third child in position 2, the second child in position 3, and the first child in position 4.

Last, there's Safari. It does it the old way I loathe with no option to change. Too bad.

Firefox can show thumbnail previews of new tabs, but I find them hard to recognize in front of busy Web pages.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Why it's not enough
Most browser makers are excited about the fact that their software is subsuming more and more computing tasks that previously ran on computer operating systems. But as browsers inherit this central importance, they also inherit some of the hassles.

The new tab positioning behavior in Firefox is a step in the right direction, but there's more that needs to be done. Moving from one tab to a related adjacent one, whether through a keyboard command or mouse clicking, is a minor change. But things get harder when you need to switch from one group of tabs to the next.

There's work under way here. Opera is perhaps the leader with the ability to show thumbnails as you use Ctrl-Tab to cycle your list of open tabs.

Firefox has been noodling with the approach too. It tried then dropped tab thumbnail previews earlier, but the technology is still present. Using the about:config system for tweaking the browser (more on this later), you can change the "browser.ctrlTab.previews" setting to "true."

But for reasons that aren't clear to me, I don't find this effective either in Firefox or Opera. Perhaps I haven't used it enough, or the thumbnails are too small to be immediately recognizable, or they're just hard to see against the noisy background. There's a good reason that Apple dims the background most of the way to black when using Expose.

Aero Peek in Windows 7 lets the task bar show a glimpse of Firefox and IE tabs.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Windows itself is helping, too. The new taskbar in Windows 7 can show individual tabs, once browsers support the feature. It's in Internet Explorer 8, and it's in the new Firefox 3.6 beta.

Add-ons such as Firefox Showcase can further tweak Firefox. (Indeed, for a wealth of options, check Mashable's handy Firefox tab management guide.)

More interesting to me, though, is work under way to expand Firefox's "awesome bar" abilities. Today, typing in it opens Web pages and retrieves ones you've already visited or bookmarked. In the future, it could be able to move you to another open tab, too. I'm a keyboard guy, so particularly appreciate this idea.

You can get a taste of the idea now. If you've enabled the "browser.ctrlTab.previews" option, hitting Ctrl-Shift-Tab will not only show you thumbnail previews, but will put a cursor in a search box.

Typing the letters of the Web page name will winnow down the thumbnails. For example, typing "netap" will cull my open tabs so only Net Applications and NetApp show. If you have a bunch of similar tabs all open, this might not help much, of course.

However, the feature only works with the tabs of one browser window, so if you can't use it to search among other browser instances.

How to get the old way back
Perhaps I've convinced you that the new approach is better. But perhaps not--in which case I encourage you to share your thoughts in the comments so people will hear more than my opinion.

For those who don't like the new tab positions, you can revert to the old method.

To get the old style back for new tab position, use Firefox's about:config system.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

First type "about:config" in the Firefox address bar. You'll get a warning that you're tinkering with Firefox's innards and you should be careful, but this isn't brain surgery, so don't be frightened. Click the "I'll be careful, I promise" button, and you'll see a big list of all the browser settings that can be tweaked.

Next, in the text box labeled "Filter:", type "tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent"; you should see just one entry below. In the column marked "Value," double-click on the word "true" to change it to "false." You're done.

But I'd encourage you to at least give the new way a try. If you don't like it, you can always change back.

Mozilla Messaging has released the first release candidate of a Thunderbird 3, software it hopes will significantly improve how people read, write, catalog, and search their e-mail.

Mozilla released the software Tuesday for Windows, Mac, and Linux, several days later than predicted earlier this month but close to a year later than Mozilla planned in 2008. A final version of Thunderbird 3 is expected not long after the release candidate.

Thunderbird 3 has been years time in the making. For its next versions, the Mozilla Messaging group hopes to release new versions more frequently, said Mozilla Messaging programmer Dan Mosedale.

"Part of the plan for Thunderbird is to move our development process in a more agile direction...Rather than having super long releases, we'd like to release significantly more frequently than we have historically done," said a draft Mozilla proposal for what to do in the post-Thunderbird 3 era Mosedale posted. He proposed major Thunderbird releases every four to six months, starting with version 3.1, and also laid out some ideas for Thunderbird after version 3.1.

Thunderbird 3.0 adds a variety of features, according to Mozilla and the Thunderbird 3 RC1 release notes:

• A more elaborate search option to locate specific messages. People can employ a variety of methods to sift the wheat from the chaff.

• An e-mail archive a la Google's Gmail. Rather than filing every message in a folder, an organizational technique that can be hard to maintain with high volumes of messages, people can move them out of the inbox into the archive where search can find them later.

• A streamlined interface that cleans up the toolbar and moves some of its functions to the frame around e-mail messages.

• A new plug-in system designed to be easier to use to replicate some of the success of the Firefox browser. The browser, by the way, is built in so plug-ins can use it.

• A tabbed interface that can reduce clutter of e-mails, e-mail folders, and other tasks. A tab can, for example, house a version of Yahoo's online calendar.

• An easier process to set up new e-mail accounts. The software has preset settings for several e-mail services.

• "Smart folders" that can be customized in a variety of ways. For example, users with multiple e-mail accounts can create a smart folder that provides a unified inbox for all the accounts.

• An easier way to add people to the address book by clicking a star icon next to the sender's name.

Be sure to check the list of Thunderbird 3 RC1 issues if you're the cautious type.