Spring

CrowdSpring leverages weasel economics

I saw CrowdSpring present at a recent Under the Radar conference I was moderating. I like the service a lot, because it simplifies the process of licensing creative works, and it levels the playing field so anyone can play. What it does, in a nutshell, is let people who need design work done put their requests up on the site. Then creatives compete for the jobs.

It sounds familiar, doesn't it -- like TaskMarket, Elance, and other task boards?

It's not. CrowdSpring has a radically different cashflow model. It works like this: If there's a job you … Read more

Sprint releases four QChat phones

Starting June 15, Sprint's new Chat will be off and running in more than 40 markets nationwide. For those not in the know, QChat offers push-to-talk (PTT) interoperability between CDMA and iDEN networks for the first time. That means that customers using the new QChat phones will be able to make PTT calls to both Sprint CDMA phones and Nextel iDEN handsets.

Sprint unveiled six QChat handsets at the CTIA show two months ago Four models, the Sanyo Pro 200, Sanyo Pro 700, the LG LX400, and the Samsung Z400, will go on sale Sunday with the remaining two … Read more

Under the Radar: Your data (and life) in the cloud

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--The second to the last group rounding up Tuesday's presentations at the Under the Radar conference comes from all walks of Web services. There's a tool to post your baby photos, one to have artists and creative types scramble to create something for you, an upcoming video channel surfing app, and one that organizes all your files online and off.

CrowdSpring, a start-up we listed as one to watch, is a marketplace for creative ideas. The site lets you put out a project and get it crowd-sourced. The winner gets cash and potentially a job … Read more

Now SpringSource is an application server, too

I read the news that SpringSource has named itself the "first proper" Java application server product in a decade, and I was left scratching my head. Over the years I've heard just about everyone call themselves an "app server" at some point (Funambol went through a spell when it was a "mobile application server" [PDF] and ActiveGrid was a "grid application server", or something, as just two examples), and the only two times it made sense to me (in the open-source context) were with JBoss and Geronimo.

How did SpringSource become an application server? I thought it was a framework.

So, apparently, does Marc Fleury, who had some blunt counsel for SpringSource's founder, Rod Johnson:

To me this is a VC driven move. Spring is a natural consultancy, being a development framework, but they have been struggling with their sales in the runtime. So voila, we now have a box drawn around an OSGi kernel, the Spring framework and Hibernate/Tomcat, and it has a name: it's an application server. It is the same thing you had yesterday for free, except it is now under the GPL and a proprietary subscription license.… Read more

Cloud Vendors A to Z (courtesy of ESM Blog)

John M. Willis has put together a matrix of the major players in the cloud right now including some of the companies that enable and others that are just offerings.

It's an interesting exercise to figure out how all these parts fit together and considering that the SaaS providers don't have a reason to disclose what's going on behind the scenes I bet there is a ton of other software that is not represented here.

Just knowing what I know about Mule's adoption in SaaS companies I can tell you that we are enabling several businesses … Read more

More smart-grid money: Silver Spring Networks fills coffers

Smart-grid company Silver Spring Networks has raised $17.4 million, the latest in a string of investments in the sector.

Foundation Capital and Edison Electric Institute were the investors, according to VentureWire, which reported the news.

Silver Spring Networks does software and devices aimed at utilities that are looking to upgrade to smart-grid infrastructure.

The company makes devices on utility poles that can broker information over IP (Internet Protocol) from people's home smart meters and grid operation centers.

Utilities are starting to invest in advanced meters and networking to make power distribution more efficient and cut down on service … Read more

GetIrishNow.com ad campaign: These Irish eyes are rolling

Oh, St. Patrick's Day. To a self-respecting Irish-American like myself, it's such a catch-22: On one hand, it's a celebration of the fact that our culture knows how to have a damned good time; on the other hand, all the gross-tasting green beer and sequined leprechaun hats kind of make us cringe sometimes.

We also have to deal with all kinds of ridiculous St. Patrick's Day marketing tie-ins, like this new ad campaign for the Irish Spring soap brand (which I believe was created by the U.S.-based Colgate-Palmolive Company). It features a new Web … Read more

What's really going on at JBoss?

Oddly enough, the answer to that question ("What's really going on with JBoss?") is probably best answered by someone outside Red Hat: Marc Fleury. Marc isn't shackled by the need to keep corporate secrets, though perhaps he's a little biased.

Marc offers several data points that suggest that JBoss adoption and monetization is "going through the roof." But he also takes on two potential aspirants to the JBoss throne: Ruby on Rails and SpringSource (I've sanitized Marc's comments to suit my Puritan sensibilities):… Read more

Open-source toolmaker acquires Covalent

Interface21, which now goes by SpringSource, is looking to add a little bounce to its business by buying fellow open-source company Covalent Technologies.

SpringSource, which announced the acquisition Tuesday, develops a popular open-source tool called Spring Framework designed to help accelerate the development of Java applications for enterprise servers.

With the acquisition, SpringSource is looking to build on Covalent's products and services that target Apache Software Foundation open-source projects, such as the Apache Tomcat Application Server and Apache Geronimo Application Server. Both companies derive revenues from selling support services.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. But it'… Read more

When open source eats itself: SpringSource acquires Covalent

Ostensibly, SpringSource today announced the acquisition of Covalent to beef up its support for the Apache-sponsored project Tomcat. The problem with such thinking is that if this is the real reason, SpringSource got very little for its money.

There's no doubt that Spring+Apache is a recipe for success. In my own experience, I've seen widespread adoption of both, and often together (not the least being within the product my company, Alfresco, ships). Rod Johnson, CEO and founder of SpringSource, states:

We see Apache code being used by many of our customer accounts--the Apache Web server, Tomcat, Web services frameworks, Active MQ and a slew of other Apache technologies. We see pent-up demand for services from folks using Spring and Apache technologies.

It's unclear how an acquisition furthers this, since the best that SpringSource has acquired is a few developers associated with the project, but not the project itself.… Read more