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Open source: Still waiting on IT

If I needed a clear sign that commercial open source is alive and well, reading Roberto Galoppini's remarks on the five Open Innovation Awards winners provided that and more. I used to be able to count every open-source company on two hands. Galoppini mentioned four of which I've never heard.

I'll feel a lot better, however, when we hear less about vendors writing open-source software and more about enterprise IT releasing open-source code.

There's no question that enterprise IT is adopting open source in droves. Gartner speculates that 85 percent of enterprises already use open source. (… Read more

Hotwire teams up with TripIt

Travel discount site Hotwire announced on Wednesday that it has partnered with travel itinerary service TripIt to help its users organize and share their travel plans.

According to the company, users booking a trip through Hotwire will now be able to click an "Add to TripIt" button after completing their travel plans. Upon doing so, those plans are added to a TripIt itinerary.

TripIt, which is a main competitor to the recently acquired Dopplr, will also bring its premium "pro" package to the service. The feature, which costs $69 per year, monitors itineraries and sends mobile … Read more

BOL 1074: Forget the tablet, let's hype the Courier

While the Apple Tablet is much more fashionable to hype, the Microsoft Courier turns out to be very hype-worthy. We also find out, once again, that Rafe knows where he works. And the U.S. has relaxed its grip on the Internet. Good thing? Bad thing? Irrelevant thing? Or over-hyped thing like an Apple tablet?

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Everything we know about Apple’s touch-screen tablet http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/apple-tablet-everything/ http://gizmodo.com/5370252/apple-tablet-aiming-to-redefine-newspapers-textbooks-and-magazines

Microsoft’s Courier tablet details emerge … Read more

Why all the requests for paperless billing lately?

Feel like just about every utility, bank, and service company you use is asking you to sign up for their paperless option?

It's not your imagination. And you're about to be inundated with even more requests to opt-in to paperless communications, according to an IDC survey released Thursday.

Ninety-two percent of the 300 U.S. companies in IDC's "Green IT & Sustainability Survey 2009" said getting customers to move from print to online services is a goal they hope to initiate within 12 months.

The survey also shows an increased interest from companies in implementing … Read more

Big IT projects fail. Open source can help

A large percentage of IT projects fail, and one big reason is the nature of the traditional software acquisition process. Buyers typically purchase software based on faith (demoware), with acceptance periods built into contracts to provide escape clauses if the software doesn't work as advertised. Open-source software, however, with its "try-before-you-buy" option, provides a better way to increase the odds of a successful IT project, while simultaneously lowering costs.

Enterprise software is hard, and made doubly so when million-dollar decisions must be made about software that has not been tried beyond a sales engineer's slideshow. It'… Read more

New iTunes LP format is live

I'm following Apple's "It's Only Rock and Roll" event along with the CNET staff, but even before the event started, I saw that Apple has revealed its new LP format for iTunes.

It's called iTunes LP, and you can access it by clicking the top item on the "More to Explore" box in the left side of the iTunes Store front page. The new format includes more album art, lyrics, writing about the record, video (such as interviews with band members), and perhaps additional songs.

There are only a handful of albums … Read more

No money? AffordIt can get you a PS3, anyway

Want a PlayStation but don't have the cash for it, nor a credit card to charge it on? You can get the device delivered to you nonetheless at the low, low price of just $120 down, plus $13 a week for 24 weeks, from a new business called AffordIt.

Now, if you do the math, you'll discover that buying something through AffordIt is a staggeringly bad deal. That PlayStation (a refurb, mind you), will cost you $432 if you pay it off, compared to the $299 price on Amazon.com for a new unit with the same specs. … Read more

New school year brings 'Green IT' college degree

Making data centers more energy efficient has been elevated to a college degree.

IBM on Wednesday said it has developed a two-year associates degree in "green data center management" in collaboration with the Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, Neb.

Starting in December, students will learn how to design and manage data centers to run efficiently in what IBM says is the first college degree in the subject. Classes will be offered online to remote students as well.

The Environmental Protection Agency in 2007 estimated that data centers alone use about 1.5 percent of all electricity in the … Read more

InfoWorld's two minds on open source's value

Each year InfoWorld sets out to rate the "best open source products" with its Bossie awards. Too bad it has decided to cloud the voting with open-source politics, as well.

The politics reveal themselves when InfoWorld tries to settle on a winner between Zenoss and OpenNMS. (Why Hyperic isn't also in that mix, or Reductive Labs' Puppet, I can't fathom, but...)

The editors write (note: the emphasis is mine):

Although Zenoss clearly has the more developed feature set, our Bossie goes to OpenNMS. The reason boils down to business models. OpenNMS is a purely open source … Read more