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Twitter has become an excellent way to quickly scan headlines. It's terrible at just about everything else. It's hard to have a coherent discussion in 140-character soundbites, and even harder when the architecture of Twitter is set to "broadcast" rather than "discourse." But maybe, just maybe, Twitter's not to blame. We are.

After all, Twitter is simply a creation of our society, and reflects our priorities.

Not all of society, of course. After all, as The New York Times reported, teenagers, usually technology's early adopters, hardly use Twitter at all, with only … Read more

Despite all the nifty, gee-whiz technology that the Web 2.0 craze brought the software industry, it's still stodgy enterprise software that continues to command a significant price tag.

That's because however much we may enjoy Facebooking, Twittering, etc., ultimately we pay for what helps us get our jobs done.

Even so, just a few years ago, if you were a start-up focused on enterprise IT, VCs treated you like a leper, preferring to invest in something with a name like Bungabooboo.com over something that could shave 10 percent from a CIO's operating costs. The one … Read more

As news broke this week that Microsoft and Nokia would be partnering to (brace yourself!) port Office to Nokia phones, followed by the equally momentous (or not) news that (sit down for this one!) Microsoft will replace Entourage with Outlook for Mac OS X, I couldn't help but agree with Larry Dignan's assessment of the Nokia deal:

Simply put, Nokia and Microsoft are the equivalent of two St. Bernards that are forced to run in 90 degree heat and high humidity. They're big. They're winded. And they could knock you over--if they could only catch you.… Read more

All the hipsters in Silicon Valley talk about PHP, Twitter, and Web 2.0. But recent surveys show that kids can't be bothered to use Twitter.

Meanwhile, COBOL, one of the industry's oldest programming languages, still "equates to 80 percent of the world's actively used code," according to Stephen Kelley of Micro Focus.

COBOL? Really?

Yes, really. COBOL keeps chugging because, as John Willis suggests, it continues to power the boring (but essential) software like CICS (Customer Information Control System). Not very sexy, but when you think about life for more than a nanosecond, most … Read more

I know what's wrong with high-end audio: it's a secret.

Unlike high-end cars, watches, clothing, etc., 99 percent of potential high-end audio buyers are completely unaware of its existence. It's interesting, car magazines regularly plaster shots of cars that only a miniscule number of readers could ever buy, apparently because guys who drive Dodge Caravans love to read about Ferraris. Even the New York Times runs fawning features about the glories of exotic cars and not a peep about high-end audio.

High-end audio magazines and Web sites are only read by folks already in the game; the … Read more

If you're part of the "cool kid" developer crowd, you're undoubtedly writing your new application with Ruby on Rails, and spend a lot of time talking about Git, Squeak, or Memcached.

But if you want a job, apparently you should get back to ancient technologies like Java and .Net, according to new data from IT employment company Dice.com, cited in Baseline magazine. In addition to those programming heavyweights, other enterprise bellwethers like Oracle, SharePoint, and SAP also make the cut.

On Java, Tom Silver, senior vice president at Dice.com, sees value in formal training, … Read more

I just wrote about Baseball Slugger 3D earlier this week because it went on sale, but seriously, if you like baseball at all, this home-run derby game is worthy of the regular price of $2.99. I started playing last night using the online matchup system and didn't stop playing for over an hour. Not only is hitting home runs really satisfying, but when you play and lose against someone, you can always go for a rematch, which leads to another rematch...and so on. Then, if you really think a particular opponent is a good competitive match, you … Read more

The business intelligence community has made much of its ability to transform the way enterprises operate, and even the way the world works. Open source takes this to the next level, as OStatic recently described. And yet, as exciting as open-source business intelligence is, it's not what gets me out of bed every morning before sunrise. What drove me out of bed to climb 2,474 feet on my mountain bike this morning is the personal intelligence movement or, more accurately, the personal data movement.

StuffIt Deluxe offers users tons of options for compressing files. So many that novice users might find the detailed options a bit overwhelming. However, thanks to its helpful wizards and comprehensive Help menu, even the least experienced user will quickly get acclimated to this effective program.

The program has a busy user interface, but it's laid out very well. Basic commands line the top and tabs keep the program's many configurations organized. We recommend that users take advantage of the help wizards that guide you through the process of creating a new archive, compressing files for e-mail, FTP, … Read more