What I am going to do in this regular column is feed my habit by highlighting some of the books I am reading, and (mostly) enjoying. (I will only rarely write negative reviews; it's a rare book that I 'do not put down gently but throw across the room with great force' after all.) Geeks...

Keynote Systems has introduced an Internet testing environment for recording and measuring the performance of Web 2.0 applications at all stages of the life cycle. Keynote's Internet Testing Environment (KITE) is a desktop-based console that enables developers and testing professionals...

In a move to bolster its attempt to add a social layer on top of the entire suite of Google services, Google yesterday joined other leading social networking players in introducing a common set of standards to allow software developers to write cross-network programs. According to The ...

Keynote Systems has announced major upgrades to the company's two flagship Web site performance test and measurement product offerings: Transaction Perspective 8.0 and Application Perspective 5.0. The enhanced versions include the Keynote Internet Testing Environment (KITE), a new desk...

At its analysts' day the other day, Google remained reluctant to forecast how its Google apps will fare and evaded off the question of whether it could get 5%-7% of the SMB segments saying predictions were 'dangerous.' It claimed it's a function of the penetration of Internet and that ...

Often in software I find myself preaching restraint to those who wish to move platforms for no apparent reason than to keep up with the IT fashion industry; however, even harder than the silver-bullet chasers is dealing with organizations where change is required, not only in a company...

'There's definitely a lot of betting going on, and it's not rational.' - Book publisher and conference thrower Tim O'Reilly, who coined the phrase Web 2.0, on the Bubble-style amounts of money going into Internet start-ups as quoted in the New York Times where he worries that the Valle...

FatWire Software has acquired Infostoria, a provider of Web 2.0 collaboration and content sharing tools for the enterprise. Infostoria's technology enables single-click wiki creation and blogging, and offers an advanced content integration platform to help organizations manage, find an...

Launched in February 2004, Facebook is now worth $15BN - judging from the fact that Microsoft has reportedly just bought itself a modest 1.6% chunk of the company for a staggering $240M. Mark Zuckerberg, a former member of the Harvard Class of 2006, will not be short of change any time...

In this session we will examine how the SOA and Web 2.0 technology-based platform developed in Openreach Portal by wiring up the existing rigid flows and deploying them for execution, through Web and Web service interfaces in real-time and zero down time, gave the power to end users to...

WebEffective 6.0 facilitates fast, accurate testing of end users interacting with sites featuring Web 2.0 technologies, including AJAX, Flash and DHTML. DHTML is a combination of technologies gaining in popularity used to create highly dynamic and interactive Web sites in which the use...

The Enterprise Service Bus provides event-driven and standards-based message services that are fundamental to large and complex enterprise infrastructures. Traditionally the ESB has focused on message delivery between different disparate server-side systems. With the use of modern Web ...

'We want to provide the best, most engaging discovery experience possible -- whether through the power of our simple 'Stumble' button or by enabling discovery across the Web, with the search engines our users are already familiar with,' said Michael Buhr, general manager of StumbleUpon...

What kind of infrastructure should enterprises adopt for mashups? How can an enterprise mashup solution best consume data sources like WSDLs, databases, portals, REST, RSS/ATOM feeds, and legacy systems? How do we orchestrate and coordinate such disparate services inside a mashup? This...

BEA has released its annual state of the enterprise portal market report, which is available for download. The report reveals that portals remain a top priority for CIOs at large enterprises for the sixth consecutive year. It also compiles survey results from over 540 customers, which ...

Nexaweb Technologies has announced that InfoWorld Magazine's Test Center has given the Nexaweb Enterprise Web 2.0 Suite a 'very good' rating based on scores of 8.0 and above for each of the five criteria considered critical to the enterprise IT buying decision: capability, developer to...

Compuware Corporation has released Compuware Optimal Trace 5.0, the latest version of Compuware Optimal's business requirements management solution. This new version provides an entry into adopting a business requirements management solution and enables organizations to grow into a sop...

The IBM Mashup Starter Kit can combine information from databases, departmental information, personal information or the Web. It rapidly blends information and Web services, such as real-time weather reports or maps, with enterprise content and services, and easily 'mashes' them togeth...

A new breed of web manager is emerging to link content management more closely to website visitor satisfaction. The new web manager may operate under several professional guises: 'customer advocate,' 'information guru,' or 'metator,' to name just a few. They need to employ a very diffe...

And finally Steve gets around to the iPhone. Basically he says that through Web 2.0 and AJAX, you can create applications for the iPhone because the iPhone is running the full, uncut, unaltered version of the same Safari engine that is now running on Mac OS X Leopard, Windows XP, and W...

Social networking - not a new idea for the twenty-something generation - but an idea that has finally crossed over into the corporate boardroom thanks to customer demand and open standards technologies built on service-oriented architectures (SOA).

Secure Computing Corporation unveiled the company's new 'SWAT' Initiative for protecting organizations from Web 2.0-related threats carried in Web and messaging protocols. The 'Secure Web 2.0 Anti-Threat' initiative is an intensive effort to provide corporations with informative resear...

Postini's e-mail security and compliance services have been added to Google Apps Premier Edition. Google acquired Postini last month to help companies realize the benefits of hosted applications while also addressing complex information security and compliance requirements.

Everyone in IT understands that there are disasters and then there are disasters. Regardless of the scale of any interruption in operations, disaster recovery plans generally comprise details describing how IT will accomplish the two most important tasks they will face in the event of ...

'The e-mail system is in a complete heap.' Those are the words of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man who created a little something called the World Wide Web, in reference to e-mail's shortcomings as a communications tool. His message is that although e-mail is effective for one-on-one dialo...

Experts in mobile applications development, AJAX, and Web standards come together to build a more complete picture of the future of interactive mobile Web applications. W3C and the OpenAjax Alliance have convened a workshop on September 28, at the Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus in Mou...

Nexaweb Technologies, provider of the leading standards-based platform for building and deploying Enterprise Web 2.0 (EW2.0) applications, today announced the latest release of its Nexaweb Enterprise Web 2.0 Suite. Nexaweb?s Enterprise Web 2.0 Suite enhanced design and management feat...

The 'upgrade' from Web 1.0 to the new Web 2.0 world has been an evolutionary process, continually driving the Web to be more interactive, useful, and interesting for consumers and the business community. The evolution from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 has been about improvements in the Web 'expe...

Alfred Chuang started out by talking about his core believe that we are on the cusp of fundamental change, with the advent of iPods, Web 2.0, and social networks. He started with a discussion of Mashups, and talked about how most of them are consumer facing. He then said 'The era of in...

As more and more Websites incorporate Web 2.0 technologies including Web services, service-oriented architecture, and AJAX to perform more critical online transactions one thing is certain - Web 2.0 technologies increase an organization's security risks.

Accelerators are business specific packages that easily integrate existing portal and address a specific business need. With the delivery of three new accelerators, IBM now offers customers all five of the initial accelerators identified as part of a new strategy announced April 2007 f...

David Gootzit talked about the 'Portal of the Future' and mashups are a key actor in the tale he told. David described portals as an 'important' entry point for enterprise mashups. More interestingly, he outlined key areas that must be addressed for mashups to become to a first-class p...

EasyAsk R10 software includs an easy-to-use, intuitive, AJAX Web-based user interface that provides merchandisers with complete control over the presentation of their products sold on their e-commerce sites. With this new EasyAsk software, merchandisers can optimize product searches ba...

I will be attending the Ajax World Conference next week in Santa Clara. I will also be at the opening reception on Monday and the conference party on Tuesday. Over the weekend Jesse Liberty blogged about this as well 'If you are going to be at AJAXWorld, look for me on Twitter, and let...

Enterprise Web 2.0 and SOBA development have gained significant momentum among enterprise and public sector IT organizations as delivery platforms for next-generation 'services-based' composite, RIA, 'mashup,' and Net-centric applications. A major consideration in the development of th...

Yahoo has launched Mash as a beta version (by invitation only) this weekend. It's (yet another) social networkig site that appears to be aimed at unseating Facebook, and their biggest differentiator is a wiki-like approach where people can edit each other's profiles. More importantly, ...

Web audience interests are both more diverse and practical than the 'big stories' orientation of the major media outlets. That is the main conclusion of a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ),a research organization that specializes in using empirical methods to eval...

With the release of RichFaces 3.1, JBoss.org has delivered more Web 2.0 development capabilities on Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (EE). This latest update has built-in support for AJAX via Ajax4jsf, an AJAX framework on JavaServer Faces (JSF). Developers have a framework combined w...

Almost 75% of US Internet users watched videos online in July, up from 71.4% in March, according to comScore Networks. The monthly time spent watching videos went up to an average of 181 minutes per viewer in July from 145 minutes per viewer in March.

One of the more annoying aspects of Web 2.0, etc., is the injection of neologisms, protologisms, or just plan made up words. In fact, I do not think that I have heard a talk from my friends Jay Simons or David Meyer in the last year that has not included a protologism. (I like the word...