Tag: IBM
Spooky Database Relations
A discussion of the least-on-brand thing to ever happen on Halloween: The Halloween problem, a database querying issue with a long legacy.
Slot Wars
The battle to replace the standard expansion slot in the IBM PC reflected an effort by two sides of the PC world to gain control. Spoiler: The clone-makers won.
You Spin Me Right Round, Baby
Before hard drives became the main way for us to back up our stuff, they were a key evolution for the business world. They were also huge and costly.
Plug and Pray
Why an early design decision around the IBM PC created the need for an innovation called plug and play—something we very much take for granted today.
Mistakes Were Made
Technology vendors like SAP may rake in billions of dollars a year helping big companies build complex tech infrastructures, but they screw up—often, at scale.
It’s Just A Swipe Away
Vintage technology has powered the innards of the NYC subway system for decades—and sometimes, it surfaces in interesting ways. This one’s for you, OS/2 fans.
A Kernel Of Failure
How IBM bet big on the microkernel being the next big thing in operating systems back in the ’90s—and spent billions with little to show for it.
Life In Four Colors
Somehow CGA graphics, the IBM PC’s first take on color, haven’t completely faded into history. But those four colors inspire a whole lot of nostalgia.
Tiny Data
That time IBM sold the Port-A-Punch, a device that allowed people to make their own punch cards to collect data in the field. Hey, it’s easier than writing.
Openness wins
Dan Lyons, writing in Newsweek, doesn’t think the introduction of the iPhone on Verizon will stop Android’s momentum: Apple's phone would have snuffed out the Android a year ago, but now Google’s device has become an unstoppable juggernaut. […] “Android is a global phenomenon,” [Fred Wilson] says. “The big deal is, Android is free software, and handsets that can run it are getting super-cheap. So we are going to see a massive shift from 'dumb phones' to 'smart phones' around the world this yea
Write real-time web applications with XMPP, PHP, and JavaScript
I’ve written a tutorial for writing XMPP-based web applications over at IBM DeveloperWorks: Real-time web applications are networked applications, with web-based user interfaces, that display Internet information as soon as it's published. Examples include social news aggregators and monitoring tools that continually update themselves with data from an external source. In this tutorial, you will create Pingstream, a small notification tool that uses PHP and JavaScript to communicate over the Ex
An introduction to Activity Streams
I’ve written an introduction to the Activity Streams standard for IBM DeveloperWorks: Enter Activity Streams, an evolving standard that extends Atom for expressing social objects. Although it is a young standard, Activity Streams is fast becoming the de facto method for syndicating activity between web applications. For example, MySpace, Facebook, and TypePad all now produce Activity Streams XML feeds. But this technology isn't just for the consumer web environment. As corporate intranets and i
El conejo rosa llega a "la nube"
Pues parece que en Energizer, los dueños del famoso conejito rosa que tanto ha dado a la publicidad, llevan tres años experimentando con la nube de Microsoft (la cuenta la han pagado en Redmon).Interesante, aunque no deja de asustarme todo esto. Ya se que la escala hace todo rentable… pero el síndro
¿GOOG + IBM >> EC2 + MSFT + YHOO ?
Ya, ya se que parece un acertijo pero parece que IBM y GOOGLE se han hecho amiguitos y afrontan en conjunto los retos del Cloud Computing.Se puede leer más aquí.Eso sí, esto no es más que el típico anuncio de “vamos a colaborar a fondo”, “somos claramente complementarios”, etc.El contraste entre est