ReadWriteHack

One benefit many developers perceive from working with a proprietary platform is that its components are generally updated and deployed according to a single agenda. (Sometimes that agenda is so slow that this fact becomes undeniable.)  By contrast, the tremendous pace of open source development can be overwhelming for some. Back in 2007 the Open Source Census noted one big problem, especially among enterprises: Development teams have continually demonstrated an inability to manage the multitude of dependencies that OSS components have upon one another, and to use the proper or most secure components for their projects. A new Sonatype survey confirms that things haven't really changed that much since then.

Haven't we seen this before: IBM making a big acquisition of a “V” company in the big data space? Indeed, last April 13, IBM purchased analytics software maker Varicent for an undisclosed amount. And then this morning, IBM announced its acquisition of enterprise search facilitator Vivisimo. 

IBM usually doesn’t acquire applications software makers unless it has something very specific in mind for them. IBM is clearly piecing together a “big data” platform - a comprehensive package for storing, accessing and analyzing unstructured data.

Tickets to Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) sold out in a record two hours this morning. The conference will be held in San Francisco from June 11-15.

"Sorry, tickets are sold out," the site says. It explains that Apple will post videos of the sessions shortly after the conference, making it available to the Internet public at large. While the event always sells out, this is the fastest conference sellout in Apple's history.

Wappwolf and ifttt are a bit like the chocolate and peanut butter in Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Separate, they're pretty good. Together, though, is when the magic happens.

For folks new to the services, Wappwolf is an application that performs actions when you drop a file into your Dropbox. ifttt, on the other hand, can interact with websites and services and then do things like send an email or save a file in Dropbox.

Google's SPDY protocol offers several advantages over serving traffic via HTTP/HTTPS. But, if you want to use SPDY, you're going to have to take a few additional steps to set it up. The good thing is that if you happen to be using Apache on recent Debian or RPM-based systems, installing and using SPDY is a simple matter.

Slowly but surely, SPDY ("speedy") is becoming more widely used. The Google-backed protocol, a modification to HTTP, is designed to help reduce latency and bolster security. Even if you don't manage a Web server yourself, you should know about SPDY and what it offers to you - and the Web at large.

You've probably heard of Markdown. Maybe you've heard the name for years. Perhaps you just encountered it, since it's enjoyed a renaissance lately.

But do you know what it is? Are you using it? You should be. Here are three good reasons to use Markdown. There are no good reasons not to.

It's a fantastic time to be a web developer. Society and the software economy that serves it are experiencing a dramatic change in the way successful Web applications are built. Previous shifts in software development have had massive, far-reaching consequences: the toppling of old technology giants, crowning of new industry kings, and the very transformation of how people communicate and how work gets done.

At the same time, these shifts also ripple through the software development ecosystem, changing everything from the processes and tools developers use down to the programming languages that are taught in schools. This time, the change is the real-time Web.  

Microsoft is spinning off its open source unit into Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc., and promoting open source veteran Jean Paoli to the role of president of the wholly owned subsidiary. The move gives the new company a measure of open source credibility and is likely to give Paoli more latitude in determining Microsoft's open source policy.

Paoli helped create XML, cementing his reputation among developers, and in 2007, he pledged his company's support for multiple document formats so long as the other format did not restrict customers' free choice. The masterstroke of diplomacy calmed a brewing rebellion among champions of the existing ISO standards format, OpenDocument, who claimed competing standards (specifically, Microsoft's Open Office XML) would sow confusion.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison likes to walk into a presentation with raw numbers in hand. When he touts Oracle technology as faster, he prefers to say how much... sometimes inflating the number as he goes along. "A factor of five. A factor of 10! A factor of 15!"

What would Ellison have given for the opportunity to tout a factor of 400,000? Evidently not enough. The notion that a database manager would run six orders of magnitude faster if it resided in DRAM rather than on a hard drive, is decades old, just waiting for an Oracle or a Microsoft or a Dell to make it hapen. Instead, SAP is the company delivering the dramatic database performance boost.