Google, the search engine most of us treat as an extra wing of our brains, is experiencing the whip-crack of a long-building backlash. Both US and European authorities are investigating allegations that it manipulates search results to favour its own services. The company is also at odds with parliament over its refusal to remove links that are in breach of privacy. And recent changes to its privacy settings have raised serious concerns about data protection. But where else can you go? There are other search engines out there, but when was the last time you used one? Read More

Another system goes to the Cloud for it’s offering. Visbility is an ERP manufaturing system and has a decent sized customer base across Europe and US. Mainly aimed as the S and M of SME.  http://bit.ly/dke6d8

Microsoft announced today that it won’t be extending it’s 64 bit love to the new Office 2011 for Macs, when it’s released. They blamed the absence of a 64 bit version on the fact that the vendor’s developers hadn’t fully shifted the suite’s user interface to Apple’s Cocoa technology. Also that they have been investing all their time on getting Mac and Windows versions to play nicely together.
The vendor said the decision not to create a 64-bit version would only affect users “working with huge amounts of data”.

Hi, server manufacturers typically launch their new stock in March, June and Sept. June is shaping up to be a big one with HP launching it’s new beastie box on the Intel “Nehalem-EX” Xeon 7500 system. HP’s superdome 2 is shipping around October time and with 16 sockets plus HP needs a big bad Unix box.

Presently the 4 to 8 socket server market has been dying but with server virtualisation on the up and also being good enough to support db’s and mails server workloads, these boxes will be making a come back. The Nehalem will be filling that need on unix and Windows.

Google is planning to spin out its browser-based Chrome OS “operating system” in the “late fall” of 2010, according to a Google policy man at Mountain View.

Sundar Pichai, who was speaking at the Computex show yesterday, said the company’s Windows rival would arrive later this year. That’s pretty much sticking to what Google has already confirmed about when Chrome OS will be released.

The company announced it was releasing an operating system initially for netbooks in July 2009. Google said at the time that Chrome OS would land in the second half of this year. A few delays but let’s hold our breath!

What’s cloud about? Isn’t it something that’s been around for the last 40 odd years? Well the idea is really a way of working, giving you flexibility, without knowing the nuts and bolts of what’s under the bonnet. In other words, you just want the service to do what’s it’s supposed to do and deliver what you signed up for.
There are various cloud solutions and yes, more acronyms, SAAS, IAAS, PAAS , take your pick. Software as a service, Platform as a service or infrastructure as a service. The register polled it’s many member and 50% said they would use one or more of the above. This will undoubtedly increase and time moves on but it will be dependant on people seeing and understanding the improvement and flexibility it gives your organisation.

Google is apparently telling all it’s staff to use MAC OSX or Linux as their preferred desktop O/S after the China hack incident. Now when a google employee joins they have to justify why they want to use a windows PC. IBM did the same to all it’s techies in 2008, telling them to move away from MS Office to Symphony. Anyway, the Google write up was in the FT and when MS were asked about it, they shrugged it off. They probably expected it a long time before, so the question begs what will the Google O/S look like!

Cisco have developed a new router and switch pair to connect in and use the electrical grid. It’s called the Cisco Connect Grid Router, known as the CGR 2010 as is being sold to the power companies to install into their power sub stations and use their telemetry (remote reporting) to connect up networks of IP over their power grid.

Looks like Novell are looking to sell their business. Not great news that their SUSE linux product is being hit in sales versus their Red Hat competitor in the first quarter. Still, good for the potential buyers!

Well, the new Apple iPad was launched yesterday in the UK, so I had to pop into my local Apple store and check it out.
It’s got the usual sexy apple design, lightweight and if you have an iphone you’ll pick it up very quickly. Two problems have been reported, Wifi drop outs, particularly in sleep mode and errors on configuring it at startup. It’s great for browsing the internet but the on screen keyboard would take some getting used to; ok for notes I suppose. Apple’s bringing out an attachable keyboard device soon, so presumably that will solve the problem but it just means more kit in your bag. Also to print you have to email it to another device to print! The price is more expensive that those little laptops out there like the Samsung N150 but when MS Office would be added, it just prices out of being a business computer. It’s a good bet that it will be a presentation type of machine for creative agencies. It seems to me that it will shape the future of the laptop world but it won’t replace a mini business laptop for me yet as I think it sits between that and an iphone.