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Just because the web has been open so far doesn't mean that it will stay that way. Flash and Silverlight, arguably the two market-leading technology toolkits for rich media applications are not open. Make no mistake - Microsoft and Adobe aim to have their proprietary plug-ins, aka pseudo-browsers, become the rendering engines for the next generation of the Web.

While the last decade was focused on the Web, the next phase in the evolution of our industry will be on the convergence of Web, mobile and desktop applications and the ability to extend existing applications with these new technologies for a consistent user experience regardless of how and where the information is viewed,' says Nexaweb CTO Jeremy Chone

Response from Microsoft's Dare Obasanjo to the Tim Bray blog: Get in the Cloud. .. "When it comes to cloud computing platforms, you have all of the same problems described above and a few extra ones. The key wrinkle with cloud computing platforms is that there is no standardization of the APIs and platform technologies that underlie these services. The APIs provided by Amazon's cloud computing platform (EC2/S3/EBS/etc) are radically different from those provided by Google App Engine (Datastore API/Python runtime/Images API/etc). For zero lock-in to occur in this space, there need to be multiple providers of the same underlying APIs. Otherwise, migrating between cloud computing platforms will be more like switching your application from Ruby on Rails and MySQL to Django and PostgreSQL (i.e. a complete rewrite)...." Although cloud computing vendors are not explicitly trying to lock-in customers to their platform, the fact is that today if a customer has heavily invested in either platform then there isn't a straightforward way for customers to extricate themselves from the platform and switch to another vendor. In addition there is not a competitive marketplace of vendors providing standard/interoperable platforms as there are with email hosting or Web hosting providers.

Excellent overview of where applications are going. Richard Monson-Haefel, (whom i met at the 2008 Web 2.0 Conference) explains the convergence of four emerging application models: Web Clients (Browsers), RiA Clients, Client/Server, and Widget Engines. He comes up with a convergence point called "Fit Client", offering Adobe Air as the leading example. Richard walks through each application model, discussing limitations and advantages. Good stuff, especially this comment: "The widget engine is really a wonderful architecture that gives you the power of the desktop (via the widget engine) and the management of the Web (via widget downloads).  Widget engines can out-perform RIA solutions and they can store larger data sets.    The limitation of Widget engines is not in their architecture, it is that they have been designed for applications with fairly weak capabilities compared to client/server. Widgets tend to be single-purpose applications with limited access to the native operating system. That said, the widget architecture itself - the separation of the platform from the applications - is important. It makes it possible to create applications (widgets) that are portable across operating systems and are packaged for easy download and installation. "

The computer desktop - as was the case with newspapers before there was radio and radio before there was television - has become the high ground from which empires are built. While dominance of the desktop has been maintained for the last decade or more by Microsoft, which at one point represented 95% of the desktops used by all consumers, the future is less certain.it will not be a single operating system that prevails. In the end it will be desktop runtimes that become the most important platforms A desktop runtime is a platform that provides a consistent runtime environment regardless of the underlying operating system. Desktop runtimes are already extending beyond their primary target platform, the desktop, to the Fourth Screen - smart phones.

The author clearly missed that Sun is a full-fledged Microsoft partner and that StarOffice 9, of all OpenOffice.org clones, is the only one that has write support for both ODF v. 1.2 and ODF v. 1.1, the latter of which is the only ODF version being implemented by Microsoft. The other OOo clones write only to ODF 1.2, which is dramatically different from ODF 1.2. So StarOffice will almost certainly have better interop via ODF with MS Office 2007 than will OOo 3.x or Lotus Symphony. For $25 per seat in the enterprise, $34.95 retail. The author simply misses that "pretty much the same thing can [NOT] be had for nothing from OpenOffice.org." There is a method to the claimed Sun madness, methinks. IBM gets left standing at the altar again.

The nine essential considerations of cloud computing. This may be the best article yet written about cloud computing. A must read! ,,, ""What sort of cloud computer(s) should we be building or expecting from vendors? Are there issues of lock-in that should concern customers of either SaaS clouds or PaaS clouds? I've been thinking about this problem as the CEO of a PaaS cloud computing company for some time. Clouds should be open. They shouldn't be proprietary. More broadly, I believe no vendor currently does everything that's required to serve customers well."

"¿Estás buscando un proyecto divertido donde invertir tus horas? Chris Robinson de n-o-d-e.net ha creado un magnífico tutorial donde nos muestra cómo crear un ordenador Linux de bolsillo al más puro estilo de la Nintendo DS."

"¿Estás buscando un proyecto divertido donde invertir tus horas? Chris Robinson de n-o-d-e.net ha creado un magnífico tutorial donde nos muestra cómo crear un ordenador Linux de bolsillo al más puro estilo de la Nintendo DS."

"El discutido canon AEDE' o 'Tasa Goole' [# ! sic.] sigue estancado a pesar de que en teoría está en vigor desde el pasado 1 de enero."

"Silvina Carraud"

"La nueva Ley de Propiedad intelectual incluye en su artículo 32.2 el denominado Canon AEDE, que restringe severamente la capacidad de cita y enlace en España para favorecer a los grandes medios, fundamentalmente los agrupados en la Asociación de Editores de Diarios Españoles AEDE. En una medida polémica, se crea un ?derecho irrenunciable? a cobrar por enlaces y fragmentos pequeños de los contenidos en Internet, de manera que los medios de AEDE, en un reparto artificial de ese canon, reciban una financiación estimable."

"A principios de este mes entraba en vigor la última reforma sobre la Ley de Propiedad Intelectual que impide a las páginas web ofrecer enlaces a contenido audiovisual protegido por los derechos de autor." [# ! Vía, Gracias, Francisco Manuel Hernández Sosa's FB]

"Comprobar todos los certificados de un sistema uno a uno es una tarea bastante tediosa, por lo que no se suele llevar a cabo. Si queremos asegurarnos de que nuestros certificados son de confianza, pero no queremos comprobarlos todos uno a uno, podemos confiar en aplicaciones desarrolladas para dicho fin, como RCC."