
On Adobe’s recent repositioning
I have long argued Adobe needed to shit or get off the pot when it comes to the Enterprise business. Well – it recently decided to get off the pot. Adobe has decided that it can’t make a broad-based enterprise platform play, and has refocused instead on two core markets it feels it can perform […]
Flash: Misunderstood by Adobe, Apple, the Haters, and the Press
Seldom have I seen a technology so widely adopted yet so poorly understood, so polarized between haters and fanboys, and so indifferently managed by its owners. It may have many other problems, but Flash’s worst problem is how widely it is misunderstood by key parties. Flash is Misunderstood by Adobe Adobe misunderstands not just Flash, […]

HTML5 – A Wonder Drug
I was reading up on some of the commentary surrounding Amazon’s release of an HTML5 reader, one of the best comes from Constellation’s Charles Brett: Amazon’s announcement of its Kindle Cloud Reader, based around HTML 5, is a wonder of irony. Apple has successfully been taking 30% of purchases made via anything bought through an […]

IBM’s IOD Showcases DB2, Informix, InfoSphere. Now, About Marketing….
It was hard to decide where to look first in Las Vegas this year at IBM’s flagship information management event. Coming as it did on the heels of a massive, sprawling Oracle Open World, it was also overwhelming, but distinguished itself immediately by its focus. Whereas Oracle has smashed together hardware systems, apps, middleware, java […]

What Silverlight Developers Should do After PDC 2010
For now. So Bob Muglia said HTML is the only true cross platform runtime. Well, no crap. What – is Silverlight going to jump through Apple’s business model hoops like a trained dog? From a governance and investment perspective it is stating the obvious to say that HTML offers a cross platform deployment story that […]

RIA is Dead – Adobe MAX 2010
It seems like Adobe has finally realized the value of the web over Flash, giving them a fighting chance where once they seemed a little too “let them eat cake.”

Database Benchmarks – The Gift That Keeps on Giving
Yes, I know – not everyone believes database benchmarks are useful. My position is that there is value in benchmarks’ role in helping engineers wring out bottlenecks, bugs and performance impediments in their products. In a conversation I recently had with Berni Schiefer, Distinguished Engineer and manager of the DB2 UDB Performance and Advanced Technology […]

Wrapping Up the Warfield/Lucchini/Flex/Javascript Smackdown
Come on, admit it, we all love a good smackdown! In response to my article about Flash coming back to the iPhone, Bill Lucchini wrote a well-reasoned rebuttal: 5 Reasons Adobe Flex is Doomed. Here they are, paraphrased for brevity: – Flex creates an unnatural and dilutive web user experience. – Flex performs poorly relative to […]

Android is so Open, it got Flash Back on the iPhone
How ironic. On the same day that MG Seigler was penning one of his characteristically snarky posts (snark is one of the ways Techcrunch pursues its Follower Economy) about how Android isn’t really open, Apple announces the return of Flash to the iWorld. Adobe’s stock price is cooking this morning as a result (I wonder […]

On HTML5 killing Flash
There’s an HTML5 killing Flash scab that keeps getting pulled off, every 1-2 months or so. In the most recent round, as I often do, I answered several question from a reporter (Howard Win in Computerworld) on the topic. The resulting story was pretty comprehensive and interesting. Here’s the questions (from Howard), and my full […]