Sean Michael Kerner

From the ‘AP Style‘ files: For journalists, following AP style is a matter of religion. AP is now getting religion of its own by adopting Mozilla’s Do Not Track (DNT) approach. Mozilla’s DNT is a binary expression of interest, (either a 1 or 0 in the header) that is setup by a Firefox user to […]

“After testing a feature and evaluating its merits, if we learn it doesn’t improve the user experience or serve our mission, we’ll remove that feature.” Twitter explains why it is removing the quickbar from its mobile client, most commonly referred to as the dickbar, named after Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. (Twitter) “When companies make privacy […]

Security vulnerabilities are on the rise and so too are the number of unpatched vulnerabilities. According to IBM (NYSE:IBM), 2010 was a banner year for vulnerabilities with nearly 8,000 detailed during the year. The 2010 tally is a 27 percent year-over-year increase. “We think attackers develop exploits shortly after vulnerabilities are publicly disclosed,” Tom Cross, […]

Oracle’s (NASDAQ:ORCL) recent MySQL 5.5 update introduced semi-synchronous replication to the open source database. According to memecached software vendor Schooner, semi-synchronous is not enough. Schooner is now debuting its Active Cluster for MySQL technology which aims to deliver fully synchronous replication. “We have fully synchronous replication and we have a license from Oracle for MySQL […]

From the ‘Google Cloud‘ files: When Google’s AppEngine first debuted, it was all about Python. A year after launching, Google decided to expand to Java, though there has always been a gap between the two languages. The new AppEngine 1.4.3 is an attempt by Google to bring the Python and Java runtimes closer to parity. […]

Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) is updating its networking portfolio with new switches and software to help improve virtualization deployments. The new Nexus 3000 switching platform is tailored for high frequency trading environments that require ultra-low latency. With the Nexus 5548 and 5596, Cisco is including unified ports to fully enable data center convergence. With unified ports, any […]

Not that long ago the TV screen and the computer monitor were two very separate and distinct devices. That’s no longer the case. In an effort to try and help guide best practices and standards for a converged world, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has setup a Web and TV Interest Group. The charter […]

From the ‘Merge Window Closed‘ files: The first release candidate for the Linux 2.6.39 kernel is now available. As always, it’s full of driver and filesystem updates. From a performance perspective there is a new block device plugging model. “It makes plugging a per-thread thing and cleaned up the code considerably,” Linus Torvalds wrote in […]

Online auction site eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) is acquiring ecommerce vendor GSI Commerce (NASDAQ:GSIC) for $2.4 billion. The proposed acquisition will see eBay paying $29.95 per GSI share for the deal which is expected to close in the third quarter of 2011. The deal will enable eBay with new ecommerce backend capabilities as the online auction site […]

From the ‘No Apple Version‘ files: A week after the desktop version, Firefox 4 for Android is now out. The general idea is to provide Android users with the same Firefox experience they get on the desktop. No there isn’t an Apple iOS version and from what Mozilla has told me and publicly stated multiple […]