Stuart J. Johnston

I remember a night in 1984 when my next door neighbor, a game developer, got one of the very first Macs from his publisher. The wow factor overwhelmed us both. We stayed up all night checking it out. It was one of those epiphanies when you suddenly saw where computing was going. It was powerful, […]

Microsoft  announced on Thursday that it will take a pre-tax charge of between $1.05 and $1.15 billion to extend the warranties on its popular Xbox 360 game consoles due to “unacceptable” levels of a specific hardware failure. “Any Xbox 360 customer who experiences a general hardware failure indicated by three flashing red lights will now […]

It’s not often that Microsoft  apologizes to customers. In a rare case this week, however, the company is doing just that. The apology is to customers impatiently awaiting some extra programs for Windows Vista Ultimate. The good news is that Microsoft officials say they plan to ship those eagerly-awaited Windows Ultimate Extras by the end […]

Microsoft is shipping two new “reference applications packs” or RAPs for its Office Business Applications (OBA) initiative – one providing guidance for how to build effective plant analytics applications and the other for how to successfully create electronic forms management workflows. Both are provided as free Virtual PC virtual machines (VM) that demonstrate how developers […]

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has been a flash point in the often contentious debate about open standards for digital document formats over the past two or three years – and will continue to be, it seems. Monday, the state’s Information Technology Division (ITD) published its proposal mandating the use of open formats for all public […]

The electronic spreadsheet arguably was the “killer application” that kicked off the personal computer revolution. Today, the spreadsheet’s ability to crunch tons of data on the desktop makes it still one of the most popular and useful applications that people use. But such universal utility comes at a price. One serious misstep entering data with […]

Motorola  announced Thursday that it has released version 1 of an open source project aimed at providing a standard for high-availability middleware for telecommunications hardware manufacturers and ISVs. The company also disclosed it has taken the first steps toward turning the code over to a consortium of interested parties. Dubbed OpenSAF for the Service Availability […]

A group of purveyors of competing identity metasystems met this week to hear large customers discuss their interests in promoting interoperability among their systems. The good news was that customers spoke out about how essential it is that those systems, including Microsoft’s CardSpace, Liberty Alliance, and OpenID, interoperate. But it may take some time before […]

Microsoft announced this week it has begun shipping new community technology previews (CTP) of two key upcoming server products – Windows Server 2008 and Office PerformancePoint Server 2007. Previously codenamed Longhorn, Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 shipped two months ago and, with this CTP, is now feature complete, a Microsoft spokesperson told internetnews.com in an […]

Call it “supercomputing smackdown.” Today, at the International Supercomputing Conference 2007 (ISC07) in Dresden, Germany, the Top500 group announced its latest list of the top 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world. To say it’s a competitive list would be an understatement and few of the players can hold top spots long without constant improvements. […]

Just when Microsoft’s legal eagles figured they’d gotten that whole nasty Vista versus Google desktop search episode behind it, the search vendor went around the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and requested to file a brief with the oversight judge, insisting that the software behemoth hasn’t gone far enough. Google’s attorneys Monday have requested to […]

HP announced Monday that it has added advanced server power consumption control as well as collaborative remote administration capabilities to its Insight Control suite of infrastructure management tools for ProLiant and BladeSystem servers. The advanced power capping capabilities are designed to lower datacenter operating costs by improving server efficiency as well as by cutting air […]