Software

Benioff the Author Strikes Again

Technology Monster — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 21:55:26 +0000

Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce.com, has done a remarkable job of marketing his company and the software-as-service business model. But less known is his interest in philanthropy. Through the Salesforce.com Foundation, the company donates 1% of its equity and income, and its employees volunteer significant chunks of time, to worthy causes. Benioff wrote about this in his previous book, Compassionate Capitalism: How Corporations Can Make Doing Good an Integral Part of Doing Well.

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Gorbachev Asks Bill Gates To Save Russian Teacher From Siberia After Students Use Unauthorized ...

Technology Monster — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 21:55:24 +0000

Just days after having to stand idly by while the Romanian president talked up how unauthorized copies of Microsoft software helped build that country's IT industry, Bill Gates has another critical issue to decide concerning such "piracy." Over in Russia, Microsoft has apparently been pressing charges against a Russian school headteacher, Alexander Ponosov, who Microsoft accuses of running "pirated" software on school computers.

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Learning Like Kids

Technology Monster — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 21:52:22 +0000

So the second best thing about being in Bolton yesterday after the amazing group of Year 6 students that were in attendance was that I got to sit in on an introductory Garage Band workshop that and Joe Moretti, and ADE from the UK was giving. We did some blogging yesterday, too, and another highlight from yesterday’s workshop was an impromptu Skype call with Chris Turek from November Learning to ask a question about the software that Bolton was using to support its network.

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Review of e-slate voting systems

Technology Monster — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 21:07:47 +0000

I emerged guardedly optimistic; the systems appear, from what I can tell, to be reasonably secure against vote manipulation by people who are not part of the election staff, and they appear to provide approximately the same level of security against election office malfeasance that paper ballots do. At the end of the day, if the election staff wants to tamper, they can; but that was true with paper ballots as well.

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Visto: Another Mouse that Roars

Technology Monster — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 20:20:28 +0000

Consider Visto, a mobile e-mail developer that has sued Microsoft, Research In Motion, Good Technology, Seven Networks, and Infowave and accused them of violating its patents. We do work the patents, but we're not a troll," insists a slightly miffed Daniel Mendez, one of Visto's co-founders and its senior vice-president for intellectual property, the guy who works the patents. Even while Visto set out to beef up its core business it started going after companies it considered patent infringers.

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SupportBlogging!

Technology Monster — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 21:59:48 +0000

Here’s the mission: “Educational Blogging” is a positive, tranformational technology that is often confused with “Social Networking” sites like MySpace.com. While there are similarities in the web technologies used for blogging and social networking sites, they serve different purposes. The current backlash against social networking sites has the potential to overshadow the benefits of educational blogging.

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Fog Creek Software Management Training Program

Technology Monster — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 22:34:52 +0000

Joel Spolsky, who has written some of the smartest and most useful articles on software development done right in his Joel on Software blog, is also the CEO of Fog Creek Software. As CEO he recently posted an open invitation for would be software managers to apply for paid on the job training at Fog Creek. Joel describes the Fog Creek Software Management Training Program : The key component of this program is rotating through just about every job at Fog Creek Software.

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Mac OS X 10.4.4 and iTunes 6.2 Update

Technology Monster — Wed, 17 May 2006 21:42:12 +0000

Three things in the Mac OS X 10.4.4 update caught my eye: .Mac now syncs which RSS feed items you have and haven't read in Safari. On the other hand, I am quite pleased that now I no longer have to decide, via the pop-up menu in the lower right hand quadrant of the iTunes window, whether I want to use external speakers via the Airport Express, or my computer's built-in speakers; now there's a third option, that uses both, "Multiple speakers."

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Surprise! The War On Movie Piracy Isn't Working

Technology Monster — Thu, 11 May 2006 09:22:17 +0000

Software companies and their shill groups have been spreading around reports on the "cost" of piracy, which are made bogus by their assumption that every pirated copy of software equates to a lost sale, which simply isn't the case. The MPAA didn't want to release the study, and it's little wonder why: doing so would not only call into question its previous research, but also be a tacit admission that its "war" on piracy is failing, and failing badly.

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New version of MovableType

Technology Monster — Thu, 11 May 2006 09:22:16 +0000

All seems to have gone well... except my template and stylesheet are thoroughly bolloxed. I've made a termporary switch to the "old" ones, rather than the "new" ones until I can either port my favored old template and style sheet or shift to one with three columns. UPDATE: I decided to ditch the old template, because templates have changed a lot since I started, and move to a new three-column layout. I'm going to be tinkering with my style sheet and template a lot before I'm satisfied.

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Wikimania Takes Over Online Shopping?

Technology Monster — Thu, 11 May 2006 08:41:23 +0000

Overzealous marketers have been using the phrase "it's the Wikipedia of ______" to describe products for a while now, and wikis have had "all the cool kids are doing it" status for a while, so it's not surprising to see people try to shoehorn wikis in all over the place. But the ability to simply delete content with which one doesn't agree is pretty powerful, and somehow the sites' rebuttal that any user can then restore the content doesn't seem to do much to help.

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Another Take-Two Game Gets Re-rated, For Another Third-Party Mod

Technology Monster — Thu, 11 May 2006 08:41:22 +0000

Now, the ESRB, which rates video games, has re-rated another game from a Take-Two subsidiary, boosting the rating of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion from "Teen" to "Mature". The ESRB says that not only did the game's developer under-represent the degree of violence in the game, but also failed to disclose the inclusion of a topless woman in the game, even though, again, it was inaccessible without a third-party mod.

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Sanford Spamford Spyford Wallace Gets Hit With Spyware Fine

Technology Monster — Thu, 11 May 2006 03:36:17 +0000

In the early days of spam, there was no spammer more notorious or publicity seeking than Sanford "Spamford" Wallace. He was proud about his spamming and was always seeking more attention for it. In 2004, he was accused of being in the spyware game, tricking people into downloading his fake anti-spyware software by claiming that users had spyware that his software would remove (when it really did the opposite).

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Ubisoft Ditches Starforce... But Looks For A Replacement

Technology Monster — Thu, 11 May 2006 03:36:16 +0000

A couple weeks ago an upset owner of a Ubisoft video game sued the company, claiming the copy protection scheme used on it, made by controversial copy protection software firm Starforce, opened up huge security holes on computers. However, they claim that they're going to replace it with another copy protection scheme, potentially putting themselves right back into the same problematic situation.

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Software

Benioff the Author Strikes Again

Gorbachev Asks Bill Gates To Save Russian Teacher From Siberia After Students Use Unauthorized ...

Learning Like Kids

Review of e-slate voting systems

Visto: Another Mouse that Roars

SupportBlogging!

Fog Creek Software Management Training Program

Mac OS X 10.4.4 and iTunes 6.2 Update

Surprise! The War On Movie Piracy Isn't Working

New version of MovableType

Wikimania Takes Over Online Shopping?

Another Take-Two Game Gets Re-rated, For Another Third-Party Mod

Sanford Spamford Spyford Wallace Gets Hit With Spyware Fine

Ubisoft Ditches Starforce... But Looks For A Replacement

More VCs Recognizing The Problems Of Our Patent System