Software: Opinions

There's a problem a lot of business units run into when it comes to automating a business process: They know a custom application could make them more profitable and or more efficient, and they know Web deployment is the way to go, but there frequently isn't an off-the-shelf application that can do what they want.

Apple has already sold 100 million iPads and the rollout this week of the iPad Mini will only add fuel to that fire, says columnist Ryan Faas.

Alas, it might not be possible to say the same about the rest of your organization, and if there's one thing that will sink your company in these harsh economic times, it is an inability to communicate. For any organization trying to get ahead in a competitive market, having staff with spelling, writing, and for that matter, speaking problems, is a huge problem.

Discussions about technology issues are complex and not amenable to sound bites. But they are quite important nonetheless.

Microsoft will open the floodgates for Windows RT tablets at a release event Oct. 26 in New York City. The Surface tablet from Microsoft will be available on launch, with more tablets from Asus, Dell, Samsung, Lenovo and Acer coming in the following weeks.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the potential impact of the verdict in the Apple v. Samsung patent case. The reaction from many readers who took the time to comment was, let's say, not supportive of the position I took in the column. You should take the time to read the comments -- they are enlightening -- but more about a very long-running split in the technical community than about the actual content of the column.

In the quest to keep you, dear reader, entertained and informed I undertake extensive research to find what's hot, interesting and useful. This means that I spend a lot of time looking at "stuff" of which only a small fraction of the "really good stuff" gets published.

Amanda Palmer, known to her fans by the soubriquet "Amanda ****** Palmer" and wife of noted author Neil Gaiman, raised almost $1.2 million on Kickstarter back in May.

The end of the world may or may not be nigh, but in the tech industry, many of these possibilities could easily become reality

No popular language may be as maligned as JavaScript. But its migration to the server side opens the possibility it may become all-pervasive

The ship early, patch often philosophy has put real programming and programmers on the endangered list

Greetings from the DEMO Fall 2012 event in Santa Clara, Calif., where more than 70 companies are launching new sites, apps, services and, in some rare cases, actual physical products. For more than 20 years, the DEMO events have showcased companies that have gone on to greatness (to be fair, several companies have also vanished after appearing here), so it's always a good barometer of what might be coming down the road next.

These projects are at opposite ends of the computing spectrum and they are both hot!

Gibbs follows up on his column from two weeks ago wherein he claimed " I think I know just what might be the smart [social media] tubes of the future.

NoSQL databases like MongoDB are great for some tasks but not for others. Is it MongoDB's fault if misguided developers use it to solve the wrong problem?

I've checked out many iPad stands over the last few months and I just found what I think is one of the very best: The Uprise 360 produced by Hub Innovations. This is a dead simple design which your iPad (version 2 or 3) snaps into and you can rotate it to portrait or landscape as required. It's easy to remove the iPad when you need to and that's it ... as I said, it's dead simple and does the job. For $39.95 the Uprise 360 produced by Hub Innovations Uprise 360 gets a Gearhead rating of 5 out of 5.

Do Not Track in Internet Explorer 10 won't kill online advertising. Microsoft, as much as anyone else, has its eye on that multibillion-dollar prize.

One of my favorite parts of Reddit is a section called "Today I Learned," where readers submit stories and facts that maybe not everybody knows. Last week while browsing there, I learned that the famous astronomer Carl Sagan, who died in 1996, sued Apple for libel two years earlier. The details of the matter are highly amusing, as they apply to Apple, and at least slightly disappointing as they apply to Sagan.

Is there any organization or company that can resist surreptitiously tracking its customers?

First up: The U.S. Patent Office just granted Microsoft a patent for, and I am not making this up, controlling an audio signal of a mobile device by giving it a whack. My friend Jerry spotted this gem sliced and diced on the Patent Bolt Blog with the headline, "Microsoft Patent: How to Silence your Device by whacking it off."