Developer tools

Report: Facebook may be headed for data storage

Remember when Facebook was just a way to "poke" that kid who sat in front of you in macroeconomics class? Yeah, that was a long time ago. Rev2 reported on Sunday that technobabble on the Facebook Developer Wiki may be hinting that the "social utility" wants to expand into data storage.

So far, this appears to only apply to developers who have created applications on the Facebook Platform and have until this point provided their own data storage for the apps. A Facebook data storage plan would allow them to rent or purchase storage (or perhaps, … Read more

Amazon wooing start-ups to its Web Services

When I think of Amazon, I think of all the money I spend there buying books and CDs. But the company isn't just focused on selling Harry Potter books online to school kids anymore.

Amazon is trying to lure start-ups to sign up for its Amazon Web Services, which offers storage, virtual server, payment and other services on a pay-per-usage basis. This makes sense for young companies that want to focus on their core business and not have to spend money on expensive hardware.

Five years after it launched its first service, the company is making a name for … Read more

Salesforce.com extends its application platform with Force.com

Salesforce.com next week intends to detail an extension to its Web-based developer platform that it claims will put it on par with traditional offline development tools.

At the Dreamforce developer conference in San Francisco next week, company executives will introduce Force.com, the new name for a set of tools and hosted services for building hosted Web applications.

It will also introduce an addition to its hosted development platform called Visualforce, a service that allows a developer to create a customized application user interface. Conference attendees will get access to a developer preview of Visualforce.

Visualforce complements existing developer-oriented … Read more

AjaxWindows: Most interesting Web OS experiment yet

I still don't fully get the whole Web operating system concept. Why run an OS inside a browser when your browser is running in an OS to begin with? But AjaxWindows, a Web OS and application suite that launched today, makes a very good case for the Web OS. It's not ready yet for adoption by the world at large, but the idea behind it, and some of the features in it, are too interesting to write off as just yet another science project.

Ajax13, the company that makes AjaxWindows, was originally started to create Web-based applications. It … Read more

Amung.us launches cool Web site visitor map

There's a new widget from the team at Amung.us: A mapping plug-in, maps.amung.us, that you can add to your site to show you where your site's visitors are coming from, updated in real time. At first it looks to be more fun than useful, but underneath the widget, Amung.us collects interesting stats. You need only to click through from the widget to check them out.

I have a love/hate relationship with widgets like this (see also Feedjit and MyBlogLog). Site managers who are thinking of adding these need to be aware that they … Read more

Microsoft stumbles in Open XML standards vote

Update at 9:45 a.m. PT Tuesday: Adds ISO confirmation

Microsoft has failed in its initial effort to standardize its Office document file format.

The company was attempting to standardize its Office Open XML document formats through a "fast track" process at the International Organization for Standardization.

The draft standard "has not achieved the required number of votes" according to a statement issued by the ISO on Tuesday. The voting process ended on Sunday.

A tally indicates that Open XML did not get the two-thirds majority needed from "participating" ISO members.

The closely … Read more

Freespire 2.0 released with proprietary mix-in

Who says nothing in life is free?

Linspire announced Wednesday it has released Freespire 2.0, its latest, free version of the Linux operating system for desktops.

But there's one twist. This version of the open-source software throws the possibility of adding proprietary software, drivers and codecs from other vendors in the mix.

Think of it like adding sugar-free Splenda to your morning coffee, only to find there's actually a dash of sugar in the powdery substance to make it taste better.

Linspire is using Ubuntu 7.04 as its baseline and offering software from six categories, some … Read more

Video demo: Startforce, a new Web OS

Here's the video demo I promised earlier on Startforce, a Web OS that's not yet in open beta in the United States. While not a new idea, this implementation is especially clean. It apes the Windows look and feel, which may not be a great thing from an aesthetic perspective, but it does mean that the system is very easy for new people to get in to.

I find products like this technically stunning, yet it's still an open question as to whether we actually need them. Developers won't build apps for platforms that don't … Read more

The battle of the mashup editors

Over the last year, all of the big three tech companies (Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo) have created their own online mashup editors. Both Microsoft's and Yahoo's are publicly available, but Google's is in a small private beta. Today I'm taking a look at the pros and cons of all three.

Microsoft Popfly

Microsoft is taking a really visual approach to the mashup editor. Popfly lets you easily mash different services together through the use of what they call "blocks." There are a lot of blocks that are already designed by Microsoft to provide data … Read more