David Strom

Go to the virtual server comparison chart. A lot has happened in the last several months of 2009 since last we last compared virtual servers. Citrix has made Xen Server free and released a new version 5.5 in mid 2009. Microsoft has released R2 of Windows Server 2008 that extends Hyper-V in new and useful […]

I had an opportunity to audit a computer science class this week at Washington University, a class that was teaching students how to write iPhone apps. It was their final presentation, and I got to see a dozen apps that were very impressive. As I was watching the kids present, I was thinking back to […]

Have we reached the point where email’s influence over our electronic lives is waning? It is hard to imagine, especially for those of us who grew up in the minicomputer/PC era. For two generations, email was the killer application. It delivered information reliably and within a few minutes. But today the properties that made email […]

Have you ever had your laptop stolen? I did several years ago, from the trunk of a locked car in a suburban shopping mall. But lately thieves are getting caught because of better software tools that are on the laptops, and this is a story about two laptops that were stolen several months ago. The […]

No one is perfect, and even some of the most successful and long-standing computer companies occasionally have stinkers of products. Here are my nominations to the list of the all-time losers. Feel free to add your own thoughts and products too. Microsoft Let’s start off with Microsoft, which is no doubt the most profitable software […]

I have been studying a presentation that Brent Payne made earlier this year and can be found here, entitled How to Connect Great Journalism with the Greatest Possible Audience. Payne is in charge of the search engine optimization efforts for the Chicago Tribune Web site, and knows a lot about what he speaks. The presentation […]

This being the week after Labor Day I wanted to pass along an interesting concept called coworking. Most of you are familiar with the idea of a shared tenant services for small businesses that can’t afford their own office space but want to take advantage of a common collection of services such as fax machines, […]

We view the Internet as the fourth desktop operating system we have to support after Windows, MacOS, and DOS.” That quote was from an executive at McAfee, and DOS gives it away that it was spoken back in 1996. With the announcement that Google will develop a quick-start operating system by next year for instant-on […]

The computing landscape is littered with many innovative but dead products from companies that are no longer with us, or that have been acquired and cast aside. Here’s a brief survey of the most memorable and significant products from such companies, and the role that they have played in getting us to our YouTubeTwitteringFacebook generation, […]

There is no doubt that we have become accustomed to less customer service and more self-service these days. Maybe it is because the general bar for customer service keeps getting lower and the actual service itself surlier. Maybe it is a cost-cutting measure as more retail establishments cut back on their staffs. Maybe it is […]