Reminding people of how its backing was the making of Linux, IBM, to no one's surprise, has thrown its support behind cloud computing, that delicious nexus of every chi-chi buzzword technology currently in vogue: Web 2.0, rich Internet applications, software-as-a-service, SOA, grid computing, Web Services, virtualization and utility computing. IBM calls its initiative Blue Cloud - like it could have another name - and claims it's a 'game-changing model for Internet-scale computing,' providing customer with just the right size computer power while at one and the same time being 'green' as well as 'self-healing and self-managing' based on open standards and Linux. Lordy, if this thing was a cute guy with money, it would be every mother's dream.

Citrix has tapped its VP of channels and emerging product sales Al Monserrat to replace its departing sales chief John Burris, who, as previously reported, is going to Sourcefire as CEO. A couple of years ago Monserrat was responsible for Citrix' North American sales. Meanwhile, Citrix has named former PeopleSoft chief marketing officer and HP veteran Nanci Caldwell to its board.

Microsoft earned $4.3 billion on revenues of $15.84 billion, up 18%, in its fourth fiscal quarter in June, making it a $60 billion company - compliments of emerging markets and demand for Windows Server 2008. It had better-than-expected Vista sales this time through, up to $4.37 billion, and solid results everywhere but in retail sales of the high-end Office kit - a function of all those freebies out there? - and in its online business which lost $488 million - impacted by the weak economy and explaining why Microsoft is desperate to buy Yahoo, AOL, somebody. Yahoo, meanwhile, has also been eying AOL.

Two of the biggest launches in Rich Internet Application history took place in 2007/2008 when Adobe launched AIR 1.0 in February '08 and Microsoft launched Silverlight (September '07). At the 6th International AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo in October SYS-CON Events is delighted to be presenting major industry keynotes from the two industry executives with overall responsibility for both of those massive richer-web initiatives: Adobe's CTO Kevin Lynch and Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's .NET Developer Platform.

After much soul-searching but finding no 'compelling reason,' Intel of all people is not going to upgrade its 80,000 PCs to Vista except in a few places; XP is just fine, thank you, according to a piece on a New York Times blog that actually started in the Inquirer. That started people to wondering whether Intel, when it finally does upgrade, will go to the Vista-beholden Windows 7 or to Linux or the Mac, its newest hero. It also got other people to remembering that Intel exhibited the same resistance to XP when it was new. It took four years for XP to get 50% of the market.

Adobe says it's going to 'dramatically improve' the search results of dynamic web content and rich Internet applications (RIAs) for Google and Yahoo by giving them optimized Flash Player technology. This new widgetry, which will read and index SWF files, is supposed to uncover information that is currently undiscoverable by search engines and provide more relevant automatic search rankings for the millions of RIAs and the other dynamic content that runs in Flash Player.

A New York federal judge has ordered Google to turn YouTube user data over to Viacom's outside counsel so Viacom, which is suing YouTube for upwards of a billion dollars in damages, can prove YouTube users are watching copyrighted videos. That's every YouTube username, associated IP address and video watched.

The Justice Department has reportedly opened a formal antitrust investigation of the multimillion-dollar Microsoft-escaping deal for Google to provide advertising to Yahoo's search engine, with a demand for documents going out to other than the immediate parties, not just the voluntary collection of information Yahoo and Google were prepared to supply.

Google is currently the pet of the American consumer. Although many in the industry don't find it particularly likeable, the company's reputation is tops among US consumers, based largely on how it treats employees and a perception of social responsibility, according to a Harris poll, in which Google dislodged Microsoft from the perch. Johnson & Johnson, the Band-Aid king, came in second and Intel third. Microsoft is now number 10. Google was previously number four. Companies with the worst reps include Halliburton, Comcast, Northwest Airlines and Exxon.

A little Chicago ISV called LimitNone is suing Google for nigh on to a billion dollar charging it with misappropriating its trade secrets to beat back Microsoft Office. Seems a year ago March LimitNone shared its mojo for migrating Outlook users and their calendars and contacts to Gmail with Google and according to LimitNone's story the widgetry turned up in Google Apps despite Google's assurances that it had no intention of developing a similar product.

Android, due in the second half, could reportedly be delayed until Q4 or maybe even next year, according to the tale the Wall Street Journal tells, a situation that opens up a can of worms for Google. Google has to prove that it's more than a one-trick pony and that it can deliver something other than beta software. The paper says Google is so absorbed with getting a T-Mobile Android phone out in Q4 that Sprint Nextel and China Mobile have fallen by the wayside.

Nokia wants to buy the 52% of the Symbian operating system that it doesn't already own to open source it and set it free. It's a defense against advances into the fragmented mobile space that Nokia and Symbian dominate - particularly - from the looks of case - against Google's nascent open source Android initiative and the freebie Linux-based LiMo Foundation - but then there's also Apple's proprietary iPhone, Microsoft's equally proprietary, royalty-charging Windows Mobile and the ever-present Blackberry and Palm.

Project Insight has released Project Scorecard, a project scoring system that enables companies to measure projects on how they fit into corporate goals and objectives. With the recent economic downturn, businesses are hard-pressed to prioritize major projects and determine whether or not they meet company strategies.

The two Detroit pension funds suing Yahoo in Delaware to invalidate its severance plan 'poison pill' have been denied the expedited trial that they asked for ahead of the August 1 stockholders meeting. The plan is supposed to incentivize Google staff to leave if an acquisition were to come off.

After failing to come to terms with Microsoft, and with antitrust regulators hovering in the background, Yahoo has gone and cut that death-defying deal on search advertising with arch-rival Google saying the agreement could clear $800 million in annual revenues. The deal is non-exclusive, applies only to paid search and text ads, and is supposed to run for four years with an option to renew for up to 10 years.

Citrix has bought sepago GmbH's sepagoProfile software so user profiles in XenDesktop, XenApp and Provisioning Server are integrated. Terms were not disclosed but as part of the deal the Cologne-based sepago will continue developing the product for virtualizing application provisioning for the next year and a half. Sepago specializes in application provisioning on large computer networks.

ComScore has upped Google's US search share. It was 59.8% in March and now for April it's 61.6%. It gave Yahoo 20.4% and Microsoft 9.1%. HP and Foxconn International, a unit of Taiwan-based Hon Hai Precision Industry, the big contract manufacturer, are building a $50 million factory outside St Petersburg where they will produce a half-million PCs a year for the Russian market starting next year. It could become a hub for the Baltic states and Scandinavia. Hon Hai, meanwhile, is going to start making laptops.

From Application Virtualization to Xen, a round-up of the virtualization themes & topics being discussed in NYC June 23-24, 2008 by the world-class speaker faculty at the 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo being held by SYS-CON Events in The Roosevelt Hotel, in midtown Manhattan.

Google has opened up App Engine to one and all. The cloud-sharing gambit meant to entice developers to build their web applications on the same infrastructure that powers Google's own applications - and in the process locks them into Google instead of Microsoft - has been in beta for the last six weeks and limited to 10,000 developers.

Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo received stupid advice from their investment bank advisers and blew their chance to close the deal with Microsoft as of this Sunday morning. Neither Yang nor Filo are experts on how to sell a company in a multi-billion dollar deal. They have relied on their investment bankers and advisers since the negotiations started with Microsoft. The difference between the offered price of $33 and the asking price of $40 per share is roughly $1.4b per share, so it's not small potatoes.

Google's Web Toolkit Release Candidate 1.5 is out. That's the stuff programmers can use to develop and debug web applications in Java and then deploy them as highly optimized JavaScript. That way they're supposed to be able to sidestep common AJAX headaches like browser compatibility, and enjoy significant performance and productivity gains.

Facebook, the social networking site that Microsoft owns a pricey sliver of, says it's going to open source its year-old Facebook Platform so it's easier for developers to build applications on it. It's reportedly calling the effort fbOpen and the move puts it on a collision course with the Google OpenSocial initiative that MySpace, Yahoo and now AOL back so third-party applications can access the sites' data.

In the largest third-party win yet for the year-old Google Gears, as well as a win for the browser-as-a-platform, they say, News Corp's MySpace social networking site has used the Google widgetry to upgrade its mail so users can search and sort their mail in real-time. The MySpace news was barely out of the bag when Opera up and announced that it'll be supporting Gears in its desktop and mobile browsers to push the browser as a full platform for applications, it said.

As soon as Google announced the availability of browser-based Google Earth functionality, GIS Planning's development team jumped on the opportunity to integrate the application into their existing Google Maps-powered services. In doing so, GIS Planning became one of the first developers anywhere to successfully integrate this technology.

Google is opening up App Engine to one and all. The cloud-sharing gambit meant to entice developers to build their web applications on the same infrastructure that powers Google's own applications - and in the process lock them into Google instead of Microsoft - has been in beta for the last six weeks and limited to 10,000 developers. Google says that another 150,000 developers are on the waiting list and so on Wednesday, the first day of Google I/O, the company's two-day developer event in San Francisco, will take down the barricade. Google also disclosed what it's going to charge for App Engine starting later this year.

Google's Web Toolkit Release Candidate 1.5 will be available later this week. That's the stuff programmers can use to develop and debug web applications in Java and then deploy them as highly optimized JavaScript. That way they're supposed to be able to sidestep common AJAX headaches like browser compatibility, and enjoy significant performance and productivity gains.

Friday morning the local Fox television station in New York City broke the news - Apple was suing New York City. Six out of 100 of their viewers thought Apple had the right to sue the City, but 94 out of 100 viewers are now calling for New Yorkers to drop Apple and its products, including the iPhone and Macs. New Yorkers are pissed off! New York City, universally known as The Big Apple, is facing a lawsuit from Steve Jobs' Apple Computer Inc. for, of all things, copyright infringement.

Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens, Citrix CTO Simon Crosby, Egenera CTO Pete Manca, Allen Stewart, Group Manager, Windows Virtualization at Microsoft, and Brian Duckering, Sr. Director of Products and Alliances at Symantec were the top industry executives who joined Jeremy Geelan in the 4th Floor Reuters Studio overlooking Times Square for a special SYS-CON.TV 'Virtualization Power Panel' recorded on June 22, 2008, the day before the opening of SYS-CON's 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo - which was held 23-24 June 2008 in New York City.

Office will support the Open Document Format (ODF) 1.1 format when Office 2007 Service Pack 2 arrives in the first half of 2009. Microsoft said users will be able to open, edit and save documents in ODF from directly inside Office application without having to install any other code. That means no more translators. They will even be able to set ODF as the default.

Google co-founder and billionaire Larry Page in Washington to speak at the think tank where Google CEO Eric Schmidt is chairman of the board - and apparently meet with government officials too - claimed that a Microsoft-Yahoo merger would 'monopolize online communications, stifle innovation and curb competition' - according to an AP report - but doubted that a Google-Yahoo advertising deal would encounter an antitrust obstacle.

Parallels said Wednesday that its Desktop virtualization widgetry for the Mac, which lets Intel-based Apples run Windows or Linux along with Mac OS X, has sold more than a million copies, a nice chunk of the Macs out there. It is the largest-selling Mac utility and gives Mac users access to all those Windows programs it?s starved for.

Dell is going to try to cut the energy consumption of its laptops and desktops by up to 25% between now and 2010 to avoid millions of tons of CO2 emissions, comparing its pledge to HP's, which is supposed to cut relative its 2005 levels. It says Dell OptiPlex desktop are down nearly 50% since 2005 and Latitude laptops are down 16% since 2006.

Zoho is gonna try rustling some of Google's prized Apps users. It's designed a unified login to encourage Google and Yahoo visitors to try Zoho applications using the user names and passwords they use with their Google and Yahoo accounts.

Google has taken its Postini investment and turned out Google Web Security for the Enterprise, which is supposed to protect against spyware, viruses and zero-hour threats in real-time whether the user is on the corporate network or working remotely like at a hotel or in an airport. If it detects malware it's supposed to neutralize it before it can reach the company network.

By now it is conventional wisdom to say that there was an IBM Era of computing, then a Microsoft Era, and now we are in the Google Era. In this post, I will explain why Microsoft was not the 'next IBM' and why Google is not the 'next Microsoft' - there are significant qualitative differences among them, quite apart from their status as the dominant, era-defining players. Understanding that qualitative difference is crucial for third party vendors, like Zoho, to thrive. I was reminded of this because of the IBM/Google partnership unveiled last week. As an aside, I have coined a kind of Moore s Law on these computing eras.

Microsoft issued a short, murky statement Sunday afternoon saying it has suggested a limited alignment with Yahoo. It does not explain its proposal. Perhaps it's thinking along the lines of the deal Yahoo is supposed to be negotiating with Google, perhaps a partial acquisition (perhaps Yahoo's Panama platform).

Ulitzer, Inc., which initially made the headlines with its 'job descriptions from the future,' announced today that it will launch its Ulitzer 'beta' site on July 4, 2008, with 5,500 authors and 600,000 original articles, published in more than 5,000 topic-specific online journals. Each journal offers up to 14 content-specific sections, written by the world's most respected authors, who are experts in their particular fields. All Ulitzer authors will get paid for their contributions.

Verizon Wireless is snubbing Google's Linux-based Android initiative to go with the LiMo Foundation's mobile Linux spec for its next wave of mobile phones expected next year. Along with Verizon, Mozilla signed up - giving the consortium its first major open source ISV - and a key one for conveying applications.

Zoho announced that it is welcoming Google and Yahoo users with a unified login designed to encourage those users to try Zoho applications. Now, Google and Yahoo users who visit Zoho can simply log into Zoho using the usernames and passwords associated with their Google and Yahoo accounts.

It's only taken Borland two years but it's finally dumped its CodeGear tools division, responsible for Borland's hereditary JBuilder, Delphi and C++ Builder lines as well as its new web ventures into PHP and Ruby, said to be used by 7.5 million developers. Embarcadero Technologies is buying it for about $23 million and the transaction's supposed to close in 30-60 days. Thomas Cressey Bravo the private equity house that bought Embarcadero and took it private last year, is fronting the money.