At the AJAXWorld 2008 East Conference, DreamFace Interactive announced the availability of 'Outsider', a major new version of their DreamFace Web 2.0 Framework, for creating Enterprise 2.0 Composite Applications and Mashups. DreamFace builds on the concepts of Web 2.0: Do IT Yourself, Personalization and Sharing and extends them to provide the next generation Web 2.0 experience, targeting the enterprise with a solution to the data integration problem through secure client side integration.

XAware announced that Active Endpoints and Appcelerator have joined the XAware Ecosystem. Together, these three technology vendors offer customers a combination of open, standards-based systems that provide broad, enterprise-class solutions. The XAware Ecosystem gives users combined solutions that are capable of addressing a variety of business problems. For partners, the XAware Ecosystem enables the development of compelling joint solutions and access to a large, new community of users. Components in the XAware Ecosystem remain plug-and-play, so that customers are always able to use the technologies that best fit their specific needs.

Appcelerator announced that it has updated its platform to allow applications built using Appcelerator to be deployed to the free new Google App Engine. Used together, the offerings give developers a fast route to developing, deploying, managing and scaling their applications. Appcelerator is an integrated platform that fuses RIA and service-oriented architecture (SOA). With Appcelerator, developers can assemble rich, interactive web applications without the need for JavaScript or player-based plug-ins.

Apatar announced the release of its new StrikeIron US Address Verification connector for the Apatar Open Source Data Integration toolset. Using StrikeIron?s US Address Verification Web service, the new feature relies on United States Postal Service-certified technology to verify, correct, and enhance any address in the United States with live data. It cleans customer data before it gets into CRM/ERP systems, databases, flat files, and RSS feeds by correcting extracted addresses, adding ZIP+4 data, specifying congressional districts, carrier routes, etc.

The mouse was the original idea of Doug Engelbart who was the head of the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at Stanford Research Institute. Engelbart's philosophy is best embodied, in my opinion, in the design of another device that he invented, the five-finger keyboard - with keys like a piano, used by one hand. The problem was, Engelbart's five-finger keyboard and mouse combination was very difficult to learn.

Now, what Google announced is really exciting! I'm not kidding. It's even better than I hoped. Yes, it's only Python, but IBM's PC-DOS was only BASIC and Pascal when it first came out, and it didn't matter. Yeah, I preferred C, but I coded in Pascal because that's what you had to do to get an app running. What you're going to see here that you've never seen before is shrinkwrap net apps that scale that can be deployed by civillians. That's a mouthful, but that's what's coming. Why? Because here is a standardized platform that can be stamped out in the billions of units. Maybe Google can't do it, but the perception is that they can. Who is willing to stand up and say Google hasn't nailed scaling? What PCs did in the 80s, Google is doing now. PCs took the black magic out of owning a computer.

Told ya Adobe was gonna reorganize and put its mobile/devices operation in with its platform operation in the name of moving to a single technology platform and runtime for PCs, handsets and consumer devices. Adobe's new CTO Kevin Lynch, the creator of AIR, is basically in charge of the whole magilla now. Gary Kovacs, VP of product management and marketing for the mobile and devices business, will be general manager of the unit, reporting to Lynch, replacing Al Ramadan, who is leaving.

JasperSoft announced that Cincom Systems has selected the JasperSoft Business Intelligence Suite to power all Cincom BI applications. Cincom will standardize on JasperSoft as its business intelligence platform across its software offerings, extending the value of BI and reporting to all Cincom customers.

Intalio announced an agreement with NTT Data Intramart to integrate Intalio products into Intra-mart, its Web platform. In conjunction with this integration, NTT Data Intramart will also add two new applications to the Intra-mart Web platform, a Risk and Control Matrix (RCM) and a Form Relation Editor (FRE).

The last quarter was the single best quarter in history for open source companies raising venture capital according to the 451 Group. The amount hit $203.75 million, up from $100.4 million year-over-year and after a really nasty downturn in the fourth quarter of '07. The previous record of $193.7 million was set in 4Q06. The Q1 investment went into 20 start-ups, with the average size deal being worth roughly $12 million.

It looks like Kim Polese's SpikeSource operation has gotten a new lease on life. At least it's gotten another $10 million, this infusion coming from Intel, which is evidently trying to protect its initial investment back in 2005. Anyway the open source software verification company is now going to do software testing and validation for Intel?s Software Partner Program as what Intel calls its Certified Solutions program.

Sun Microsystems and the NetBeans community announced the availability of NetBeans 6.1 integrated development environment (IDE) Beta. NetBeans 6.1 Beta adds a rich set of features for JavaScript technology development, a key component for delivering AJAX web applications and tighter integration of MySQL database functionality.

CodeGear announced the availability of JBuilder 2008, its latest version of the IDE for the Java platform based on the Eclipse open source framework. With JBuilder 2008, CodeGear has added an innovation to the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Java: a methodology and associated collection of tools known as Application Factories. Application Factories is a new approach to software development and code reuse that addresses one of the challenges faced by Java developers today: navigating the complexity of framework choices, open source, internal code, and deregulated technology standards trying to determine how to use and reuse them together in order to deliver high-quality solutions with ever-increasing time pressures.

'Unlocking content to be remixed into new business value' is the driver of Web 2.0 in the enterprise, says Rod Smith, IBM VP of Emerging Internet Technologies, in this Exclusive Q&A with Jeremy Geelan on the occasion of IBM's release of a new technology created by IBM researchers, codenamed 'SMash' - short for Secure Mashup.

Here is a question that I have been pondering on and off for quite a while: Why do 'cool kids' choose Ruby or PHP to build websites instead of Java? I have to admit that I do not have an answer. Why do I even care? Because I am a Java developer. Like many Java developers, I get along with Java well. Not only the language itself, but the development environments (Eclipse for example), step-by-step debugging helper, wide availability of libraries and code snippets, and the readily accessible information on almost any technical question I may have on Java via Google. Last but not least, I go to JavaOne and see 10,000 people that talk and walk just like me.

What does Software as a Service (SaaS) have to do with open source? Not much, you might think. SaaS, as you probably know, is a delivery - and business - model for software that has been proving quite disruptive to the traditional software business - just as the open source model has been. The two combined may turn out to be even more so.

JasperSoft, the open source business intelligence venture - which just last week was rattling off a bunch of numbers contending that it's 'the world's most widely deployed BI suite' - said from the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco the other day that it's 'working with Microsoft on a series of initiatives to optimize its suite on Windows Server 2008 and other key Microsoft technologies.'

Intalio announced Intalio|On Demand, an open source Business Process Management System delivered as a service. The convenience of being able to deploy a BPM project lowers the bar for adoption. Business users and IT analysts can get a project up and running much quicker and without the administrative concerns associated with managing the required servers. Intalio|On Demand replicates the Intalio|BPMS On Premise version and includes the connectors for Salesforce.com as well as enterprise applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite and SAP.

MuleSource announced the availability for download of Mule RESTpack. More and more developers are now building distributed applications based on the underlying software architecture of the Web, known as representational state transfer (REST). Providing a way to create and deliver Web services, REST is the formalized architecture of hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), the software specification that enabled the Internet's scalability.

Anyone who's ever been involved in the beginning of a nonprofit consortium will tell you that the first year is the hardest. The initial high of coming together in the name of a shared cause gives way to the drudgery of meetings, working groups and member politics. The realities of executing against the vision and the inherent challenges of keeping an all-volunteer organization active and engaged set in. For many such consortia, the first year can be the last.

Is Google growing too fast to continue to produce innovative software while maintaining the quality that has become expected of it? I've had some problems with their alerts and sent in comments and, excluding the automated email replies, have received no response nor has the problem been corrected.

The F2F meeting of OpenAjax Alliance at NYC on March 21st worked out really well in my oppinion. As a result of the last F2F meeting in October 2007, we formed a new task force called 'Runtime Advocacy Task Force' at OpenAjax. The goal of Runtime Task Force is to collect a 'wish list' from the Ajax community, get the communities involved, have active dialogs and engage browser vendors, with the goal of fixing the issues that have bugged down Ajax developers and help build a better web. So far we've collected a list of 29 issues, of which we hope to open up to the general public for review/comments/voting.

Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) Europe, the European chapter of the non profit, vendor-neutral consortium dedicated to driving the interoperability and mainstream adoption of comprehensive open solutions, announced its interim board of directors (BoD) and further details for its plan throughout Europe.

AMD announced a new plug-in that provides the Eclipse community with increased performance management and monitoring of Java software code. Called 'CodeSleuth,' this new plug-in delivers the functionality of AMD's CodeAnalyst Performance Analyzer, a suite of tools that analyze software performance on AMD processors, including Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors. To help ensure that the plug-in is readily available to the Java technology community and evolves with the community's needs, AMD is making CodeSleuth open source and available as a no-charge download within the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment(IDE).

The wait is coming to an end. We are working feverishly to get the open source version of BlueDragon into the wild on the 3rd of May 2008 at cf.Objective(), when Vince presents his BOF. Vince will illustrate the first public open source version of BlueDragon. This will including the building of it, the deployment and other items of interest. If you want to be among the first to witness this, then get over there.

ActiveState announced an updated, open-sourced release of Komodo Edit, the popular and free editor for dynamic languages including Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Tcl, plus support for browser-side code including JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and XML. Komodo Edit, based on Komodo IDE, offers support for all major scripting languages, including in-depth autocomplete and calltips, multi-language file support, syntax coloring and syntax checking, Vi emulation, and Emacs key bindings.

Presens Technologies is conducting a survey in partnership with Red Hat. The mailing, which will be sent to CIOs and IT managers across North and South Carolina, aims toward mapping current use or intended plans to implement open source technologies in the corporate IT environment. The recipients of this survey will rate the importance of security, support and cost as well as training and exploration of server and storage virtualization technology. The responses will provide the scope of market need for new reliable and scalable products and services.

Ingres Corporation announced the creation of Ingres CAFE (Consolidated Application Foundation for Eclipse), which brings together in one bundle all the components developers need to create and deploy rich Java applications built using the Eclipse Foundation's open source development framework.

Ringside Networks announced the Beta release availability of the Ringside Social Application Server - the open source platform that enables businesses to weave social capabilities into their existing websites while integrating with social networks such as Facebook.

Red Hat has open sourced its Certificate System - or rather those parts of it that weren't already open sourced. Certificate System, its identity management and security system, derives from the Netscape technology that Red Hat got from AOL three years ago and pieces of it like the Apache Web Server and Red Hat Directory Server were already open source.

Oracle has open sourced the embeddable XQilla XQuery engine code, its implementation of the W3C XQuery 1.0 standard, which lets developers query XML data like SQL for relational data. The widgetry, now at SourceForge under the Apache 2.0 license, is used in building XML-based applications.

MySQL - and by extension Sun's sales force - are going to start peddling Zmanda's open source backup and recovery software written especially for MySQL to the enterprise. Starting April 1, MySQL Enterprise customers will be able to buy subscriptions to Zmanda's Recovery Manager for MySQL and MySQL Cluster directly from Sun worldwide. The software is already available for download for free at http://www.mysql.com/zrm.

iWay announced that it will sell more than 35 iWay adapters developed on and built for IBM WebSphere technology. This offering opens market opportunity for iWay Software and extends IBM's connectivity ecosystem offering customers additional cost-effective application integration options by delivering consistent adapter technology based on IBM's WebSphere Adapter Toolkit.

Open source application developers Colosa and Knowledge Tree have announced a 'mashup' of their web-based applications (ProcessMaker and KnowledgeTree document management software) to help small to mid-sized businesses handle, manage and retrieve vital company documents such as contracts, approval letters, or applications.

This session will provide attendees with an overview of the iPhone SDK, including discussion of the App Store, Apple's planned distribution channel for SDK applications. Keep in mind that the contents of the SDK and experiences while using it are covered under NDA, so be prepared for me to talk in generics and leave out specific details that might be covered by the NDA. I am planning on providing a quick introduction to Objective-C for those attendees who may have never seen it and might be worried that it will be difficult to code in (it isn't!).

Appcelerator announced the launch of its new open source developer community, the Appcelerator Developer Network. 'The response to our revamped developer community has been overwhelming,' said Jeff Haynie, CEO of Appcelerator. 'In just a few days, over 500 new community members have signed on to the developer network, started making significant contributions and engaging in active collaboration around the development of rich Internet applications with Appcelerator. We expect this excitement to build through our outreach to attendees of AJAXWorld East this week.'

JumpBox announced that it is launching JumpBox Open - giving users subscription access to their collection of time saving virtual appliances for Open Source applications. 'In a nutshell, JumpBox Open brings simplicity, selection and time savings to the world of Open Source software,' said Kimbro Staken, JumpBox Co-founder and CEO. 'Because JumpBoxes make it so simple to deploy applications, JumpBox Open provides easy solutions to most any business application requirements.'

The all-Java Perst open source, object-oriented embedded database system from McObject has improved performance, stability and development ease in the open-source Frost client software for the Freenet global peer-to-peer network. The new Frost client has already been downloaded by thousands of Freenet users who are enjoying a 'much better' application experience due to Perst, according to a Frost project leader.

InterSystems announced that the Swedish national electronic health record, known as the National Patient Overview (NPO) will be supplied by TietoEnator using InterSystems HealthShare software. The contract is valued at approximately $19 million for the first five years, with an option to extend for an additional two years.

SourceLabs announced a Self-Support offering for Linux, as well as a similar offering for open source Java. The tools and services give developers, corporate IT professionals, and their solution providers a new way to more effectively support open source software than large vendors pushing expensive support contracts, enabling greater productivity, independence and self-reliance. Close to 3000 users registered for SourceLabs' Self-Support Suite with advanced discovery during a successful private beta program launched in December 2007.