It is with some sadness that I write this post as my last for the Redmond Diary blog on the Redmond Developer News and Visual Studio Magazine Web sites. Eleven days ago, I started a new blog for ZDNet covering Big Data, at http://zdnet.com/blog/big-d... There’s been a ton of interest around Big Data in the industry lately and the topic ties into the ......

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In the development of line-of-business (LOB) applications, there has long been a certain tug-of-war between tools that automate development, or frameworks that accelerate it, on the one hand; and the notion of coding from scratch, perhaps with the aid of code libraries developed in-house (or by the sole developer), on the other. This is typically put ......

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This was a big week for Windows 8 news (given the relative secrecy around the whole project). At the beginning of the week we learned that the Consumer Preview (fka the "Beta") of Windows 8 will be released at the very end of the month in concert with the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona (MWC). Then, just yesterday, Windows and Windows ......

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I attend the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to follow and cover Microsoft, both in terms of its announcements at the show, and those of its competitors. From that standpoint, and since Microsoft announced that this year’s CES would be its last, I attended again this year and I think it was the best CES Microsoft’s had since I started attending. But ......

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The software industry lives within an interesting paradox. IT in the enterprise moves slowly and cautiously, upgrading only when safe and necessary. IT interests intentionally live in the past. On the other hand, developers, and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) not only want to use the latest and greatest technologies, but this constituency prides ......

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The much ballyhooed release of Nokia’s first Windows Phone handsets finally took place Wednesday at the Nokia World event in London. There had been a lot of anticipation building up to this “reveal,” and it is genuinely a watershed moment for the Windows Phone platform. That’s because Nokia’s adoption of Windows Phone brings several firsts: For the ......

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Last week, at the PASS (Professional Association for SQL Server) Summit in Seattle, Microsoft held a coming out party, not only for SQL Server 2012 (formerly “Denali”), but also for the company’s “Big Data” initiative. Microsoft’s banner headline announcement: it is developing of a version of Apache Hadoop that will run on Windows Server and Windows ......

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As I write this post, Microsoft’s Windows 8-focused //build/ conference has just ended. The apprehension so many developers had around the show is now dissipated, the developer platform and tools have been detailed, and we have all been able to work with the operating system, and develop apps for it, on a touch device, for about 72 hours now. Most people, ......

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There are plenty of posts and articles out there that provide retrospectives of, and pay homage to, Steve Jobs’ tenure as Apple CEO. I’m not an expert on Apple or Jobs, and this is not one of those posts. But Steve Jobs’ resignation from the CEO post does mark the end of a related era I know something about. It’s the era that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs ......

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I’m on vacation this week, and I didn’t intend to write a blog post. But after the sea changes in the mobile computing industry and, ironically, my extra time to ponder it, I really couldn’t stay silent. In the space of four days, Google may have effectively taken Android “private” and HP seems to have euthanized webOS in public. It’s really hard to ......

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