http://twitter.com/fuatkircaali I live 11 minutes away from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. Friday evening I took a Cessna Caravan for a short 45-minute flight to Martha's Vineyard. This was my first trip to the island. I didn't do any research and had false expectations based on my long-time love affair with the island of Cat Cay in the Bahamas. I found out that Martha's Vineyard was huge. Upon landing on the island, my pilot called a cab for me to take me to my hotel. According to the cab driver the island's population was around 30,000 off-season and well over 100,000 during its peak summer season. These numbers change drastically from driver to driver or whomever you ask, of course. As compared to a maximum three to six neighbors any time I go home to Cat Cay, this was an instant shock to me. I had a relaxing two-day weekend in Martha's Vineyard. As long as I ... (more)

Breaking News: $92 Million Settlement in Kodak-Sun Java Patents Case

Related Links: Java Costs Sun $92 Million Java Patents: "Software and Patents Kodak Wins vs Sun The trial in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York in Rochester involving Eastman Kodak Co and Sun Microsystems will no longer be entering its penalty phase, as it was otherwise expected it would today. The parties agreed instead this morning to an out-of-court settlement, under which Sun has agreed to pay Kodak $92 million for a license with respect to the three US patents Java has been found to breach.. Accordingly, Judge Michael Telesca has signed an order formally dismissing the case - "with prejudice." It was just last Friday that a federal jury ruled in favor of Kodak in its dispute over Java, in which it alleged that the middleware mechanisms provided by Sun Microsystems' world-beating language in fact infringe patents Kodak acquired from Wang... (more)

IBM Sitting Pretty on Oracle-Sun Debacle

Mergers & Acquisitions on Ulitzer You have to know when to hold them, and when to fold them. That's the not just slightly smug assessment by IBM executives as they reflect -- with twinkles in their eyes -- on the months-stalled Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems, a deal that IBM initially sought but then declined earlier this year. Chatting over drinks at the end of day one of the Software Analyst Connect 2009 conference in Stamford, Conn., IBM Senior Vice President and IBM Software Group Executive Steve Mills (pictured below) told me last night he thinks the Oracle-Sun deal will go through, but it won't necessarily be worth $9.50 a share to Oracle when it does. "He (Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison) didn't understand the hardware business. It's a very different business from software," said Mills. Mills seemed very much at ease with IBM's late-date jilt of Sun (Sun wa... (more)

Oracle To Hire More Than It Fires at Sun: Reports

Oracle Keynote at Cloud Expo Oracle CEO Larry Ellison got out ahead of his own announcement Wednesday of his plans for Sun and told both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times that he intends to hire more people at Sun than he fires. He also struck a go-it-alone pose, seeming to burn his bridges with the IBMs and HPs of the world that sell Oracle’s software on their systems. “It took us a while to decide that we would be better off with all the pieces, and not working with partners,” he told the Journal. He’s definitely dumping Sun’s resellers. “Sun has wonderful engineering,” he told the Times, “but they didn’t seem to like selling very much. The partner model was disastrous, and we are immediately changing that.” Instead Sun will sell direct – at least to its 4,000 top customers which account for 70% of its revenues – and sales will include two new purpos... (more)

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz Scopes Out Future for Sun's Cloud

"At Sun, we're planning on maintaining Java's ubiquity as the number one runtime environment, backed by the world's most price performant datacenter infrastructure, all powered by Sun's cloud." That, in no uncertain terms, is Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz's vision for Java and stresses the new role that Cloud Computing is beginning to play at Sun. "The Java platform is only growing in importance and value, across billions of devices," Schwartz noted, writing on his industry blog. He also shared his view of the overall marketplace, as follows: "First, freely distributed, open source software will continue to create enormous revenue opportunities for those that understand the underlying business model - as an example, the Java business for Sun, last quarter, delivered more than $67m in billings, up nearly 50% year over year. On an annualized basis, that means the Java client... (more)

Ulitzer’s Amazing First 30 Days in Public Beta

http://twitter.com/fuatkircaali Today marks the 30th day of Ulitzer's public beta. We had an amazing month and perhaps one of the most widely discussed launches of a "new media" site. Gartner recently asked, "Will Ulitzer dominate news content on the Web eventually?" The answer is yes, and I'll explain why. First, I'd like to share some of the 30-day stats with you. We had more than 140,000 visitors who read 197,000 pages of articles, blogs and news stories. The syndicated page views (outside the Ulitzer domain) exceeded 1,369,983 page views. The legendary technology reporter Maureen O'Gara was the most read Ulitzer author with 231,600 rolling page views, and we syndicated more than 3,000 Ulitzer stories. My First Blackberry, Circa 1999 I remember receiving my first Blackberry 10 years ago at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco. It was a small device similar to a ... (more)

Confessions of a Ulitzer Addict

John Funnel on Ulitzer Earlier this year one of my staff attended a SYS-CON event and returned to the office a different person. Revitalised and motivated. I asked her what happened at the event to warrant such a transformation? What was her secret? Was it the New York Shopping experience? A business Romance or was it Devine intervention? She simply advised me to ‘check out Ulitzer. – Everyone who is anyone is on it’. She was not the first to introduce me to the innovation. Many of my peers had gone through such noticeable changes, It was like a weight had been lifted from their shoulders, that they now had a true portal to vent out their innermost thoughts. I was instantly intrigued by such recommendations. People, just like me, were using Ulitzer everywhere. So what had I been fighting against all this time? What was I avoiding? Eventually I succumbed to the in... (more)

Cloud Security on Ulitzer - Nothing New But It Changes Everything

Cloud Security on Ulitzer SYS-CON Events announced today that Glenn Brunette, Distinguished Engineer and Chief Security Architect at Sun Microsystems, will be presenting at the upcoming Cloud Computing Conference & Expo (www.cloudcomputingexpo.com) this coming November 2-4, 2009, in Santa Clara, California. His session will be entitled "Cloud Security - It's Nothing New, It Changes Everything!" Sponsor or Exhibit at Cloud Computing Expo! Register to Attend and Save! Speak at Cloud Computing Expo 2010! Cloud Security - It's Nothing New, It Changes Everything! This session cuts through the hype and sharpens our focus on what security means for cloud computing and other elastic, hyper-scale architectures. Is security different in the Cloud? Discussions of similarities and specific new challenges will be reinforced using use cases and architectural patterns showing why cl... (more)

Adaptivity “Platinum Plus Sponsor” of Cloud Expo

SYS-CON Events announced today that Adaptivity, the IT transformation company, has been named "Platinum Plus Sponsor" of SYS-CON's 5th International Cloud Expo (www.CloudComputingExpo.com), which will take place on April 19-21, 2010, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City. Adaptivity's CEO Tony Bishop (http://tonybishop.ulitzer.com) will be offering major thought leadership on Day Two of the 3-day event in a Morning Keynote. Read Exclusive Cloud Computing Journal Q&A; with Tony Bishop here. Cloud Expo was announced on February 24, 2007, the day the term "cloud computing" was coined. That same year, the first Cloud Expo took place in New York City with 450 delegates. Next April, Cloud Expo is returning to New York City with more than 5,000 delegates and over 100 sponsors and exhibitors. The three-day event will attract more than 5,000 delegates from 48 co... (more)

How Passionate and Excited Are You?

New Media on Ulitzer Every staff meeting we hold, I open the meeting either with my "passion speech" or end it with the importance of passion and excitement toward one's job. The colleagues whom I've been working with for longer than 10 years must have listened to my 'broken record' speech hundreds of times. My heart goes out to them. When I was a student at Zurich University in Switzerland 25 years ago, I studied German that first year before I started taking my regular classes. During my first summer vacation in Switzerland, and partly because I did not speak the local language, the best summer job I could find was to replace a full-time factory worker at TERLINDEN Textilpflege AG (a carpet cleaning factory), outside Zurich. Bergi Andonian of Renaissance Carpets & Tapestries, New York City - Photo by Fuat Kircaali That summer I got up at 4 a.m., took the train f... (more)

McNealy Writes the E-Mail He Never Wanted To Write

Oracle News on Ulitzer Sun chairman (and an exclusive Ulitzer columnist) Scott McNealy sent out his farewell to the troops Tuesday, the day before Oracle is supposed to explain what it's going to do with Sun and maybe indicate how many of Sun folks it's going to fire. Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz told Sun employees last week that "Upon change in control, every employee needs to emotionally resign from Sun. Go home, light a candle, and let go of the expectations and assumptions that defined Sun as a workplace. Honor and remember them, but let then go." Here's what Scott had to say: "Gang, "When I interviewed many of you for employment at Sun over the years, one commitment often made was that things will change above, below, and around you faster than any place you have ever been. Looks like this was one area we exceeded plan for 28 years. While it was never the primar... (more)