Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Finally, something that might kill PowerPoint

It's the one use of HTML5 that I've actually found some purpose for.

http://fayetteadvocate.com/archives/11511/2013/10/15/bunkr-unveils-new-major-version-of-its-powerpoint-killer/

Some technology that might actually make web applications as complex and responsive as Silverlight or Flash

They bypass the browser's renderer.  It's in beta now.  It's supposed to operate without plugins on all browsers, although they haven't announced support for Internet Explorer yet.

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-10-2013/131015-reinventing-the-web.html?page=1

Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Well, I got one thing right anyway...

I commented in a PBDJ article a while back that:
That's when I had an epiphany. Windows 8 might actually make sense. It runs on both ARM and x86 processors. It has desktop and Metro (mobile) modes. It includes virtualization. Perhaps Microsoft is thinking ahead to a time when we don't need an operating system that can deploy to different devices, but an operating system that can deploy to a single device that has a number of different form factors.
Microsoft recently confirmed that is something that they are trying to accomplish.  Not specifically with Windows 8, but Windows 8 does seem to be a step in that direction.

Monday, October 07, 2013

A petition update and a new petition....

It's two weeks until SAP TechEd Las Vegas, and we've ready 1,891 signatures on the petition for SAP to take some action with regard to PowerBuilder.  That means we need 109 more to reach our goal by the beginning of TechEd.

Meanwhile, a number of people have expressed some concerns with one or both features of the current petition:

1.  That causes.com seems to require a Facebook account in order to sign the petition, and people don't want to create a Facebook account or link their existing one with the petition.

2.  That some of the proposed actions (i.e., sell the product or release it to open source) were more extreme than they felt comfortable signing onto.  Instead, they just wanted to urge SAP to proceed with the release of PowerBuilder 15 that everybody has been waiting for.

As a result of that feedback, I've created a second petition on change.org, one that does not require a Facebook account and which only urges the release of PowerBuilder 15.  I've also received translations of the text of the petition in German, Spanish and Japanese.  There is also a Hebrew translation in the works, but for now I've included a Google Translation generated version.  I'll replace that with the human generated version as soon as it's available.

You can access the new petition at change.org.  Please pass it along to those you know who haven't signed the first petition for some reason.