UK Net Entrepreneurs to Run Web Startup Soflow
291974
Two British entrepreneurs who founded online dating service Udate.com and sold it last year to media mogul Barry Diller's InterActive Corp  for &#36;150 million, have resurfaced to run a professionals-networking Web start-up.
405566
Blog: The social networking company plans to launch an API to connect to other services.
499189
Wanted to blog about this  but I'm about to walk out the door for the night.  "As the number of blogs, news services and other syndicated sources of online information balloons, a new crop of start-ups has emerged promising to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. And venture capitalists and veteran Internet investors Marc Andreessen and Ron Conway are right behind one of them."  "Rojo, a San Francisco start-up in the blog aggregation business, "is wrapping a communications capability around content consumption," said Andreessen, Web browser pioneer, Rojo investor and Opsware chairman. "And the killer app for the Internet is and always has been communication.""  ...  "Rojo founders Chris Alden, ...
757660
(InfoWorld) - BEA Systems is planning a dynamic application infrastructure codenamed "Project Genesis," for building next-generation business applications that incorporate technologies including mashups. BEA sees a new generation of flexible, dynamic, and real-time composite applications emerging built on concepts like SOA, said Alfred Chuang, BEA Chairman, CEO, and president, during the BEAWorld conference in San Francisco on Tuesday morning.Â  "Genesis is a system that radically simplifies the way that we create, operate, and govern dynamic next-generation applications," said Chuang. Genesis is expected to be a set of products enabling the whole lifecycle of dynamic business applications, including the ability to build mashups and dynamic business infrastructure, according to the company. "The goal is the 24-hour product [development] cycle," with Genesis, said Bill Roth, vice president of the BEA Workshop business unit. Dynamic applications focus on individual needs. "Dynamic business applications are tailored to the individual, to be tailored for the person so the user doesn't need to switch from app to app to complete a task," Chuang said. The Genesis platform will feature user-based pricing and incorporate SaaS capabilities, Chuang said. The company's Workspace 360 technology serves as the development environment for Genesis. Packaged applications can no longer be the focus, according to Chuang. "We cannot innovate with packaged enterprise applications because we can't afford to work with them. They're rigid and monolithic systems," he said.Â  Chuang did not immediately provide details on when Genesis would be available. Chuang stressed the evolution of the Internet as a tool for self expression and productivity. He also touted mashups, describing them as generally Web-based applications that leverage consumer-oriented sites for external facing audiences. But mashups now are spreading to the enterprise. "Mashups are an example of how the world is changing so rapidly," with mashups available for purposes ranging from finding the 100 best fishing holes in the United States to rating dance moves, he said.Â  Following Chuang's presentation, Comcast CIO Andrew Baer touted his company's use of SOA after presenting an overview of the company's video, cable Internet and voice products. The company is building an infrastructure featuring SOA and intended to provide for business flexibility. "I want us to be in apposition where if the needs to come up with a new idea, in many, many cases from a technology perspective, we can launch that in 24 hours," Baer said. "We are firmly committed to SOA and a set of loosely coupled, coarse-grained services with all kinds of implementations underneath that," said Baer. Comcast is using BEA products, such as the company's AquaLogic Service Bus and the WebLogic Server application server. Comcast has goals such as improving its call center with a productivity portal for 20,000 customer service representatives. Also at the conference, BEA announced the first product component of its WorkSpace 360 environment with the release of BEA AquaLogic Registry Repository 3.0. The repository can provide shared metadata management and structured workflow processes. Also, the registry is designed to improve and management and governance of SOA deployments. Featured in version 3.0 are advanced workflows to automate approval-based processes, a metadata interoperability framework, an Eclipse plug-in, and built-in best practices. WorkSpace 360 has been described by BEA as a set of tools allowing for participation of different roles in an SOA lifecycle.
272671
Server and software company prepares new foray into market for dot-com infrastructure.
198489
By Anonymous  The original investors in Skype - Joost, Google, hotmail and Draper Richards - have joined forces to launch a new venture, kyte.  Kyte brings together user-generated content, mobile and TV.
116588
Great and good say Huzzah! The UK now has its own national think tank for open source and open standard policy.â¦
542136
(InfoWorld) - A new U.K. think tank launched on Monday will analyze how open-source software can be used in government and the private sector. The National Open Center, based in Birmingham, England, will be composed of working groups that will study open-source issues, such as the use of standards and procurement guidelines, said Ed Downs, of the National Computing Center, a professional IT membership organization. Unlike other European countries, the U.K. lacked an organization dedicated to studying open-source software, he said. "If open source and open standards can make a contribution, that's what we want to do," Downs said. Many of the innovations on the Internet would not have been possible without open-source softwareÂ like the Apache Web server, said Scott Thompson, one of the founders of the National Open Center. Companies like GoogleÂ and Yahoo use open source to drive down their software costs, he said. Open source helps avoid such trapsÂ as vendor lock-in and higher costs associated with proprietary software, he said. But using open source is fraught with risks as well as opportunities. Many public sector agencies are ignorant about open source, and misguided procurement policies have complicated open-source implementations, said John Pugh, a member of Parliament. Some open-source companies have also struggled in selling their products and services, while their continued viability has been sometimes questionable, Pugh said. The politics around open-source software are bitter, he said. "Open source has enemies, and its enemies are very, very close to government," Pugh said. MicrosoftÂ believes organizations don't care whether their software is open source or proprietary as long as it's the best product, said Jerry Fishenden, the company's U.K. national technology officer, who attended the launch. About 5 percent of the total IT spend in the U.K. is actually on the software itself with the rest comprised of consulting fees, system integration costs, and more, Fishenden said. Those costs are where organizations could make significant savings, he said. Â
711433
A dot-com enabler for small financial institutions is rolling in the dough.
298579
Google licks its chops Unhappy with the way they've been treated by Hollywood's old school film and television producers, more than a few big name American movie and TV writers are bootstrapping startups in an effort to distribute their own material. And naturally, they plan on distributing via the web.â¦
422816
(InfoWorld) - Raising the stakes in the burgeoning mashup development tools field, JackBe is unveiling Presto Wires, a visual enterprise mashup composer, at the AJAXWorld conference in Santa Clara, Calif. on Monday. The tool functions with the company's Presto Edge mashup server, which offers secure access to disparate data and services. Users of Presto Wires, who would be business analysts as well as developers, can integrate Web services via a drag-and-drop workflow. These could be services based on REST, WSDL, RSS, and SOAP as well as services produced from SOA infrastructure. Services can be gathered from such sources as RSS feeds, maps from Google, and research data. "[Presto Wires] gives enterprise users the ability to mash these different Web services together with minimal or no support from IT [and] with all the security and governance that larger enterprises expect," Chor-Ching Fan, vice president of product management at JackBe, said. JackBe defines mashups as applications integrating two or more data services and allowing users to specify how the data is mashed up, such as stipulating how columns of data are to be joined. "The main benefit [of mashups] is to allow business units to solve ad hoc business issues," said Fan. Presto Wires can access public Web services and integrate them with internal data sources to look for business opportunities. Presto Wires allows enterprises, including business units and non-technical people, to leverage SOA investments and combine data sets and business rules, according to JackBe. "Many enterprises have made major investments into SOA, and they cannot deliver the value and benefits of SOA without allowing the business units to do mashups on their own," Fan said. "Presto is providing the way that business users can take advantage of the SOA investments," made in the past five to 10 years, he said. An analyst compared Presto Wires to a Yahoo technology. "JackBe's Presto Wires resembles data mashup construction environments like Yahoo Pipes, which is focused on the consumer Web space," said analyst Vishwanath Venugopalan of The 451 Group. "Yahoo Pipes operates almost entirely on syndicated Internet data feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.) Presto Wires offers business users a chance to expand the scope of these data mashups to traditional enterprise data sources such as spreadsheets and Web services." While JackBe leverages AJAX to provide for more intuitive, user-friendly mashup creation, no programming is required. Users can drag and drop objects. Presto Wires carries a list price of $40,000 per CPU.
715122
LONDON - The number of newcomers to the internet in Britain has surged this year to its highest level since the dotcom heyday of 2001, according to a study.
360840
(InfoWorld) - AmberPoint on Tuesday will extend its Web services and SOA management system to SAP's NetWeaver business process platform and services based on the ABAP (Advanced Business Application Program) programming language. Through a Development Cooperation Agreement, AmberPoint SOA Management System will provide performance analysis and debugging in the application development stage, quality assurance during staging, and application-level visibility, said Ed Horst, vice president of marketing at AmberPoint. With SAP getting ready to release application components as Web services, AmberPoint is looking to offer management of SAP-based Web services and visibility into ABAP as well, Horst said. "This [arrangement] provides management for those services and a heterogeneous environment around it," Horst said. Organizations using Web services running on NetWeaver will have out-of-the-box integration capabilities with the AmberPoint management platform. Visibility and control will be provided across heterogeneous application networks, including Java and ABAP Web services on NetWeaver. "The major benefit [of the integration] is SOA has lots of pieces to it and SAP will be large part of the landscape, and our job -- our mandate -- is to provide out-of-the-box management for as much of the SOA environment as possible," Horst said. The company's AmberPoint for SAP package will provide an interface between AmberPoint and SAP. With the AmberPoint deal, SAP gets visibility into the larger SOA environment, said analyst Anne Thomas Manes, vice president and research director at Burton Group. The deal represents a big win for AmberPoint because SAP traditionally never makes deals with little companies, Manes said. SAP likely has been finding AmberPoint in accounts and is getting word from customers, she said. "Custom integration between AmberPoint and NetWeaver will ensure a turnkey SOA management solution for the SAP environment that seamlessly integrates with other SOA environments," Manes said. "I see no downside to this partnership for AmberPoint, SAP, or their respective customers," Manes said. AmberPoint can interface with NetWeaver now; an extension for ABAP is due by the end of 2006. AmberPoint's announcement is being made at the SAP TechEd '06 conference in Las Vegas. SAP officials could not be reached for comment on Monday. InfoWorldEditor-at-Large Eric Knorr contributed to this report
314276
TechWeb - The company expects to fill what it sees as a market void -- Web-based software that's affordable to small businesses with up to 50 employees.
255774
The cofounder of a Web site that offers free streamed music from top artists said he&#39;s determined to operate his service legally despite menacing overtures from Universal Music Group.
390864
The founder of Easyjet confirms he is to enter the online music market in a partnership with UK-based download service Wippit.
395486
Phillip Merrick, founder and former chief executive of Washington technology company WebMethods, is launching a new venture today that tries to apply the powers of Web 2.0 to job hunting.