Kudos to Doonesbury. A major problem in the United States is the drop in the number of students studying engineering in college. Reportedly, we are graduating fewer engineers than we used to and are falling far behind other countries, such as China and Russia. This was one of the issues Ray Kurzweil and I discussed [...]

Famous last words?. I almost fell off my chair when I read this: ” I don't really feel personally as though Microsoft is behind in any way, shape or form related to services, except for the size of revenues from the new economic model ” – Ray Ozzie, CTO Services, Microsoft Not behind in any, [...]

Guest post from Nick Bradbury: What Can I Learn from You?. Hi folks, this is Nick Bradbury, the author of FeedDemon for Windows. Now that Brent and I are co-workers, we thought it would be a great idea to guest post on each other's blog today as a way to introduce ourselves, and also to [...]

So ya wanna be a consultant?. So Matt in the mailbag says that he's planning to become a consultant in the next 6 to 8 months and is studying right now for the Small Business Specialist exam. Matt….here are some more ideas to help you in your journey…. Join a partner group – the web [...]

Guest Host: Faces of Innovation. During my week as guest host here at FC Now, I've tried to amplify, explain, or improvise on the Ten Faces of Innovation from my new book that appears in the current issue of Fast Company. Those posts were mixed in with the prolific blogging of other Fast Company editorial [...]

Responding to a security breach. InfoWorld sister publication NetworkWorld has a feature on steps to take when your network has fallen prey to an attacker. Responding to a security breach looks at ways in which organizations reacted once they knew a problem had occurred, including good approaches to handling the situation, as well some of [...]

The Price of Compatibility?. Business Week tech columnist Stephen Wildstrom piped in on the Windows vs. Mac OS security debate with one of the most reasonable explanations I have heard yet. In “Why Worms Shun Apple's OS X,” he writes: “OS X offers inherently better security for several reasons. The most important is that it [...]

Shipping Windows Vista, When?. As I've blogged before, Windows Vista's development progress is closely aligned with Windows Server 2003 R2. Simply put: It was from clean server code that Microsoft began earnest Windows Vista development. I would expect Windows Vista Beta 2 (the build that supposedly will be publicly distributed) to be available around the [...]

MySQL 5 Released. The long awaited MySQL 5 has been released. New to this significantly update are views, triggers, stored procedures, and more. I've been using MySQL 5 since very early beta days, and it has been solid and stable (and every bug I reported has been fixed). Download your copy now. [Ben Forta's Blog]

Something Rotten in AdSense. Google AdSense is a system for web publishers of all sizes, from big newspapers to tiny bloggers. They sign up with Google to place a small box full of text ads on their site. You've probably seen it, but if you haven't, check out Michael's techInterview site for an example. Advertisers [...]