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It now seems inevitable that Google and Apple will face each other in the courts. The great irony is that Apple will be fighting for open standards for the smartphone industry, while Google appears set on a course to make FRAND deals a whole lot less friendly. So much for the 'open' OS...

The decision used to be an easy one. Now the tables are turned.

What's a surge protector to do after it can no longer provide surge protection? In a follow-up to a previous blog, APC officially stands behind their documentation that says their NET8 model will not provide unprotected power. Tripp Lite says nothing, leading credence to their own documentation which says that their ISOBAR4ULTRA does provide unprotected power after it fails.

Google is working on a home-entertainment system that will wirelessly stream music to speakers throughout a home -- and Microsoft, more than any company, has the most to lose if Google succeeds. Music is only Google's first target. Next up are television and movies, which Microsoft wants to control in the home as well.

Flashback to the 1980s, when alcohol hasn't yet been banned where this pilot fish works, and a development team discovers just how useful it can be in a big project in the data center.

Windows 8 is coming, and now we know that Windows on ARM (WOA) will include four Office 15 apps. In Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) latest spot of kimono-opening, we gain surprising new insights into the new OS. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers dig into the details. Not to mention: Off and on and off and on and off...

Before you start making changes in the organization steam rolling toward the goal of a private cloud, it's important that you understand where you are today so that you can plot the right trajectory, and as you progress toward your goal, make course corrections as needed.

It's patent-troll time once again, folks. A one-person* company that adds zero economic value is suing a huge laundry list of companies who use the Web. The company claims it invented a common Web page feature, so it should be entitled to licensing fees. What sort of crazy is this? Explanations in today's The Long View...
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When you buy a MP3 from iTunes, do you own it? What if you could resell some of the ton of digital music you don't listen to, but that is taking up hard drive space? You can buy and legally resell "used" MP3s on eMarketplace ReDigi, the brainchild of former MIT programmers. Like the RIAA which refuses to change a broken business model, Capitol Records had a copyright infringement cow and objected in court. However a judge handed the first round victory to ReDigi, not Capitol. It's looking good for music lovers.

Google's Android Ice Cream Sandwich release is slowly trickling out to devices around the world -- and today, HTC has promised to send the upgrade to three more of its phones.

A few days ago a customer came to me with a question; they wanted to know what online services were consuming the most amount of bandwidth on their Internet connection. Easy, I thought, and I proceeded to show them how to report on the top websites consuming bandwidth. The problem was that the top entries in the list were all sites associated with content delivery networks (CDN).  

In a previous post, I invoked Thomas Jefferson in predicting the future of storage.

As I prepare to conclude and summarize this series of Computerworld posts, I'd like to invoke another, eminently-quotable American statesman, Dan Quayle. Our 44^th vice president famously described the future by stating:

"The future will be better tomorrow."

Instead of bulk capital expenditures for large servers and storage arrays, you can purchase computer time based on actual usage of CPU cycles and storage by the number of gigabytes or terabytes used. But here are ten things to consider before you jump into the cloud. Insider (registration required)

It is commonplace in our industry to refer to the applications and other functionality that IT delivers to users as "services." We talk about the performance of the "IT services" to the desktop. We talk about the "service catalog" that we offer the business. We even claim to have "service-oriented architectures." Unfortunately, despite all this talk, corporate IT is still not very service-oriented at all. And one of the main ways this lack of service-orientation reveals itself is in IT's opacity. Insider (registration required)

Unless you're a network security or IT security professional, hearing the word "compliance" probably makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. It's sort of like when you realized that Bruce Willis was dead at the end of The Sixth Sense - you suspected something was wrong for a while but now your dread has come to life.