Here is a question that I have been pondering on and off for quite a while: Why do 'cool kids' choose Ruby or PHP to build websites instead of Java? I have to admit that I do not have an answer. Why do I even care? Because I am a Java developer. Like many Java developers, I get along with Java well. Not only the language itself, but the development environments (Eclipse for example), step-by-step debugging helper, wide availability of libraries and code snippets, and the readily accessible information on almost any technical question I may have on Java via Google. Last but not least, I go to JavaOne and see 10,000 people that talk and walk just like me.

Key opinion-formers in the field of infrastructure and pioneers of virtualization technologies of all types have already begun submitting speaking proposals to Virtualization Conference & Expo 2008 East, being held in New York City, 23-24 June, 2008. Topics covered will range from Server Virtualization, Application Virtualization, Desktop Virtualization, Network Virtualization, I/O Virtualization and Storage Virtualization, to Virtual Machine Automation, Physical to Virtual (P2V) Migration, Management Applications, Tools and Utilities, and Virtualization Scripts and Procedures.

Norwegian browser maker Opera Software ASA has complained to the European Commission that Microsoft is abusing its dominant position by tying its Internet Explorer browser to the Windows operating system and hindering interoperability by not following accepted Web standards. It wants IE unbundled or Windows to preinstall competitive browsers on the desktop. And - and this seems extraordinary even for Europeans - it wants the EC to compel Microsoft to support open web standards 'accepted by the web-authoring communities.'

In keeping with the longstanding SYS-CON tradition of being at the very forefront of software development with all its online and offline resources, SYS-CON Media & Events jointly today announced a double whammy, launching both 'Open Web Developer's Journal' (htt p://openweb.sys-con.com) and 'Open Web Developer Summit' (http://openweb.s ys-con.com) - to be held for the first time in New York City April 21-22, 2008.

SYS-CON Events has created a hands-on, immersive learning experience for all Web developers who want to know the how, what, and why of the tools and concepts behind AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), the popular user-interface approach to creating Rich Internet Applications. AJAXWorld University AJAX Bootcamp is a compelling, intensive, one-day, hands-on training program that will teach Web developers, Web designers, and other Web professionals how to build high-quality AJAX applications from beginning to end.

SYS-CON.TV invites you to join an industry all-star lineup today at 1:30PM EST - Enerjy CEO, Nigel Cheshire; renowned IT guru, Andrew Binstock; and Java Developer's Journal publisher, Jeremy Geelan - as they shine the spotlight on the increased quality and reliability your applications will enjoy by using quality metrics at the developer level to build your software development process!

SYS-CON Events (www.events.sys-con.com) announced today that the first international 'AJAXWorld(TM) Conference & Expo' (www.ajaxworldexpo.com), taking place on October 3-4, 2006, at theSanta Clara Convention Center, California, will offer AJAXWorld University - Developer Bootcamp program. The AJAX Developer Bootcamp will take placeon Monday, October 2, 2006, one day before the conference opens.

Salesforce.com , the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, today marked a major milestone in on-demand computing, announcing that on July 31, 2006 the company's industry leading Salesforce service handled more than 50 million transactions in a single day. During July the company handled more than one billion transactions (page views or API calls through Salesforce or AppExchange applications), demonstrating the vitality and scalability of on-demand business applications for all size companies, from small to medium to the largest enterprises.

'Though it's been around for a while, AJAX is now a hot topic in the application developer community because it brings cross-platform rich user interfaces to web applications without having to use products like Microsoft .NET or Macromedia,' said Steve Benfield, VP of strategy & technology evangelism, ClearNova, as he announced his upcoming session at the Atlanta Java Users Group next week

Dice Inc., the leading online career site that helps businesses source technology and engineering professionals, and Targeted Job Fairs, a leading provider of career fairs for technology and engineering candidates nationwide and a Dice company, will host a technology, engineering and security clearance job fair on January 25, 2006 from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM at the Hacienda Hotel. Admission is free.

Twenty-one year old Billy Bones of Orem, Utah is the proud winner of the Game Trust LaunchNow Race to Space Contest. The office worker (http://www .myspace.com/billy427) will travel to Moscow where he'll strap into a Russian MIG 25 and travel a more than twice the speed the speed of sound to the edge of space. At the top of the climb, Billy will gaze back at the Earth, a distant blue 'marble,' and experience a view that only a privileged few have enjoyed!

In response to Intel's ViiV digital home platform, AMD unveiled a chip called AMD Live, saying that it plans a full-featured Athlon 64 X2 dual-core-based consumer multimedia desktop PC and AMD dual-core mobile-based notebook PCs to be delivered mid-year using Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 and later its Vista operating system.

Quest Software and Intrinsic Technologies were chosen by Atlantic Health System to implement Quest's Active Directory migration and management software to simplify and manage its IT infrastructure. 'We were looking to create a more unified directory services environment by having all of our user accounts in Active Directory,' said Pat Zinno, director, Infrastructure Services and Support, Atlantic Health System. 'Our systems are only as stable as the underlying infrastructure allows them to be. Intrinsic and Quest are infrastructure experts, so it just makes sense to use their professional services and software.'

Visual Paradigm provides a suite of products that facilitates organizations to visually and diagrammatically architect, integrate and deploy enterprise applications and their underlying databases. The products are designed to help software development teams to excel the entire model-build-deploy software development process, maximizing and accelerating both team and individual contributions. Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, Eclipse and other major Java-integrated development environments.

PDF Tools focuses delivering reliable PDF products to international customers in virtually all market segments. The company provides server-based software products designed specifically for developers, integrators, consultants, customizing specialists and IT-departments. The tools can be easily embedded into application programs and are available for a multitude of operating system platforms, the company says.

BMC Software, Inc. , a leading provider of enterprise management solutions, today announced the appointment of Stephen (Steve) B. Solcher to the position of senior vice president and chief financial officer, effective immediately. In this role, Mr. Solcher will be responsible for Finance and Accounting, Treasury, Investor Relations, Information Technology, Procurement, Internal Audit and other related functions.

Published reports are claiming that Google has paid $1 billion to take a 5% stake in AOL, thereby securing the significant (10%) portion of its annual sales that derives from AOL.

Verio says that it 'leads the Internet services market by providing state-of-the-art technology with flexible options and control that guarantee the right solution at the right price.' An NTT subsidiary, the company provides Internet access, web hosting, colocation, as well as additional security and network services.

Dedicated Servers from a $99 'Value Series' to the newest Dual Xeon 3.2ghz SATA RAID servers are among the variety of services offered to customers by EV1Servers.net The company also says that it offers a full line of upgrades and add-on solutions.

For the second consecutive year, HostMySite.com has been selected to receive the prestigious Marvin S. Gilman Award of Excellence for outstanding customer service.

Agility, flexibility, and integrity are attributes which underscore any successful business. Typically, this success is based on the way businesses process information. From design and production, through order entry and shipping, information is the critical commodity, so much so that over the years, businesses have gone to great expense to optimize information flow within their supply chain. The reliance on EDI and x400 networks has been one such investment.

Unstructured data is doubling in size each year within most enterprise organizations. Yet in many of these same organizations, this vital information is hidden within individual desktops and fragmented in server silos across the enterprise. Employees spend countless hours looking for relevant content and waste many more hours reproducing work, ultimately costing employers millions of dollars in lost productivity.

'It's time for the software industry to recognize that code quality is in a critical state,' says Enerjy Software CEO Nigel Cheshire. To address this challenge, he says that Enerjy will unveil a new product that will empower development managers to meet the code quality challenge without having to relinquish productivity.

'We are thrilled to get both the backing of such a strong group of strategic investors and a major distribution agreement with AOL,' said the 'Father of ColdFusion,' Jeremy Allaire, now Chairman and CEO of Internet TV start-up Brightcove. Allaire was referring to the announcement yesterday that Brightcove had completed a major strategic financing round, forged a groundbreaking video content distribution partnership with AOL, and appointed Barry Diller, Chairman and CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp and Chairman of Expedia, Inc., to the Brightcove Board of Directors.

A leading developer of cross-platform application publishing and Web-enabling solutions, has announced that it has established a strategic co-marketing agreement with BlueShark Technologies. BlueShark will now offer its Apriza 5400 and 5410 thin-client hardware appliances pre-configured with GraphOn?s GO-Global for Windows CE client software.

IBM has announced new solutions to allow financial services and banking customers to centralize operations and reduce overhead costs. The new IBM Systems Solutions for Branch Banking leverages IBM's growing ecosystem of partners, and also adds another option to the IBM Virtualized Hosted Client Infrastructure solution portfolio.

President George W. Bush has announced that IBM has been awarded the 2004 National Medal of Technology by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Technology Administration in recognition of more than four decades of innovation in semiconductor technology.

It's become very popular lately, even though it's not exactly new. It's been possible to use the concept behind AJAX since browsers introduced the XMLHttpRequest function in 1999. AJAX isn't a technology, or a language, and there's no recipe to implement it; it's just a combination of various components to achieve something you otherwise couldn't: asynchronous http requests. However, since early 2005, when Google and Flickr popularized the concept, its use has grown rapidly.

HP has introduced an expanded Total Print Management portfolio - the company's integrated suite of devices, management software and services designed to help businesses streamline their printing and imaging resources and document output.

Gary Reasons of DocSoft visited SYS-CON headquarters for an exclusive SYS-CON.TV interview to talk about one ofthe latest product releases from DocSoft, element, an XML search platform and an appliance that you can use to search XML data.

The Associated Press and MSN have announced that they are teaming to provide AP members with news video for their Web sites: the AP Online Video Network is born.

Xythos Software announced that more than a half dozen new colleges and universities have joined its customer ranks. Included among these new institutions are Pepperdine University, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Cleveland State University, Meredith College and École Polytechnique Fédérale De Lausanne. With the addition of these institutions, Xythos now counts more than one million licensed users in the academic and research marketplace.

MicrosoftZone.Com has started the process of building new Corporate Board of Directors to coordinate bringing to market our new suite of Business Intelligence products and services.

Synaptris, a provider of enterprise reporting solutions has announced the release of IntelliVIEW Designer 3.0, a product that is slated to add significant power into their IntelliVIEW suite of products.

MapInfo has reported earnings per share of $0.18 for the fourth fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2005, representing the tenth consecutive quarter of year-over-year earnings per share growth for the company.

In conjunction with the release of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, Software FX is offering Chart FX for Visual Studio 2005 which has integrated development environment integration and easy deployment.

Perforce Software has announced that IHP has selected Perforce, the fast Software Configuration Management system, to manage the development of its hardware and software solutions.

Dassault and IBM has announced the release of Version 5 of their Product Lifecycle Management portfolio.

GraphOn Corporation, a developer of cross-platform application publishing and Web-enabling software, has announced that it has entered into a distributorship agreement with Netherlands-based Acropolis Automation BV.

Now the next question coming from the spin circles is 'Will Oracle buy Borland?' Similar questions were raised when IBM's WebSphere chief John Swainson joined CA as their CEO earlier this year.