Articles by Jack M. Germain

Having secured funding from Hummer Winblad Venture Partners,Lightspeed Venture Partners and Morgenthaler Ventures, MuleSourcecofounder Ross Mason turned what was the Mule Project into an opensource player on the fast track. Re-invigorated with new CEO GregSchott when another cofounder, Dave Rosenberg, left the company, MuleSource hasbeen ramping up its business in the wake of a recession that hasgutted some proprietary legacy players...

Mention social networks to most Web users, and they'll likelytell you about general-interest gathering places like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. However, other social networks -- some large, some small -- exist to provide users with a way to communicate about slightly more specific topics. LinkedIn, for one, emphasizes professional and career networking. Wesabe is one that's focused on personal finance...

The security of any given computer system is no better than the skills researchersbring to finding the next potential program flaw. Network securityworkers concentrate on updating patches and making sure only validatedusers can access the corporate LAN (local area network). Meanwhile, security researchershunt for existing but unidentified infrastructure flaws that could letin the bad guys...

In 2004, KnowledgeTree CEO Daniel Chalef had no idea his interest in developing an open sourcedocument management product would thrust his South African company into prominence.That's the time a government agency there approached him to help the Medical Research Council retain control of its documents and track sharedaccess That South African counc...

You might say that entrepreneur Alan E. Hall lives in two businessworlds. Don't complain to him how challenging it is to grow a businessin today's fragile economy. He knows those struggles firsthand as abusiness owner. He also knows how next-to-impossible it is forstartup business owners to find financial backers. He is the founder and chairman of...

You might say that entrepreneur Alan E. Hall lives in two businessworlds. Don't complain to him how challenging it is to grow a businessin today's fragile economy. He knows those struggles firsthand as abusiness owner. He also knows how next-to-impossible it is forstartup business owners to find financial backers. He is the founder and chairman of...

You might say that entrepreneur Alan E. Hall lives in two businessworlds. Don't complain to him how challenging it is to grow a businessin today's fragile economy. He knows those struggles firsthand as abusiness owner. He also knows how next-to-impossible it is forstartup business owners to find financial backers. He is the founder and chairman of...

In the U.S., consumers are accustomed to paying for merchandise with checks, credit cards and debit cards. Online shopping and banking transactions are dependent on electronic money transfers between vendors and their customers' financial institutions That experience, however, is not universal. Consumers in Europe and Asia are used to different typ...

Part 1 of this two-part series discusses ways to transition into Linux without leaving Windows behind all at once Six months ago, I began a self-imposed experiment to see if I couldsurvive leaving Windows XP behind. After all, despite its flaws anddecade-old technology, the aging Microsoft OS had served me well. However,I decided to skip Windows 7 ...

Microsoft has a very clever philosophy that it uses to keep consumersmisinformed about the benefits of the Linux operating system. It's asimple message that effectively dissuades consumers from deviatingfrom the Microsoft upgrade path to Windows 7 The argument basically asserts that consumers making the Windowsupgrade will continue to enjoy a fami...

Microsoft made good Tuesday on a promise it made months ago to the open source community that it would not sue software developers who use its EMCA C# programming language and Common LanguageInfrastructure, or CLI This announcement aims to calm growing fears that Microsoft might restrict open source projects by going after program developers for pa...

It seemed like a logical leap: If you already provide shoppers with couponsonline, what's to stop you from offering them an online source for e-gift cards? So thefounders of online gift card company CashStar pooled resources withonline shopping coupon mogul Coupons Inc. to create an outlet formerchants to offer more services than are available fr...

This story was originally published on April 6, 2009, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. Does cloud computing cause a dilemma for application developers? Does it present problems that devs would not face in building software for earth-bound applications? ...

Here's one of the many questions facing device makers targeting the mini notebook and netbook markets: When business users or consumers want to access the Web on the go, will they be willing to set aside a smartphone or cellphone and instead log on using a next-generation PDA? Dell may be wagering the answer is yes. The Wall Street Journal reporte...

Adesso's newest keyboard, the Wireless Slimtouch Ergo, is a love-it-or-hate-it type of product. If you can getalong without the features it misses and get through the learning curve,you might just keep it It has a few interesting features to offer those looking for a changeof pace. However, making the move probably will not be an easy transition....

T-Mobile's Tuesday announcement that it will offer a new Android smartphone in August has raised interest in the possibility of greater competition for enterprise adoption The new Android-powered smartphone, the myTouch 3G, will come loaded with a 3.5-inch touchscreen, a 3.5-megapixel camera and a preinstalled 4-GB microSD memory card. However, the...

SourceForge, a media services and e-commerce company that provides open source software downloads and development, is enjoying the best of both business worlds. It is one of the largest open source software repositories -- the SourceForge Web site has more than 30 million unique visitors permonth -- and it reported more than US$40 million in earnings for its last quarter, with no outstanding debt...

Wind River on Tuesday announced the availability of a high-performance Type-1 hypervisor as the latest addition to its VxWorks product portfolio. The Wind River Hypervisor Multicore Software Solution for device development supports virtualization on single and multicore processors....

The economy is still broken, and businesses are scampering to savemoney and entice back lost customers. Don't remind Brett Caine, though. As president of Citrix Online, he's too busy growing thecompany's customer base into aUS$100 million business that a few years ago didn't exist As a young startup in 1997, Expertcity was a provider of Web-basedde...

The Asus EeeTop ET1602 is an interesting computer with some potentialfor home and business use. However, it will surely cause considerablediscussion over what users might really do with it The ET1602 is essentially a netbook-like computer with a 14-inch by8-inch LCD touchscreen wrapped around it. With an overall unitmeasurement of 16 X 11.5 inches,...