Replete with wizards and widgets, the latest development tool from LANSA can create a collection of Web applications in a matter of minutes.

Written by Chris Smith

The need for interoperability and the growing variety of skill sets developers find they need to create Web applications in an IBM i environment have focused attention again on the benefits LANSA can bring to the development environment. The company has complied with the needs of changing times by introducing a new version of Visual LANSA and opening up the LANSA repository to all programs.

Tape may be everyone's darling, but SPHiNX is a dandy earning new friends daily.

Written by Chris Smith

I recently wrote an article titled "Bulletin: Tape Is Alive and Well at IBM." It was about several new technologies that will effectively extend the life of tape as a viable backup solution for a decade or longer. However, the whole time I was writing it, I was thinking, "Wow, this is amazing! I thought tape was on the way out long ago!"

That, of course, is a naïve belief. The fact is that almost every company uses tape in one capacity or another for backup or archiving even if they have a more robust backup solution running in parallel.

Rational Team Concert for Power now caters to RPG developers, according to IBM.

Written by Chris Smith

IBM announced upgrades to both RDi and Rational Team Concert last month, giving developers on the IBM i platform more choices and making it just a little easier for them to be a part of the larger enterprise application development environment, according to IBM. They will also have to get used to a new name for their development tool.

The newly released open-source code transformer converts PHP to C++ and makes large, complex PHP Web sites run much faster.

Written by Chris Smith

If ever there were an example of an enterprise-level PHP application, Facebook is it. The social networking super-site serves more than 400 billion PHP-based page views per month, proving beyond question that PHP is suitable for scaling large Web applications—or does it?

Less than a week before the Super Bowl, a technophobe makes a mad dash for a big-screen TV.

Written by Michael Stuhlreyer

A certain frenzied logic takes over five days before the Super Bowl when the Saints are playing and your wife was born and raised in New Orleans and you can't possibly justify $3,000 a ticket plus airfare and hotel. The rationale is unassailable: I presently have a 30" television screen. A 30" screen just will not do. Therefore, I need a bigger TV.

Users now have access to detailed technical information on the world's most technologically advanced server platform.

Written by Chris Smith

IBM released a pair of "technical overview and introduction" Redpapers this week that detail the new line of POWER7 servers, information users will need to evaluate upgrades to POWER7.

The first Redpaper (REDP 4638-00) discusses the IBM Power 750 Express and Power 755 servers. The second (REDP-4639-00) discusses the IBM Power 770 and Power 780 units. Both Redpapers examine the servers in detail from a technical viewpoint—server architecture, energy utilization, virtualization capabilities, memory handling, and processor modes. The publications also take a close look at the architecture of the POWER7 processor, its ability to handle simultaneous multithreading, and memory access.

Along with new medium and high-end servers is a refresh of its development tools.

Written by Chris Smith

IBM this week introduced a new line of midrange and upper-tier servers based on the POWER7 chip. These servers promise to give users a lot more value for their investment and tremendous savings on energy costs.

Ever wonder what the free market in full indulgence mode looks like? Browse the list of Apple's Web apps.

Written by Michael Stuhlreyer

Editor's note: You asked for it, and you got it! Back by popular demand is our "Tirade" humor column.

The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter for an infinite amount of time will eventually type the complete works of William Shakespeare. Well, the monkey's still at work; no Shakespeare yet. But I'm convinced that all the monkey-babble typed to this point has not gone unused, that Apple and its legion of app developers continually sift through the mountains of nonsense words for ideas.