With quick commentary notes from NetQoS CTO, Dr. Cathy Fulton

Ars Technica: Adobe launches Apollo, its web application runtime for the desktop

Now this is seriously cool – Adobe is developing a runtime library that allows Inter-and-intranet enabled runtime apps to work offline as well as online; allowing Web developers to access, edit, and store information even when the network is down or slow.

Granted, no one likes it when the network is down, but sometimes it does happen. This way, people can still use the Web apps and just have the information be updated when the network comes back up. Additionally, you could theoretically use this to schedule SAAS apps to run at a certain time, freeing up some network bandwidth for peak periods.

Downey then pulled the network cable and showed that new auctions could be created even when offline, and the application would automatically upload them to eBay when the computer was next connected. He also demonstrated how the application could create an Excel spreadsheet based on online data and save it to the desktop.

Adobe is giving the runtime away for free, and it can be distributed with each application or downloaded separately from Adobe's web site. The openness extends to third-party applications as well—users can select "View Source" from a menu to see the underlying code behind any Apollo application.

This is especially cool for people who like to use network apps in Wi-Fi enabled coffeeshops, which often have unpredictable downtimes or crowded pipes. Soon, you’ll be able to use Apollo at Starbucks.

(I still haven’t seen all of Season 2.5 yet! Nobody tell me anything!)

Dr. Fulton: It’s certainly cool to have an app work offline and online seamlessly as the network performance degrades. I wish more developers, more companies, would get excited about ensuring their applications worked well online under different network scenarios, however.

Network World: Stanford Researchers Scheming to Rebuild Internet from Scratch.

The “Clean Slate Design for the Internet” is a Stanford University event where researchers will, essentially, explain how the Internet is good, but it could be better if we just started over.

The researchers already have projects underway to support their effort: Flow-level models for the future Internet; clean slate approach to wireless spectrum usage; fast dynamic optical light paths for the Internet core; and a clean slate approach to enterprise network security (Ethane).

Quite frankly, I’m wary of anything replacing the Internet, in this political and economic climate. The Internet developed under the radar of everyone except the geeks; a “clean slate” would invite so many special interest groups, corporations, and national governments to bring in input that the entire operation may be politically, if not technically unfeasible. However, there’s nothing wrong with hearing out the ideas.

Dr. Fulton: This is primarily a “fishing for funding” academic marketing exercise. But a few gems might be discovered that actually will be of practical future use. And that fundamentally is what research is about.

InfoWorld: The Business Case for Open Source Software

This is an editorial espousing the virtues of OSS software solutions for the “free as in speech” approach, pointing out that proprietary software sometimes has onerous licensing restrictions. It’s an interesting read if you haven’t considered it – but we particularly like this one line in the opening paragraph.

“What we really care about (or should care about) is making a sound business decision regarding software.”

We agree with him – mostly – but we also believe that sometimes the open source solution isn’t always the best solution. By all means, software needs to be able to survive the company that spawns it and licensing should be enabling, not disabling. But sometimes the cost of paying for software is worth it – the classic case is GIMP vs. Photoshop. I use both, I prefer Photoshop, and think it’s worth the money. If GIMP ever became as feature-rich as Photoshop, I’d probably use that instead.

Dr. Fulton: The hidden cost of software is in the additional personnel time required to retrieve/maintain the desired solution. I’ve found some open source solutions to be superior (for my uses) to commercial solutions – I use them even when the commercial option is freely available (meaning, the company already purchased it). For large-scale tasks, however, open source solutions usually are not viable. Their hidden cost outweighs their flexibility.

UBCD4Win.com: How to Build the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows

Essentially, this allows you to create a “LiveCD” version of Windows for troubleshooting Windows systems. I often use LiveCDs – Ubuntu mainly – to troubleshoot family computers that won’t boot, but now it’s great to have an option to use Windows. I’m sure many of you already know how to do this but if you don’t, I’m sure you can come up with situations where knowing it would be useful.