Mac News: RIM ‘considers’ sale options: Should Apple buy BlackBerry?
With poor sales and a desperate hedge on the next-generation QNX-based BlackBerry 10 devices, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion’s is in utter turmoil. The company is struggling to stand up, let alone walk, and its shareholders are pleading for it to change the will.
Read full story => ZDnet
Technology News: Obama’s big data plans: Lots of cash and lots of open data
The White House on Thursday morning released the details of its new big data strategy, and they involve access to funding and data for researchers. It’s a big financial commitment in a time of tight budgets — well over $200 million a year — but the administration is banking on big data techniques having revolutionary effects on par with the Internet, which federal dollars financed decades ago.
Read full story => gigaom
Programming News: On Community Funding of Open Source
The other day Yehuda Katz announced a kickstarter for creating Rails.app, an OS X application that makes it easy to bring new programmers to Rails and Ruby. I think the idea is fantastic. When I first started learning Ruby I had to do battle with compilers, RubyGems didn’t exist, the RAA had but a handful of libraries, and there weren’t really even any tutorials for learning Ruby around. I had either fortitude or stubbornness on my side to get through the much steeper learning curve than many of you had to deal with to get where I am today, and it sucked.
Read full story => segment7
Standards News: ISO Focus+ magazine puts spotlight on services
From traditional sales-related services to intangibles such as banking, tourism, and education, services represent the fastest growing sector of the global economy. They are also by far the largest component of GDP. The March 2012 issue of ISO Focus+ – the magazine of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) – looks at the current developments in the international standardization of services and highlights the positive impact they will have, not only for specific services, but for the global market as a whole.
Read full story => ISO
