Soft District

While the Yahoo vs. Microsoft affair, previously known to be finally over, seems to have some dark areas yet to be discovered, another incident involving Microsoft has been brought into the light once again - the European Comission has just added Microsoft's promise to improve the compatibility of Office applications with competing programs to its concerns list...


Expected to become reality next year, Microsoft's promises include the ability to save PDF files in Office 2007, together with other non-Microsoft formats, in addition to its Office Open XML format, shortly known as OOXML.

On Thursday, the European Union's executive arm said "In its ongoing antitrust investigation concerning interoperability with Microsoft Office, the commission will investigate whether the announced support of PDF in Office leads to better interoperability."

So far, Microsoft was forced to pay no less than $2.63 billion in fines in the E.U, so they should be extra-careful this time. It seems Europe shouldn't be taken lightly...

If you didn't knew that already, I have to tell you that the Codie Awards is a yearly award issued by the Software and Information Industry Association for excellence in software development, primarily among its members. Established in 1986, the Excellence in Software Awards program became the Codie Awards in 1993, and now I just found out the results of this year's edition...


Ken Wasch, SIAA president, said "What I think is most gratifying is the Codie awards are a [great] leveler and smaller companies have as much chance to win as large companies," and it's enough to say that Red Hat, Adobe Systems and Salesforce.com, together with "newbies" such as SightSpeed got back home with prizes.

But let's cut the talking and see highlights of this year's winners list, shall we? Here we go...

* Asset management -- Express Metrix with its Express Software Manager
* Business Productivity -- Jigsaw, Jigsaw.
* Collaboration solution -- Adobe, Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional
* Communication Solution -- SightSpeed, SightSpeed 6.0
* Content Management -- Clickability, Clickability On-Demand Web Content Management Platform
* Data Security -- Absolute Software, Computrace Complete
* Database management -- FileMaker, FileMaker Pro 9
* E-commerce -- NetSuite, NetSuite 2007.0
* Enterprise search engine -- Coveo, Coveo Enterprise Search 5.0
* Identity management -- Red Hat, Red Hat Directory Server
* Open source solution -- Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
* On-demand platform - -Salesforce.com, Force.com
* Security solution -- Novell, Novell Identity and Security Management Portfolio
* SaaS solution -- Salesforce.com, Salesforce CRM
* Systems management -- Kace, Kbox Systems Management Appliance
* Web services solution -- Adobe, Adobe ColdFusion 8.

Anyway, the full list is a few times as long as the above, and you can see it on the official Codie 2008 winners page.

Yesterday, Steve Ballmer found himself under siege! A decade after Bill Gates took a cream pie right into the face, Ballmer managed to avoid 3 eggs thrown at him by a guy who doesn't like sports, probably, because he managed to miss such a big target from less than 10 meters! Anyway, since the Internet is boiling already because of this subject, I will give you the movie below.

Well, there you have it! If you have a very slow connection and can't watch the movie, here's what you should know - a T-Shirt with "Microsoft=Corruption" written on it, and three eggs= probably less than $15. Steve Ballmer's reaction? Priceless!

After going for cover behind a desk, Ballmer said "It was a friendly disruption. That broke my train of thought." I wonder what would have been the answer if that guy was better trained in egg attacks...