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Ruby on Rails 2.2, an upgrade to the popular Web application framework, was released Friday, featuring an internationalization framework and stronger support for HTTP validators, according to the Ruby on Rails Web site.

With a full-on internationalization framework, internationalization is offered by default. Support for HTTP validators is provided in the form of etag and last-modified, according to the site. This can make it easier to skip expensive processing and also makes it easier to use gateway proxies.

Also featured are thread safety and a connection pool for the Active Record capability in Rails. "So now all elements of Rails are thread-safe, which is a big boon for the JRuby guys in particular," a blog on the site stated. "For C Ruby, we still need a bunch of dependent libraries to go non- blocking before it'll make much of a difference, but work on that is forthcoming."

Rails 2.2 also features improved API docs and a new guides section. It is compatible with Ruby 1.9 and JRuby.

Connection pooling in version 2.2 enables Rails to distribute requests across a pool of databases, according to release notes for the framework. Transactional migrations in version 2.2 are supported on PostgreSQL out of the box. The code will be extensible to other database types in the future, the notes said.

The framework can be installed through the RubyGems packaging system for Ruby.

Ruby on Rails was created by David Heinemeier Hansson, and Ruby and Ruby on Rails were featured at this week's QCon conference in San Francisco.

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, who co-founded the company, stepped aside this week to the surprise of no one who has followed the recent travails of the company. While that ship continued to list, the IETF debated what, if anything, to do about the problematic DNS bug that was discovered earlier this year. And the BlackBerry Storm lived up to its name, if not entirely to its hype, as it debuted in the United States and the United Kingdom.

[ Video: Catch up on the week's news with the World Tech Update ]

1. Yahoo's Yang to step down as CEO and What's Yahoo's next move?: From the "it's about time" file -- Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang is leaving the company's CEO post, which he took over in July 2007. While he took charge to try to right what was wrong with the company, his CEO tenure didn't go so well, with the failed Microsoft buyout attempt, followed by a failed ad deal with Google, with two rounds of layoffs and slumping finances mixed in. Yang will continue as a board member, and when a new CEO is found he will resume his previous title of "Chief Yahoo." What happens next at Yahoo has been the source of much debate this week.

2. A future without programming: There are presently tons of codeless app dev tools available, tools that will help you create an app without having to do any of the coding yourself. This is a great boon to people who want to create simple apps without having to write all the code, or even noncoders who just want to make the app that they need themselves. But they could also be signaling a decline for developers as they see themselves replaced by applets.

3. Microsoft, Novell eye Moonlight beta, system management: As Microsoft and Novell near the two-year anniversary of their controversial interoperability agreement, they are announcing a beta of Moonlight, which will bring Microsoft's Silverlight RIA technology to Linux. The companies are also rolling out the Advanced Management Pack, which enables management of Windows and Linux servers from a single console.

[ For a two-year retrospective on the agreement, featuring comments from Microsoft, Novell and an opponent of the arrangement, see The Microsoft-Novell Linux deal: Two years later. ].

4.JavaFX RIA technology almost ready: Sun says that general release products for JavaFX Desktop and JavaFX Script should be out by the end of the year. Featuring an application platform based on Java, a scripting component and runtimes for desktop and mobile systems, JavaFX, Sun officials said, gives the company a unique entrant in a market also featuring Adobe Systems, with Flash, and Microsoft, with Silverlight.

5. Five top spending priorities for hard times: Forrester, Gartner and IDC have slashed 2009 IT spending growth projections, with IDC forecasting a decline to a paltry 0.9 percent from its pre-financial crisis prediction of 4.2 percent. Analysts say that despite the grim financial scene, companies should not inflict deep cuts on IT. "Companies should tighten their belts, not take their pants off," says Forrester senior analyst Andrew Reichman. InfoWorld chatted up analysts and CIOs to find out which technologies should be funded regardless of what the economy is up to (or down to, as it were).

6. Hosted Exchange, SharePoint now widely on sale: About 500,000 users have already adopted Exchange Online since a limited release for large enterprises in October 2007, and Microsoft expects half of all enterprise employees with e-mail to use a combined online and premises-based system in five years. Naturally, the company hopes that its Exchange Online, now in full release, will capture a large part of that market.

7. Survey: U.S. IT spending forecast worst since 2001: Forty-five percent of those who responded to a new ChangeWave Research Survey said their companies aim to spend less on IT or even nothing at all on IT during the first quarter of 2009 -- the highest percentage response to that survey question since 2001. Researchers talked to 1,926 U.S. respondents who are involved with IT spending to get the dismal survey results. Just 10 percent said they plan to spend more in the first quarter, which was down three points from an August survey.

8. Microsoft drops OneCare anti-virus product: Microsoft is essentially giving up on its efforts to build a consumer anti-virus business as it is discontinuing its OneCare software. Microsoft pushed hard to get OneCare to be thought of as on the same level as products from Symantec or McAfee, but it was poorly reviewed and failed to establish itself as being able to run with the big boys. OneCare will be replaced with free anti-virus software called Morro.

9. Obama administration to inherit tough cybersecurity challenges: The administration of President-elect Barack Obama will wind up dealing with key cybersecurity initiatives begun during the Bush administration, but far from fruition. More progress has been made on other cybersecurity projects, but some of those have been found to be lacking. Those in the security industry say that the next administration will also have to focus on collaboration between public and private sectors.

10. Bush's exit to put new e-records system to the test: The National Archives and Record Administration expects to receive 140TB of data when the Bush administration ends after eight years with inauguration day, Jan. 20, when all paper and electronic records of the administration become the legal responsibility of NARA. The unprecedented volume of records has to be sorted, indexed, and preserved. Comparatively, the Bush years are expected to generate 50 times more data than the Clinton administration, which also went two terms.

Nemertes Research continued to throw cold water on the future of the Internet this week, releasing a study projecting that demand for bandwidth on the Web would exceed its capacity by 2012.

The study, which is a follow-up to similar research Nemertes conducted last year, projects that the current global economic recession will only delay rather than eliminate the increased demand for bandwidth the firm predicted last year. Then, Nemertes projected that traffic growth would eclipse supply by 2010, but the firm now says it has adjusted its projections to reflect deteriorating global economic conditions.

[ Does the bandwidth shortage mean out Internet future is in danger? ]

Nemertes emphasized it is not projecting that the Internet will crash or shut down altogether. Rather, the typical user probably will experience Internet "brownouts," where such high-bandwidth applications as high-definition video-streaming and peer-to-peer file-sharing will stop performing up to users' expectations, the firm says. 

During a presentation at an Internet Innovation Alliance symposium this week, Nemertes analyst Mike Jude said that one consequence of declining Web performance would be that users would look less to the Internet to deliver their desired applications. "More and more applications are coming online that will drive expectations for service quality even higher," he said. "I'm not saying that the Internet is going to crash in 2011, but that people's expectations are going to be throttled. People will stop going to the Internet for those services."

One big reason for the projected growth in traffic is the continuing emergence of virtual workers who work from home or in remote branch offices located far away from companies' central offices, Nemertes says. In particular, these remote workers "expect seamless communications, regardless of where they conduct business" and they "often require more advanced communication and collaboration tools than those who work at headquarters," including videoconferencing and Web conferencing, the report says.

Another factor is simply the large growth in high-bandwidth applications for users to employ. More ISPs in the coming years will follow the lead of such companies as Comcast and AT&T trying out bandwidth caps that will charge extra money each month for heavy bandwidth consumers, Nemertes says. Although Comcast now caps individual bandwidth consumption at a relatively high 250GB per month, average future users will easily reach or surpass that bandwidth limit as they find higher-bandwidth applications to use, the firm says.

"Though this traffic load is [currently] more than typical, it certainly isn't exceptional," Nemertes reports. "This type of usage will become typical over the next three to five years. The fact that Comcast's network is, by its own admission, not able to cope with such usage patterns is a clear indication that the crunch we predicted last year is beginning to occur."

Looking forward, Nemertes says that if this capacity issue is not addressed, the Internet will fracture into a tiered system where companies with the most money will pay for specialized network infrastructure that will ensure their content is delivered at higher speeds than non-favored content.

This fractured system -- where certain entities can pay extra money to give their content favored treatment -- is what advocates of network neutrality have been working to avoid by preventing ISPs from discriminating against certain types of content. The Nemertes report gloomily concludes that although the Internet will not shut down entirely, it will experience a dramatic slowdown in innovation because "new content and application providers will be handicapped by the relatively poorer performance of their offerings vis-à-vis those created by the established players."

Microsoft asked a federal judge Thursday to end the class-action lawsuit about its "Vista capable" tag that has been the source of a treasure trove of embarrassing insider e-mails that have showed the company bent to pressure from Intel and infuriated longtime partner Hewlett-Packard.

In a pair of motions filed with U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman, Microsoft's lawyers asked her to decertify the class and rule on a summary judgment to dismiss the charges.

[ InfoWorld's Robert X. Cringely did a rundown of the legalese of this case -- and the humor of it ]

If Pechman rules for Microsoft on the decertification motion, the case could conceivably continue, although it would no longer be a class-action with a large pool of plaintiffs; instead, each plaintiff would have to sue Microsoft separately. A ruling for the company on the summary judgment would effectively end the case.

Unlike recent filings by the plaintiffs, which have been packed with quotations from internal Microsoft e-mails that covered everything from managers badmouthing Intel to others who worried how Vista would be compared to Apple's Mac OS X, Microsoft's motions were densely worded and full of case citations.

According to Microsoft, the plaintiffs have not demonstrated that the lowest-priced version of Windows Vista was not the "real" Vista, or showed that users paid more for PCs prior to the new operating system's launch because of the Vista Capable campaign. That means the plaintiffs have not met the legal standards set by Pechman, and so have no case, the attorneys argued.

"The evidence refutes Plaintiffs' claims that Windows Vista Home Basic cannot 'fairly' be called Windows Vista," Microsoft said in the motion for summary judgment. "Windows Vista Home Basic has nearly all of the same computer code as the rest of the Windows Vista family, and ... Microsoft never publicly defined Windows Vista in a way that would exclude Windows Vista Home Basic."

Vista Home Basic, the lowest-priced and least-capable version of the operating system, is a key to the Vista Capable lawsuit; the plaintiffs have argued that they bought PCs before Vista's January 2007 launch and expected them to be able to run more than just Home Basic. That edition lacks several advanced features found in some or all of the other versions, notably the Aero graphical user interface.

Elsewhere in the motion, Microsoft claimed that Vista Home Basic shared 93 percent of the code found in Vista Home Premium, the next-most-expensive version and also the most popular of the consumer editions.

The lawyers also hammered at the price inflation reasoning promoted by the plaintiffs. "Plaintiffs have no evidence that the Windows Vista Capable program ('WVC program') caused an artificial increase in the demand for or prices of Windows Vista Capable PCs ('WVC PCs') that were not Premium Ready," the motion continued.

Last February, when Pechman granted the case class-action status, she blocked the plaintiffs from arguing that Microsoft deceived consumers because that would have required an individual determination for each member of the class action. Instead, she allowed them to pursue a "price inflation" line of reasoning, which would argue that PC buyers paid more than they would have otherwise, after Microsoft's marketing boosted demand and increased the prices of systems that could run Vista Home Basic.

In the motion to decertify the class, Microsoft's lawyers said that the plaintiffs had not met the bar Pechman set when she allowed them to explore the price inflation line. "With discovery closed, Microsoft asks the Court to decertify the class because Plaintiffs have done nothing and propose to do nothing to further develop their price inflation theory," Microsoft said.

Discovery, the legal procedure where the each party is allowed to request documents from other, closed a week ago in the case. "The Plaintiffs have no viable method of establishing class-wide causation," the motion continued.

Over several pages, Microsoft argued that the economist the plaintiffs brought in as an expert witness, Keith Leffler, of the University of Washington, had been unable to come up with a way to quantify the impact of the Vista Capable program on PC prices in the run-up to Vista.

"Dr. Leffler admitted that he cannot develop a model that would quantify the price inflation, if any, that supposedly affected the class, much less do so across the entire class period," the motion said. "That fact, standing alone, mandates decertification."

Microsoft crafted the Vista Capable program to keep sales of PCs from flagging as the new OS's release loomed. A message by a Microsoft director working on the campaign made it clear that was the top priority. "The primary goal of Ready PC [ an earlier name for what would be recast as Vista Capable -- Ed. ] is to limit stall of XP PC sales as we continue to build Vista buzz," said Rajesh Srinivasan in October 2005. "We believe [the program requirements] strike a balance between limiting impact on XP PC sales, ensuring OEM support and participation in the program and providing a good customer experience after Vista upgrade."

The lawsuit, which began in April 2007, has become best-known as the source for hundreds of Microsoft e-mails that have been made public by the court. Earlier disclosures showed that Microsoft relaxed the requirements of Vista Capable to accommodate Intel, a decision that then enraged HP, and that company managers feared comparisons between Vista and Apple's Mac OS X more than a year before Vista went public.

The case is currently set to start trial next April.

Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

In separate moves this week, Sun and Microsoft both proceeded with previously stated plans to boost their software development environments

Version 6.5 of the NetBeans open source IDE was released by Sun and the NetBeans community, while Microsoft has added jQuery IntelliSense support to Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express.

Accessible for download, NetBeans 6.5 features increased support for Web and Java software development, according to Sun and the NetBeans community. It includes localized versions for simplified Chinese, Japanese, and Brazilian Portuguese.

Also being offered is an early access version of NetBeans for Pythin applications, featuring an editor, debugger, and Python runtimes.

Version 6.5 features tooling for PHP, such as syntax highlighting and code completion. A JavaScript editor is included as well.

?Integration across multiple languages simplifies development. The NetBeans IDE 6.5 allows you to stay within one tool and move easily from PHP to JavaScript and back," said Ian Murdock, Sun vice president of developer and community marketing at Sun, in a statement released by the company.

Other capabilities include enhanced support for Spring, Hibernate, JavaServer Pages, and Java Persistence API. Support for Groovy and Grails also is offered in the editor. Ruby enhancements are offered within the editor and debugger.

Multithreaded debugging for Java technologies is featured as well.

Sun in December will offer a training and certification for NetBeans by way of its Certification Specialist for NetBeans IDE effort.

Microsoft, meanwhile, is offering JavaScript IntelliSense support via Service Pack 1, which can be downloaded. JQuery is a JavaScript library.

Users also must install the VS 2008 Patch KB58502 patch to support "-vsdoc.js" Intellisense files and download the jQuery-vsdoc.js file.

"Visual Studio 2008 SP1 adds richer JavaScript IntelliSense support to Visual Studio, and adds code completion support for a broad range of JavaScript libraries," said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president in the Microsoft Developer Division, in his blog.

Remember when a phone was just a phone? You'd no more give thought to its operating system than you would to the one that your microwave oven ran. Boy, have times changed.

Today's smartphones are pocketable, Net-connected personal computers, and the OSes they use have a huge impact on their power and their personality. Buy a phone, and you're committing to a platform just as surely as you are when you choose a PC or a Mac.

[ Check out Neil McAllister's SDK shoot-out of Android vs. iPhone as well as InfoWorld's Test Center review of  Android, Google's iPhone killer. And discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]

To see how today's smartphone OSes stack up, I spent time with five leading ones as experienced on phones that show them to good advantage: Apple's iPhone OS (which I tried on the iPhone 3G, using AT&T's network), Google's Android (on T-Mobile's G1), Microsoft's Windows Mobile (on HTC's Touch Diamond, using Sprint), Nokia's S60 3rd Edition on Symbian (on the company's N96, sold only in unlocked form), and RIM's BlackBerry OS (on the company's own BlackBerry Bold, using AT&T).

(Consult PC World's Top 10 Smart Phones chart to see how the hardware compares.)

I judged the five operating systems on their capabilities, ease of use, and visual panache, and considered both their standard applications and third-party programs.

The Winners
The two most impressive operating systems were the two with the briefest histories: iPhone OS and Android.

Both are built for Internet-centric devices, both are not only functional but fun, and both make extending your phone's capabilities with new applications extremely easy. At the moment, iPhone OS beats the newer, rougher Google OS ; over time, Android's open-source design and lack of restrictions on third-party developers could give it an edge over Apple's more locked-down approach.

Among the old-timers, the BlackBerry OS is doing a solid job of preserving the strengths that made it popular in the first place while keeping up with the times. In contrast, I regret to report, Windows Mobile and S60 3rd Edition are aging badly. Let's delve more deeply.

Apple iPhone OS
What it is: iPhone OS is a pocket-size version of the Mac's OS X , shrunk down and redesigned to power the iPhone 3G.

How it works: As you zip your way around the iPhone 3G's multitouch interface with your fingertips, hardware and software blur into one pleasing experience. With other OSs, it's all too easy to get lost in menus or forget how to accomplish simple tasks; iPhone apps , however, are remarkably sleek and consistent. The OS's most infamous omission is cut-and-paste capability -- but to tell the truth, I haven't missed it yet.

How it looks: Terrific. Everything from the sophisticated typography to the smooth animation effects contributes to the richest, most attractive environment ever put on a handheld device.

Built-in applications: What's good is great--especially the Safari browser , which makes navigating around sites that were never designed to be viewed on a phone remarkably simple. And the OS's music and video programs truly are of iPod caliber. But as a productivity tool, the iPhone lacks depth: You can't search e-mail, and you get no apps for editing documents or managing a to-do list.

Third-party stuff: Just months after Apple opened up the iPhone to other developers, thousands of programs are available, and downloading them directly via the App Store is a cakewalk. The best ones, such as Facebook and the Evernote note-taker , are outstanding. But the limitations that Apple puts on third-party apps -- they can't run in the background or access data other than their own -- place major obstacles in the way of everything from instant messengers to office suites. And Apple, the sole distributor of iPhone software, has declined to make available some useful applications that developers have submitted.

Bottom line: iPhone OS is easily the most enjoyable and intuitive phone operating system in existence, but its growth could be stunted unless Apple keeps its control-freak tendencies in check.

Google Android
What it is: Google's new phone OS is an ambitious open-source platform intended to let companies customize it to their liking for an array of handsets. So far, however, it's available on just one model, T-Mobile's G1 .

How it works: On the G1, Android's interface feels like an iPhone/BlackBerry mashup -- much of it uses the touch screen, but you get a trackball and Menu, Home, and Back buttons, too. The highly customizable desktop is a plus. Overall, it compares well to older platforms but isn't as effortless as the iPhone.

How it looks: Android isn't an aesthetic masterpiece like iPhone OS, but it's fresh and appealing, and it makes good use of the G1's high-resolution screen.

Built-in applications: They're tightly integrated with Google services such as Gmail and Google Calendar -- the first thing you do when you turn on the phone for the first time is to give it your Google account info . (That's fine as long as you're not dependent on alternatives such as Microsoft Exchange .)

Android's browser lacks the iPhone's multitouch navigation but is otherwise a close rival. The best thing about its music features is the ability to download DRM-free songs from Amazon. The only videos it can play are YouTube clips, alas.

Third-party stuff: Developers are just beginning to hop on the Android bandwagon. The iPhone-like Market service lets you download apps directly to the phone from Google; unlike with the iPhone, you can also snag programs from third-party merchants such as Handango .

Bottom line: Android's potential is gigantic, especially if it winds up on scads of phones. On the G1, it's a promising work in progress.

RIM BlackBerry OS
What it is: This software powers RIM's BlackBerry smart phones, including the Curve , Pearl , and 8800 , as well as the new Bold and Storm models.

How it works: The basic concepts behind the BlackBerry interface have changed remarkably little in a decade. And why should they? In its own way, the BlackBerry interface is just as logical and consistent as the iPhone's: On most models you perform almost every function in every application with a trackball, a Menu button, and a button that lets you back out to the previous screen.

Master those three actions, and you can whip around the OS with extreme speed. (I haven't tried the Storm, which replaces the standard BlackBerry controls with an iPhone-style touch screen.)

How it looks: The BlackBerry OS is fairly mundane and text-centric, although recent models such as the Bold dress it up with crisper fonts and slicker icons.

Built-in applications: The BlackBerry's e-mail and calendaring applications still set the standard for efficient design and reliable real-time connectivity with widely used messaging systems such as Microsoft Exchange.

The Bold introduces a much-improved new browser that rivals iPhone OS and Android in its ability to display sites the way their designers intended; its music and video apps are serviceable enough but still secondary to the productivity tools.

Third-party stuff: Once upon a time, users didn't have many BlackBerry programs to choose from, but recently the market has boomed--thousands, from productivity apps to games, are available now. Windows Mobile and S60 have even more bountiful selections, though.

Currently BlackBerry has no over-the-air storefront comparable to Apple's App Store or Android Market. RIM's BlackBerry storefront is expected to launch in March 2009.

Bottom line: The BlackBerry OS is an old dog, but a smart one -- and one that's proving itself capable of learning new tricks.

Microsoft Windows Mobile
What it is: As its name makes clear, this is Microsoft's mobile edition of Windows. Version 6.1 ships on a dozen phones from manufacturers such as HTC (with its Touch Diamond ), Motorola, Palm, and Samsung.

Here's a video showing the best of the new features of Windows Mobile 6.1.

Some manufacturers -- including HTC with the Diamond, Palm, and Samsung -- supplement Windows Mobile with their own software layer or tweaks to the underlying Windows Mobile OS.

How it works: Surprisingly, Windows Mobile acts like full-strength Windows , complete with a Start menu and system tray. That isn't a virtue -- who wants to squint at tiny icons on devices meant for on-the-go use? The Touch Diamond covers up part of Microsoft's stylus-oriented interface with a fingertip-driven system called TouchFLO that's nowhere near as elegant and intuitive as the iPhone.

How it looks: It's workmanlike. But it falls far, far short of iPhone OS's surface gloss.

Built-in applications: The version of Internet Explorer on current phones is profoundly archaic; the Touch Diamond dumps it for Opera Mobile . (Microsoft has released a new version of IE, but it isn't yet available on any phones.) On the other hand, the productivity apps -- basic versions of Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint -- aren't bad.

Third-party stuff: The best thing about this OS is the sheer variety of available applications in every category. Utilities such as Lakeridge Software's WisBar Advance let you tweak the interface's look, feel, and functionality, compensating for some of its deficiencies. But you get no built-in app store à la iPhone OS and Android.

Bottom line: Windows Mobile has fallen behind the times on multiple fronts. Microsoft's next major overhaul isn't expected until late 2009 or 2010; by then, version 6.1 will be all but irrelevant.

Nokia S60 3rd Edition on Symbian
What it is: S60 3rd Edition is the version of the venerable Symbian mobile OS found in a variety of smart phones, not only from Nokia (including its new N96) but also LG and Samsung.

How it works: S60's interface dates from the days when even the smartest phones sported only a numeric keypad and a few other buttons, and it tends to make you shuffle through menus one laborious item at a time. (The BlackBerry OS does a much better job of making non-touch-screen devices fast and efficient.)

How it looks: It's pretty old-fashioned by today's standards, with blocky fonts and retro icons.

Built-in applications: The programs vary from phone to phone. The N96 I tried includes a reasonably comprehensive suite of apps, and judged purely on available features, they're respectable; the browser, for instance, has a zoom-in/zoom-out interface that's theoretically similar to the one in iPhone OS's Safari. But the clunky interface leaves them feeling less powerful than the apps on any other phone I tried for this article.

Third-party stuff: A profusion of useful S60-compatible applications is available at sites such as Handango -- one of the deepest libraries for any platform, thanks to Symbian's long life span and wide usage.

Bottom line: S60 3rd Edition is stale in comparison with iPhone OS and Android, but it's also heading for retirement. The new S60 5th Edition brings the OS up-to-date with features such as touch-screen support; Nokia's 5800 XpressMusic , the first phone to use it, won't arrive in the United States until early next year.

Former PC World editor in chief Harry McCracken now blogs at his own site, Technologizer. PC World is an InfoWorld affiliate.

A Taiwanese research institute on Friday revealed a folding display on a smartphone that allowed its screen to double in size to 5 inches.

The mock-up smartphone, developed to showcase the screen, is styled like other smartphones and opens like a book turned on its side so when open the display is on the top half and the bottom half is the keyboard.

[ Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]

What users are actually seeing is only the top half of the display. The rest of the 5-inch screen is hidden underneath the keyboard and can be pulled up to reveal the full screen when required. To allow the screen to close down over the keyboard a 1-centimeter portion along the center is flexible.

Researchers at Taiwan's publicly funded Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) developed the TFT-EPD (Thin Film Transistor Electrophoretic Display) screen with smartphones in mind.

Currently 5-inches is the only screen size available, but work is being done on other screen sizes, said Nick Vasiljevic, managing director of Pilotfish, the company ITRI hired to design the smartphone model.

But for designers, the flexible 5-inch screen does offer other possibilities, he added. The hinge and flexible part of the screen can be in different places, so the screen could bend at the 3-inch mark instead of 2.5-inch mark.

Pictures of the smartphone appear to show a break at the center of the screen, so it looks almost like two separate screens, but that's not the case.

What looks like a break is actually a software taskbar similar to the one at the bottom of a PC screen. But the taskbar on the smartphone screen can be moved so the whole screen can be used for pictures, video, or anything else.

The flexible screen technology offers new possibilities for mobile phone makers, an important consideration at a time when companies are scrambling to develop Mobile Internet Devices, netbooks, smartphones, and other portable gadgets. Many companies say that finding the right screen size is key to such portable devices because people want to be able to surf the Internet or watch movies on as large a screen as possible.

ITRI worked with Pilotfish on the smartphone design to show off the concept because it's seeking handset makers interested in creating products around the technology. The technology will be ready next year.

ITRI is also working to add touchscreen technology to the flexible screens, which will also likely be ready later next year.

The U.S. government may be poised to reverse course on its market-only approach to rolling out broadband and a smart electricity grid to all corners of the country, advocates said Thursday.

With a Democratic Congress and a Democratic and tech-savvy president in Barack Obama, the upcoming months will be the time to push for government involvement in building network infrastructure, said Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, a communications policy advocacy group.

[ Google's CEO says private efforts not enough; government must take the lead. And Ted Samson's Sustainable IT blog reports how coalitions are calling on Congress for a clean energy economy. Your source for the latest in government IT news and issues: Subscribe to InfoWorld's Government IT newsletter. ]

In recent years, some conservatives and broadband providers have called on the government to stay out of broadband rollout, saying such "industrial-policy" intervention could lead to a heavily regulated industry, with little competition and high prices. "I'm about to use some words that have been profane in this town for the last eight years," Scott said at a Google-sponsored forum on broadband and electricity policy. "We need an industrial policy."

The U.S. broadband market isn't competitive now, with most people having only one or two providers, Scott said. The U.S. pays more per megabit of service than most other industrialized nations, and it's 15th among industrialized nations in broadband adoption, speakers said.

If policy makers agree that universal broadband and a higher broadband adoption rate are crucial for the U.S. economy, "then we're going to have to take some really aggressive measures to get there," Scott said.

Thursday's event was the first of three Google-sponsored discussions in Washington, D.C., concerning policy recommendations the company has for the next Congress and the Obama administration. In a speech Tuesday, Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt laid out many of Google's policy goals, including a national broadband policy, energy independence, and a more open and accessible government.

In addition to addressing broadband, Thursday's panel talked about a need for a "smart" electricity grid, which would allow customers to monitor their electricity use in real time and allow them to work with electricity utilities to reduce use during peak demand. Both universal broadband and a smart electricity grid will take major investments and require leadership and strong public support, said Michael Oldak, senior director of state competitive and regulatory policies for the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group representing electric companies.

Oldak compared the challenges facing the outdated electrical grid to the challenge of sending astronauts to the moon in the 1960s. "We need that same kind of drive to get more kids into science and engineering," he said.

Asked if the public would support higher prices for an improved electrical grid, Oldak said that's the wrong question to ask. In pilot programs using "smart" thermostats, customers have saved 10 percent to 15 percent on their electric bills by allowing electric companies to control electricity use during peak hours. For instance, an electric company could adjust the temperatures of air conditioners or heaters via the thermostats to reduce electricity consumption. Without smart grids, the U.S. will continue to waste energy and the energy industry will have to build dozens of new power plants to keep up with demand, he said.

"You can't look at this as adding $5 to people's bills," he said. "You've got to look at what the situation will look like with or without smart grids."

Since Schmidt's speech, there have been some detractors to Google's policy vision. While privacy groups have raised concerns about the practices of Google and other online companies, Google's policy goals don't mention privacy, said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy and a frequent Google critic.

"Failing to acknowledge privacy online is a glaring omission and undermines the company's credibility," Chester said. "Google should acknowledge that protecting online privacy must be a key task for the new administration and Congress. Google is so generous making suggestions, but fails to reflect how its own data collection house should be put in order."

Blogger Matt Sherman, of The Only Republican in San Francisco , questioned remarks by Obama transition official Susan Crawford, suggesting broadband should be treated like a public utility, one way the government could get involved in broadband rollout.

"Is there anyone in the technology world who sees public utilities as a model for innovation?" Sherman wrote. "A 1.5 megabit connection (T1) was an unimaginable luxury when I started in tech in the mid-90's. It was for well-funded companies only. Today, it is a low-end consumer connection and costs around 80% less. Has your sewage service followed a similar trajectory?"

But a national broadband policy would not have to mean excessive government subsidies, said Gigi Sohn, president of digital rights group Public Knowledge. It could mean tax breaks for companies that roll out broadband in underserved areas and a thorough review of wireless spectrum use, she said at Thursday's forum.

People who aren't connected to broadband will have more and more social and economic disadvantages, added Scott. "What are the consequences of not being connected to the 21st-century network?" he said.

Seeking to bridge "the now to the next," Nokia has set its sights on Internet services, next-generation wireless technology, and mobile application development.

Among the company's efforts include the impending beta release of Point & Find, a technology for finding information and services on the Internet by pointing a camera at real-world objects. The upcoming beta release lets users watch a film trailer, read a film review, or find a nearby cinema to buy tickets by pointing a camera phone at a movie poster.

In the wireless radio technology space, the company is focused on LTE (Long Term Evolution of Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network), said Jim Harper, a Nokia senior technology marketing manager. LTE requires fewer network elements than earlier-generation networks, and it requires no circuit-switching, he said. It's being proposed as a competitor to WiMax, a technology that Sprint has begun rolling out in the United States this fall.

[ Does WiMax deliver? Find out in the InfoWorld Test Center's road test: "Does WiMax work in the real world?" ]

In the development tools space, Nokia is positioning its Qt (pronounced "cute") application development framework as a platform for building applications to run on different types of systems. Applications also can be developed once and run across various desktop OSes, said Dilip Kenchammana, a Nokia product line manager.

Another focus is cognitive radio, in which a device can dynamically jump between frequency bands to increase bandwidth capacity, for purposes such as sending audio bits or data.

Nokia has also previewed several research projects, including:

* A videoconferencing pet, which features a mobile unit that can, for example, let grandparents catch a glimpse of their far-away grandchildren. It acts as a physical avatar of the caller.

* Mobile 3-D video, which provides immersive video experiences and rich communication.

* Mobile Millennium, which offers a next-generation real-time traffic data platform that uses GPS-enabled phones to gather data on traffic.

Thirty years have passed since the Internet Protocol was first described in a series of technical documents written by early experimenters . Since then, countless engineers have created systems and applications that rely on IP as the communications link between people and their computers.

Here's the rub: IP has continued to evolve, but no one has been carefully documenting all of the changes.

[ Some experts predict storm clouds looming for the Internet and say governments must intervene to end an IP address shortage. Keep up on the latest tech news headlines at InfoWorld News, or subscribe to the Today's Headlines newsletter. ]

"The IP model is not this static thing," explains Dave Thaler, a member of the Internet Architecture Board and a software architect for Microsoft. "It's something that has changed over the years, and it continues to change."

Thaler gave the plenary address Wednesday at a meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force , the Internet's premier standards body. Thaler's talk was adapted from a document the IAB has drafted entitled " Evolution of the IP Model .'' 

"Since 1978, many applications and upper layer protocols have evolved around various assumptions that are not listed in one place, not necessarily well known, not thought about when making changes, and increasingly not even true," Thaler said. "The goal of the IAB's work is to collect the assumptions -- or increasingly myths -- in one place, to document to what extent they are true, and to provide some guidance to the community."

The following list of myths about how the Internet works is adapted from Thaler's talk : 

1. If I can reach you, you can reach me.
Thaler dubs this myth, "reachability is symmetric," and says many Internet applications assume that if Host A can contact Host B, then the opposite must be true. Applications use this assumption when they have request-response or callback functions. This assumption isn't always true because middleboxes such as network address translators (NAT) and firewalls get in the way of IP communications, and it doesn't always work with 802.11 wireless LANs or satellite links.

2. If I can reach you, and you can reach her, then I can reach her.
Thaler calls this theory "reachability is transitive," and says it is applied when applications do referrals. Like the first myth, this assumption isn't always true today because of middleboxes such as NATs and firewalls as well as with 802.11 wireless and satellite transmissions.

3. Multicast always works.
Multicast allows you to send communications out to many systems simultaneously as long as the receivers indicate they can accept the communication. Many applications assume that multicast works within all types of links. But that isn't always true with 802.11 wireless LANs or across tunneling mechanisms such as Teredo or 6to4.

4. The time it takes to initiate communications between two systems is what you'll see throughout the communication.
Thaler says many applications assume that the end-to-end delay of the first packet sent to a destination is typical of what will be experienced afterwards. For example, many applications ping servers and select the one that responds first. However, the first packet may have additional latency because of the look-ups it does. So applications may choose longer paths and have slower response times using this assumption. Increasingly, applications such as Mobile IPv6 and Protocol Independent Multicast send packets on one path and then switch to a shorter, faster path.

5. IP addresses rarely change.
Many applications assume that IP addresses are stable over long periods of time. These applications resolve names to addresses and then cache them without any notion of the lifetime of the name/address connection, Thaler says. This assumption isn't always true today because of the popularity of the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol as well as roaming mechanisms and wireless communications.

6. A computer has only one IP address and one interface to the network.
This is an example of an assumption that was never true to begin with, Thaler says. From the onset of the Internet, hosts could have several physical interfaces to the network and each of those could have several logical Internet addresses. Today, computers are dealing with wired and wireless access, dual IPv4/IPv6 nodes and multiple IPv6 addresses on the same interface making this assumption truly a myth.

7. If you and I have addresses in a subnet, we must be near each other.
Some applications assume that the IP address used by an application is the same as the address used for routing. This means an application might assume two systems on the same subnet are nearby and would be better to talk to each other than a system far away. This assumption doesn't hold up because of tunneling and mobility. Increasingly, new applications are adopting a scheme known as an identifier/locator split that uses separate IP addresses to identify a system from the IP addresses used to locate a system.

8. New transport-layer protocols will work across the Internet.
IP was designed to support new transport protocols underneath it, but increasingly this isn't true, Thaler says. Most NATs and firewalls only allow Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) for transporting packets. Newer Web-based applications only operate over Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

9. If one stream between you and me can get through, so can another one.
Some applications open multiple connections -- one for data and another for control -- between two systems for communications. The problem is that middleboxes such as NATs and firewalls block certain ports and may not allow more than one connection. That's why applications such as File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and the Real-time Transfer Protocol (RTP) don't always work, Thaler says.

10. Internet communications are not changed in transit.
Thaler cites several assumptions about Internet security that are no longer true. One of them is that packets are unmodified in transit. While it may have been true at the dawn of the Internet, this assumption is no longer true because of NATs, firewalls, intrusion-detection systems and many other middleboxes. IPsec solves this problem by encrypting IP packets, but this security scheme isn't widely used across the Internet.

11. Internet communications are private.
Another security-related assumption Internet developers and users often make is that packets are private. Thaler says this was never true. The only way for Internet users to be sure that their communications are private is to deploy IPsec, which is a suite of protocols for securing IP communications by authenticating and encrypting IP packets.

12. Source addresses are not forged.
Many Internet applications assume that a packet is coming from the IP source address that it uses. However, IP address spoofing has become common as a way of concealing the identity of the sender in denial of service and other attacks. Applications built on this assumption are vulnerable to attack, Thaler says.

Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate

Google has launched a search feature that lets signed-in users re-rank, delete, and add comments on search results, according to a blog posted on Thursday.

The new feature, SearchWiki, is an example of how search is becoming increasingly dynamic and that by giving people tools, search is even more useful, according to Google.

[ Google also recently added 'on demand' indexing to its Site Search. Keep up on the latest tech news headlines at InfoWorld News, or subscribe to the Today's Headlines newsletter. ]

Users who do the same search frequently can remove a site from the results that isn't of interest, said Anthony House, spokesman at Google.

Users can also add comments to a site, which will pop up every time that site is in the results. If a user searches for car sites, they can add a comment to the site, so they remember that it has a lot of interesting information on, for example, hybrid cars, according to House.

Comments are always shared with other users and signed with a person's username. Re-ranked search results, however, are only seen by the signed-in user and do not affect other people's results.

Users can further personalize search results by typing in the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of a site they want to add to the results of a given search or move a site to the top of the search results.

There is also an option to see how other people have customized a search, which is accessed by clicking "see all notes for this SearchWiki" at the bottom of the page.

For SearchWiki to work you have to be a signed-in Google user, and English must be the preferred language, according to House. Changes are stored in the user's Google account.

If a user is wondering if he or she is signed in, they can always check by noting if their username appears in the upper right-hand side of the page.

Users can keep track all the changes they have made by clicking on "see all my SearchWiki notes". Users can also remove edits or comments and go back to the usual search results.

New leaders arrive, old ones leave -- sometimes by the back door in the dead of night. And so it goes with this week's quiz, as the country gets to know a new president elect, a longtime senator says adios, and Yahoo employees wonder who will wear the crown (or the dunce cap) after Jerry Yang departs. Also on tap: A print magazine and a virtual world die, while a dead ISP and an extinct mammal rise from the grave. Have you got your finger on the tech pulse? Prove it by acing this week's quiz. Correct answers are worth 10 points, and no looking at your neighbor's DNA for clues. Ready?

1. In a move that surprised absolutely no one, Jerry Yang is stepping down as Yahoo's CEO but remaining at the company in another capacity. What will be his new title?

a. Chief Operating Officer
b. Chief Vacillating Officer
c. Chief Yahoo
d. Chief Sitting Duck

Take the InfoWorld news quiz

Microsoft said Thursday it would issue an RC (release candidate) for IE8 (Internet Explorer 8) in the first three months of 2009, indicating it will ship its newest browser sometime in the first half of the year.

"We will release one more public update of IE8 in the first quarter of 2009, and then follow that up with the final release," Dean Hachamovitch, the general manager overseeing IE8, said in an entry to a company blog.

[ Find out J. Peter Bruzzese's take on IE8 in his Enterprise Windows blog: "IE8 pushes back Firefox and Chrome even further" | Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]

The current version is Beta 2, which was released in late August.

If Microsoft's past performance is an indicator, the final of IE should launch in the first half of 2009. Its last major update, IE7, hit release candidate status in late August 2006, and shipped as a final version in mid-October of that year, a span of just under two months. Even if Microsoft pushes the release candidate of IE8 to users in March 2009, it should still be able to manage to ship a final edition by the end of June.

Hachamovitch said the IE8 release candidate would be the final, more or less. "We want the technical community of people and organizations interested in Web browsers to take this [release candidate] update as a strong signal that IE8 is effectively complete and done. They should expect the final product to behave as this update does." He went on to urge site and Web service developers to test their work against the release candidate when it ships.

As other Microsoft officials have done since IE8 first appeared, Hachamovitch declined to set a specific date, however. "Our plan is to deliver the final product after listening for feedback about critical issues," he said. Previously, all that the company would commit to was a release prior to the launch of Windows 7, which in turn has been pegged for late 2009 or even early 2010.

Although several people who left comments on Hachomovitch's blog applauded the disclosure of the rough timeline, others thought Microsoft is moving too fast.

"'We listen,' 'We are listening,' 'We've heard you,' and other stupid marketing sentences..., you've just heard nobody," said a user identified only as Oliver. "Where's beta3? Beta2 was unusable and crashed all the time, so we can't test it. Please give us a testable beta before a release candidate."

"This has been said many times before, so I'll make it simple," added Jason Ashdown in another comment to the post. "We want a Beta 3! Beta 2 was nowhere near the quality we expected. Before getting to a [Release Candidate], we want to get the last set of bugs reports before you get to RC1. Closing the door now would be a horrible mistake."

Although IE continues to dominate the browser market, relatively few people are trying the preliminary versions of IE8, according to Web metrics firm Net Applications Inc. IE8 accounted for just 0.58 percent of all browsers used last month, Net Applications reported. As a comparison, Google's Chrome, which was released about a week after IE8 Beta 2, and is in beta testing itself, accounted for 0.78 percent of the browsers used in October.

Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

An Austrian security vendor has found a vulnerability in Windows Vista that it says could possibly allow an attacker to run unauthorized code on a PC.

The problem is rooted in the Device IO Control, which handles internal device communication. Researchers at Phion have found two different ways to cause a buffer overflow that could corrupt the memory of the operating system's kernel.

[ Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]

In one of the scenarios, a person would already have to have administrative rights to the PC. In general, vulnerabilities that require that level of access somewhat undermine the risk since the attacker already has permission to use to the PC.

But it may be possible to trigger the buffer overflow without administrative rights, said Thomas Unterleitner, Phion's director of endpoint security software.

The vulnerability could allow a hacker to install a rootkit, a small piece of malicious software that is very difficult to detect and remove from a computer, Unterleitner said.

Phion notified Microsoft about the problem on Oct. 22. Microsoft indicated to Phion that it would issue a patch with Vista's next service pack. Microsoft released a beta version of Vista's second service pack  to testers last month. Vista's Service Pack 2 is due for release by June 2009.

Unterleitner said there has been lots of interest in the vulnerability. "We have received requests for detailed information on how to take advantage of this exploit from all over the world," he said.

Microsoft officials contacted in London did not have an immediate comment.

Sun Microsystems has heard from a company concerned about the vetting process of Java and open source, a Sun official said on Wednesday.

Lawyers for the concerned company said they cannot be sure the results of the process are legally pure, said Patrick Curran, chair of the Java Community Process (JCP), during a panel session on open standards development at the QCon conference in San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon. The JCP serves as the process for updating Java standards. Curran would not name the company.

[ For more news from QCon, see "Ruby hailed as economic solution." ]

"There is concern that if you do your development work in a completely open source manner through something like OpenJDK, that it is possible something will slip into the source code base that has not been appropriately vetted," Curran said in an interview after the session. He described the issue as not a big deal but a concern.?

Sun began open-sourcing Java two years ago.

Also during the panel session, Spring Framework founder Rod Johnson said that as a member of the JCP executive committee, he plans to push for openness in the Java standardization process.

"There may be times when that needs to be deviated from, but I would like that to be the starting point," said Johnson, who is CEO of SpringSource. Johnson was elected to the committee several weeks ago for a two-year term, he said.

Johnson stressed community involvement in Java. "I think that it's too easy just to blame Sun for the fact that the community doesn't participate more," he said. Openness does not really work without participation, he said.

Elsewhere in the JCP, Curran said all work on Java Platform, Standard Edition 7 will be done by the Java Development Kit community in an open source manner.

Also on tap from the JCP are collaboration tools for better communication in the Java standards development process. "We are going to roll out some stuff on jcp.org, which is in forums and so on, to make it a little easier for expert groups to communicate amongst themselves and between themselves and the general membership," Curran said.

There has been concern that expert groups have been operating behind closed doors, Curran said. The tools are currently in a beta form and are due in a couple months, he said.

On Nov. 6, Sam Palmisano, chairman, president & CEO of IBM, made an important speech entitled "The Smart Planet: The Next Leadership Agenda" at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York City. That speech is only now getting public press attention.

To emphasize the significance of Palmisano's speech, IBM took two-page ads out in numerous newspapers, such as the New York Times and Washington Post, throughout the world. This can be seen as public relations, self-promotion or the simple realization that the way out of this global financial mess requires a refocus of technology not on the consumer, but on corporate business.

[ Just how severe is the impact of the economy on IT? Find out in "Is tech in more trouble than we think?" And also learn the "Five top spending priorities for hard times." ]

Palmisano's argument is that technology has permeated our daily lives to an extent beyond what prior generations could ever imagine. Here are some key points from this speech.

"The world is becoming instrumented." A vast array of sensors perform telemetry tasks in every industry that affects our personal as well as business lives. From RFID tags in retail stores to red-light/speed cameras to security systems to hospital instrumentation technology. No matter how mundane, these are now integral parts of our lives.

"Our world is becoming interconnected." From almost 2 billion people on an ever-growing Internet to the untethered virtual workplace, individuals have accessibility and mobility to time-shift and increase their productivity on a global basis. Add to that the non-human communication of telemetry devices and human to machine interaction, communication technology and services become a necessity for survival, not a luxury.

"All things are becoming intelligent." The PC and cell phone are just the "tip of the iceberg." Everything from our cars to our cameras to our clothing will be smart. The real advances in computer technology, information science and advanced analytics software are just in their infancy. As with any child, we are experiencing growing pains. We live in an information age where we have let information, be it an e-mail or a video, consume us rather than allowing technology to process the details and we as humans to process the exceptions.

"Digital and physical infrastructures of the world are converging." Everything large or small contains or will soon contain a computational engine that can network and communicate. This is a subtle statement that from hindsight caught everyone by surprise. Another definition of "convergence" or a realization that we missed "seeing the trees because we were looking at the forest?"

Developing technology for technology's sake (feed the consumer and they will feed the ad revenue-based Web sites) and business processes to increase profitability/revenue (make the quarter numbers to meet financial analyst expectations not long-term growth) were myopic goals while the "system was running on all cylinders."

In achieving these goals we all got sloppy and missed numerous opportunities to utilize technology to benefit society, our county, our daily lives and last but not least our employer.

Palmisano listed numerous examples such as energy waste caused by unintelligent and archaic electrical grids; traffic congestion causing lost working hours and gasoline consumption; corporate supply chain inefficiency reducing business profitability; antiquated global healthcare systems with little or no process linkage/communication (profits first/patients second) creating ever increasing costs and inflation; decreasing water supplies which limit access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation facilities causing human malnutrition, disease and tainted food production; and financial institution risk taking that created a global fiscal disaster of unprecedented proportion that undermined global government, business and individual confidence.

All of us can add to this list examples of technological sloppiness that have produced waste or loss of productivity/revenue. From the oil crisis to the healthcare crisis to the financial crisis, technology innovation and use have taken back seats to greed. At first this seems to be altruism or socially motivated thinking. Not true, capitalism with technology as its core competency will drive the next recovery.

Good intentions aside, IBM had examples of technology/systems solutions for each of these problem areas. Sales pitch aside, Palmisano had it right -- increased technology use is the driving force that will produce a global business recovery. The next global growth period will be business driven not consumer driven. This is not the Internet Bubble of 2000 but the Business Recovery of 2010.

Throwing human resources and/or money at a problem will not solve all of today's complex interdependent global issues. Add to this the prospect of increased regulation and oversight required to manage ourselves out of this financial mess and restore confidence in the global economy.

Without the creative use of information technology, autonomics, collaboration and information analytic systems and communication internetworking on a global scale, this is an utterly impossible task that's doomed to failure. Conducting business the "old way" will not work going forward to 2010.

Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate

Microsoft faces a tough sell with its latest mobile browser, Internet Explorer 6, since consumers will need to buy more powerful handsets to run it.

Microsoft, which announced plans earlier this week to launch IE6 with market leader China Mobile, has made no secret of the more stringent requirements. It has indicated the software won't be available to download.

[ Check out our slideshow featuring the latest wave of mobile products hitting the market: "Next-gen mobile devices: InfoWorld's preview guide" | Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]

The browser requires 500MHz chip processing speeds, according to Lena Goh, director of marketing in Microsoft's mobile communications business for Asia.

"It will only be available in new handsets," she added.

Having to buy a new smartphone just to enjoy the benefits of mobile IE6 may put people off considering there are many choices for mobile Web browsers, including the popular Opera Mini and Skyfire .

The initial launch of the browser will be on a Samsung Omnia i900 made for China Mobile. The Chinese mobile network operator, the world's largest with more than 436 million subscribers, has been offering new smartphones along with the rollout of its 3G network in China.

Microsoft is launching mobile IE6 with China Mobile in hopes of capturing more first-time users in emerging markets, said Scott Rockfeld, director of Microsoft's mobile communications business.

Among the improvements in IE6, the mobile browser will allow people to complete transactions more easily than before and offer users the choice to automatically revert Web site searches to mobile optimized Web sites or full Web sites.

IBM Research on Thursday is expected to uncover work it is doing to bring the brain's processing power to computers, in an effort to make it easier for PCs to process vast amounts of data in real time.

The researchers want to put brain-related senses like perception and interaction into hardware and software so that computers are able to process and understand the data quicker while consuming less power, said Dharmendra Modha, a researcher at IBM. The researchers are bringing the neuroscience, nanotechnology, and supercomputing fields together in an effort to create the new computing platform, he said.

[ Stay ahead of advances in technology with InfoWorld's Ahead of the Curve blog and newsletter. ]

The goal is to create machines that are mind-like and adapt to changes, which could allow companies to find more value in their data. Right now, a majority of information's value is lost, but relevant data can allow businesses or individuals to make rapid decisions in time to have significant impact, he said.

"If we could design computers that could be in real-world environments and sense and respond in an intelligent way, it would be a tremendous step forward," Modha said.

There is a problem in the core philosophy of computing and a new approach is needed, Modha said. Today's model first defines objectives to solve problems, after which algorithms are built to achieve those objectives.

"The brain is the opposite. It starts with an existing algorithm and then problems [are] second. It is a computing platform that can address a wide variety of problems," Modha said.

For example, the new approach could help efficiently manage the world's water supplies through real-time analysis of data that could help discover new patterns, Modha said. A network of sensors could monitor temperature, pressure, wave height and ocean tide across the oceans. "Imagine streaming this data to a global brain that discovers invariant patterns and associations that no algorithms of today can do," Modha said.

It will also be able to sense the world's markets, like stocks, bonds and real estate, extracting patterns and associations in the way the brain extracts information from those environments.

The research is not about concrete applications yet, but about understanding what the brain does and its implementation in computing, Modha said. The research includes work on nanotechnology, which has made it feasible to realize the brain function in cognitive computing chips that rival the low-power and small space of the brain, Modha said. Neuroscience has also matured, and supercomputing technology has progressed enough for IBM to undertake large-scale simulations to test a wide variety of hypotheses.

It's a long and arduous research project that may lead to a number of technological breakthroughs, Modha said. He didn't provide a timeline for implementation of the platform.

If the company succeeds in making this platform, it will lead to an entirely new computer architecture and programming paradigm that could overwrite the traditional ways of computing, Modha said.

For the research IBM is working with the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency and universities including Stanford, University of Wisconsin in Madison, Cornell, Columbia University Medical Center, and University of California at Merced.

Yahoo rolled out a beta version of its new Glue search concept for the first time in the U.S. late Wednesday.

The Internet search method aggregates text, images, and video results on a single results page.

[ For more news on Yahoo's roller-coaster week, see "Yahoo's Jerry Yang to step down as CEO" and "Yahoo OneSearch coming to T-Mobile USA" | Keep up on the latest tech news headlines at InfoWorld News, or subscribe to the Today's Headlines newsletter. ]

The Glue Page Beta was first tested by Yahoo in India in May. Glue page results are displayed alongside the usual Yahoo India search results.

In the United States, Yahoo Glue Beta is however being tested as a stand-alone experience that is not accessed via Yahoo Search, a spokeswoman for the company said.

"This iteration of the beta is centered around gathering insights about how people use topic pages focused purely on helping people discover information and browse through images, videos, articles, etc.," she added.

In a post on the Yahoo Search blog, Julie Demsey of Yahoo Glue Product Management said that Yahoo is starting with a limited set of topics, pulling together content from the best places on the Web onto one Yahoo Glue page. The company plans to add more topics later.

The pages are built using an algorithm that automatically places the most relevant modules on a page, giving users a visually rich, diverse page about the topic in which they are interested, the post added.

A few years ago, self-proclaimed nondeveloper Kevin Smith worked for a software company that tried to build a project tracking tool using Microsoft .Net. Some 15 developers spent a year with little success. "After burning though a million dollars and still without a product, the company called it quits," says Smith, now managing partner of NextWave Performance, a consultancy in Denver, Colo.

NextWave took up the idea but ran into similar timetable and budgetary overruns. "I said, 'I'll learn to code and do it myself,'" a frustrated Smith recalls. His search eventually led him to Coghead, a Web app for code-free development of Web apps -- and Smith built key components of the tracking tool in less than 30 days.

[ InfoWorld Test Center shows the pros and cons of Coghead in an in-depth review; for an online app builder with a Microsoft twist, see the review of Caspio Bridge. | Read about other "Application builders in the sky." ]

"I was showing my business partner some of this stuff the other day and he turned to me and asked, 'How do traditional developers stay in business?'" Smith says. "It's such a game changer. I think it turns developers from wizards who read the magic book and know the syntax into business analysts who understand the processes and goals of what they're trying to achieve."

Such views may be a bit far-fetched, but it's true that do-it-yourself application development has never been more appealing. With IT budgets being squeezed, along with the growing dysfunctional relationship between IT staff and managers, it's no wonder the promise of cheap "codeless" development that sidesteps IT resonates loudly with businesspeople. "We also have a whole new wave of business users that are not intimidated by the notion of application development," says Mike Gualtieri, analyst at Forrester.

Coghead and others, such as Caspio, Zoho, and Wufoo, are just the latest attempt to bring application development to the masses. From Cobol to 4GL to scripting languages to, recently, Microsoft's Oslo for model-based software development, the Holy Grail is to make it easier for nonprogrammers to program. Now Coghead CEO Paul McNamara believes cloud computing tools increase the number of potential software builders in the world tenfold.

Whipping up a Web app
There are areas where codeless software development makes sense, mostly with business apps that have multiple records, business logic, notifications, and other straightforward features. For instance, Jim Heagney, an accounting and systems consultant, tapped his experience with Great Plains and other ERP integration projects to develop a virtual-events scheduler, called Inexpo.

Using Coghead, Heagney, another self-described nondeveloper, built Inexpo to manage all of the activities that go into producing a virtual, Web-based event, including order entries, invoices, expenses, purchase-order requisitions, and other transactions. Inexpo even interfaces with an accounting system "in all the right spots," Heagney says. Working part time, he built the application in only six months.?

Anyone who is comfortable writing macros or sophisticated Excel spreadsheets has what it takes to create apps with Coghead, says McNamara. A person needs a basic understanding of relational databases, such as an account record that has many invoices stored against it. Sounds easy enough, yet the problem is that even seasoned business executives who know how to operate intricate database applications have no idea what goes on in the background, adds Heagney.

Moreover, Heagney acknowledges some of Coghead's limitations today. For instance, the tool lacks simple ways to make mass changes and to create complex fields, he says. As with all cloud systems, reporting is a drawback because there's limited access to the back end. "One part I couldn't write was the general ledger -- the core piece of ERP -- which is a challenge right now because of the way the tables work," he says.

InfoWorld Test Center analyst and software developer Peter Wayner, who authored the Coghead and Caspio reviews, takes it a step further: "In essence, [Coghead] is a fancy front end to a spreadsheet." Wayner, though, is quick to point out its potential, saying, "We're reaching a space where people can quickly build Web applications on top of any kind of database tables."

Into a wall of disillusionment
But don't count your applications before they hatch. Codeless software development is not as easy as the examples of Heagney and NextWave's Smith suggest, contends Forrester's Gualtieri. Rather, nonprogrammers heading down the do-it-yourself route should expect to confront a number of trials.

Gualtieri believes many business users will get in over their heads and become frustrated, which will lead to disillusionment. That's because they'll have made mistakes along the well-trodden developer's path of identifying what they want to do, selecting the right tools, and architecting the project appropriately. Or, more simply, they'll pound their heads on the desk because they won't be able to insert a table with an image in one of the cells.

"It didn't take me long to generate an inscrutable error message, the kind that leads to panic in mere mortals but inspires real programmers to roll up their sleeves," Wayner writes in his Coghead review. "The drag-and-drop tool may look nice, but I think most serious Coghead programmers will need to learn BPEL syntax and then work backward to figure out why something isn't working." In other words, the Cogheads may eliminate the coding, but they still require you to think like a developer.

The average business executive will hit a wall trying to do this himself, agrees Heagney. For this reason, 60 percent of Coghead's sales flow through the channel where at least some level of technical expertise and guidance is available.

A simple Web app can also grow into a monster, with more users and features added daily. It may become so large and so unwieldy that intervention by the IT department is needed to save it. Or a company may need to hire a Coghead programmer to support the app. "Somebody has to understand the internal architecture of applications in order to protect integrity," says Yefim Natis, distinguished analyst at Gartner.

Coding futures
Natis scoffs at the idea that codeless software threatens the livelihood of traditional developers. "When apps are designed with heavy use of metadata -- it's highly productive and easy to use -- then you're doing configuration, not programming," he says. "Programmers had to create the environment in which some of the parameters could be manipulated by the business users."

Everyone agrees that the gap between the business analyst and the software developer is closing, and thus developers should become more business savvy. But programmers won't really be affected by business analysts who fool themselves into thinking they can write business applications without programmer know-how. "People still have to understand how to create algorithms to deal with data and process," says Natis. "The means of expressing the algorithms may change, but the algorithms themselves do not."

Even as business users become comfortable around technology and seize a greater role in application development (as well as managing their own PCs), the fact is programmers haven't been marginalized. Life may in fact get more interesting for programmers, says James Owen, an InfoWorld Test Center reviewer and founder of Knowledge-Based Systems, a consultancy specializing in business rule management systems.

Codeless programming, which includes business rule-based systems, is sold on the idea that "business analysts will be able to insert their business logic without knowing the first thing about the underlying code," Owen explains. "When upper management realizes they now can do more with the same personnel, they begin to dream" of software skyscrapers that reach infinitely upward.

But codeless programming can only do so much, and so IT programmers will be tasked with architecting and creating frameworks that support these lofty dreams. "And the dreams will lead to even more jobs for the IT programmers," Owen says. "Now the fun begins."