Stories about: Pioneer

For much of his 34 years at Intel, Justin R. Rattner has been a pioneer in parallel and distributed processing. His early ideas didn't catch on in the market, but the time has come for them now, he recently told Computerworld's Gary Anthes.

We at Computerworld would be the last to say that science and technology aren't creative pursuits. Still, when most people say, "Oh, she's very creative," they're probably not talking about the subject's ability to perform higher math or engineer a network. Such people might be amazed to learn of the remarkable number of actors, directors, musicians and other celebrities who nurture an inner geek.

IBM Monday seized on last week's rejection by the ISO of the Microsoft and Ecma International Office Open XML format and said it would throw its development weight behind OpenOffice.org, the most prominent set of open source applications based on the Open Document Format.

A hunger for lighter-weight and lower-cost sales and CRM applications has brought great success to SaaS vendors such as Salesforce.com, and also lifted the fortunes of open source offerings in the space. Open source ERP has had a harder time breaking out, but here too there are several impressive offerings to choose from. And if you're looking to open source for an enterprise portal, CMS, or Microsoft Exchange substitute, you will not be disappointed.

The inventor of the term AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), urged attendees at The Rich Web Experience conference in San Jose on Friday to emphasize user experience when designing products.

In an embarrassing setback for Palm, the handheld pioneer has scrapped its Foleo project, a two-and-a-half-pound "smart phone companion".

eBay has acquired StumbleUpon, a Web browsing recommendation site that mixes social networking and novel search functionality based on peer reviews, for US$75 million.

Someday robots will do more than vacuum your floors. They will train you, advise you and help you remember things as they strive to improve your quality of life.

Vernor Vinge, 62, is a pioneer in artificial intelligence, who in a recent interview warned about the risks and opportunities that an electronic super-intelligence would offer to mankind.

When plans to build and distribute a $US100 (£50) laptop to schoolchildren in emerging economies were first announced two years ago, the people behind the scheme had their fair share of critics.

Red Hat has set up a global services centre in India that will assist its customers with deploying open-source technologies. The centre will hire about 100 staff over the next 12 months.