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Thanks to Ronnie 44052 on Flickr for the pic (CC licence).

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[It was rumoured today that Apple might buy Twitter -- the Web telegraph system with a maximum count of 140 characters per 'tweet' -- for up to $700m.]

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[It was rumoured today that Apple might buy Twitter -- the Web telegraph system with a maximum word count of 140 characters per 'tweet' -- for up to $700m.]

Pic credit: ping ping on Flickr, CC licence.

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Thanks to Silveira Neto for the original image (CC licence, Flickr).

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Thanks to Chsipita on Flickr (CC Licence) for the pic.

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Thanks to Cimexus on Flickr for the pic (CC licence).

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While the speculation surrounding IBM's rumoured acquisition of Sun tended to assume that there were no other sensible acquisition candidates, I have tended to disagree. It occurred to me that a great acquirer would have been Microsoft. Click continue reading for more.

Q. I know you won’t be able to say much about the rumours in the press. But if some kind of IBM-Sun deal did happen, would it be interesting to see what you could do combining things like Sun’s NetBeans and IBM’s Eclipse projects?

A. It’s certainly possible. We have been partners on the Java journey for quite a few years. In many ways there would not be a huge impact on Java development. It’s all just speculation at this point.

Q. IBM and Sun seem to be rather different organisations…

A. There would definitely be a culture clash. We’re definitely weirder than they are. We grew up from a bunch of hippies, almost with flowers in our hair. But we’re a much more grown-up company now [than when Sun was founded] with a very different group of people. We’ve become a full-on enterprise software company.

Q. You’re in London addressing developers and partners; what are some of the key themes you have been discussing?

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The Wall Street Journal has reported that IBM is on the verge of acquiring Sun Microsystems, the software, systems and services vendor, for $6.5bn...[click continue reading for more on this entry]...

Google Chrome’s incognito mode is meant to keep any sites that you visit during a browsing session – when using Chrome’s incognito mode -- private. Google says incognito mode could be useful if you are looking for presents for the wife, for example, and don’t want her to see which online stores you have visited.

Users of incognito mode would hope that Chrome’s history is kept clear of any site visits they would prefer to keep private – whether shopping for the wife or indeed visiting sites that she or the rest of the family might not approve of.

But it turns out there’s a big flaw with the incognito mode, that effects both Chrome and Firefox. When using Chrome or Firefox to stream media files, it is not uncommon for them to use Windows Media to act as the streaming player – files with extensions such as .avi and .wmv. Only trouble is, Internet Explorer keeps a copy of these file names in the IE history, regardless of whether incognito mode was turned on in Chrome or not.

Users are noting that IE is storing these file type names in its history even when they didn’t realise they were using IE – they were using Chrome or Firefox as their browser of choice but they happened to use IE’s Windows Media capabilities for file streaming.

So I guess for now the advice is either not to stream any media that you would prefer to remain incognito, or if you do, you’re going to have to open IE at the end of your browser session and delete its history.

Thanks to Polybore for bringing this to my attention by posting a comment on one of my previous blog entries – he also found this mention of the problem on Google’s support pages.

I've already blogged about the fact that Chrome incognito mode is not without its problems, even before the streaming media issue was brought to light.

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Insiders say that if IBM does indeed close the deal, the package will include not just Jonathan Schwartz’s blog – and all associated branding including the rights to use the term ‘Jonathan’s Blog’ -- but also an ancilliary hardware, systems and software business that IBM is believed to think “could come in handy if the ass falls out of the blogging market”.

In its latest quarter Sun announced sales down 11%, gross margin as a percentage of revenue down 6.6% and a net loss of $209m. Schwartz said of the results: “It's great to see customers so aggressively embracing open source software, from Solaris to MySQL, alongside Sun's new open source storage platforms as a means of radical cost reduction.”

But while the company was having a tough quarter Schwartz’s blogging prowess suffered no such setbacks. He put a picture of a pair of sneakers next to a blog about major retailers for those not familiar with the concept; he embedded a video of Steve Ballmer’s now infamous “Developers, Developers, Developers!” speech into a blog about, you guessed it, developers.

But perhaps the piece de resistance, he blogged the line: “The storage industry bears a remarkable resemblance to the proprietary server industry [companies like Sun -- Ed.] at the bursting of the internet bubble - closed, highly profitable, frustrating customers with exorbitant charges. Plump, and ripe for change. Like a plum.”

Let's put aside for a moment the fact that Schwartz has just described Sun's server business at the bursting of the Internet bubble as having "frustrated customers with exorbitant charges".

Because, as anyone will tell you, plums too are ‘ripe for change’. You can’t walk past a plum orchard without hearing the little fellas talking about how they want to get out, do something different: change. Plum crumble, plum cake, plum jam – anything but staying a plum! Simply remaining a plum is so, well, plum 1.0.

Of course for anyone who wasn’t aware of The Nature of Plums (i.e. they’re like rolling stones, always moving from place to place, never settling down) or indeed doesn’t know what a plum looks like, Schwartz helpfully included a picture of a plum on his blog entry.

This seminal entry led one IBM insider close to the Jonathan’s Blog acquisition to note sagely: “This isn’t just any blogger. This is a guy who can read the mind of a plum. The $6.5bn valuation obviously needed to take that into account. People will of course say we are paying too much. But do you know of another blogger who knows as much about plums? I didn’t think so.”

A plum.

Red Hat’s CEO Jim Whitehurst wants to get Red Hat to the $1bn revenue mark by 2011. So has the ex-airline industry executive got what it takes? Jason Stamper reports.

If incoming CEO Whitehurst lacked open source credentials he was not lacking in credibility: he took the COO role at Delta Airlines just weeks before it was forced into declaring bankruptcy, and he was credited with helping get the company back on track – or at least to get back in the skies.

Whitehurst: the right man for the job? Image (c) CBR 2009; Do Not Copy.

So why did the board want someone like Whitehurst? “The company is at an interesting size,” Whitehurst told CBR on a recent trip to London. “We’re growing very rapidly, doing over $500m in our last fiscal. The board recognised the need for someone who comes from a large company to drive Red Hat forward, and who will put in management reports, processes and so on. We’ve produced the first strategic plan the company has ever done."

Click continue reading for The 451 group analyst Matthew Aslett's view of Whitehurst's strategy, and how CBR sums up Whitehurst's progress so far.

Sources close to the news confirmed that date for the launch of the latest version, which is expected to put greater emphasis on migration technologies, virtualisation, interoperability, 'green' computing and even desktop Linux...[click continue reading for more on this news story]...