Jason Brooks

When I reviewed the iLuminate 4.0 data warehousing product in June, I spent a healthy share of my testing time getting the data I’d chosen for testing-a set of campaign finance records from the OpenSecrets project-cleaned up and ready for loading into the iLuminate product. This involved writing shell scripts to target small import snags […]

When Microsoft offered the public a first look at next year’s Office 2010 upgrade, one of the suite’s most compelling new features-Web-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote-wasn’t yet available for testing. Microsoft recently pulled back the curtain on its Office Web Apps in the form of a limited-access technical preview, and according to […]

LABS GALLERY: Office Web Apps Preview Brings Microsoft’s Productivity Flagship to Firefox and Linux Logging In Microsoft’s Office Web Apps will eventually be available in ad-supported Windows Live and hosted or on-premises paid versions. For this Tech Preview, Microsoft provided access to the Windows Live version, which meant mortgage ads at log-on. No such ads […]

My fellow Labs analyst Andrew Garcia has chronicled his Windows 7 64-bit migration woes-a tale that led me to consider the bumps I’ve encountered on my own road to 64-bit on the Ubuntu Linux machines I run at home and work. The issues that bedeviled Andrew-missing drivers and a 32-bit-only Cisco VPN client-weren’t a problem […]

This week I’ve been testing out OpenGoo, an open source online office project that’s meant to provide a more open alternative to Google Apps. Specifically, the code that comprises OpenGoo is freely accessible, and, as a plain old LAMP application, OpenGoo gets to leave the confines of its makers’ firewall and live in your data […]

LABS GALLERY: Web-Based OpenGoo Office Productivity Suite Is Worth Watching by Jason Brooks Installing OpenGoo OpenGoo installation involves dropping the project’s code into the Web folder of your LAMP server, visiting a configuration page and walking through basic setup steps. Getting Started OpenGoo presented me with a dashboard that laid out further steps for configuring […]

Web-based office productivity applications such as Zoho Office and Google Apps enjoy significant deployment and collaboration advantages over their older, desktop-bound cousins. These Web-based apps are accessible through most browsers, there’s no software to install on client machines, and, as Web natives, online office applications tend to make documents and events easy to share and […]

LABS GALLERY: Windows Server 2008 R2 Stands Out Most for Hyper-V, Win 7 Features by Jason Brooks Multiple Management Points In contrast with virtualization-only products such as VMware’s ESX Server, Hyper-V is baked into Windows Server, which means visiting various separate Windows configuration tools to perform Hyper-V operations such as shared storage management. Validation Wizard […]

Windows Server 2008 R2 is a modest upgrade, but it’s one that’s worth paying attention to for organizations tracking Microsoft’s foray into server virtualization–Hyper-V–as well as for companies looking to deploy Windows 7 in the short term. With this R2 release, Hyper-V gains the capacity for shifting virtual machines from one host to another without […]

This week, eWEEK Labs’ Jim Rapoza reviewed the developer preview edition of Google Wave, the much-buzzed-about new communications project that Google announced but didn’t quite unveil at its I/O developer conference in May. I’ve spent a bit of time with Wave myself, and I met recently with Wave’s creators for a demonstration. I agree with […]