microsoft

I’m not a fan of pop-up ads at all. This is quite a common position on the web and first led to the development of add-ins to popular browsers to prevent these being displayed and then to the browsers themselves blocking pop-ups. Something quite odd seems to have happened with Internet Explorer 9 however, when [...]

I’m really not sure what to think about the collaboration between Nokia and Microsoft. Prior to my recent switch to HTC, I’ve always used Nokia phones, so I have a soft spot for the company, but this recent announcement has me in two minds.

My first reaction was this move is a complete disaster for Nokia and a big bonus for Microsoft. Nokia ships a serious amount of phones, so Microsoft will quickly get some impressive numbers, which is great for them, but what do Nokia get out of it? Currently it seems they get a mobile platform that nobody really wants or cares about.

My second reaction was maybe this is the right move for Nokia. Symbian has a lot of the market share at the moment, but it is going down hill very quickly. They need to make a move, but where to go? If they go Android they will be just another manufacturer in the mix. They would be better off than they are now, but could they dominate this market? If they go Windows they could mark themselves out as the dominant force in this market. The other offerings in this space look rather weak. As Windows Phone develops, with Nokia’s help, maybe this could be a very attractive market.

Of course, only time will tell, but I know one thing. As the mobile OS market currently stands, I won’t be buying a Nokia phone running Windows Phone.

Cheers

Tim…

This afternoon I’ve been cleaning up some data in an SQL Server database. I decided to use SQL*Developer to connect to SQL Server by following this post.

• Using Oracle SQLDeveloper to access SQLServer (The “Check for Updates” functionality doesn’t seem to work properly on my SQL*Developer running on CentOS 5 (64-bit), so I had to install the JDBC driver manually.)

I made liberal use of the following tip when dealing with TEXT and NTEXT types.

• How to use REPLACE() within NTEXT columns in SQL Server

The joys of dealing with multiple engines…

Cheers

Tim…