Sean Rhody

One of the nice things about working for a large consulting company is that I have access to our strategic services department. These are the people who help develop strategies for our clients and research industry trends and conditions. I recently spoke with a few of our folks w... (more)

Linux is one of the operating systems I run in my basement in what my wife likes to call the computer lab from hell. That may be because the heat from all the obsolete equipment I collect is reducing my fuel bill and keeping the place toasty and warm. Linux is one of three UNIX v... (more)

There's a project team out there that really hates me. I was called in recently to help them get their application together so it could be put into production. When I got there, I determined that the problem was simple - no one understood configuration management. It's tempting ... (more)

Lately I've received a number of e-mails and had conversations regarding J2EE compliance and what it means to the industry. Each conversation or message has a slightly different slant depending on whether the person on the other end is a vendor or a reader or a colleague. What al... (more)

Years ago, when I was in college, I decided to pursue a minor in music to offset the insanity of getting a degree in physics. I spent a bit of time learning the key signatures, and how to transpose music written in one key to another, usually simpler, key (since I'm not much of a... (more)

"J2EE is to Java what SQL was to databases." That's a direct quote from one of my conversations with software vendors during JavaOne. And I tend to agree with the statement. I spent most of the show talking with people regarding their products, their visions and their strategies.... (more)

I spent a couple of weeks in Florida recently - ignoring the Internet and hoping the market dip would go away. It felt good not to pull e-mail (all right, I did, but not every day) and it gave me some time to think about the whirlwind pace that's been the routine of the past year... (more)

Third time's the charm this time. After two aborted attempts to write this column, I finally was able to put pen to paper (all right, fingers to keyboard). I've been really busy patenting the two through 10 click methods of buying on the Internet. I'll shortly be asking for a roy... (more)

Some trends you just don't see coming, like the return of bell-bottom pants. They are mysterious and leave you wondering what people can possibly be thinking about. Other trends are much more comprehensible and when they start to manifest themselves, you tend to wonder why on ear... (more)

One of the frustrations of editing a monthly magazine, as opposed to a daily newspaper, is that I seldom get to scoop the rest of the press. With our lead times, breaking news is more or less old by the time you hear it from me. So by now you've heard that Corel has merged with I... (more)

I may be somewhat unusual, but I've never bought anything at an online auction. I've seen eBay, and one of my friends sold some of his collection of valuable magazines (okay, comic books) on eBay, but I've never gone the whole route and come home with the goods. I've thought abou... (more)

Yech. I hate that title as much as you do, but it stuck in my brain and I can't get it out. Things are going on in the industry, and I think this is an appropriate time to cover them. We were at the Java Business Conference in December, covering what appeared to be more of a none... (more)

(San Francisco, January 28, 2002) WSJ-IN traveled to the West coast, to cover the Next Generation Web Services Conference sponsored by InfoWorld Media, which was held in San Francisco. Web services was the topic on everyone’s mind at this well-attended show, and the two-day event... (more)

Being left handed and, therefore, left footed, I once tried to take dancing lessons so I'd look a little less ungainly at family functions like weddings. My father, who's ambidextrous, makes it look easy. Of course, I always forget that when he was growing up, dancing was the mai... (more)

(San Francisco, January 17, 2002) WSJ traveled to the West coast, to cover the Next Generation Web Services Conference sponsored by InfoWorld Media, which was held in San Francisco. Web services was the topic on everyone’s mind at this well-attended show, and the two-day event wa... (more)

Without a doubt, 2001 is a rebuilding year. The market is down, especially the tech stocks. The dot-coms that were leading the charge are now the dot bombs that we're all trying to distance ourselves from. So it might be easy to conclude that the Internet revolution is over, and ... (more)

Are you nimble enough? That seems to be the new buzzword in the Internet world. Nimble. Nimbleness. Nimbler. My development team is nimbler than yours. Being nimble is the name of the game today. It's not enough to be good developers, we've got to be quick developers. What's dri... (more)

It's not often you get to write an end-of-the-millennium column (once every thousand years, last time I checked). I thought that a little reminiscing about the past few years might be in order, followed by a brief look in the crystal ball to see what we have in store for you in t... (more)

My Forté Here's an old joke. A guy in a strange town needs to get a haircut. There're only two barbers in the town, but the guy doesn't know either of them. Which one does he pick? The answer is the guy with the worst haircut. Why? Because neither barber can cut his own hair, so ... (more)

When I was a teenager, my parents taught me never to argue about sex, politics and religion. Later on I also learned that it's never a good idea to argue with drunks. Now I find myself in the unenviable position of having to step into the middle of a "religious" debate. In the Ju... (more)