From The Editor
By Jeff Caruso, Site Editor
- Buck up, little camper
- If you're searching for the silver lining to all the economic clouds you've seen hanging around lately, just read Matthew Nickasch's latest blog entry.
- 2009 Salary Calculator is live
- If you haven't seen it yet, check out Network World's Salary Calculator, which has been newly updated for 2009.
Plug in your data (which we don't keep) and get a personal estimate of how much you...
- IT industry wants a bailout, too. Hey, why not?
- A think tank is suggesting that while the federal government is handing out cash, it might want to spread some around the IT industry.
Specifically, the group suggests that $30 billion would do...
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Palm Pre at CES; Wi-Fi Chipset shipments up Listen now!
- Seven reasons cloud computing works in a tough economy
- Typically, during a recession, IT departments will assume a conservative spending approach and limit adoption of new technologies, but cloud computing offers an alternative to that route, said one executive.
- Microsoft postpones Windows 7 public beta
- Microsoft Corp. postponed the roll-out of the Windows 7 beta Friday, citing "very heavy traffic" on its Web site.
- Borders' New E-Commerce Strategy Falls Flat During Holidays
- In 1971, Tom and Louis Borders opened an 800-square-foot used bookstore in the quintessential college town of Ann Arbor, Mich., and named it Borders Book Shop. Flash forward nearly 40 years, and their namesake book establishment, now expanded to 1,100 stores and 28,000 employees worldwide with a state-of-the-art e-commerce website, is in trouble on a Dickensian scale.
- Report: Companies use Word out of habit, not necessity
- Companies may use Microsoft Word for word processing out of habit rather than necessity and are beginning to consider other alternatives as the Web has changed the way people create and share documents, according to a Forrester Research report.
- Google: Chrome in 'never-ending' beta
- Google Thursday announced that its Chrome browser would be in a "never-ending" beta test, and gave users three options to update their copies at varying intervals.
- Lenovo buys into Nortel virtual shopping app
- Nortel this week said it landed PC maker Lenovo as a customer for its virtual world business application.
- Italy antiterror law stunts Wi-Fi, critics say
- Italy’s antiterrorism law, renewed by government decree at the beginning of this year, is being accused of stifling the development of Wi-Fi technology in the country.
- USB has yet to win nod from monitor makers or Microsoft
- Two video connectors can be found on nearly every PC, monitor or graphics card in use today. Developed 21 years ago by IBM , the analog VGA (Video Graphics Array) clings on, despite the rise of the (DVI) Digital Visual Interface, which is tailored for LCD displays.
- Memory card standard could provide up to 2TB on SD cards
- The SD Association unveiled a new SD card specification this week at the 2009 International CES that it said can support data storage capacities of up to 2TB with read/write speeds to 104MB/sec. The specification, called SDXC (eXtended Capacity), uses Microsoft's exFAT file system to support the large capacity and interoperability in a broad range of PCs, consumer electronics and mobile phones.
- Apimac intros file-encryption software
- Apimac introduced Protect Files, a new file and folder encryption application. Protect Files 1.0 creates a password-locked encrypted space for files and folders on hard drives, external disks, or a USB drive.
- Auditor: IRS still vulnerable to cyber breaches
- The U.S. Internal Revenue Service remains vulnerable to a wide range of cybersecurity problems, and the agency has fixed less than half of the vulnerabilities identified in a November audit, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office released Friday.
- Charter targets Verizon FiOS in patent suit
- Verizon Communications' flagship FiOS high-speed data and video service infringes four patents held by Charter Communications, the cable operator alleges in a federal lawsuit.
- Hackers deface NATO, US Army Web sites
- Hackers have taken down two high-profile targets as they continue their ongoing Web attacks in support of Palestine, defacing Web sites run by the U.S. Army and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
- Microsoft testing a better rival to Google Docs
- Microsoft is testing new capabilities for Office Live Workspace, its online adjunct to Microsoft Office, that will make it a closer rival to online application suites such as Google Docs.
- Start-up in stealth mode virtualizes memory, shares across servers
- Virtualization start-up RNA Networks will offer technology that aggregates memory and shares it across servers, improving performance of online transaction processing and clustered or grid computing.
- Dell shows its new ultraslim Adamo laptop
- Dell on Friday stripped the tease surrounding its upcoming Adamo computer, revealing it to be a lightweight laptop, which could make it a possible competitor to Apple's MacBook Air.
- XtremeMac shows off voice recorder for 4G nanos
- iPod accessories maker XtremeMac this week unveiled a voice recorder designed for the fourth-generation iPod nano.
- LG shows off OLED display just 0.85 millimeters thick
- LG Electronics is showing off a 15-inch OLED (organic light emitting diode) display at the International Consumer Electronics Show that's just 0.85 millimeters thick, less than half the thickness of a similar display it expects to market in the second half of this year.
- Burger King Asks You to Choose: Friends or Food?
- Burger King has had some pretty outlandish ad campaigns--most recently with the "Whopper Virgins" TV ads--but a new marketing scheme that utilizes Facebook is possibly its strangest yet. Burger King is asking people to drop ten friends on Facebook to receive a free whopper.
- Via displays netbooks, PCs with rival chip to Intel Atom
- Via Technologies on Thursday showed off several new products armed with its new Nano microprocessor, the chip it hopes will compete with the Intel Atom in netbooks and other devices.
- Palm Pre vs. Apple iPhone: how they stack up
- Palm's new Pre 3G smartphone, with its webOS software, seems to stack up well against the Gold Standard – Apple's iPhone. The Pre's Web integration is an intriguing and distinct approach to the mobile Web
...
- Boxee: Open Source Connected TV
- One of the clear trends at this year's Consumer Electronics Show is the proliferation of ways to get Internet-based content onto your TV. But I've seen only one system that's free (as in both speech and beer) and doesn't seem to restrict where you get content: Boxee.
- Securing your Mac
- When you think of security for the Mac, you're usually talking about firewalls, encryption products, and (most controversially) antivirus apps. But there are some much more brass-tacks security products on the Macworld Expo show-floor that have nothing to do with hackers or malware.
- Race Car Simulator Costs Almost as Much as a Race Car
- If, like me, you've always dreamed of driving a race car really, really fast, but have been deterred by minor worries like the possibility of smashing headlong into a wall at 175 mph, you'll drool over the Simcraft Apex SC830.
- Track Amazon Wish-List Prices with Wish Radar
- I use Amazon's Wish List not just so others know what to get me come birthdays and holidays, but also to track items I'm interested in buying for myself--once the price goes down, that is.
- New Combat Mission Shock Force Demo, Now with Marines
- Can't get enough Generation Kill? Want to take "The Few, The Proud" for a spin? Wondering if wargame developer Battlefront fixed Combat Mission Shock Force's recent performance issues with their latest v1.11 patch?
- Brother's big at Expo
- Printer maker Brother is at the Expo, showing off a line of Mac--compatible inkjet and laser printers. The highlights include the new MFC-990CW, a US$230 color-inkjet multifunction with print, scan and fax capabilities, a cordless handset, and a 4.2-inch touchscreen LCD for navigating menus. As for connection options, the MFC-990CW features 802.11 Wi-Fi as well as Ethernet, USB 2.0 and Bluetooth.
- Fry's VP indicted for wire fraud, money laundering
- A vice president at Fry's Electronics Inc. was indicted this week by a grand jury on five counts of wire fraud and four counts of money laundering in connection with an alleged kickback scheme that pulled in tens of millions of dollars.
- Microsoft releases Window 7 public beta
- Microsoft has posted the Windows 7 beta to its TechNet site for IT professionals, but has not yet made the download available on the site set up for the general public.
- Acer says fourth quarter revenue to fall
- Acer, the world's third largest PC vendor, on Friday said its revenue will drop in the fourth quarter, after previously forecasting a strong holiday season.
- SanDisk puts 'one-touch' backup on flash drive
- SanDisk has extended its strategy of reinventing the USB flash drive as 'do-everything' device, with the announcement of a new one-touch flash backup product, the San Disk Ultra Backup.
- Get Slick
- At Macworld Expo this week, I talked to Bruce Gee of GeeThree fame, as he demonstrated his company's latest batch of SlickFX plugins for Final Cut.
- Obama Calls for a Delay to the Digital Switch
- President-elect Barack Obama has joined the growing chorus of those calling for the digital television switch to be pushed back from its February 17 deadline. On Thursday John Podesta, the co-chair of Obama's transition team, sent a letter to key Congressional members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee and the House Energy & Commerce Committee saying there was insufficient support to assist consumers with the switch. Of the major networks, both NBC and ABC said they support Obama's call for a delay and CBS is open to the idea, according to reports.
- Schwinn Shows Tailwind Electric Bike
- Bicycles at a consumer electronics show? You bet. But Schwinn's Tailwind is no ordinary cycle: It's a hybrid bicycle, which can be ridden the old-fashioned way, powered by its petals, or in motor-assist mode. So if you live in a hill-ridden city like San Francisco, you can get an extra boost getting up those arduous inclines.
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