Software Blog » data-storage

The Converged Media Road to Success

admin — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 12:00:00 +0000

With the introduction of advanced smartphones, e-readers and tablets, it’s hardly surprising that consumption of online content has grown exponentially. This has caused turmoil within the media industry. Traditional advertising revenues are declining as new marketing options are emerging. Print media and newspaper subscriber bases and readership are eroding, while the competition for online viewership is increasing. The need for adoption of social media and delivery to multiple mobile devices is increasingly becoming essential for retaining and attracting new customers.

Album Shaper: Plenty of Oomph Without the Button Glut

admin — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:00:00 +0000

If you are on the hunt for a do-everything photo management app, check out Album Shaper. Considering its solid, user-friendly design, Album Shaper is packed with a hefty toolset of features that newcomers to image manipulation programs will appreciate. That does not mean more experienced digital shutterbugs will feel left out. Album Shaper’s simple menu-driven structure, though, may make the app seem too basic for them. Just don’t let the simplicity lead you to that conclusion too hastily.

SC Leaves Big Questions Open in Text-Message Privacy Case

admin — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 20:52:26 +0000

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to carve out new rights to digital privacy for public sector workers in its 9-0 decision in City of Ontario v. Quon. The case revolved around the question of whether the Ontario, Calif., police force had the right to read text messages employees sent using the department’s equipment and wireless service. The department had no formal policy about text-messaging, but it did have a general computer, Internet and email policy, which stated that use of such equipment and services was limited to city business.

Almanah and RedNotebook: Easy, Elegant Journaling

admin — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 12:00:00 +0000

Diary writing apps are nothing more than glorified text editors with a narrow focus. Keeping a daily diary for personal life commentary is a task that many people restrict to traditional paper-and-pen entries. Keeping a daily journal of work-related entries is more suited to electronic entries. Regardless of the purpose, making diary entries in a dedicated text file or word processing document is the obvious starting point. However, over time, the sheer number of entries becomes a cataloging nightmare.

Growing the Data Center Gracefully With Flexible Load Balancing

admin — Tue, 25 May 2010 12:00:00 +0000

year over year, the amount of Internet traffic has grown and will continue to grow. These trends are facilitated by the continuous growth of smartphone usage and the recent introduction of the iPad. This growth in Internet traffic means that most websites today are expected to see more traffic and more users coming into their data centers and networks than they currently serve. While this is great for business, many data centers are not designed to effectively manage this ongoing growth in traffic usage. This is due to two main facts.

Seagate’s Hybrid Drive Shoots for Quick-Draw Data Access

admin — Mon, 24 May 2010 18:29:04 +0000

Seagate Monday began shipping its second-generation hybrid solid state/hard disk drive to original equipment manufacturers and its sales channels. The Seagate Momentus XT is priced much lower than full solid-state drives. The device spins at 7,200 RPMs and comes in capacities of 250 GB, 320 GB and 500 GB. All Momentus XT models come with not only a standard hard disc drive, but also a 4GB solid state flash memory drive. The Momentus XT comes with Seagate’s Adaptive Memory Technology software that memorizes users’ file access patterns and stores the most-loaded files onto the SSD.

Why Is Your IT Audit Taking So Long?

admin — Tue, 18 May 2010 12:00:00 +0000

There’s no shame in admitting that audits are hard. For those of us in IT, hearing the word “audit” probably brings up a groundswell of negative connotations and the corresponding aggravation and headache: We know from having lived through it that tech-heavy regulatory audits — annual PCI assessments, HIPAA audits, ISO, etc. — cut directly into our staff’s ability to get their already-busy jobs done. Expect reduced productivity from employees, intrusive questions that take time to research and answer, and extra hours spent gathering evidence and reports.

Who Will Show Up to Linux’s Steam-Powered Playground?

admin — Mon, 17 May 2010 12:00:00 +0000

Linux fans tend to be a loyal bunch, showering their favorite operating system with rightfully deserved praise at every opportunity. When they do complain about Linux, however, the topic is often gaming. Lack of games on Linux, that is — a factor many consider crucial to Linux’s ultimate mainstream acceptance. So it was with great glee and excitement last week that the community learned that the Steam content delivery platform and source engine are coming to Linux in the not-too-distant future!

Brasero Burns Data, Not Time – or Piles of Discs

admin — Wed, 12 May 2010 12:00:00 +0000

The ubiquitous CD/DVD platter may be on its way to Legacyville, one town away from the FloppyTown and the once-popular ZipDisk City. Large-capacity USB and micro disk storage media go where the CD/DVD cannot go — small mobile gadgets. But for laptop and desktop storage and bulk transfer needs, CD/DVD software is still indispensable. Nothing can bog down its use more than poorly designed tools for burning content. Burning files to CDs and DVDs is not something I do daily, so I sometimes have to revisit a learning curve for using these apps.

EMC’s Vplex Puts Data on the Bullet Train

admin — Mon, 10 May 2010 21:04:20 +0000

Much has been said recently about virtual servers and networks and their ability to both save IT groups hardware costs and let users access software applications and Web-based tools regardless of location. However, data storage has remained a sticking point in the full realization of cloud-based computing, because those virtual servers and mobile networks typically depend on data residing on traditional storage devices in physical data centers. Anyone who has waited for a department group’s knowledge management site changes to replicate across an organization’s intranet knows the frustration of that limitation.

There’s Something About Ubuntu

admin — Mon, 10 May 2010 12:00:00 +0000

That Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distro these days seems to be a matter of relatively little dispute, and certainly, it’s not hard to see why. The distro has a variety of features that make it particularly easy to use, especially for beginners. With the recent release of Lucid Lynx, however, the rapturous jubilation seems to have reached epic proportions. To wit: “Ubuntu 10.04 — Perfect” was the title of one blog post on the release, generating no fewer than 140 comments there before racking up another 400 or so on Digg.

White House Gives Back: Drupal Gets New Custom Code

admin — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 12:00:00 +0000

Taking its relationship with Drupal to the next level, the Obama administration announced on Wednesday that it has released to the public some of the custom code it’s developed for the Whitehouse.gov website. “This code is available for anyone to review, use, or modify,” wrote Dave Cole, senior advisor to the CIO of the executive office of the president, on the White House blog. “We’re excited to see how developers across the world put our work to good use in their own applications.”

6 Critical Technologies for Combating Targeted Attacks

admin — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 12:00:00 +0000

Hiring a professional penetration tester is often a humbling experience. Using a mix of simple social engineering and technology savvy, a professional is often able to expose dangerous security holes in an organization’s IT infrastructure with ease. In a few days, a penetration tester can identify security vulnerabilities overlooked by the IT staff. Targeted attacks however, surpass penetration testing efforts and can present an even greater threat than malware.

Hadron Smashes Through Door to New Era in Physics

admin — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 19:22:22 +0000

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, finally smashed two beams of protons together at high speed on Tuesday after a couple of failed starts. CERN was trying to get the two proton beams to collide at an energy level of 7 trillion electron volts, but problems with the electrical system forced the scientists to reset the system and try again. The experiment succeeded shortly after 1 p.m. central European summer time. CERN will run the collider for 18 to 24 months.

Latest Swiss Army Knife Boasts Super-Secure Storage Stick

admin — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:55:34 +0000

Victorinox, maker of the Swiss Army Knife, has come out with a model that would make James Bond proud: a pocket knife with a super-secure USB stick. How secure is the Secure Pro USB stick? Well, it’s equipped with both a fingerprint reader and a thermal scanner so, if someone cuts off your finger and applies it to the fingerprint reader, that won’t work. Oh, and if a bad guy tries to force open the USB, it will self-destruct. The USB stick comes in three versions. The basic model is the Secure Pro, which is available in capacities of 8 GB, 16 GB and 32GB.

Nanobots Flip Off Cancer Switch in Cells

admin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 15:56:43 +0000

There is now proof that a Nobel Prize-winning technology can deliver targeted therapy directly to cancer tumor cells, say a team of California Institute of Technology researchers led by Mark Davis, who published their findings in Nature. Their clinical trial showed that a specialized polymer nanoparticle injected into patients’ bloodstreams did indeed carry a genetic off-switch message to cancer cells, rendering their proteins unable to replicate.

Bill Curbs President’s Power to Flip Internet Off-Switch

admin — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:46:27 +0000

If the U.S. comes under cyberattack, how much authority should the president have to shut down the Internet? That’s at the core of the debate over different versions of the cybersecurity legislation currently in circulation in Washington. Senate Bill 733 limits that authority. A previous version of the Act, introduced about a year ago, gave the president the power to flip the switch on all or some portions of the infrastructure of the Internet in the interests of homeland security.

Data Storage: It’s Time to Grow Up

admin — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:00:00 +0000

Today’s data-storage customer has lost his voice in a sea of vendor jockeying and positioning. This glut of vendors creates a noisy industry and a crowded marketplace, where all vendors sound the same and marketing materials are nearly indistinguishable from vendor to vendor. Directly because of this confusion, many data storage customers have chosen to stick with practices that they are familiar with, regardless of whether those behaviors prove detrimental to their storage environment.

Much Goofy Gardening Fun to Be Had in ‘Plants vs. Zombies’

admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:00:00 +0000

Anyone whose home has been under attack from zombies knows all too well how incredibly annoying the problem can get — way worse than termites or even a wasp nest. Luckily, strategic landscaping in the front yard can be an effective defense, at least in the cartoony world “Plants vs. Zombies” inhabits. PopCap’s game for PCs and Macs has been scaled down into an iPhone/iPod touch version, which loosely follows the tower defense game genre while adding in some new features to keep things interesting.

Making IT Security Less Artsy and More Scientific

admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:00:00 +0000

Security may be the hottest topic in IT, but it’s also one of the least understood. So BriefingDirect assembled a panel to examine the need for IT security to run more like a data-driven science, rather than a mysterious art form. Rigorously applying data and metrics to security can dramatically improve IT results and reduce overall risk to the business. By employing and applying more metrics and standards to security, the protection of IT becomes better, and the known threats can become evaluated uniformly.

Software Blog » data-storage

The Converged Media Road to Success

Related Posts

Album Shaper: Plenty of Oomph Without the Button Glut

Related Posts

SC Leaves Big Questions Open in Text-Message Privacy Case

Related Posts

Almanah and RedNotebook: Easy, Elegant Journaling

Related Posts

Growing the Data Center Gracefully With Flexible Load Balancing

Related Posts

Seagate’s Hybrid Drive Shoots for Quick-Draw Data Access

Related Posts

Why Is Your IT Audit Taking So Long?

Related Posts

Who Will Show Up to Linux’s Steam-Powered Playground?

Related Posts

Brasero Burns Data, Not Time – or Piles of Discs

Related Posts

EMC’s Vplex Puts Data on the Bullet Train

Related Posts

There’s Something About Ubuntu

Related Posts

White House Gives Back: Drupal Gets New Custom Code

Related Posts

6 Critical Technologies for Combating Targeted Attacks

Related Posts

Hadron Smashes Through Door to New Era in Physics

Related Posts

Latest Swiss Army Knife Boasts Super-Secure Storage Stick

Related Posts

Nanobots Flip Off Cancer Switch in Cells

Related Posts

Bill Curbs President’s Power to Flip Internet Off-Switch

Related Posts

Data Storage: It’s Time to Grow Up

Related Posts

Much Goofy Gardening Fun to Be Had in ‘Plants vs. Zombies’

Related Posts

Making IT Security Less Artsy and More Scientific

Related Posts