Friday, September 26, 2008

Google Unveils Tool to 'Crowdsource' Meeting Questions

Cool stuff...

"There was never enough time for all the questions, and it wasn't clear that the best questions were the ones actually getting asked," Heath said. "To help with this, I designed a tool that would allow anyone attending a tech talk to submit a question, and then give other participants a way to vote on whether or not that question should be asked. This way, the most popular and relevant questions would rise to the top so that the presenter or the moderator could run the discussion more efficiently and in a transparent manner."


Click here for the rest of the article.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Android (gPhone) in October on TMobile?

Hmmm... not sure what I think yet.



Official: First Android Phone on September 23rd

"T-Mobile has sent out invitations for the official announcement of the first Googlephone, the HTC Dream. The press conference will be held in New York on September 23rd, although the Android-based phone won't hit stores until October (probably October 20th)."

Monday, September 15, 2008

Google to Take to the High Seas?

If you can't beat'em... leave! :) This would certainly help lower their legal costs for dealing with all of the government regulations/lawsuits, etc.... :)

"Google may take its battle for global domination to the high seas with the launch of its own “computer navy”.

The company is considering deploying the supercomputers necessary to operate its internet search engines on barges anchored up to seven miles (11km) offshore.

The “water-based data centres” would use wave energy to power and cool their computers, reducing Google’s costs. Their offshore status would also mean the company would no longer have to pay property taxes on its data centres, which are sited across the world, including in Britain.

In the patent application seen by The Times, Google writes: “Computing centres are located on a ship or ships, anchored in a water body from which energy from natural motion of the water may be captured, and turned into electricity and/or pumping power for cooling pumps to carry heat away.”

Click here to read the rest of the story.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Why Is the Internet So Infuriatingly Slow?

Ok, so mine isn't... it's kind of hard to complain about 20-30mb down and 3-8mb up.

"Everyone hates their Internet service provider. And with good cause: In the age of ubiquitous Internet access, Web service in America is still often frustratingly slow. Tired of being the villain, telecom companies have assigned blame for this problem to a new bad guy. He's called the "bandwidth hog," and it's his fault that streaming video on your computer looks more like a slide show than a movie. The major ISPs all tell a similar story: A mere 5 percent of their customers are using around 50 percent of the bandwidth—sometimes more during peak hours. While these "power users" are sharing three-gig movies and playing online games, poor granny is twiddling her thumbs waiting for Ancestry.com to load."

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Trackback... Comcast to Cap Monthly Bandwidth Usage

Eight reasons CIOs think developers are clueless

"CIO.com has published several stories that examined the sometimes volatile, often misunderstood and never dull relationship between CIOs and application developers -- from "9 Reasons Why Application Developers Think Their CIO Is Clueless" to "8 Reasons Why a Developer Would NEVER Want To Be a CIO" to "Getting Clueful: 7 Things CIOs Should Know About Agile Development."

Those articles were presented solely from the programmer's viewpoint, however. We wanted to give the bosses -- CIOs and IT leaders who perhaps were irked by the "clueless" label -- a chance to respond. Because, certainly, developers can be out-of-touch too -- just in different ways.

CIO.com asked IT leaders what they wish developers knew so that the programmers don't appear clueless to the rest of the organization. The bosses' responses, gathered from eight CIOs and IT managers and which have been anonymously condensed, show that many developers need to gain the bigger-picture view of their organizations to appreciate the challenges of those "clueless" CIOs. "


Click here for the rest of the article.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008