Seagate Ratchets Up Support for System Builders

By Joel Shore, ITworld.com

Perhaps the single most crucial aspect of any data center is storage, and mere talk about storage subsystems failure is enough to drive any IT director to update the old résumé. Seagate appears to be doing something about it. On Monday (Sept. 24), disk drive maker Seagate announced a major initiative in which it is ratcheting up support for system builders with a new campaign to drive adoption of high-capacity storage with Windows Vista. That's a good thing.

Apple Controls the Flow of iPhone Apps

By Dan Blacharski

The difference between Apple and Microsoft has more to do with strategic marketing and business model than technology.

Read the full article here.

My PC has appendicitis

By Sean McGrath, ITworld.com

It recently struck me that the years have not been kind to all parts of what is known as a PC. There are bits of the PC that could disappear tomorrow without adversely affecting its performance. Kind of like the appendix. Humans haven't had a use for those things since we stopped roaming the prairies in our loincloths and chewing on switchgrass.

Implementing time by expanding space in Web 2.0

By Sean McGrath, ITworld.com

Do not adjust your set. You have not stumbled into a science fiction or theoretical physics article, as the title might perhaps suggest. The topic of this article is - would you believe - URLs. URLs and time. URLs and space...Actually, the topic is really web 2.0.

Picture the scene. You have a website on which you publish stuff. The nature of the stuff doesn't really matter. The important thing is that there is stuff you want to publish today and there will be other stuff you want to publish tomorrow and the day after that...

Windows update update

By Dan Blacharski

Did you catch the recent brouhaha last week over a so-called "stealth" Windows update, which apparently occurred without giving users the option of denying or delaying it? Here's a summary of what was being posted around the web.

iPhone Price Cuts Triggers Whining

By Dan Blacharski

It's not too often that dramatic price reductions in a popular product elicits whining as a reaction, but such is the case with the Apple iPhone. Apple's expensive iPhone, which debuted just a few short weeks ago at $599, is now $399. Personally, I won't spend more than twenty bucks on a mobile communications device, but I suppose I would be bitterly disappointed had I waited in line to pay $599 for something that was $200 cheaper just a little over a month later. But as everybody knows, in the world of technology, early adopters always pay a higher price for something that inevitably becomes cheaper later. I'm not surprised that the iPhone came down in price. What is surprising is that it came down so quickly.

Read the full article here.

Open XML Rejection by ISO Means Status Quo -- For Now

By Joel Shore, ITworld.com

Back in seemingly prehistoric times -- September 2005 -- the People's Republic of Massachusetts announced that it would dump the proprietary file formats of Microsoft's Office applications and adopt the XML-based OpenDocument Format instead. Since Office didn't support ODF, the move meant getting rid of Office from thousands of state-owned computers and replacing it with ODF-compliant applications. Much has happened since then. 'Twas the "Save As" heard 'round the world.

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Combinatorical Enterprise Architecture

I have been thinking a lot about enterprise architecture recently (an occupational hazard I must deal with on a daily basis). I got to thinking about how, over the years, I have noticed a distinct pattern underlying EAI projects that work out well. No, I don't mean SOA or Open APIs or protocol independence or any of those IT-shaped things. The pattern is at a different level. It goes like this...

Tinfoil hats, or unfortunate reality?

By Dan Blacharski, ITworld.com

Two things are happening that relate to privacy that are cause for concern. First, government intrusion of privacy is at an all-time high (warrantless wire-tapping, etc.), and second, RFID technology is advancing in many ways. There are vocal advocates who proclaim that humans should be "tagged." And according to the Wireless Weblog, there is one company that already requires employees to have microchips implanted in their arms as a condition of employment. Remind me to put that one on my list of places I would never want to work. This is no "feel-good" bill. It's a legitimate bill that should be passed immediately, not just in California but everywhere, because it takes pre-emptive action against the possibility of a grave injustice that could realistically happen.

Read the full article here.