March 2011
Spotting Virtual Intruders - Technology Review →
technologyreview.com
Researchers propose using hacker tactics to secure cloud computing systems.
Superconducting Magnets for Grid-Scale Storage - Technology Review →
technologyreview.com
Superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) has long been pursued as a large-scale technology because it offers instantaneous energy discharge and a theoretically infinite number of recharge cycles. Until recently, however, the material costs for SMES devices have been prohibitively high for all but very small applications. Now a project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) could pave the way for SMES technology that offers megawatt hours of energy storage. Such capacity is becoming increasingly necessary for electricity grids that need to balance the intermittency of renewable energy sources.
“The Xoom tablet is trim, light, and very pretty … but when you place it next to the iPad 2, it looks as though it was designed and built by angry Soviet prison labor instead of by Motorola.”
—Andy Ihnatko (via shaneguiter)
It's Apple's 'post-PC' world -- we're all just living in it →
engadget.com http
Joshua Topolsky, firing on all cylinders.
“Twitter has no plan to go public in the near future and does not need additional funds because it is making money, Biz Stone, the co-founder of the popular microblogging site, said.”
—Twitter has no plan to go public, says founder Biz Stone - Telegraph
Experimenting on Themselves - Technology Review →
technologyreview.com
About 400,000 people work at IBM, scattered in offices all over the world. To help them work together, the company has been conducting large-scale internal experiments with social software. What started as ad hoc experimentation has become a focused effort driven by the company’s senior management, reaching almost all the company’s employees. As far back as 1997, IBM built an Intranet directory in an effort to help employees find others with the skills and experience they were looking for. For several years after that, employees informally built applications on top of that infrastructure. While many of those tools were helpful, they often didn’t have the technical support they needed to really improve work at the company, says John Rooney, who heads the Technology Innovation Team in IBM’s office of the CIO. “Projects might be running on a server under someone’s desk,” he says. Five years ago, IBM started the Technology Adoption Program (TAP) to facilitate employees’ software experiments. The company created a website with a catalogue, where employees could find projects to try out, and supplemented it with infrastructure to host and develop the projects.
“A new crop of location-based services for mobile devices will encourage users to interact more.”
—Toward a More Social Sense of Place - Technology Review
CNNMoney Tech Tumblr: Not everybody loves new iPad 2 cover →
cnnmoneytech.tumblr.com
Chart: CNNMoney
Steve Jobs’ appearance at the iPad 2 announcement was not the only big surprise at today’s event. To investors in ZAGG, a Salt Lake City company that makes invisibleSHIELD and other covers and skins for mobile devices, the news of a snappy new cover Apple plans to sell with…
“Apple’s recent App Store changes, however logical and empirically justifiable they may seem, all point strongly to a company that has started to believe that what’s good for Apple is good for America. And indeed, this may be the only way to reconcile the inherent conflict of interest. The alternative is philosophically and practically untenable. Apple can try to be a good platform owner and ensure that popular apps like Kindle and Netflix thrive on iOS, and it can also try to advance its own competing services, but both efforts cannot succeed to their fullest potential.”
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John Siracusa — The Apple strategy tax
A perfect post by Mr. Siracusa there. Love it.
(via quatermain)
