jfruhlinger - Slashdot User

Submission + - Qualcomm Wants A Piece Of The PC Market (itworld.com)

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jfruhlinger

on Tuesday January 10, 2012 @06:18PM

jfruhlinger writes: "Much of Intel's story of the past few years has involved its so far fruitless attempts to break into the smartphone and tablet market. But as it keeps trying, it may find competition on its home turf: Qualcomm, which makes many of the ARM-based chips in those smartphones and tablets, wants to make PCs, too. The advent of Windows 8 for ARM and Android will make this possible."

Submission + - Data Hogs: The Monsters Carriers Created (itworld.com)

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jfruhlinger

on Monday January 09, 2012 @05:03PM

jfruhlinger writes: "A recent study claimed that the top 1 percent of mobile data users eat up 25 percent of the available bandwidth. But assuming it's true, who's at fault? Stats show that data usage has increased radically with each new model of the iPhone, and similar phenomenon are in place for Android phones — all of which are gleefully sold to the public by the same people who complain about 'data hogs.' Isn't this the equivalent of a car dealer that heavily promotes Cadillacs, then complains about poor fuel efficiency, then charges a ton for extra gasoline?"

Submission + - Michael Dell: Mobile Gadgets No Threat To PCs (itworld.com)

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jfruhlinger

on Monday January 09, 2012 @04:32PM

jfruhlinger writes: "In a pitch that might qualify as "no duh" news, Michael Dell, CEO of a company that makes lots of money from PCs and has tried and largely failed to break into the smartphone and tablet market, told an audience in India that smartphones and tablets don't threaten PC sales. It's a particularly important question in India, where many users buy smartphones rather than PCs because they're cheaper; Dell believes that such users will eventually switch to PCs for a fuller Internet experience."

Submission + - Hadoop vs. RDBMS: How Much (Less) Would You Pay? (itworld.com)

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jfruhlinger

on Friday January 06, 2012 @12:48PM

jfruhlinger writes: "Hadoop is a popular open source NoSQL data analysis framework that runs on commodity hardware. One of its main appeals, like most open source software, is its free-as-in-beer nature, but does it really save you money in practice? One attempt to crunch the numbers indicates significant savings, even if you're paying more for professional Hadoop wranglers than you would for an Oracle admin."

Submission + - Confessions Of An Internet Stalker (itworld.com)

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jfruhlinger

on Thursday January 05, 2012 @03:57PM

jfruhlinger writes: "You have someone's first name, last initial, and home city. How easy is it to find their home address, phone number, and pictures of them drunkenly partying on the Internet? Pretty easy, it turns out."

Submission + - Netflix Stock Surge Shows Wall Street's Madness (itworld.com)

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jfruhlinger

on Thursday January 05, 2012 @12:38PM

jfruhlinger writes: "Netlifx's stock has suffered over the past year as a result of the company's pricing changes and abortive attempt to split into separate DVD and streaming arms, but yesterday it surged more than 10 percent. Was there some new information about the company's fundamental strengths? No; the sudden increase in value came because some TV analyst mused that Yahoo might buy it. As if you needed more proof that short-term stock prices are based on very little."

Submission + - Windows, Nokia To Spend $100M on WP7 Marketing (itworld.com)

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jfruhlinger

on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @06:47PM

jfruhlinger writes: "One of the big turning points in the history of Android phones came in October of 2009, when Motorola and Verizon launched the Droid line of phones with a $100 million marketing blitz that took aim directly at the iPhone. Now Microsoft, Nokia, and AT&T are working together on a similarly pricey campaign to get the first wave of Nokia Windows Phone 7 handsets into the national conversation in the United States. Will wall-to-wall advertising and better placement and incentives in AT&T stores finally make Windows Phone a realistic contender in the smartphone market?"

Submission + - FDA Approves Self-Sanitizing Keyboard (itworld.com)

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jfruhlinger

on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @05:07PM

jfruhlinger writes: "Deep down, most people ,now that the germiest thing they touch all day is the thing they're touching all day: their keyboard. But what, if anything, can be done about it? A couple of former MIcrosoft hardware guys have launched a keyboard that sterilizes itself via ultraviolet light. While the FDA has signed off on it, tests show that the UV only kills about two-thirds of the germs living in it, and that it still needs to be cleaned by hand."

Submission + - Asus Tablet Gets ICS - But Where Can You Buy It? (itworld.com)

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jfruhlinger

on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @10:24AM

jfruhlinger writes: "The Android tablet market got a little less fragmented this week when Asus announced that its Transformer Prime tablet, currently running Android 3.2, will get the upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich next week. But if you wanted to buy one, where would you find it? They're almost impossible for an ordinary consumer to track down — which is another problem the Android tablet market has, with hyped gadgets being MIA in the real marketplace."

Submission + - Red Hat Will Hire 1,000 New Employees In 2012 (itworld.com)

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jfruhlinger

on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @03:07PM

jfruhlinger writes: "According to Red Hat's CEO, the venerable Linux company will add 1,000 new employees this year, The surge in the company's business is almost entirely attributable to an increase in interest in cloud computing: Red Hat is becoming a major cloud infrastructure provider."

Submission + - Online Clearinghouse Offers To Defend Privacy (itworld.com)

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jfruhlinger

on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @12:20PM

jfruhlinger writes: "Privacy may have become a hot-button issue in the Internet age, but the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse has been fighting against corporate privacy violations for 20 years now. Today, they've launched an online complaint center that will hopefully help keep your private data private. Fill out the online form and the PRC will follow up with the privacy compliance officer at the company in question, or investigate whether a complaint to a government agency is in order."

Submission + - We Are All Linux Developers Now (itworld.com)

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jfruhlinger

on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @01:42AM

jfruhlinger writes: "As Linux rose to prominence in the early '00s, one of the knocks against it was the fragmentation across various distributions and platforms, which made things tricky for app developers and required frequent tweaks and a rapid release cycle. If that sounds familiar, it's the exact same problem that Android devs are facing today — and that cross-platform applications like Firefox have grappled with for years. Call it the Linuxification of software development, and get used to it, because it's here to stay."

Submission + - Who Owns Your Twitter Followers? (itworld.com)

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jfruhlinger

on Wednesday December 28, 2011 @04:59PM

jfruhlinger writes: "Many people who are wary of social networking worry that the networking services themselves — Twitter, Facebook, etc. — will assert ownership over their personal data and friends lists. But what about your own employer? Noah Kravitz spent four years blogging for PhoneDog and built up a 17,000-follower Twitter account in the process; now he's left the company and he and his erstwhile employer are suing one another over rights the account."

Submission + - How Santa's Tech Has Evolved (itworld.com)

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jfruhlinger

on Thursday December 22, 2011 @05:38PM

jfruhlinger writes: "Santa may be an immortal elf who lives at the North Pole, but the way we imagine him reflects our own contemporary world. A flying sleigh may have made more sense in an era when many people used sleighs for everyday transportation, after all; in modern movies, that sleigh is often outfitted with the sort of in-dash navigation we expect in our new cars. This video looks at how the technology Santa and his team of elves has evolved in our image of him over the last hundred years or so."

Submission + - German Nonprofit Forks OpenOffice, Solicits Cash (itworld.com)

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jfruhlinger

on Thursday December 22, 2011 @12:10PM

jfruhlinger writes: "There's weird business afoot in the world of OpenOffice. The Apache Software Foundation may have laid out its plans for OpenOffice, but that hasn't stopped a German nonprofit called Team OpenOffice.org from seeming to claim ownership of the project, declaring that "OpenOffice.org can't be allowed to die!" and raising money. Is this just healthy open source competition or is the German group deliberately spreading FUD?"

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