64290493
submission
Gamoid writes:
I got to talk to a nonprofit that built a cloud based on Salesforce with a UX that lets anyone with any level of sightedness — from visually impaired to fully blind — get to work in any part of the business. It's kind of a cool story about the importance of accessibility in tech, check it out.
63900285
submission
Gamoid writes:
At VMworld today, VMware introduced the Workplace Suite, a platform for securely delivering applications and content across desktops and mobile devices from the cloud. The really cool part, though, is a partnership with Google and NVIDIA to deliver even graphics-intensive Windows applications on a Chromebook. I was on the scene.
62700677
submission
Gamoid writes:
This past school year, the Coachella Valley Unified School District gave out 20,000 iPads to every single student. The good news is that kids love them, and only 6 of them got stolen or went missing. The bad news is, these iPads are sucking so much bandwidth that it's keeping neighboring school districts from getting online. Here's why the CVUSD is considering becoming its own ISP.
46385803
submission
itwbennett writes:
Researchers from the University of Edinburgh set out to test the long-held assumption that kids who performed well in school at a young age carried that early success through to adulthood. And prove it they did! Specifically, 'Math and reading ability at age 7 may be linked with socioeconomic status several decades later.'
45277775
submission
bdking writes:
Google says it plans to ship its Google Glass Explorer Edition by the end of April to developers and consumers who paid $1,500 to test the computer-enabled eyewear, with vague plans for a general release (at a lower price) by year's end. But what will you really be able to do with Google Glass, beyond having information presented before your eyes? Even investors who are set to spend millions funding apps development for Google Glass have no clue. Is Google Glass being overhyped as a "transformational" device?
38007343
submission
bdking writes:
A typeface commonly found on the devices installed in many modern cars is more likely to cause drivers to spend more time looking away from the road than an alternative typeface tested in two studies, according to new research from MIT's AgeLab.
37712885
submission
bdking writes:
A recent study by a Louisiana State University psychology professor adds more evidence to the argument that the human brain is incapable of performing numerous tasks without memory and productivity loss. Like that's a surprise.
31630407
submission
bdking writes:
In an effort to protect sensitive data from internal security threats, some organizations are "using new technology to look at the language of their IT staff's emails to determine whether their behavior or mind-set has changed," the Wall Street Journal reports. Is secretly spying on and linguistically interpreting employee emails going too far in the name of security?
31304135
submission
Lucas123 writes:
Major tech vendors are funding patent trolls, companies that derive the bulk of their income, if not all of it, from licensing huge libraries of patents they hold as well as by suing companies that use their patents without permission, according to an investigation by Computerworld. Tech companies — including Apple and Micron — have railed against patent 'nuisance' lawsuits, only to fund or otherwise support some of the patent trolls. Because of patent trolls, more politely called mass patent aggregators, patent litigation has in part increased by more than 230% over the past 20 years. 'Most of the major tech companies are backing a troll in some way, probably financially,' says Thomas Ewing, an attorney who has authored reports on what he calls 'patent privateering'.
31057031
submission
Lucas123 writes:
While magnetic tape is about as boring as technology gets, it's still the cheapest storage medium and among the fastest in sequential reads and writes. And, with the release of LTO-6 with 8TB cartridges around the corner and the relatively new open linear tape file system (LTFS) being embraced by movie and television markets, tape is taking on a new life. It may even climb out of the dusty archives that cheap disk has relegated it to. "Over the last two years, disk drives have gotten bigger, they've gone from 1TB to 3TB, but they haven't gotten faster. They're more like tape. Meanwhile, tape is going the other direction, it's getting faster," said Mark Lemmons, CTO of Thought Equity Motion, a cloud storage service for the motion picture industry.
30981097
submission
bdking writes:
Former White House cybersecurity advisor Richard Clarke says state-sanctioned Chinese hackers are stealing R&D from U.S. companies, threatening the long-term competitiveness of the nation.
28121544
submission
Lucas123 writes:
IBM researchers say they've been able to shrink the number of iron atoms it takes to store a bit of data from about one million to 12, which could pave the way for storage devices with capacities that are orders of magnitude greater than today's devices. Andreas Heinrich, who lead the IBM Research team on the project for five years, said the team used the tip of scanning tunneling microscope and unconventional antiferromagnetism to change the bits from zeros to ones. By combining 96 of the atoms, the researchers were able to create bytes — spelling out the word THINK. That solved a theoretical problem of how few atoms it could take to store a bit; now comes the engineering challenge: how to make a mass storage device perform the same feat as scanning tunneling microscope.
28082582
submission
bdking writes:
Reddit's planned 12-hour "blackout" on January 18 sounds like an ineffectual, if not self-defeating, strategy for opposing the Stop Online Piracy Act. But the social news site actually will use that time not to "go dark," but to educate visitors about the ramifications of the House legislation that many fear will lead to widespread shutdowns of Internet sites.
