117 posts tagged “computers”
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On Sunday, the x86 architecture turns 30! This is the classic "PC" architecture, but now runs Macs, as well as many of the servers on the Internet. I dare say that the vast majority of the servers my company hosts are x86 based.
It's hard to imagine I've been on Twitter about a year and a half. It has become so integrated into my life. I've met friends, kept my family up-to-date on what I'm doing (in the are-you-home-from-the-ride sense), and have found it useful to timestamp my life ("When did I go to lunch? Oh yeah..."). I'm glad I can use it as a messaging tool and a status display.
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Then, off to college, where we learn Pascal or C, and that GOTO is considered harmful.
Finally, in the real world, Perl does the programming chores.
You can still try out BASIC, if you are so inclined.
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A week ago, we switched to Broadband over Power Line (BPL). So far, we like it. The speed is definitely better. I did a comparison using an Internet speed test:
The text and a scan of a 1970s Life magazine article, showing a family using a computer in the home for several odd things. They rocked the BASIC, it would seem. No mention of Twitter.
Show us an autograph.
Submitted by Stephen.
There are two web-centric applications I have started to use the last several months that I've come to the accept that I won't be able to exploit to their fullest potential. The first is Zamzar. Upload a file in one format, and it will convert it to an alternate format for you. It can do YouTube to mp4, PDF to Word, and several others. The conversion is done on one of their servers, and they give you a URL to get the final product.
The second is Evernote. This allows for notes to be stored and searched. It will even perform OCR on images, so text within images can be referenced. I took a picture of a whiteboard, and, to some degree, I can search for the text that I wrote. Really cool. The notes are stored on a server, and accessed through either dedicated clients, or a web page.
These are both incredibly useful. However, I have to execute a thought process with each use: how confidential is this? If the data is something sensitive to me personally, I have to take a moment to consider what happens if the company in question goes evil on me. We've all probably had this consideration when using web mail. Where it gets especially sticky, and where the utility of the sites has the most potential but presents the greatest challenges, is using it for work settings.
Some of what I deal with is confidential to my company. It could be deals we are working on, or intellectual property, or other functions. Uploading a document constitutes transmission to a third party, regardless of the terms of service. As often happens, security wins out, and I don't use it.
However, I think this represents a strong opportunity for these Web 2.0 companies to monetize their offering. If they create a version of the server that can be put on common, commodity IT infrastructure, a version for just my company could exist. I can get all the utility, but the added knowledge that it won't go outside of the scope of control of those who need it.
There would be a few challenges. First, the creators of this software would probably need to tweak it--at a minimum, to support integration into existing security infrastructures. It may, however, require replatforming it to things that are closer to corporate standards (this may mean Windows).
Second, they would have to show its value when other groupware is already installed. How does Evernote's utility exceed or compliment SharePoint (it's obvious to me).
I think Google is already on track--the can sell e-mail services and their office suite for your company. However, I think security and legal considerations will always keep applications that live "in the cloud" from ever reaching their full potential.
