Ad: Manage updates with the Download App
  • CNET
  • All data posts

data

The Internet fridge is back

The Internet fridge I saw at CES doesn't do what I want it to do. It does not know when I am running out of milk. It does not sniff out the moldy cheese hiding behind the mustard to tell me it's time to throw it out. What the Internet fridge does is this: It has a mounting bracket and a power port on its front so you can install fridge-centric devices.

Stay with me here.

Whirlpool makes the refrigerator in question. I really don't expect you're going to buy one. Another company, Data Evolution, makes … Read more

LinkedIn: Hands off our user data

This post was updated at 12:14 PM PT to include comment from Plaxo.

A representative from business networking site LinkedIn has denied a claim from contact management service Plaxo pertaining to last week's controversy over transporting data from one social network to another. According to LinkedIn, it doesn't approve of Plaxo scripts that import LinkedIn contact information.

Last week, Facebook blocked "power user" Robert Scoble's account when he attempted to test out a new feature from Plaxo that synchronized Facebook "friends list" e-mail addresses with Plaxo's contact management system. Scoble's … Read more

Stealing without taking

Verdasys CTO Dan Geer says one of the problems with data theft is that it has nothing in common with our current attitudes toward possession and loss. I recently talked with Geer about protecting your computer assets, and at one point he started quoting that famous Joni Mitchell line, "You don't know what you've got till it's gone."

(Data theft) is one place where our intuition about physical objects and our intuition about data can't be the same.

If I steal your car, you are likely to notice. Or putting it differently, if I … Read more

The Scoble scuffle: Facebook, Plaxo at odds over data portability

A data import feature being tested by contact management site Plaxo hasn't gone over too well with social network Facebook.

At least one alpha tester of the new script has had his Facebook account disabled, due to an alleged terms-of-service violation that brings to light the sticky debate over just how "open" the social Web is--and ideally should be.

The controversy hit the Web when popular blogger and former Microsoft evangelist Robert Scoble--who once gained notoriety when he publicly complained that Facebook wouldn't allow his friends list to surpass 5,000 people--posted a blog entry that … Read more

Pumping DC power to the data center

Thomas Edison had it right, say the founders of start-up Validus DC Systems. Direct current is the way.

Validus on Tuesday announced that it has raised $10 million from Oak Hill Venture Partners to further develop its data center power supplies that use direct current (DC) to lower power consumption. Products are expected to be released in late January next year.

By using direct current, rather than drawing electricity from outlets that supply alternating current, data center managers can reduce their energy consumption by up to 40 percent, according to the company.

There is a growing awareness of the cost … Read more

Attention profiling: How radical do you want radical transparency to be?

Michael Pick of Particls has written the perhaps most comprehensive overview of attention profiling and APML (attention profiling mark-up language) to date. APML is a proposed standard that allows users to share their own personal attention profile and compress all forms of attention data into one portable file format that can be traded between attention seekers and givers:

"We have reached the point of information hyper-saturation. It can become quite a chore to find relevant content online, when there is so much other information competing for your attention. But by implementing attention profiling, it becomes possible to have the … Read more

Apple and the mysterious case of the iPhone purchase requirements.

Sometimes it seems that ZDNet drives around in big vans, catches those prone to willful obtuseness with nets and takes them immediately to its headquarters where they're each given a blog.

This time ZDNet's David Berlind is hot on the trail of the hideous secret behind Apple's requirement that iPhones be purchased with a credit card.

And he's got a camera. The Macalope just bets Apple sales associates and holiday shoppers alike were just thrilled to see him coming.

"Oh, hell, Mabel, it's another one o' them ZDNet bloggers. Maybe we should head over … Read more

Predictions for 2008: A massive data meltdown

Remember the panic when the first computer worm hit? We're going to have a crisis like that next year when we get the first data center meltdown, predicted Subodh Bapat, a vice president in the eco-computing team at Sun Microsystems.

"You'll see a massive failure in a year," Bapat said at a dinner with reporters on Monday. "We are going to see a data center failure of that scale."

"That scale" referred to the problems caused by the worm created by Cornell grad student Robert Morris Jr. in 1988. His worm infected … Read more