Miscellaneous

When we talk about pervasive computing, we're usually talking about mobile devices like cell phones or, if we're being really exotic, the various sorts of wearable gizmos that get made fun of in Dilbert cartoons. But I look at pervasive from the other end of the pipe. Hence, The Pervasive Datacenter, the name of the blog that kicks off with this post. From my point of view, it's the datacenter, the software that it runs, and its connections that are everywhere just as much as the peripherals out at the end of the network.

This blog will have its home base in the datacenter itself and will cover topics from servers big and small, to multi-core processors, to operating systems, to virtualization, to power and cooling concerns. However, it will also look at the software and the services out in the network cloud that are consuming datacenter computing cycles and storage and thereby determining the future of the back-end. I'll also spend some time on the bigger questions: Is Software as a Service the next big thing or merely Application Service Providers warmed over? What's the future of Open Source in a Web-delivered software model? Do operating systems even matter any longer?… Read more

Update: I added a bit more detail, news of the CFO switcheroo, and a self-congratulatory but illuminating quotation from Intel's CEO.

Intel on Tuesday stomped all over estimates of its quarterly financial performance--not only Wall Street's but its own.

Three months ago, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker in September predicted revenue of $9 billion to $9.6 billion for the third quarter of 2007. Then, in September, it raised it to a range of $9.4 billion to $9.8 billion.

The real number: $10.1 billion, a 15 percent increase from the year-earlier quarter. And net … Read more

Dolby has signed up a passel of cinemas to use its Dolby 3D movie technology, the company announced Monday.

At the ShowEast conference Monday, the company offered a list of independent and chain theater companies that will use Dolby 3D: Carousel Cinemas, Cinema City, Cinetopia, Cobb Theatres, Kerasotes Theatres, Malco Theatres, Marcus Theatres, Maya Cinemas, Megaplex Theatres, Starlight Cinemas, Sundance Cinemas, Warren Theatres, Kinepolis Group of Belgium and Supercines of Ecuador.

But Dolby still isn't saying how many screens total are equipped with its technology, a key measurement of how the relative newcomer is faring against incumbent Real D. … Read more

VMware announced details of its forthcoming Virtual Infrastructure 3.5 on Monday, including an experimental feature to shut down servers if they're not necessary.

The feature, called Distributed Power Management, monitors how hard servers are working and moves virtual machines to new machines to let unneeded servers be shut down. When workload picks up again, the servers are powered up again, according to the publicly traded EMC subsidiary.

Virtual Infrastructure includes two main components. First is ESX Server, the underlying hypervisor that lets a single physical computer run multiple operating systems simultaneously in compartments called virtual machines. Second is … Read more

A Georgia Tech researcher has concluded that you're more likely to forgive your cleaning robot's shortcomings once you bond with it, according to The Associated Press.

Eww.

OK, I'll admit I enjoy watching our iRobot Scooba (purchased it) and Roomba (trying it out after my colleague Michael Kanellos reviewed it). The admonition often comes to my mind that it's only a time saver if you don't watch it while it works.

But I don't want to buy the Roomba little outfits. Or follow the lead of the majority of 30 committed Roomba users that … Read more

Enough with the eensy weensy flash memory drives such as Dell's 64GB model. It's time for a solid-state disk whose capacity is closer to a conventional hard drive with spindles and platters.

Bitmicro Networks this week announced a 2.5-inch flash drive with a capacity of 416GB that will be available in March 2008.

Alas, though, the drive is geared for military, industrial and commercial users, not for arming high-end PC owners with bragging rights. Bitmicro's drive is designed to withstand shocks, vibration, and hot and cold temperatures.

Not being a conventional retail product, it's no … Read more

I've been a typography buff for years--I even reflexively groan when I see ads that use Helvetica--so this Flip Web site was just too entertaining for me to pass up.

It relies on a property of the Unicode character-encoding scheme, which has a vast array of letters and glyphs from non-Roman alphabets. Think of it as ASCII on steroids.

Unicode has enough characters that many standard Roman alphabet characters have upside-down equivalents. When you type letters into the upper box, they appear upside down in the lower box via Unicode translation, according to the site's designer, David Faden. … Read more

I spent about 90 minutes Monday night trying to set up an Ooma, a phone system that piggybacks both on your broadband Internet connection and land line. My experience: it was a pain to install, but now it works pretty well.

I've griped to acquaintances about how ordinary folks have had to become first system administrators and now, with broadband and multiple computers per household, network administrators. Setting up a review model from Ooma raised these hackles anew.

There was nothing seriously newbie-deterring like command-line utility, or even setup software. The Ooma system setup had two other afflictions instead. … Read more

Gordon Haff is a Principal IT Advisor for Illuminata, Inc. which has business relationships with many systems and software vendors, some of which he may write about. However, Illuminata requires that judgments and opinions of its Advisors are their own. The company does not solicit or accept payments to endorse either products or vendors, nor does it serve on the boards of directors of vendors, or accept equity payments. Gordon has no personal business relations, investments, or affiliations with companies he covers.