it

Virtual building audit spots energy savings

Now there's an app to tell you how to make commercial buildings more energy efficient.

Startup FirstFuel announced today it has raised $2.4 million from venture capital companies Nth Power and Battery Ventures to commercialize a software system to remotely evaluate and measure commercial building efficiency.

What's unusual about the application is that it doesn't require a person to be dispatched to perform an energy audit or install meters to gather data. Instead, the company collects utility data on hourly energy consumption and combines it with weather information to create a profile of a specific building. … Read more

Was brief Google Docs outage a tremor or a tsunami?

My pronouncement at the end of the short story about the brief Google Docs outage did not go over well. I said, "This is likely to be a major blow to the growth of cloud computing, as it reminds IT managers of the danger of relying on a unified product to serve all a company's users."

As commenters said, and I'm generously paraphrasing, I'm a kook. One little outage may send worrywarts like me running for the safety of Microsoft Word, but work is moving to the cloud, and it's high time, since overall it's a more reliable and more cost effective place to store documents.

Right on all counts. Let's posit that the cloud is a hundred times more reliable and less expensive than a corporate working infrastructure built on local computing power and local storage. Fine. Now let's imagine what failures look like on a fully old-fashioned (local model) system compared with a modern, fully cloud-based one.

… Read more

Create and share a countdown timer with ItsAlmo.st

Having a countdown timer counting down the exact seconds until a big event can be very entertaining. Since the creation of the Internet, there have been countless services and methods of creating a countdown timer to put on display. ItsAlmo.st looks to be a quick and easy way of creating and sharing a countdown timer. … Read more

BMC's vision for the cloud

For a company with an $8 billion market cap, we really don't hear too much about BMC. And yet, when I met CTO Kia Behnia this week, I couldn't help but be very impressed by the company's focus on the cloud and its vision for where much of enterprise IT is likely to be heading.

According to Behnia, BMC currently has more than 85 customers for its cloud services products, primarily large companies looking into both public and private clouds as ways to enhance their environments.

From Behnia's perspective, the primary opportunity for the private cloud … Read more

YouSendIt delivers unlimited cloud storage

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 4G will launch this Thursday, Apple forces developers to update their apps to remove external links to e-books and subscriptions, and YouSendIt offers unlimited cloud-based storage for less than you'd expect.

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

YouSendIt launches unlimited cloud storage Apply with LinkedIn Apple forces developers to update apps Apple & AT&T gearing up for iPhone 5 launch Samsung launching Galaxy Tab 10.1 4G Subscribe:  iTunes (MP3) |  iTunes (320x180) |  iTunes (HD) |  RSS (MP3) |  RSS (320x180) |  RSS HD

iFixit teardown confirms active Thunderbolt cable

Without any devices initially being available for it, Apple's Thunderbolt technology was relatively dormant in the public eye after its debut in the latest MacBook Pro and iMac systems. However, since the release of the Promise Pegasus RAID system, Apple's accompanying Thunderbolt cable, and some recent firmware updates for it, Thunderbolt appears to have caught a new wave of interest, particularly around the cable itself. People have wondered not only about its compatibility with Displayport (which has a similar connector as Thunderbolt), but also about its seemingly expensive $49 price tag.

iFixit today released a teardown of the cable to look at its components and in doing so revealed that the cable's unusually large connector jackets actually house a controller that is used to boost and condition the signal so it makes it from one end of the cable to another without any data loss.

Not only does the cable contain chips, but it contains a fair number of them. Each end of the cable contains six chips, with a large controller by gennum technologies, and a number of other smaller electrical components on printed circuit boards. Gennum technologies provides signal conditioning chips that allow for data transfer at high speeds. This technology appears to be the root of the cost for the cables.… Read more

Car Tech Live 221: A look into the Kia Optima Hybrid (podcast)

Car Tech Live 221: Is the honeymoon over for hybrids? Ford puts Sync apps in more cars. New Volvos may brake for animals. And we drive the Kia Optima Hybrid. (podcast)

Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video) EPISODE 221 SHOW NOTES

• CNET drives the Kia Optima Hybrid

• Volvo technology will brake for animals

• The worst cities for keeping your car are mostly in California

• In-car TV stumbles again

• CNET's LOLcars gallery!

Disgruntled IT guy slips porn into CEO's PowerPoint

Sometimes, revenge is bitter.

The reason for this is that sometimes you get your revenge and then you get, well, caught.

Please consider the feelings of Walter Powell, a 52-year-old IT manager at Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems. Actually, he became a former IT manager there. Which, perhaps stimulated a desire for a little revenge.

I am grateful to The Baltimore Sun for offering this story which begins with revenge, has porn in the middle, and whose denouement is played out in court.

Powell, you see, was reportedly fired in 2009. He wasn't very happy about this, so began to … Read more

IBM connects dots for smarter buildings

To IBM, buildings are just another source of data its computers can crunch and make sense of.

The computing giant today at an event in New York is unveiling its Intelligent Building Management software, which collects and analyzes information to improve energy efficiency and maintenance. It's part of IBM's smarter planet initiative to use technology and its business consulting group to tackle big social problems.

Many commercial buildings are already have building management systems that use sensors to communicate information with a central computer. For example, heating and cooling equipment and offices can monitor temperature, humidity, light levels, … Read more