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CNET ran a story yesterday about BeamItDown Software, the start-up behind the iFlow Reader app for iOS, offering harsh words for Apple as it felt forced to shut down. In a note to customers, the Irvine, Calif.-based company said its demise was due to Apple's "mid-game rule changes that make it impossible for anyone but Apple to sell e-books at a profit on iOS."

I was struck by the candidness of the remarks and decided to track down BeamItDown's co-founder Dennis Morin for a follow-up interview. Morin has been an entrepreneur for a number of … Read more

Nero Kwik Media is a light and free media manager with which you can organize, edit, and share your music, photos, videos, and data. Imagine iTunes and iPhoto rolled into one, then trimmed in half. While this download is technically "free," there is one caveat: you'll have to purchase some of its functionality in the form of "apps" listed in Nero's built-in store. Sure, most of these add-ons aren't too expensive, but it's a shame that a few of them (like Nero Kwik Play, a video decoder) don't come with the … Read more

A significant number of IT professionals say they'd take a salary cut for the chance to work from home full time, according to a survey from techie job site Dice.

Thirty-five percent of 937 IT pros surveyed in mid-March said they would accept up to a 10 percent pay cut to telecommute in light of soaring gas prices,

A 10 percent slice in the average technology professional's salary would translate into $7,800 less earned per year, according to Dice.

Thirty-six percent responded no, insisting on the same pay for the same work. Another 9 percent said they … Read more

WALTHAM, Mass.--There's loads of technology available to make commercial buildings smarter and more efficient, but getting beyond a small niche of trophy green buildings requires big changes to current real estate practices, not just a technology make-over.

Every year, many buildings are built or retrofitted to improve water and energy efficiency and offer a good interior space for occupants. But often owners and occupants don't take full advantage of advanced technologies, creating a situation where buildings don't perform up to the level they were designed for, industry experts say.

"What about Gus the janitor? The … Read more

Tintri this week is coming out of stealth mode with a new storage system designed to solve the unique storage problems of virtual machines (VMs). Founded by the former head of VMware R&D, the company is also announcing it raised $17 million from venture firms NEA and Lightspeed Partners.

Storage has long been a lucrative market, heavily dominated by just a few players. The introduction of a virtualization-oriented solution brings new blood and a new approach to a rather stagnant industry. And, considering the enormous growth of virtualization, an approach that IT staff should certainly be interested in. … Read more

IBM already manages computers with software. Now it wants to manage buildings.

The computing giant today said it intends to acquire Las Vegas-based Tririga for an undisclosed amount, giving IBM software for managing a portfolio of buildings, including projects to improve building efficiency and lower carbon emissions.

IBM said it is part of its strategy to give corporations better ways to manage their facilities and equipment. Tririga's applications will be part of IBM's Tivoli division of management software.

"Having one view of building operations worldwide will be a powerful tool to help organizations control and optimize their … Read more

WhereIsIt Portable is a simple database tool for cataloging, searching, and accessing your computer media such as CD-ROMs, DVDs, audio CDs, disk drives, floppies, network drives, or any media that Windows recognizes as a drive, even those not currently attached to your system. So if you have CD-ROMs full of archived data or a terabyte's worth of movies on a removable hard drive, you can find what you need quickly with WhereIsIt instead of accessing and searching each archived disk separately. Since it's completely portable, it will run from thumbdrives and other removable storage devices on any Windows … Read more

Last week, I attended the Cloud Connect Conference and Expo in Santa Clara, Calif., which is one of the biggest gatherings of cloud thought leaders and practitioners of the year. What I took away from that week was both a firm confirmation of the concepts I have covered in the past, and a surprising revelation of the maturity of some organizations with respect to those practices.

Most notably, there is a growing gap between the culture and practices of organizations that have embraced cloud as a primary IT model, and those that are trying to fit the cloud into their … Read more

Historically, users viewed IT departments as the people who ran the basic infrastructure "plumbing," were inflexible when it came to doing anything new, and generally far more of an inhibitor to the business than an enabler. That take was at least middling unfair in most cases, but it was grounded in certain realities.

For most organizations, IT was primarily focused on a fairly common--if hardly standardized--set of tasks. Functions like enterprise resource planning, financials, human resources, and e-mail all had to work. But they weren't something that especially advantaged the organization most of the time. Yes, an … Read more