data sharing

The economy may be slowly recovering, but that doesn't mean you need to hand over more of your hard earned cash to your wireless provider.

In this edition of Ask Maggie, I help two different readers figure out how to get the most value out of their wireless service. Of course, cheaper isn't always better. If the service doesn't work or doesn't offer you enough data for your needs, then the lower price tag is irrelevant. In the first question, I offer one reader some advice about switching from Sprint to either AT&T or … Read more

Facebook friends can now share data with one other courtesy of a new promotion from NetZero.

The new 4G Data Share plan lets NetZero subscribers dole out 1GB of data each month to fellow subscribers on Facebook, with up to five friends getting 200MB a piece.

To partake in the promotion, you need to subscribe to any one of NetZero's five 4G mobile broadband plans, starting at 200MB for free and going up to 4GB for $49.95 a month.

You'll also need to buy NetZero's 4G USB stick or its 4G hotspot device. Both items are … Read more

Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo said the response to the carrier's shared data plan has been positive, despite the wave of criticism that has erupted over the new policy.

"Early feedback has been great," he said during an investor conference call today. "The customer adoption has been tracking with expectations."

The company last month launched its "Share Everything" plan to a bit of controversy, exacerbated by the carrier's decision to kill off unlimited data for anyone who upgraded their phone. Verizon took fire over the plan's complicated cost structure and … Read more

Updated 7:07 a.m. PT:This story was updated to reflect AT&T's announcement of a new data share plan. The story has been reworked to compare AT&T's and Verizon's data share plans.

First Verizon and now AT&T has announced new plans that offer families the option to share a bucket of data across several users or even several Internet-enabled devices. But are these new plans right for your family?

One thing is certain about these new plans. AT&T and Verizon have not made these plans easy to understand. … Read more

It's a phone-tastic episode today:

Microsoft's new Windows Phone 8 operating system will be in new Windows Phones this fall, but existing Windows users won't be able to get the full upgrade. That's because the Windows Phone 8 OS requires better hardware, like multicore processors and NFC support. The next OS will also have more enterprise-friendly features and Nokia's maps. (Maps are becoming a new battle ground in mobile phones.) However, current Windows Phone users aren't completely ignored. There's a slight upgrade coming that gives the live tiles in the home screen new … Read more

Yesterday, Verizon's CFO told a conference of investors that Big Red will be moving this summer to finish the job of shutting down its all-you-can-eat data buffet. Last year Verizon stopped offering an unlimited data option with new contracts, but those who already had them were grandfathered in.

When I first heard the news yesterday, I was led to wonder out loud (and later translate into bits) what it all meant for my own grandfathered 3G data plan, which I've recently upgraded to 4G.

In his remarks yesterday, Verizon CFO Fran Shammo explained that the carrier will be … Read more

The cost of Verizon's Fios and wireless service are expected to go up during the next several months, as the company hikes prices and introduce new plans that demand customers pay more for the data they consume.

Speaking at the JP Morgan investor conference Tuesday, Fran Shammo, Verizon Communications' CFO, said the company is planning to increase fees and prices for its Fios Internet and TV services. He also promised investors that wireless customers would soon be spending more on its service after the company implements a new "data share" plan for its 4G LTE network.

Shammo'… Read more

In today's show, Google search gets smarter, Verizon ends its unlimited data era, and E.T. tweet home?

Google search results will now look a bit different. Google has launched the Knowledge Graph, a database of 500 million people, places, and things, and it will show up in your search to give you more info on a topic and help you find related items. Google is rolling it out in the next few days to desktop, mobile and tablet users.

You can't always count on iPhone rumors being true, but here's one that's looking pretty solid: … Read more

The computing industry is seeing dramatic growth in the use of "shared nothing" database architectures where each node functions independently of one another and is self-sufficient (Hadoop Distributed File System for example). For the sake of performance, contention among nodes for shared disk resources (SAN and NAS) is one of the things these architectures avoid by dedicating storage resources to each node, i.e. no shared disk.

While these computing architectures are best-known in the context of Web-based applications and development activities, they are no longer confined to the Web. EMC Greenplum, IBM Netezza, and ParAccel are all … Read more