Google, it seems, has built the first touchscreen laptops for its poorly received Chrome operating system.
The Wall Street Journal says the cloud-based widgets that run web apps should be out and about sometime later this year so Google can go “toe-to-toe” with Microsoft’s touch-sensitive Windows 8operating system.
It’s thought the Touch Chrome devices will actually compete directly with Android, but that’s apparently okay. According to the paper “The company has said it is comfortable having two competing systems that help boost Google services such as its web-search engine and YouTube.”
Samsung, Acer, Lenovo and now HP are in the Chromebook trade.
The Journal says maybe 100,000 Chromebooks were sold in the US last quarter due to heavy promotion.

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For $25,000, which gives it no say in the technology, Seagate is now a corporate sponsor of the OpenStack Foundation and a member of the Open Compute Project (OCP).
It’s looking for partners to advance its storage fortunes given the data explosion and the cloud’s role in storing that data.
Thinking perhaps of its Open Vault product, it says it “will help cloud builders develop more scalable, customizable solutions using open platforms while reducing operating costs and providing benefits for consumers in the marketplace.” What technology it may dangle and when is unclear.

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For $25,000, which gives it no say in the technology, Seagate is now a corporate sponsor of the OpenStack Foundation and a member of the Open Compute Project (OCP).
It’s looking for partners to advance its storage fortunes given the data explosion and the cloud’s role in storing that data.
Thinking perhaps of its Open Vault product, it says it “will help cloud builders develop more scalable, customizable solutions using open platforms while reducing operating costs and providing benefits for consumers in the marketplace.” What technology it may dangle and when is unclear.

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John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, just published a good blog entry about the potential for change caused by universal connectivity, not just of our mobile gadgets, but of pretty much everything. Much has been made of late of the so-called … Continue reading →

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John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, just published a good blog entry about the potential for change caused by universal connectivity, not just of our mobile gadgets, but of pretty much everything. Much has been made of late of the so-called … Continue reading →

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Google is in the middle of a legal battle with European privacy watchdogs after the organisation refused to change its new privacy policy in order to adhere to EU compliance regulations. The watchdogs said “Google Inc.’s privacy practices don’t comply with Europe-wide data-protection rules.”

The Problem with Google’s Privacy Policy:

Google presented the new policy in March 2012 and it the changes allowed the search giant to help utilize targeted advertising by merging user data from its different websites (Gmail, Google+, Google Drive, etc.). Another issue is that the company’s 60 privacy policies have been combined into one “simpler” policy.

EU regulators have decided that the privacy policy does not provide enough information for users about how their data will be used or tracked. Also if a user does not agree with these policy changes they would not be able to use Google’s services. The …

IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, like many other acronyms in the IT industry, leave us lost in translation. With the initial confusion aside, they simply explain the three main developments in cloud computing. As a pooled collection of resources and services that are hosted on the Internet, the Cloud, often referred to as a stack, is categorized into three main service models: Infrastructure, Platform and Software as a Sservice translate to IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, respectively.
These services function thanks to virtualization, with the availability of high-speed networks and capabilities of modern browsers. With the use of these technologies, it has become less necessary for businesses to have their own infrastructure or software. Yet still IaaS, PaaS and SaaS remain a grey area, and many individuals struggle to differentiate between them to find the optimum solution for their business.

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Skyera has gotten $51.6 million in series B financing led by Dell Ventures and a syndicate of other strategic investors to accelerate its next-generation enterprise solid-state storage solutions.
Skyera is supposed to be positioned at the forefront of the hyper-growth solid-state storage sector and is supposed to enable a large class of applications with “extraordinarily fast performance, exceptionally lower power consumption, high density and cost effectiveness relative to existing enterprise storage systems.”
Naturally it supports the cloud, Big Data, increased mobility and social networking.
The general availability of Skyera’s skyHawk series of enterprise solid-state storage systems is supposed to mark the first time that the new-generation 19/20nm solid-state technology can be used to replace the traditional hard disk-based system, at a system price of less than $3 a gigabyte.

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Cloud computing allows US businesses to reduce their total IT costs by a significant 26 percent, according to a new study released on Wednesday. In addition, a majority 62 percent of respondents agree cloud computing has helped them boost profits.
“Businesses of all sizes, from the very largest global corporations to startups, say their operations are seeing multiple benefits from cloud computing,” noted Rackspace Chief Technology Officer, John Engates. “Thanks to the cloud, at least half of businesses on both sides of ‘the pond’ are growing with increased profits despite the ongoing economic backdrop. Savings from the cloud have enabled these companies to hire new employees, increase wages and drive innovation.”
The study, conducted by Rackspace Hosting with support from Manchester Business School, a UK and world business school, found an overwhelming 94 percent of businesses in the US using the cloud had saved money.

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