Stories by: Mel Beckman

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8 radical ways to cut datacentre power costs 04 April, 2011 20:07:00

Today's data center managers are struggling to juggle the business demands of a more competitive marketplace with budget limitations imposed by a soft economy. They seek ways to reduce opex (operating expenses), and one of the fastest growing -- and often biggest -- data center operation expenses is power, consumed largely by servers and coolers.
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The iPad data dilemma: Where cloud storage can help 22 February, 2011 22:10:00

Tablet computing is a decade-old technology, but one that lay buried since users rejected Microsoft's "heavy OS" approach a while back. A year ago, Apple's iPad resurrected the tablet computing concept, delivering a lightweight sheet of computational glass with a pleasant, responsive user interface and a blizzard of applications. Users love it, and now a barrage of wannabe tablets are flooding the marketplace. All do reasonably well at the four applications users access most: Web, email, books, and media. And the half million or so apps in the collective app stores of Apple, Android, and BlackBerry would seem to fill every conceivable mobile need.
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Jailbreaking in the iPhone 3.0 era 02 March, 2010 03:24:00

In a few short years, Apple has established the iPhone as the mobile platform to beat. Each successive firmware update opens new, and often unmatched, features for users and developers to explore. Many of these features, however, find their roots outside Apple's walled-garden approach to the iPhone, as the jailbreak community proves time and again to be an innovative environment for off-limits apps that demonstrate new ways to push the iPhone platform forward.
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Building the Google smartbook dream machine 07 December, 2009 22:15:00

The netbook promises convenience and capability in a small, lightweight, and generally inexpensive package, and the concept of a smartbook goes even further: a handy-dandy combination of smartphone and notebook. Alas, most netbook offerings come burdened with a full-blown Windows operating system, which runs slowly on performance-limited netbook hardware and saps battery life. And Windows is not exactly smartphone-oriented.
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iPhone jailbreaking still going strong 13 April, 2009 23:56:00

Despite Apple's formal opposition and upcoming 3.0 firmware, users still seek jailbroken iPhone advantages -- and developers deliver
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Cloud options for IT that IT will love 17 February, 2009 09:51:00

Back in 1991, before the Internet was a big deal, Ohio State University technologist Jerry Martin signalled the nascent Internet's value with an official standards document entitled "There's gold in them thar networks!" (RFC1290) Although simmering as an academic tool for years, the Internet had not yet triggered a significant paradigm shift for commercial computing. Martin's formal proclamation was an early push to business, which eventually embraced Internet commerce wholeheartedly.
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Easy-to-use Web server speeds up 13 October, 1999 12:56:59

Until now webmasters wanting an all-Mac Internet presence had to get by with ad hoc collections of server software from assorted vendors; even Apple's own AppleShare IP bundle consists of weakly integrated programs that don't play together as well as they could. To remedy this situation, StarNine has stepped up to the plate with a suite of integrated products that endeavour to be team players. WebStar Server Suite 4.0 bundles a significantly faster version of the WebStar Web server; a full-function mail server; and Lasso Publisher, for publishing FileMaker and ODBC-compliant databases. In spite of a few minor errors, the suite hits a home run; using it is the easiest way to get a complete Internet presence on a single Mac.