Analysis The Age of the Platform [Book Excerpt] There are many smart people out there - and few are smarter than Eric Schmidt. Even before joining Google as chairman in August 2001, Schmidt was long regarded as one of the most respected, knowledgeable, and prescient technology minds on the planet. Among his many accolades, in 2007 PC World named him the most important person on the web… Phil Simon View comments
Trends The Big Cat Internet Secret New research from Bit.ly shows that people share more links about dogs than cats. Using their internal search engine, Bit.ly data scientists looked for the number of pages with content containing the term "cat" and "dog." They included the plural and any variations. While it's clear that dogs are the most popular animal on the Internet, the data… Alicia Eler View comments
The Consumer Cloud Windows 8 Will Bring Personal Cloud to Billions The next version of Microsoft's still dominant PC operating system, Windows 8, "represents an incredible opportunity to bring the benefits of the personal cloud to billions of PC users." That's according to a blog post written by the Group Program Managers for SkyDrive, Microsoft's consumer cloud product. When it was launched back in August 2007… Richard MacManus View comments
mobile Carrier IQ vs. XDA Developer There is a brewing controversy surrounding the data that cellular operators and cellphone manufacturers know about users. It has started with researcher and coder Trevor Eckhart, known as TrevE on the XDA Developer forums, digging into the code of a company called Carrier IQ (CIQ). According to Eckhart's research, CIQ has the ability to know just… Mobile Dan Rowinski View comments
News COPS: A New Consistency Model for Wide-Area Storage Here's a little Thanksgiving reading for you while you're digesting that fourth helping of pie: a paper on a new approach to geo-replicated, distributed data stores (PDF). The paper, authored by researchers from Princeton University, Intel Labs, and Carnegie Mellon University, proposes a new consistency model for wide-area storage. The idea is… Joe Brockmeier View comments