July 15, 2015

Flash Storage Prices Keep Falling: What it Means For the Future

The combination of increased capacity and lower prices have turned SSD into an even more competitive alternative to hard disk drives. When one of the main selling points of HDD is its larger capacity, it’s easy to see why hard disk drives may fall in overall use. At the moment, most hard disk drives are stuck at around 10 TB in capacity. SSD has yet to reach that same level, but it is quickly catching up. Experts are predicting that solid-state drives will eventually match HDD, or at least come close to matching it, sometime in 2015. SSD will likely overtake HDD capacity in 2016, with some experts even estimating that 30 TB solid-state drives will be produced as soon as 2017. At the same time, the price of flash storage will continue to fall.


Google Proposes Open Source Beacons

Google is calling its beacon protocol Eddystone, a name that comes from a lighthouse in England. It's available on GitHub, under the Apache 2.0 license. The software supports Android, iOS, and many BLE devices. It is compliant with the Bluetooth Core Specification. In contrast to iBeacon, it also supports multiple types of data (frame types). So while an iBeacon is limited to broadcasting an identification code, an Eddystone beacon could transmit an identification code, or a URL, or telemetry data about voltage or device temperature. Google is also releasing two APIs: The Nearby API for Android and iOS, which allows developers to create publish and subscribe methods to share messages and connections between nearby devices, and the Proximity Beacon API, to manage data associated with a BLE beacon through a REST interface.


6 things Evernote does that Microsoft OneNote can't

So it’s not surprising that once people pick Evernote or Microsoft OneNote as their repository of choice for digital scraps, doodlings and scanned documents, they usually stick with that choice. Once you have committed to one of these two popular products, it’s not easy to toggle between them or switch entirely. About a year ago, I chose Evernote over OneNote, and I started amassing my own digital archive. At the time, Evernote's Mac software was far superior to OneNote's Mac app. However, Microsoft has continually upgraded OneNote for Mac and iOS, and today it's a legitimate Evernote rival; if I were facing the Mac Evernote versus Mac OneNote decision today, it would be a different situation.


Self-Charging Phones Are on the Way, Finally

One way the consumer electronics industry is trying to fix this is by aligning with wireless charging technologies like Qi and Rezence. So far, though, only a handful of smartphones from companies like LG, Samsung, and, HTC use the Qi standard, while Rezence-supporting handsets are set to come out later this year. With such wireless charging still far from the mainstream (and still requiring your phone to be on a charging mat or base that itself plugs into a wall), a few companies, including Nikola Labs, are trying to figure out other ways to make you less dependent on outlets so you can keep using your phone for battery-intensive things like looking at websites, navigating trips, and streaming videos.


Asking the right questions: unlocking the value buried in all that data

There are a lot of untold stories in our data said Dave Schubmehl, research director for content analytics, recovery and cognitive systems research with International Data Corp. (IDC), who presented the results of research of 2,000 global knowledge workers about what they do to unlock value in their data. He said the state of information access hasn’t dramatically changed over the last decade, despite the big data hype. “There’s a tremendous opportunity to find the information hidden in your company, whether it’s in a content management system or your email servers. If you acquired a company, it may be in another system you don’t know is there,” said Schubmehl.


So About That Whole Tech-Eating-Jobs Thing

All of which would be a good thing–as most jobs are crap jobs–except that our society is not built for a world in which more and more people are unemployed. Not unless we implement something like a basic income. …That’s the argument, at any rate. It’s one I’ve made repeatedly in this space over the last few years. (Echoing many others, to be clear.) But intellectual honesty compels me to admit: the available evidence does not currently support it at all. If the USA is the canary in our global coal mine–which seems likely, given its high technology and liberal labor laws–then the workers of the world have little to worry about any time soon. “Robots Seem to Be Improving Productivity,


How To Survive Digital Transformation

MIT researchers say the invention of the steam engine began the most transformative social development in the last 3000 years. Fast-forward to today’s paradigm shift – the convergence of technologies fueled by innovation accelerators like renewable energy, robotics, cognitive computing, and the Internet of Things. Is your organization prepared to thrive? That’s the question that was discussed in a recent episode of Game Changers radio: The Next Paradigm Shift and Your Digital DNA, hosted by Bonnie D. Graham, and featuring Futurist Thornton May, Frank Diana of TCS Consulting and me, Timo Elliott, SAP Innovation Evangelist.


14 Security Fails That Cost Executives Their Jobs

When you look at the list of companies that have been hacked in some way, it becomes apparent that even the most technically sophisticated organizations can be breached given a sufficiently well-funded, determined attacker. Speaking on 60 Minutes in 2014, FBI Director James Comey put it this way: "There are two kinds of big companies in the United States. There are those who've been hacked by the Chinese, and those who don't know they've been hacked by the Chinese." And Chinese hackers are not the only hackers in the world. Given the vulnerability of IT systems, the first act of an incoming CEO, CIO, or CTO should be to write a resignation letter, apologizing for the "unforeseen" data breach that everyone feared was coming. Ideally, the letter's presence will serve as a reminder to prioritize security concerns.


20 Features of Office 365 That May Surprise You

Office 365 for Business offers the same features (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc) that you maybe familiar with, plus additional tools to help you collaborate and be more productive. What does that mean? In short, Office isn’t now constrained to well, your office! From PC, Tablet to Phone you can access, edit, collaborate and save your files across devices and when on the go. But there’s more…..here are 20 features of Office 365 that may surprise you.....


Check Your Normative Defaults

Once you start thinking about normative defaults in your digital experiences, it’s hard to stop seeing them everywhere. Software is considered more science than art, but highly subjective decisions go into building it. ... Not all defaults are problematic. We want software that makes reasonable assumptions, informed by demographics, user research, and past behavior where obtainable. Maybe one distinction to draw is that the defaults should be less about our core identity (assuming one is male, or an English-speaker), and more about our presumed mindset when using the web service. You may not be sure who a user is, but you may be able to infer why they are there.



Quote for the day:

“The most successful people have the same twenty-four hours in a day that you do.” -- Jay Samit

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