InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

Top 15 Cloud Collaboration Apps

Judging by the investments that developers -- both well-established and start-ups -- are making in the collaboration market, software vendors are paying more than lip service to the adage that no man is an island. Certainly, businesses are investigating -- and investing in -- tools that help employees brainstorm, locate each other, schedule meetings, and communicate via social networks. Collaboration technology itself covers a broad spectrum of devices, from instant messaging and email, to cell phones and videoconferencing equipment. The cloud empowers individuals to use these tools practically anywhere, further boosting corporate productivity and spurring investment. Here's 15 of the leading cloud collaboration applications.

Healthcare IT Vendor Directory

As money flows into efforts to modernize healthcare IT systems, a wide variety of tech vendors -- from traditional healthcare systems providers to newcomers seeking a piece of the action -- are offering new systems, products, and services to assist caregivers in doing a better job of helping patients.

Broadvision's Clearvale Express Offers Free Social Media Capabilities

Broadvision has introduced Clearvale Express, a SaaS-based social networking/enterprise 2.0 application that makes it possible for a company to provide workers with a Twitter-like activity stream that lets you know what your colleagues are working on, collaborate on files and tasks, and build collaborative communities. Workers can follow other users and view a simple Facebook-like profile wall on each user of the company network within Clearvale Express. The application is a stripped down version of Broadvision's full enterprise-class Clearvale. For small businesses or departments looking for a way to add a social element to business interactions, it can be an effective tool. Businesses and organizations using Clearvale Express that want to invite users with different email domains to collaborate with their employees need to make sure at sign-up that they use the link for membership organizations, as the default sign-up for Clearvale Express works only if all member of the network have the same email domain.

Internet Explorer 9 Fast, Powerful, Intuitive

The browser wars are back and bigger than ever. Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Opera are all providing innovative, fast, and streamlined experiences for surfing the Web. And now, with the release of Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft joins in with arguably the best Web browser the company has ever released. With a revamped interface, improved security and privacy options, and much better performance, IE 9 compares well with competing browsers. Traditionally a laggard in performance tests, IE 9's new Web and JavaScript engines put it back among the pack in general performance tests and even slightly in the lead for JavaScript performance. IE 9 has also added many long missing features, such as a download manager and integrated search.

Enterprise 2.0 Launch Pad: 2010 Elite 8

Innovation is at the heart of software development, and it's the name of the game in the Enterprise 2.0 Launch Pad competition. Held in conjunction with both the Santa Clara and Boston editions of the 2010 Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Launch Pad produced four finalists at each site -- the best of the best applications produced and submitted to the competition that year. Best of all? Entering Launch Pad was free, and open to all software developers -- large and small -- who were building, launching, or had recently launched an application. Companies first submitted their pitch via Twitter. In round two, entrants submitted a video of no more than three minutes highlighting the product or service's most compelling features and functionality. Quarterfinalists were selected by a jury of Enterprise 2.0 experts.

Google Chrome 10 Boosts Performance, Management

Google releases a new version of its Web browser every six weeks, so a new release of the Chrome browser is usually light on new features. That's true for Chrome 10, but the improvements in the new version of the browser are welcome. Probably the biggest new feature is the new Crankshaft V8 engine for JavaScript. Along with other performance improvements, the JavaScript engine clearly puts Chrome right at the top of browser performance, based on a variety of benchmarks. Chrome 10 has also added a new interface for configuring browser options, improved the ability to sync settings across browser installations, and has added additional security layers for Flash content running in the browser.

Apotheker Takes The Stage, Paints An HP Cloud Vision

Hewlett-Packard crafted a media and analyst summit where it envisioned the company at the center of cloud, connectivity and software, providing the enabling technology and services on top. New company captain Leo Apotheker, who has been traveling the globe talking to business customers and employees, was expected to talk about bringing HP back to its roots: Innovation, R&D, and engineering, perhaps with a misguided desire for the company to be as hip as Apple. Despite a reliance on buzz words (one more time with the "seamless, secure, context aware," sometimes with no context?), Apotheker provided a bit of a surprise, namely that HP would take a dramatic new direction in the cloud, providing Infrastructure as a Service today, and, soon, Platform as a Service. HP will, he said, also provide other services in the cloud, like analytics through its Vertica acquisition.

iPad 2 A5 Chip Teardown Reveals Samsung Fab, Advanced Power Management

The new dual core A5 chip inside the iPad 2 is very fast, but as always, Apple isn't very forthcoming on its origin. UBM TechInsights dissected the chip and found it to be a Samsung fab. TechInsights also provided a cost breakdown of all the iPad 2 components.

10 Massive Security Breaches

They make the news on a regular basis: incidents in which a company or government agency's security is breached, leading to a loss of information, personal records, or other data. There are many ways to measure the size or cost of a security breach. Some result in the loss of millions of data records, some affect millions of people, and some wind up costing the affected businesses a lot of money. Not to mention, the questions of you calculate the value of personal medical information vs. credit card numbers. Here are ten security breaches of epic scale, plus one "bonus" incident that ranks among the boneheaded moves of all time.

Apple iPad 2 3G Teardown

Apple began shipping the iPad 2 at 5 p.m. at its stores and other affiliated retailers nationwide on March 11. Apple's original announcement was vague, as Apple always seems to be, about what's under the hood of their newest device, and yet, the lines stretched and turned for block, with consumers desperate to be the first to have the iPad 2. Our crack teardown team at UBM TechInsights waited in line for 12 hours in Syracuse, NY! But the early results are in, and there were a few surprises. For example, the 3G radio represents yet another big win for Qualcomm. The 3G chip is the same one used in Motorola's Xoom tablet, and in the Verizon version of Apple's iPhone. That's pretty big props (not to mention volume). Another surprise: the iPad 2 touch screen controller is the older Broadcom BCM5974 -- Apple has been using a TI controller as of late, and customizing it with Apple markings. Enjoy some of the early results of our teardown, including the full comparison chart at the end -- it breaks down the parts and costs for the original iPad, the iPad 2 and Motorola's Xoom. The UBM TechInsights team will start dissecting the dual core A5 chip tomorrow to determine its origin; it will do the same with the audio codec (which the team suspects is from Sirrus Logic) and the power management unit (probably the Dialog D1815A). Special thanks to UBM TechInsights, especially Allan Yogasingam.

11 Epic Technology Disasters

Nature and politics kill far more people than technological accidents but failures of machines still take a toll on both a personal and social level. Separating machine failures and negligent maintenance from unforeseeable circumstances isn't easy and no doubt there are some accidents worthy of mention that we've missed. In any event, these are the eleven worst tech-related disasters where mechanical or engineering failure played a significant role. And by "worst," we're considering death toll but not using it as the exclusive metric. Some disasters like the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger resulted in only a few deaths but nonetheless had a worldwide impact.

Apple Announces iPad2

For almost one year, Apple has owned the tablet market. In fact, it's had the market almost entirely to itself. That began changing at the end of last year, with a constant stream of announcements and product launches from Cisco, Research In Motion, Samsung, and more, leading to an absolute avalanche of new products announced and demonstrated at CES this January. And those products have been, at least on a feature basis, easily superior to the original iPad. Just as some of those products have started to ship, Apple comes along with its long-expected iPad version 2. Observers expect Apple to merely match features, and leverage the enormous volume advantage of its app store; but would Apple merely strive for parity?

Great Lost Software: 16 Gone But Not Forgotten

Software comes and software goes. Most that fall into the latter category deserve their fate, because either they weren't very good or they were superseded by a better option. Though such also-rans are soon forgotten, some defunct software still holds our affections, whether because nothing as good has come along or because it was our "first love" in a category. Software may seem a funny thing to be sentimental about, but when you use a tool every day, you can grow quite fond of it. We ransacked our own memories of applications past and polled some of our colleagues to formulate this list of 16 fondly remembered programs that are no longer really with us.

Businesses Take Action With Twitter

In only a couple of years, Twitter's gone from what seemed like a mere gimmick to one of the fastest ways to spread the word about something. That makes it seem like an ideal medium for a business to raise notice about its products and services, and in fact that's what a great many companies do. The problem is that the very audience you'll be seeking to engage with Twitter is also the same audience that has a built-in skepticism about social media. Twitter users by and large are entirely too conscious of how any segment of the Internet, or any communications medium at all, can be turned into a mere advertising vehicle -- and thus made that much easier to ignore. To that end, there are cases to be made both for and against Twitter when using it to spread information about what you do.

Motorola Xoom Teardown: Inside The New Android Tablet

UBM TechInsights, a sister company to UBM Techweb, InformationWeek's parent company, took apart the newest Motorola tablet, the 10.1-inch Xoom, the first dual-core Android tablet and the first tablet to run Android 3.0 (Honeycomb). Inside is Nvidia's Tegra 2 processor. In fact, many of the Xoom's components are similar to those of Motorola's newest smartphone, the Atrix 4G. That's not a surprise given that Apple and Samsung, for example, share design components across tablets and smartphones; and not a surprise given the economies of scale of these design choices. The Xoom is, suffice it to say, plenty of hardware to challenge Apple's iPad, at least as it exists today. But the competition is heating up. Plenty of dual-core processor tablets are due out in the next few months.

Clicking Through Drupal 7's Features

When looking for examples of enterprise applications where open source products have competed effectively against expensive and complex commercial products, a good place to start is content management. Open source content management systems (CMS) have become extremely popular choices for running very large, complex, and busy Web sites. Open source CMS Drupal has made its name on that basis, by managing some very popular Web sites, including many news sites and WhiteHouse.gov. However, in areas such as usability, Drupal has come up a little short when compared against competing open source CMS offerings such as Joomla and Wordpress. With its recent release, Drupal 7 now features a fully revamped administration interface that makes it easier to view and manage content, change the look and feel of sites, and extend the CMS through add-on modules.

12 Worst Tech Predictions Of All Time

The epic history of technology is littered with some incredibly lousy prophecies, often made by some very smart, very successful -- and very wealthy -- executives. We trolled the timeline of technology to find the most misguided -- and in some cases just plain crazy --calls in the industry's storied past, from the telephone to television to YouTube. Sure, it's easy to call out the most foolish forecasts with the benefit of perfect hindsight. It's also a lot of fun -- there are some doozies. And though your own all-time list might look a little different, this much is fact: As technology continues to plow forward, it will undoubtedly leave more preposterous predictions in its wake.

NFC, Pico & Audio: Mobile Chips In Full View

Many new mobile technology enhancements, from NFC to 4G to just plain old audio calling, are possible thanks to the silicon that makes it all so. At Mobile World Congress, there are as many chip manufacturers as any other mobile ecosystem player, and we met with everyone from Samsung to Intel to Qualcomm to Texas Instruments. Everyone's heard of them, but some of the most innovative advancements come from companies that are a bit more behind the scenes. Here are a few of our favorites from this year's event.