InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

Meat, Mobile and Me
They were slicing a giant pork roast here in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress, but all I could look at was the amazing array of mobile technologies the folks at Mobile Focus (put on by Pep Com but not affiliated with MWC) laid out. Exec producer Fritz Nelson, videographer Matt Conner and I avoided the carcass and spent our time checking a surprising array of mobile technologies. There were several main themes I noticed. Lots of announced but still unshipped devices were in use by the app makers. The upcoming LG phones and the here-any-minute RIM BlackBerry PlayBook were in full sight, showing off games, fancy personal networking technologies, 3D maps and developer toolkits for every device imaginable. A lot of companies were taking mobile aim at Skype. I loved a product from VMware that will allow two operating systems to run on one phone -- theoretically, that means they could put iOS in a virtual session on the Android. That video is coming soon. Take a look at some of things we found. As I said, Fritz and I both shot videos at this locale. Keep a look out.
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Intel Showcases MeeGo Tablet UI And Other Apps
Despite Nokia's insistence that it is still very much behind MeeGo, Intel is going to the mobile platform dance stag. It would be easy to feel sorry for them if it hadn't felt like a mistake from the beginning. "Disappointed" is how one Intel MeeGo product manager expressed the company's view on Nokia's fickleness. Still, the company presses on, announcing and demonstrating a tablet reference platform, among other advancements, at Mobile World Congress. Intel also showcased MeeGo running a variety of applications.
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Mobile World Congress: Taking a BYTE Out of Barcelona!
We arrived in Barcelona two days before the show started. The city is gorgeous, famous for its Gaudi architecture. The picture below, taken from Wikipedia because there are cranes now all over it during its completion, shows the famous Basilica I Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia. Construction began in 1882 and has proceeded off and on since. Now, in 2011, it is only halfway complete. The name Gaudi, as it refers to the architecture so prevalent here, refers to Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi, who died in 1926. These buildings look like sand castles. Wish you could see them. Check out the rest of the slideshow for some of the sights, eats and scenes at the Mobile World Congress as InformationWeek, Techweb, and the upcoming BYTE.com storm Barcelona. And I do mean storm. If you want to see show related pictures, they start after my touristy Barcelona slides. Check it all out, though! Well worth it. And stay tuned for more slideshows from Barcelona.
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Mobile World Congress: Spicy Mobile Madness
Steve Leon's Showstopper kicked off the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and Fritz Nelson, Matt Conner and I were there (see last slide). Lavish food and drinks for the press abounded, but we never imbibe. You know why? We choose instead to race around gathering data on the early look at products Showstopper provided on this night, the night before the show opened. I had a blast racing around taking pictures, shooting video and checking out vendors' wares. Showstoppers' Steve Leon, who I haven't seen in person in 12 years, hasn't aged a bit! (Note that he did not say the same about me. OUCH AND LOL! See last slide). Check out the slideshow I put together of hot stuff showing at ShowStoppers, and stay tuned right here for more slideshows from Barcelona. Ateo! (Adios in Catalan). So there.
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Mobile World Congress: Samsung Announces GalaxyS II Phone, Galaxy Tab 10.1
Samsung is using Mobile World Congress as its own personal stage. Before the world's biggest mobile event kicked off, the company putting on quite a show itself, with dancers, a live orchestra and, oh, yes, some new devices, too. Namely, a second generation smart phone (Galaxy S II) and a 10-inch tablet (Galaxy Tab 10.1). These devices will be available in February and March, respectively, but, in typical Samsung fashion, only in Asia and Europe at first. The company will make a North American announcement here as well. We were there to capture the event (and nibble on some food), and we were also whisked away to play with the new products.
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Building The Mac Office
Building an office around the Apple Macintosh has long been a good business strategy, particularly for SMBs. Macs generally require fewer IT resources and retain their value better than Windows-based PCs -- that's a key consideration for cash- and resource-strapped small and midsize businesses. And the iPhone and iPad, with their strong Mac integration, make it easier for businesses to move into the new era of mobile computing. But before you can Go Mac, you need to know how to get your Mac office up and running. This review of products from Apple and other Mac vendors, will take you on a visual tour of a Mac-centric office that could be your future infrastructure.
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Google Chrome 9 Advances The 3D Graphical Web
With its recently released Chrome 9 Web browser, Google has added several enhancements to provide a more immersive and rich Web experience. Chief among these new capabilities is default support for the emerging WebGL standard. This makes it possible to run 3D animations, games, and other rich interfaces within a browser without the need for third-party plug-ins and extensions such as Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight.
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Slideshow: HP Tablet Announced
We are here at beautiful Fort Mason in San Francisco on a spectacular day. The Bay is sparkling, Alcatraz beckons (for some of us), and somewhere inside the theater HP is making all the final preparations. The line to get in is already pretty long, and growing. We are about to see the launch of a new lineup of HP mobile products based on the company's WebOS platform.
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10 Tenets Of Enterprise Data Management
Data quality, master data management, metadata management, data warehousing architecture and data integration: These are all pieces of the data management puzzle, but rare is the enterprise that has assembled these pieces into a cohesive and coherent picture. Get it right and you can count on clean and consistent data from transaction systems and reliable insight from business intelligence systems. It doesn't end there. Your data management strategy must also consider business processes and business rules. Then, consider the people factor: How do you harness the expertise of your subject-matter experts and data stewards? Lastly, where do you draw the line on competency centers? This image gallery presents ten tenets of enterprise data management -- best practices illustrated by conceptual images -- that will get you headed in the right direction.
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Slideshow: LIVE: VERIZON IPHONE 4 TEARDOWN
BYTE's colleagues at UBM TechInsights are tearing down the Verizon iPhone 4, the CDMA version of the iPhone that Verizon began shipping to its own customers late last week. Beginning from the out of the box experience, the following photos show the process of taking this baby apart, step by step. This is a full tear down, so you can get a real look at the ICs and the design decisions engineers made. In this case, we were particularly interested in the CDMA aspect of the phone, comparing the design with the AT&T GSM iPhone version. As you check out this gallery -- and we're posting it live as we tear it down -- pay particular attention to the presence of the Qualcomm chip. You'll see why. Enjoy.
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15 Influential Tech Board Members
The board of directors' primary responsibility is to protect the assets of shareholders, trying to ensure they receive a strong return on their investments. In some cases, directors include venture capitalists or angel investors who have invested in a technology business. In others, directors are selected from outside the IT industry, perhaps because of their connections or success in complementary businesses. A board of directors can be a big asset. After all, the board gives a business the opportunity to pick the brains of executives from other organizations -- from companies involved in similar yet non-competing lines of work, complementary markets, and unrelated industries. Whether a firm is grappling with start-up issues such as capital, branding, and building a market, or challenges -- including mergers and acquisitions, re-branding, and expansion -- facing a well-established company, a board gives executive management access to more than a sounding board. A strong board provides guidance and advice, and helps direct a company's short- and longer-term steps. Here are 15 of the most influential board members in tech.
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Real Time Conversation With Google Translate
Google Translate for Android smartphones offers a unique and compelling new capability. This beta feature, called Conversation Mode, makes it possible to carry out a person-to-person conversation and have the Android device translate and speak each piece of the conversation on the fly. This new conversation model feature only works for conversations between English and Spanish speakers, though the main Google Translate app supports a wide range of languages for standard phrase-by-phrase translation. In tests, the Conversation Mode proved to be surprisingly effective, especially when the English speaker and the Spanish speaker were using their native tongues. However, if pronunciation wasn't very good, the app could make a few amusing mistakes. Luckily, Google Translate's Conversation Mode let's speakers view and manually type in correct phrases when the on-the-fly translation fails.
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12 Advances In Medical Robotics
Robots play a critical -- and growing -- role in modern medicine, from training the next generation of doctors, dentists, and nurses, to comforting and protecting elderly patients in the early stages of dementia. Using robots, medical professionals can make smaller incisions for shorter surgeries, reducing hospital stays and improving patients' prognoses and saving costs. As robots become even smaller and developers continue to further integrate the devices with artificial intelligence, the medical community will continuously expand the ways in which it uses this technology to save patients, improve quality of life and prevent health problems. At the other end of the spectrum, medical schools are turning to robots that mimic live patients' feelings of pain or discomfort to help the next wave of doctors and dentists prepare to treat real people. Of course, dummies and cadavers are not new to medical students, but by giving students access to sensitive patients, healthcare educators hope to hone the bedside manners of soon-to-be doctors and dentists.
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Top Features Absent From Windows 7
From dropping SteadyState to the lack of touch support, universal software updates, or third-party hardware support there's still a great deal missing from the Microsoft operating system. Some, inexplicably, didn't carry over from XP or Vista and others still haven't materialized despite widespread, ongoing demand. Why would Microsoft skimp on offering features that seem in their best interest to provide natively? One possibility is that they don't feel that way -- because they're waiting for someone else to develop their own approach to the same problem. So while the latest OS may be considered a success for Redmond, there remain shortcomings. Here's a look at several notable omissions and a few suggestions for alternatives.
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Inside Watson, IBM's Jeopardy Computer
IBM has spent four years and untold hundreds of millions of dollars developing Watson, a computer that can play Jeopardy. In fact, Watson answers questions so quickly and accurately that IBM challenged Jeopardy and two of the show's all-time champions to a match. Jeopardy's producers and the human contestants agreed. Taping took place January 14, and the three computer-vs.-human episodes will air February 14-16. Cynics may call it a publicity stunt, but the project has brought real advances in computer science. If IBM's previous (chess-playing) Deep Blue and (genetics-studying) Blue Gene supercomputers are any indication, advances in what IBM calls deep question-and-answer analytics could show up in the real world within three to five years. Here's a look inside the architecture, hardware, and advanced analytics that make Watson tick.
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12 Money Saving Tech Tips For SMBs
Smaller companies are under constant pressure to maximize their performance with minimal resources. However, you can't do business without technology -- and tech means spending money, something there never seems to be quite enough of for growing businesses. You keep a vigilant eye on costs as a matter of course. So you need to be creative to get what you and your employees need -- from phone service to software to desks and chairs -- without busting the budget. No matter what your business needs, with a bit of effort and due diligence you'll find that you can have your tech and save on it, too. Here are 12 ideas for reducing the budget burden of the business tools you need to succeed.
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Inside Joomla 1.6: Improved Access Control, Categories
Open-source content management systems, such as Joomla, have proven to be effective options for many Web sites and businesses and can be found running some of the largest and busiest sites on the Web. With strong content features, the open-source Joomla has been a popular choice, despite some traditional weaknesses, especially when it came to controlling user permissions on site and sorting content. But with the recently released Joomla 1.6, the open source content management system has gone a long way towards addressing these limitations. The new Joomla system now features much stronger user access control features that make it possible to define who can access and change content on a site and do so in a very fine grained and detailed manner. And Joomla 1.6 has ditched its old two-level site organization and added a new Categories system that allows for unlimited nested levels of content.
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Top 15 Facebook Apps For Business
While many of Facebook's 500 million users waste part of their days growing virtual crops or committing imaginary crimes, there are many Facebook applications designed to actually improve business productivity. There are more than 550,000 active applications on the Facebook platform, according to the social network, with many designed specifically to improve business practices or better-integrate Facebook into a company's operations. Many business apps are free. Often, fee-based apps offer a basic service at no charge. Frequently, only limited support, usually via Facebook, is available. In addition to general-purpose business applications, there are apps for specific verticals and jobs such as real estate, education, the entertainment industry, Web design, and marketing. These 15 are worth a look.
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