InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

40 Tech Gifts For The Holiday Season
When it seems like the techie in your life already has every next-generation gadget and gizmo on earth, just the thought of finding them a good gift can make you wince with expectant agony. But no one actually has everything, and there's bound to be something out there that will tickle their tech fancy. From TVs to smartphones, green gadgets to slightly goofy gadgets, jaw-dropping sound to peaceful wake-up calls, here are 40 ideas for the holidays or any other gift-giving occasion. Prices are rounded to nearest whole dollar and are suggested retail unless otherwise noted. In some cases, there's no wiggle on the price tag; in others, it pays to shop around for the best deal.
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Google Chrome OS Promises Computing Without Pain
Before a crowd of reporters and guests, Google provided an update on its forthcoming browser-based operating system, Chrome OS, and invited attendees and select early adopters to try Chrome OS running on an unbranded netbook through a pilot program. Chrome OS aims to be speedy, simple and secure: all the things that the typical PC is not. It achieves these goals by limiting the user to Web apps, running in the Chrome browser. But Google doesn't see this as a limitation; it sees it as a way to prevent the user from mucking up the works by installing bloated or malicious software. Google sees the Web and cloud computing as a better user experience.
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Clicking Through Opera 11 Browser Beta
The Opera web browser, from Opera Software, has long been one of the most innovative browsers available, and has been the first to introduce many features that became common in all browsers, such as tabbed windows. With the recent released beta of Opera 11, the browser continues this tradition with several interesting new capabilities, including the ability to load plugins on demand within web pages. The Opera 11 beta also includes some features already found in other browsers, such as competing betas Microsoft IE 9 and Firefox 4, and has adopted some of the interface characteristics of Google's Chrome web browser.
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5 Airport Body Scanner Patents Stripped Down
Here's a deep dive on five patents applying X-ray backscatter technology to airport contraband detection. These screening machines have been much in the news recently, amid controversy regarding both their effectiveness and the amount of radiation exposure to which travelers are subjected. The patents we'll look at are from prime players in the airport body scanner field. This list is led by Rapiscan Systems Inc. , of Torrance, Calif., which in 2009 won the TSA contract to supply whole-body imaging scanners to U.S. airports. Also included is Martin Annis, a pioneer in body scanning who founded American Science and Engineering Inc. (ASAE) of Billerica, Mass. in 1958. In 1980, Annis was awarded one of the first personnel scanner patents. Finally, L-3 Communications Security and Detection Systems Inc., of Woburn, Mass., has sold numerous explosives detection devices to the military and vied for the TSA contract. Selected diagrams from five patents are included to illustrate inventors' efforts at enhanced privacy, through which explicit body part imagery is replaced by a mannequin-like view, as well as to show attempts to reduce traveler exposure to x-rays through more sophisticated radiation source arrays.
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Top 20 Apps For Managing Social Media
Social media from Twitter to Facebook, LinkedIn to YouTube creates opportunities for building relationships, cultivating customers and promoting business, but the sea of updates and input awash with data both important and consequential can drown all but the most dogged of users. Fortunately, app developers have created more than a few devices to make keeping afloat in the social media waters manageable, sane and even productive. Yet even the tools intended to help users navigate social media are so numerous that culling through them can be overwhelming. That's why we've plucked out 20 of the best third-party apps to power up your social networking. Many are fee and many of the pay-to-play options offer free trials or stripped down versions at no charge so you can try them before you buy.
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Desktop Twitter Programs Revealed
Desktop Twitter clients offer some advantages over browser-based options for the more than 175 million registered Twitter users navigating the tens of millions of daily Tweets. Desktop clients free user from the limited range of controls and UT metaphors found in the browser, and there's less chance of being bitten by a web-based exploit. Moreover, third-party browser-based clients, such as HootSuite and Slipstre.am, hint at different ways of interacting with Twitter. It's no wonder that third-party applications have emerged as a significant means of accessing Twitter, with almost 15% of unique users coming through one of the leading clients. Based upon ease of use, the number of services supporting, interfaces to additional services such as URL shortening and filter management, here are five Twitter clients worth a look.
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Top 20 Government Cloud Service Providers
Nearly a dozen teams of technology vendors have been approved to provide IT infrastructure as a service to government agencies through Apps.gov, the General Services Administration's cloud computing portal. The new blanket service agreement makes it possible for federal, state and local government agencies to order on-demand virtual servers, cloud storage and web hosting as needed from GSA-approved service providers. Cloud vendors must satisfy FISMA's "moderate impact" data security level to participate in the program. A total of 20 companies made it through GSA's vetting process. They comprise a broad cross-section of IT service and infrastructure providers, from industry leaders such as AT&T, Dell and Microsoft to smaller vendors that specialize in doing business with Uncle Sam.
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RockMelt Social Web Browser Revealed
RockMelt, a new browser backed by Mosaic and Netscape web pioneer Marc Andreessen, tightly integrates web browsing with social networking, letting users easily track their Facebook friends, Twitter feeds and changing news feeds, while surfing the web. RockMelt is not the first attempt to reimagine the web browser as a social tool. Back in 2005, the Flock browser was released with similar ambitions. Initially based on Mozilla's Gecko rendering engine, the forthcoming 3.0 version of Flock will, like RockMelt, be based on Google's Chromium browser engine. Despite being just an early preview release, RockMelt offers some of the best social networking features we've seen in a browser and could already be considered one of the best browser choices for heavy Facebook users. And with its Chrome heritage, it is already strong as a standard web browser. Here's a look at some of the key features of the recently released early preview of RockMelt.
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9 Ways Health IT Improves Patient Care
The HITECH legislation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is allocating more than $20 billion to push for the adoption of health IT nationwide, including e-health records and e-prescription systems. Health IT can boost patient's quality of care by reducing medical errors, improving clinical decision making and helping to eliminate redundant and unnecessary tests and costs. Health IT, including automated systems that check for adverse drug interactions, allergies, and confirm patient IDs, can help patients avoid being victim to medication and other errors. Meanwhile, as more aging and chronically ill patients are cared for at home, health IT deployments can help keep those individuals out of the hospital, while mobile apps and other tech deployments aid in wellness programs to keep the healthy active. Here are a few examples of health IT helping to bring those benefits.
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15 Mobile Apps For Better Health
From helping you monitor your condition to making suggestions for improving it, today's smartphones can become valuable healthcare partners -- with the right apps. The iPhone App Store, the Android Market and the BlackBerry App World are chock full of applications that can help keep you in the pink. The Health, Wellness, and Fitness categories in the various mobile app stores are full of applications that promise to help keep you healthy. Some of them are backed by major pharmaceutical firms, while others are the brainchild of a single person who thinks they've found the solution to a health issue. We've sifted through them to bring you 15 of the best.
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NASA, Microsoft Reveal Mars In Pictures
As Earth's closest neighbor and with an atmosphere more similar to Earth's than any other planet in the solar system, Mars has long been a subject of great interest to astronomers and the public. NASA began exploring Mars with unmanned spacecraft in the 1970s, and the space agency hopes to eventually send a human to the Red Planet. In March 2009, NASA and Microsoft partnered under a Space Act Agreement to make images of Mars and other planets available through Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope, an online "virtual telescope." When viewed through Worldwide Telescope, users can study the surface of Mars in detail, while zooming in and out and panning its surface.
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How Firesheep Can Hijack Web Sessions
Firesheep is a Firefox extension used to hijack web sessions, usually used over WiFi networks. Firesheep doesn't steal usernames and passwords, instead it copies session cookies used on authenticated websites. These are then used to impersonate the hijacked connection. Session hijacking, or sidejacking is a well known problem, ranking 3rd on OWASP's (Open Web Application Security Project) Top 10 Application Security Risk list. Attackers using Firesheep just need access to network traffic -- such as on an unencrypted WiFi network, or with a man-in-the-middle attack. Here's how it's done.
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Zeo Personal Sleep Coach
Technology's pervasiveness doesn't stop at the bedroom. The Zeo Personal Sleep Coach combines wireless, the Web, and an intelligent design to bring sleep data and therapy to the masses.
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Samsung Galaxy Tab Teardown
When Apple introduced the iPad, many were probably disappointed to learn that it would run the same operating system found on Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch devices. "Isn't the iPad just a big iPhone?" people wondered. Samsung has a similar problem to overcome with the Galaxy Tab. Isn't the Tab, which runs Google's Android 2.2 Froyo operating system (the same one found on nearly a dozen smartphones), really just a big Android phone? The answer is yes and no. In this slideshow, we take a look under the hood courtesy of UBM TechInsights, which provides a teardown of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, revealing all of the major components, including the processor, the camera module and more.
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12 Best Government Websites
Easy access to government online has gone from being nice-to-have to being necessary in the "open government" era, with many government websites taking advantage of modern designs and technologies to help do the trick. All too often, local, state and federal governments and government agencies do far too little to reach out to citizens on the web. Many governments and agencies are stuck in the 1990s era of tacky animated images, an over-abundance of white space, and confusing arrays of links. However, there are also plenty of agencies that stick out, with designs nearly or every bit as modern and enticing as one might expect from top corporations and Web 2.0 companies. These are some of the best.
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Best Mobile Apps For Busy Professionals
Today's smartphones have led to the development of hundreds of thousands of mobile apps. Apple's iPhone, RIM's BlackBerry and phones based on Google's Android all have access to extensive libraries of apps that you can download and install for our increasingly mobile world. When you're always on the go, having the right smartphone app makes it easy to transition from business to pleasure and back again without skipping a beat so you can get the most out of every minute. Here we pick 17 of the best apps for pros on the go -- steering clear of the silly and the stupid -- to help you manage your mobile lifestyle.
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Inside DHS' Classified Cyber Coordination Headquarters
The Department of Homeland Security recently brought its classified National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center down to an unclassified level for one day only, and InformationWeek Government was there to take photos. The facility looks and functions like a state-of-the-art network operations center and much more. The NCCIC, as it's called, is the locus of DHS-led inter-agency cybersecurity work in the federal government. That includes providing an integrated response to cyber threats against government networks, monitoring network sensors across the government and coordinating any requested government aid and response to cyber attacks against private industry networks like power plants or communications networks.
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Cisco Umi Takes Telepresence To The Home
Cisco has spent the past four years pounding "telepresence" into the brains of business and IT professionals, and now it has introduced Umi, a full telepresence solution for the home. From Umi, you can have video chats with other Umi users (or, it supports Google Video chat), leave video messages and upload video to share with your Umi contacts.
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