Could NeXT have been THE big thing???

Way back in 1988 Compaq, Dell, and IBM approached Steve Jobs and asked him if they could license his object oriented NeXTSTEP operating system. NeXT was a company that Steve Jobs personally started. They did not see a future in DOS and did not like the Microsoft operating system. Gates reached an agreement with IBM and did get some money to work on and sell the OS. Bill Gates personally got irate at this news and told everyone he could at IBM and other places that the NeXT OS was bad and was not compatible with anything. After IBM hired a new chief of strategy the relationship with Jobs cooled down. IBM eventually turned to the development of OS2 with Microsoft and Steve Jobs folded neXT into Apple after it failed. What long ago stared out as NeXTSTEP has since transformed into Mac OS X.

It is very interesting how if one man really bought into NeXT and not OS2 we could have a completely different computer landscape. Just think of a world where Mac OS is on almost everyone's personal computer and Windows is just a small speck on the windshield. Imagine the world for the computer technician. That might have been a spooky place for him indeed.

Living in a digital age...

The program Frontline did a piece on what is happening to people around the world living in this new digital age. The program explored both pluses and minuses of the use of technology in today's society. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The students are constantly multitasking while they are at school. They are talking to one person while texting another person and sending an e-mail to someone else. The professors said that the students are becoming too distracted in class doing other things than listening to the lectures.

At Stanford University in California they conducted a study on the students. They found that while multitasking the students actually worked slower than when they only did on task at a time. They became so distracted by doing many things at once it look them longer to do any one task by itself. Researchers say it is hard to conduct studies on the impact of technology on people because it changes so rapidly that you can not monitor the effects on people. The government of South Korea is so concerned about the growing crisis that they have called gaming an addiction and a mental health crisis. They have sent up rehabilitation centers around the country to try to deal with the effects of long term gaming use by youth in the country.

A Junior High School in the Bronx is has used computer laptops given to students to raise the grades of the students and lower the violence at the school. People play the MMO game World of Warcraft and meet people from all over the world and some even have real world relationships with people they meet in the game. Some companies like IBM have used virtual worlds like Second Life to hold meetings and cut down travel costs. They think that meeting in the virtual world actually leads to closer interaction and relations than meeting other ways. The U.S. Military uses remote unmanned airplanes to conduct air strikes in foreign countries. The pilots are able to drop bombs on terror suspects and than drive home from work for dinner.

The program was very interesting. It showed both the good and the bad side of technology. Many advances have been made using new technology but other things have also been lost. When people changed from the spoken word to writing words we lost some of our memory capability. Since we have moved from a written word to using e-mail and texting some feel we have lost our ability to write. I think that with technology like anything else in life moderation is key and you should not be afraid of new things but do not toss the old things away too quickly.

Facebook to build massive server farm on edge of Artic circle

Facebook is going to build three giant server halls that covers an area the size of 11 football fields. They are going to build it in the town of Lulea that is on the Northern tip of Sweden that is just over 62 miles South of the Arctic Circle. The site will need to generate 120 MW of power to operate and cost Facebook around 62 million Euro's a year to run. They are going to use the naturally cool temperatures of the area, around 2C or 35.6F average, to keep the servers cool enough to run and not need any other sources to cool the halls.

This seems like a very interesting way to go. Using the naturally cool climate to cool the servers and keep them at optimal temperature seems like a win-win idea. They get to spend less money to keep them running and they do not have to use any other means that might pollute the environment.

Lee Medical uses iPad's to reduce catheter infections

Lee Medical, a local medical company in Tennessee that services 60 hospitals and other health care facilities in the area, is using custom software for FileMaker on the iPAD to keep track of the location & usage history of Catheters. By using the iPAD's they are able to use a central server that keeps track of the use history and the location of all the catheters in the area. They are also able to schedule procedures and know what places to visit. The great thing about using the iPAD's is the data is all on a protected server and no data is stored on the iPAD's so it can not be stolen. They have been able to reduce infection rates from 2 to 18 per 1,000 catheter days to 0.5 per 1,000 catheter days. I think it is really neat they companies are coming up with new and productive ways to use iPAD's and the software programs that are available to it. This is also a safe way to use it because all of the data is stored on a server and not the individual iPAD's.

HDD shortage expected to impact market

The flooding in Thailand could impact the HDD market. The big hard drive suppliers Western Digital & Seagate are either stopping production of HD's or using short supplies left to build the drives. Apple, Dell, & Intel are not worried about the shortage yet but are closely monitoring the situation and will react as the situation changes.