Stories about: ADVENT

Thirty years ago, on June 8, 1978, Intel introduced its first 16-bit microprocessor, the 8086, with a splashy ad heralding "the dawn of a new era." Overblown? Sure, but also prophetic. While the 8086 was slow to take off, its underlying architecture -- later referred to as x86 -- would become one of technology's most impressive success stories.

In a new study that has potentially Orwellian implications, ABI Research projects that revenue for video surveillance software will quadruple over the next five years.

EMC executives predict flash storage technology will be nearly as inexpensive as high-end disk drives within two years. Most disk drives will continue to offer lower prices than flash, though, ensuring a long life for disk technology, it said.

The same question people used to ask about PCs can be asked of social networks: Were our lives easier or harder, better or worse, simpler or more complex, before they came around? The answer is yes. For some folks, social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace seem nearly as indispensable as e-mail, but creating and maintaining these virtual circles of friends turns out to be quite a bit of work, often necessarily so. Here are the ten things that bug me most about today's social networking services.

A major transformation in the way that large data centers are built is under way, and the expected changes may have as much impact on IT productivity as the adoption of shipping containers did on operations in the freight industry starting in the late 1950s.

Though the purchasing power of many young Sierra Leoneans is still a limiting factor, the advent of wireless services in Sierra Leone has enabled more people to embrace the use of the Internet.

Long gone are the days when politicians only had to bring their "A" games to stump speeches and meet-and-greets. Now with the ubiquity of 24-hour cable news, online political coverage and even private citizens with digital cameras, politicians have to be more alert and focused in public than ever before. As former senator and presidential candidate Fred Thompson tells it, this constant scrutiny carries a definite price for people running for office.

Asia is leading the way in new media and interactive marketing, according to Ian Rowden, chairman and CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Asia/Pacific. "Internet users have topped 160 million in China and 50 million in India.

Qualcomm's Gobi, an embedded laptop module allowing for wide-area wireless connectivity, is poised to upset the apple cart, offering alternatives to Wi-Fi and even emerging WiMax.

A group of US universities is blazing a new path in open source software. They're building a set of enterprise applications -- the big, important, mission-critical ones that have long been the exclusive domain of software companies such as Oracle, SAP and Microsoft.

Last month Cisco Systems unveiled its future. It's merely a big switch, but if some industry analysts are to be believed, it's also the first shot in a war to control the data centre.