Features

• 2012: The year in quotes

  Some of the most memorable IT-related quotes were uttered in courtrooms this year, which involved a steady stream of legal challenges about intellectual property. In no particular order, these are some of the comments that stuck with us as 2012 winds to a close.

• Cloud computing showdown: Amazon vs. Rackspace (OpenStack) vs. Microsoft vs. Google

  It wouldn't be a mischaracterization to equate the cloud computing industry to the wild, wild west.

• Apple iPad vs Kindle DX: Which is better for education?

  If the iPad doesn't succeed as a consumer electronics device--its initial target market--it may find a successful second career as an electronic textbook reader.

• Amazon's Kindle for PC app: 10 things to know

  Amazon's extending its electronic bookstore onto your desktop. The company announced plans for a Kindle for PC desktop application at Microsoft's Windows 7 launch event Thursday.

• Inside Amazon's Cloud: Just How Many Customer Projects?

  There's been a lot of discussion the past couple of days about an analysis by Guy Rosen, in which he estimates that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is provisioning 50K EC2 server instances per day. He created this estimate by examining EC2 resource IDs and doing a time-series analysis on how much the IDs are incremented per hour.

• Google's move into e-books could be explosive

  E-books may have been a niche technology so far, but Google Inc.'s entry into the market could burst the online business wide open.