Spotlight Features

Some "applications" are misnomers of a sort. "Oddly enough, I'm not sure that true cloud innovation is happening quite yet at the application level," said Charles King, principal with Pund-IT. "Instead, we're seeing a variety of what people call 'cloud-enabled' or 'cloud-oriented' apps and services ...

"Cloud computing is not magical, but it is more economical, more easily scaled and more easily managed," said Lance Walley, chief executive officer of Engine Yard, a hosting and infrastructure support company for Ruby on Rails applications. It's getting more so, too. That's because it's so practical...

Google arguably is the granddaddy of cloud computing, at least in its current incarnation. So, whenever the Googleplex develops a new feature or capability -- or service offering -- the rest of the industry takes notice. That was the case last month when Google rolled out a service level agreement t...

There have been a number of attempts to size the cloud computing market. The most eye-popping figure, arguably, is from Merrill Lynch. It has famously said that by 2011, the cloud computing market will reach $160 billion. Whether or not this is a realistic projection -- and there are many who conten...

Increasingly, consumers are connecting their stereos, plasma TVs, DVRs, PCs, laptops and gaming systems to intelligent entertainment systems designed to record, store and share media across devices throughout the home. As the home networking market continues to gain traction, what devices will they ...

Pity the Patent and Trademark Office examining attorney who gave Dell the green light propelling its trademark application for the term "cloud computing" toward the home stretch this summer. That particular individual was obviously unaware that the phrase had become, over the course of a year, one...

Cloud storage opportunities for consumers are increasing rapidly. Those looking to store photos, music libraries and other personal data online have a number of choices, including both free and fee-based services. Large-capacity free e-mail services such as Gmail have become personal storage vaults ...

For most businesses, data security is a mission-critical undertaking, and a summer of weather calamities drove home that point. "As the recent hurricanes reminded us, off-premise backup solutions can make the difference between being out of business for good and being on hiatus for a few months," Ro...

A week -- even a day -- can make a world of difference in a presidential election. Witness the fact that nearly right up to the minute the still-unfolding Wall Street crisis came to a boil, the issue getting the most play in campaign speeches was oil prices. There was even a fair amount of speculati...

As energy prices -- crude oil, gasoline, heating oil, electricity and natural gas -- continue to increase, the focus of governments and other groups, such as car makers, has turned to finding alternative energy sources. High on that list of potential technologies are fuel cells. Much has been made a...

Less than a decade ago, it seemed touch-screen had the touch. In the years after the 2000 Florida general election controversy, election officials worried about public confidence in voting and, fueled by $3 billion in federal funding for election improvements, presided over a swift transformation of...

Portable electronics like smartphones and laptops aren't generally known for their ability to withstand drops, splashes and harsh conditions. Yet the portable nature of these devices means they're often in the line of fire -- swimming pools and toilets for cell phones, dusty places like construction...

Digital age, and the stealin' is easy. Regardless of the content type -- be it a text, audio or video file -- computer users can seemingly download and upload copyrighted content with near impunity. After all, it doesn't cost anything to share this material. It's there for the taking. Besides, what...

Online media coverage of this year's Summer Olympic Games on MSN is shaping up to be a breakout event for Internet TV, as well as quite a big hit for NBC and its tech partners. The network reported 12 million hits and 70 million page views on its Olympics Web site -- and that was before the opening ...

The leading edge of online corporate outreach once was the executive blog. Carefully crafted messages on a range of topics, closely vetted by PR firms, were posted every few weeks, calculated to appear spontaneous and thoughtful. Not surprisingly, many companies learned that customers didn't find th...

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