Marian Prokop's Most Recent Posts

EMC's Joe Tucci may have gotten Red Sox players to wear the company's logo on their shirtsleeves during opening games in Tokyo this week, but he really needs to work on his pitching.

Lots of portable PCs with features including GPS, MP3 and video players, Wi-Fi and other cool stuff are on exhibit. The PepperPad 3, for instance, from Pepper Computer,  is a handheld Web computer that offers Internet access via Wi-Fi on a 7-inch display screen, 20 GB hard drive. It offers Web surfing, downloading of music, video and books, a remote control for controlling your TV and a 20GB hardrive. It sells for $699.

Mio Technologies offered a couple of portable devices, including the DigiWalker H610, which provides GPS functionality including voice and text navigation, point of interest for 3.5 million locations in the U.S. and Canada,  as well as a media player. It has a retail price of $499.

What will be the big gifts for this year's holiday season? Smart phones with function and that reflect your personal style, more convergence devices, like PDAs with GPS, notebooks and desktops PCs, cameras and HD-TVs in plasma and LCD and projectors are all predicted to be big sellers over the holidays.  Those were some of the devices forecast at a panel on What's Hot for the Holidays at the Digital Life consumer electronics expo that opened today in New York City. The panel members were from companies including HP, AMD and Eastman Kodak,  whose products are on exhibit here for the next four days.  Dual core processors have gone mainstream noted Patrick Moorehead of Advanced Micro Devices, and quad-core isn't far behind, especially for big gaming fans.

David Strom, noted blogger, network consultant and author, is writing a story for Computerworld.com about best practices for corporate blogging. In the spirit of his research, we ask for you to send us (by posting comments here) your ideas for how to blog and still keep your day job. What should corporate IT bloggers be doing and what shouldn't they? Should there be specific and explicit blogging policies from IT to govern what is posted, what is or isn't reviewed? Any horror stories?

If you'd like your comments to be off the record or private, send e-mails to dstrom@gmail.com with corporate blogging in the subject line.

Our Gadget Tech reviewer Michelle Johnson was intrigued by Kanguru Solutions' 64GB flash drive. The Flash Drive Max sells for a whopping $2,800, which begs the question of why anyone would want or need to carry around that much data on a device the size of a stick of gum.  (It also comes with a lanyard, so you can wear it around your neck.)
It's out of the price range of most consumers, but for early adopters, it might be the new must have. A company spokeswoman, however,  told Johnson that the product was "aimed at business and government users looking for large amounts of storage in a small form factor."

Cancer is a scary topic, so when studies pop up suggesting links between routine activities and getting cancer, I pay attention. A recent story was on a Swedish study that found a higher risk of brain tumors among long-term cell phone users.

The study by the Swedish National Institute for Working Life defined heavy cell phone use as "2,000 plus hours, which corresponds to 10 years' use in the work place for one hour per day."   Our wireless columnist Craig Mathias, who's been following wireless technology for years, doesn't see reason for concern with this study, nor has he seen any study that conclusively proves a link between brain tumors and cellphone use, and he has his doubts that one will be found. But he advises using common sense just like you would with any risky behavior like sun-bathing or eating a diet that's high in fat. "With decades of wireless technology now under our belts, we should have seen something that correlates by now. I don't think we will, but we should keep trying," he says. 

Blu-ray technology made a symbolic leap with news that Sony Pictures has completed its first high-definition feature film on a Blu-ray disc. The movie,  "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle," was compressed and authored in MPEG 2 full high-definition (1920 x 1080 megapixels) by Sony's Digital Authoring Center (DAC), the company said.  The disc is being shipped to Blu-ray disc hardware companies for player testing. It's a significant milestone, but it follows last week's news of a conflict between Hewlett Packard and the Blu-ray Disc Association that may prompt the No.

The company that brought you disco-dancing bits to explain perpendicular recording has done it again. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has produced another flash animation,  this time with a hip hop tune to promote its microdrives. Who thought storage could be so cool?

Among the latest developments in the Michael Lynn story at the Black Hat conference is that the research analyst was served with a temporary restraining order  barring him from discussing the flaw that could compromise Cisco's unpatched routers . The order was filed by Cisco and Internet Security Systems, Lynn's former employer, from which he either resigned or was forced to resign after giving a presentation on how a malicious hacker could exploit a flaw in unpatched Cisco router software that  "could crash those systems or intercept Internet communications." According to Red Herring, Lynn explained his actions by saying,

The Department of Homeland Security is planning a "major cybersecurity preparedness
and response exercise"  for November. The exercise, dubbed "Cyberstorm" was mentioned during congressional testimony earlier this week. During the hearing, government investigator David Powner told a Senate subcommittee that the DHS needs to develop a "recovery plan for widespread attack on the Internet" and also needs "stable leadership in cybersecurity."

Federal employees involved in preservation and archiving want the optical disks they use to have a lifespan of at least 40 years, according to a survey.   The Government Information Preservation Working Group is working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish a long-term, or archival, standard measurement for recordable CD and DVD media.  According to Government Computer News, recordable disks are estimated to retain data for 100 years but there is no scientific data to support that figure.

One of the areas that might be a target of this week's anticipated layoffs at Hewlett Packard is its server and storage unit. The job cuts at HP are expected to range from 5,000 to 25,000, according to reports. The company has 150,000 employees worldwide.

IT, sales and services are expected to be especially hard hit, according to one source, as new CEO Mark Hurd makes his move to cut $1 billion a year in costs over the next two years. ""Almost every area will be affected across-the-board, but it won't be 10 percent cuts in every department. It'll be in areas where (HP) need to improve their benchmark against competitors," according to a source quoted by CNET.

Now that the public is all whipped up about data security breaches, it may be that online retailers will be paying the price. A new survey from the Conference Board  says that consumers are more concerned about identity theft, and that concern has made them more wary of performing financial transactions over the Web. The respondents also say they are making fewer online purchases.
According to a Conference Board statement:

It might be a coincidence, but since the reports of the colossal credit-card data theft at CardSystems Solutions Inc. last week, a slew of companies have been pushing data storage protection products.

Marketers must be gleeful at NetApp, where the company announced in the same week as the MasterCard caper that it was acquiring data encryption company Decru. Just today, Seagate Technologies said it is prepping a security technology that will protect the data on your notebook PC if it gets stolen.

A number of Web sites are reporting on plans to use iris scans as a way of identifying kids who are reported missing.  Ohio.com reports that the police department in Summit County is looking into the technology, which is supposed to be so precise that it can distinguish between identical twins. The department also figures it would be easier to obtain an iris scan than a fingerprint from a squirmy or nervous  kid. The program is available through a nationwide effort called the Children's Identification and Location Database, or the CHILD Project and is open to police departments and social service agencies. According to the Associated Press, via the Charlotte Observer,  the child stands about a foot away from a camera that takes a picture of the iris, the colored part of the eye.  Parents receive a card that includes a photo and the iris scan and can "decide whether to release the child's information to the national database or just keep the card."  The article also notes that it takes about 15 seconds to photograph the iris and about nine seconds to search the database for a match. FIngerprinting, it says, can take weeks.