The Pervasive Data Center

Latency matters even across the ocean

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When I wrote a research note entitled "Latency Matters!" in 2002, I was primarily reacting to the tendency of computer system vendors to highlight how much data they could move around rather than how quickly that data could get from point A to point B. This made comparing server designs--one of my main areas of focus at the time--difficult given that the speed, rather than the amount, of data movement within and between various subsystems was often the more important metric. As I wrote:

Latency is the time that elapses between a request for data and its delivery. It is more

Why 'drop in' doesn't always fit

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Certain ideas lurk largely at the boundaries of the IT industry, periodically making a push for a more central role. One such is the appliance or integrated stack--an assembly of hardware and multiple layers of software from a single vendor.

The argument for this concept revolves around simplifying the acquisition of technology and optimizing its operation.

Of course, vertical stacks were once simply the-way-systems-were-built. This model largely gave way to horizontal layers such as microprocessors, operating systems, and databases developed by different specialist vendors and brought together at the end user. (Former Intel CEO Andy Grove describes this shift in more

The new tweener cameras

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When it comes to shooting digital photos, you've had three basic choices. You can use your phone, a compact point-and-shoot camera, or a digital SLR.

There is certainly a range of capabilities within each of those categories. But, broadly speaking, all of the devices within a given category have a pretty similar set of tradeoffs relative to the devices in another category.

When it comes to dedicated cameras, point-and-shoots don't have interchangeable lenses, have relatively small image sensors, tend to have a perceptible lag between the shutter button being pressed and the picture being taken, and usually have more

Why Apple will do a real iWatch

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In the wake of a Steve Jobs keynote comment, the new and miniaturized iPod Nano has found a new role as geek chic wrist wear of the moment. As soon as one gets past the doing-it-because-you-can stage though, you probably realize that the Nano does not, in fact, make a very good watch.

Running a wire from your wrist to your ear so you can use the Nano as a music player--which is sort of the point--rather than just a timepiece with a short battery life is inelegant. Keynote comments notwithstanding, Steve Jobs would not approve.

But there's the more

The rise of the community cloud

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In the fevered world of cloud computing, much is possible certainly. After all, the concept was first discussed as a grandiose parallel to the rise of the electric grid and the replacement of locally created power by a commoditized utility. Internet worrywart Nick Carr chronicled this in his book "The Big Switch" and went so far as to view it as a coming cause of major employment disruptions, as labor-intensive local computing operations were widely replaced by mega-datacenters with just a handful of operators.

There's certainly a kernel of truth here; more computing happens in other places, standardization and more

'Get Lamp' illuminates the text adventure game

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Jason Scott's first documentary in 2005 was about bulletin board systems (BBSs), which were in a sense the PC world's parallel evolution of the early Internet. This documentary, really more a multi-disc series of interviews with BBS pioneers than a documentary film as such, brought back to me my early years in personal computing and my subsequent forays into shareware software development through the mid-1990s.

Now, Scott has tackled a subject from roughly the same era: the text adventure game. My involvement here was more peripheral but no less a part of my memories.

As his new "Get Lamp" more

Countdown to Kodachrome's last development

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With the last roll of Kodachrome slide film ever to be manufactured by Kodak now developed, a major chapter of the film photography era is winding down. Dwayne's Photo Service of Parsons, Kansas, is the only lab left in the world that still processes this type of film, and it plans to stop processing Kodachrome on December 10. Kodak itself had previously farmed out what remained of its in-house film processing business to Dwayne's in 2006.

Kodachrome wasn't the first color film, but it was the first successful commercial film based on a subtractive process; earlier additive processes used filters, more

Benchmarking performance in a virtualized world

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The central concept behind benchmarks was historically pretty simple. What's the horsepower of some vendor's "Big Iron"? After all, most systems--the important ones, anyway--were the big boxes sitting in a data center someplace doing important stuff like booking orders or counting money.

They cost a lot. They were based on proprietary architectures that made low-level technical comparisons between vendors difficult. And they were a core part of an enterprise's business.

This was largely the environment that spawned the benchmark business. Ideally, buyers would run their own tests, using their own applications, but this was difficult and expensive. more

My favorite iPad applications

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Some of the early commentary about the Apple iPad dismissed it as just a big iPhone or iPod Touch.

Today, I am listing the applications I find most useful on my iPad and comparing them with my iPhone favorites. And I must say that I'm struck by how different the two lists are.

My iPhone sits in my pocket as I'm out and about, often in at least somewhat unfamiliar cities. I want to know which restaurants, which Wi-Fi hot spots, and which ATMs are nearby. I want to listen to music, glance at the news headlines, or more

One year in: My most useful iPhone apps

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The apps make the iPhone. So every time an acquaintance picks one up, just about the first thing they ask is: "What apps should I get?"

This is my current list of apps you might want to download. It's tailored to my use case, which is that of a fairly frequent business traveler and social media user. To the degree your profile is different; your mileage will vary. I've left off games--a post topic of its own--but I've included some honorary mentions that are good and innovative, but which I just don't find myself using as more