data

San Francisco Chronicle music critic Joel Selvin mourns the loss of audio quality in our iPod-obsessed culture.

He's right: MP3 files and other forms of data-compressed audio, such as AAC (used by Apple's iTunes) and Windows Media Audio, don't contain as much audio data as an uncompressed song on a CD. For long-time music listeners such as Selvin, the difference is striking. (Note that he's talking about data compression, not the audio compression that's misused to "punch up" many modern recordings.)

The first time I heard a CD full of burned MP3 files … Read more

The market timing for products like the "Tele-Data Guard" couldn't be better, coming on the heels of the recent spate of spy movies such as The Good Shepherd, Breach and The Company. We can think of no better way to heighten people's sense of paranoia.

Besides, who hasn't had their phones tapped as part of international conspiracies? That's what this device is aimed at detecting (well, maybe not the conspiracy part), by flashing a green light during conversation if someone is eavesdropping on your line, according to Uber-Review. It supposedly works on faxes and … Read more

IBM intends to undertake a massive server consolidation in an effort to make its data centers more "green."

The computing giant on Wednesday said it will transfer the computing load now on 3,900 servers onto about 30 System z mainframes running Linux.

That transfer will reduce power consumption at IBM's 8 million square feet of data centers by 80 percent over the next five years.

Earlier this year, IBM officially launched what it calls its Big Green Innovations program to offer products and services around environmental conservation and energy efficiency.

Data centers represent large consumers of … Read more

Remember how we all mocked the gadgets and appliances used by our parents when we were kids? You know, the "Veg-O-Matics," the "Pocket Fisherman" and pretty much anything else pitched by Ron Popeil on TV after 2 a.m.

Well, don't laugh--we're next. Imagine the reaction of our own children a decade from now when they find something like the "DataGlass HMD" in a corner of the basement. Accurately described by SCI FI Tech as a "cross between a pirate, a cyborg soldier and a member of the Borg hive," … Read more

Does anyone remember the PDA? You know, that thing people used to carry around before BlackBerries, Treos and most mobile phones made since 2003? A few of them may be tucked away in a Members Only jacket somewhere in the closet (buried, we hope).

If any of them are still in use, they may be easy targets for schoolyard bullies like the iPhone. Perhaps that's why one of the surviving models, the "Recon 200X" from Tripod Data Systems, comes with its own body armor--to avoid serious injury when getting beaten up by the bigger kids. Although specs … Read more

Many of us at Crave aren't exactly the outdoorsy types, but we do our best to help exercise-enabled individuals in the interest of trying to be a full-service gadget blog. Recently, for example, we featured a tent that can keep your electronic equipment powered even while deep in the woods. And today we offer one for the seagoing geeks among us: the "DataMask HUD."

This underwater headgear, which is supposedly used by military special forces personnel, is equipped with a miniature LCD inside the mask, which provides such detailed diving info as "current depth, elapsed dive … Read more

Sometimes it feels like every day, there's word of another incident involving lost, hacked or pilfered personal data stores--and dire warnings about the potential consequences.

But according to a report just released by the Government Accountability Office (PDF), only a small fraction of those recent episodes have actually resulted in clear signs of identity theft.

After scrutinizing the 24 largest data breaches that got media attention between January 2000 and June 2005, the GAO found that only three of the incidents indicated fraud on existing accounts. One pointed to evidence that new accounts had been created based on the … Read more

The sky is not falling for Microsoft, but it's sure starting to look cloudy. No wonder the company keeps trying to make thunder about patent infringement. The US Supreme Court under Justic Roberts has become less activist than in previous decades, as the WSJ reports: let's hope that the courts won't be the last bastion for market share in the software world, either.

Evans Data, as reported by Paul Krill at Infoworld, just completed a survey of North American developers and found the following:

A survey this spring of more than 400 developers and IT managers in North America found that the number of developers targeting Windows for their applications declined 12 percent from a year ago. Just 64.8 percent targeted the platform as opposed to 74 percent in 2006....… Read more

IBM has acknowledged that in early 2007 a third-party contractor misplaced a tape containing the personal information of current and former IBM employees. The tape was lost in transit to its Armonk, N.Y, headquarters some time in February. Recently, IBM was in the news as one of the companies helping to investigate the massive data breach at TJX.

Big Blue started informing affected employees last week, and as compensation the company is offering one year of free credit monitoring. The exact number of affected employees is not known but it's thought to include personnel who worked for the … Read more