A new feature wherein All Things Digital looks at up-and-coming and innovative start-ups you should know about.
This week: We caught up with Sam Blackman, CEO of Elemental Technologies at the San Francisco NewTeeVee Live conference. Elemental Technologies hopes to become a major player in the future of online and over-the-air video through its high-performance encoding technology.
As companies look for new ways to squeeze costs out of their technology budgets, some are deciding that the next PC they purchase need not be a PC at all.
Instead, they are rolling out virtual desktops–a set-up consisting of a screen, keyboard and small connector box that ties into a powerful server in the computer room that has all the software, storage and processing capabilities that each desktop user needs.
VMworld, the annual conference hosted by software maker VMware, is fast becoming one of the hot tech conferences, in large part because VMware’s technology has become an important selling point for tech-equipment makers like Dell and Cisco Systems. There are likely to be dozens of new product announcements made at the conference, which kicks off Monday.
There is something very uplifting about Opera’s vision of a Web that turns every user back into a node on the network, with all the rights and responsibilities that implies (this is the blog post today that explains the idea, and this is an inspirational video.)
Netbooks are hot. Intel estimates that the laptops–which can cost less than $300–sold faster in their first 12 months on the market than Apple’s iPhone or Nintendo’s Wii game console did. Could a similar low-end niche emerge in server systems?
It’s too early to tell, but there are some tantalizing signs–and some big ramifications if the trend takes hold.
Business at Sun Microsystems continues to, well, stink.
For the fiscal third quarter ended March 29, the server, storage and software company posted revenue of $2.614 billion, down 20 percent from a year ago, off 18.8 percent sequentially, and well short of the Street consensus of $2.86 billion.
As I noted earlier this month, the recent Cisco Systems decision to to move into the server business came with the risk that it might irritate both IBM and Hewlett-Packard, both of whom control big pieces of the server business while also reselling Cisco networking gear.
Companies used to give away pens, squishy balls and coffee cups to worm their ways into the hearts of customers. Now, they pass out database software. That is, in a sense, Sun Microsystems’ strategy with its $1 billion purchase of MySQL, said Sun CFO Mike Lehman at Sun’s Global Media Summit here today. Very few [...]
This past week, Jonathan Koomey, of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, released an update to his study of the electricity consumed by server computers. The research, funded by AMD, underscores the rapid increases in data-center energy use, showing that the power consumed by servers and related cooling gear doubled over the first five years of this decade, reaching 123 billion kilowatt-hours in 2005.
This is a section of the All Things Digital Web site featuring posts from around the Web, from other Dow Jones properties and also original pieces we solicit. The section is now explicitly labeled that it comes "from other Web sites."
We are fully aware of the controversies around how linking and aggregating is done on the Web and we, in no way, are attempting to "scrape" original content created by others. Instead, regarding third-party posts, we are trying to point readers of this site to other posts from around the Web that we admire and are trying to do so in the quickest manner possible.
The Internet is full of terrific content that is not ours and we want to help our readers find it by making editorial suggestions--Look, Mom, no algorithm!--of posts we think are worth their time.
That is why we have made even more changes to Voices to ensure we do this in the most transparent and timely way. While we don't expect that everyone will agree with our policies, we have made changes that reflect our intent in pointing to content outside our site.
So here is exactly what we do: Read more »
Because the site is wholly owned by Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, we aim to adhere to the journalistic standards of the best of the mainstream media. But, because it is run autonomously as a small online startup, we aim to exhibit the fresh thinking and nimbleness of the best of the new media. We want to be first, and sassy, but also well sourced and accurate. We will offer lots of opinion and analysis, but plenty of fact as well.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
Don't miss a post! Sign up for our Daily Email and get AllThingsD.com delivered each day.
Get columns, blogs and video from D and All Things Digital on your iPhone. Download now »
