Overheard – Data center swamp cooler

Evaporative cooling technology has done away with refrigerants. At Yahoo’s latest center in upstate New York, the entire building functions as an air handler, taking advantage of the winds off the lake to eliminate chiller plants in the data center. The average cost to cool for Yahoo centers is now 1%. Linda Tucci, Disaster recovery is dead; long live continuous business operations

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is swamp cooler.   It’s the slang name for a cooler that uses evaporative cooling technology.

Overheard – SQL injection

What’s the most common password among the 32 million people who’s accounts were hacked at RockYou late last year? According to a study by Imperva , it’s “123456,” followed by “12345,” “123456789¿ and “Password,” in that order. “iloveyou” came in at no. 5. Sigh. Jack McKenna, Depressing Analysis Of RockYou Hacked Passwords

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is SQL injection.   Last December the social site RockYou was notified that there was an SQL injection vulnerability in their database and although they were quick to fix it, someone had already gotten in and claimed access to sensitive data on over 1 million accounts.  I don’t know what’s worse — that there was a vulnerability, that the user passwords were so lame or (gasp) that RockYou had stored the passwords in PLAIN TEXT.  It’s still the Wild Wild West out there. Be careful.

Overheard – ISO 38500

The ISO 38500 standard seeks to establish that IT is the entire executive management team’s responsibility and not just the responsibility of the CIO. Yuga Chaudhari, ISO 38500: A new corporate governance standard for IT

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is ISO 38500.

Overheard – Clonezilla

Clonezilla is an open source, Linux-based alternative to commercial disk cloning tools like Symantec Ghost and Acronis True Image. Unfamiliar with the process of disk cloning? In a nutshell, disk cloning makes a copy of a data disk for future restoration. A perfect time to create a clone would be after you’d installed your operating system of choice, your favorite applications, and tweaked the system settings to your liking. Lifehacker, Clonezilla Backs Up and Restores Your Disks

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is Clonezilla.

Overheard – Wifi range extender

Range extenders (or wireless repeaters) can be useful, but they come with a downside: lower speeds. In most cases, you will get half of the throughput (or less) than connecting directly to your wireless router, so don’t expect the same type of performance. Lockergnome, Do Wi-Fi Range Extenders Work?

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is Wi-Fi range extender.

Jim Geier has a good tutorial on range extenders.  All the experts agree that it’s best to use the same vendor for both your access point and your range extender.   Hopefully it won’t be too long before the extender comes built right into your wireless router.

Overheard – knowledge process outsourcing (KPO)

While BPO places an emphasis on low level processes, KPO places an emphasis on high level processes such as patent filing, investment research and legal issues. Steve, The basic elements that differentiate BPO from KPO

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is knowledge process outsourcing (KPO).  By 2010,  the KPO industry is projected to generate $17 billion globally.  About 70% of the business will go to knowledge workers in India.

Overheard – cloud backup

The marketing minds can put a positive twist on anything. Online data backup offers a lot of value, however, there are downsides you absolutely need to be aware of. There’s too high a price to pay to bury your head in the sand over something so important. Kevin Beaver, Data security concerns with online and cloud backup technology

The WhatIs.com Word of the Day is cloud backup.

Overheard – data archiving

“Technically, archiving applications used for compliance should apply policies to files, move files based on those policies and keep audit information on files.  Also, the file content should be indexed to make it searchable and be written to specific media depending on regulatory specifics.” Shane O’Neill, Choosing a compliance archiving tool

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is data archiving.

Overheard – Appreciative Inquiry

On the surface, Appreciative Inquiry can sound too “touchy feely” for hard-nosed business people. We like to vent and to gripe. But is venting the best use of time at an organization’s planning meeting? Jane Logan Appreciative Inquiry

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is Appreciative Inquiry.

Overheard – near CDP

Near CDP is a marketing invention of people who don’t offer continuous data protection but are trying to repackage non-continuous technologies as ‘kind of being the same thing.’ Mark Twomey, Non-CDP

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is near-continuous data protection.