Overheard – High Speed Packet Access
Profile: Margaret Rouse
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It’s no secret that 4G wireless technology – aka Long Term Evolution and WiMax – is in the works and actually starting to see some deployment. But until then, a 3G technology called High Speed Packet Access, or HSPA, is seeing the big growth numbers around the globe.
Sam Diaz, Growth of 3G wireless broadband illustrates demand for 4G connections |
HSPA is a general name for the High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High-Speek Uplink Packet Access protocols. They are packet-based mobile telephony protocols used in 3G to increase data capacity and speed up transfer rates. One of the primary differences between HSPA and EV-DO networks is that HSPA allows mobile handsets to transmit voice and data simultaneously.
Jonathan Morgan has written a very interesting post explaining why HSPA is so important. It all comes down to dollars.
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Overheard – Serial-attached SCSI (SAS)
Profile: Margaret Rouse
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“Beginning late 2006, major network server platform releases embraced 3Gb/s SAS and there has been no looking back.”
Harry Mason, Serial Attached SCSI storage moves ahead in network server designs |
Today I’m reading about SAS.
SAS is the only storage connect that embraces both the high-performance and high reliability disk drive offered with SAS connected drives, as well as providing native compatibility with low-cost per gigabyte SATA drives.
This capability allows common storage components to span a variety of storage environments, including tiered storage solutions. The ability of the storage system to scale is a critical attribute for enterprise critical data storage solutions.
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Overheard – Master data management (MDM)
Profile: Margaret Rouse
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“You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and many enterprises have few or no resources devoted to measuring or monitoring how users use the information that enables and drives the business.”
Michael Dortch, Building an MDM project plan for manufacturing |
Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is master data management (MDM).
Whether a company uses a data discovery and mapping tool or begins by surveying users to ask them ‘manually’ about their information access and use patterns and behaviors, knowledge about current data is the first step towards truly effective MDM.
It doesn’t have to be as elaborate as a true, interconnected real-time data map, but the closer an enterprise can get to that goal as a start, the firmer the foundation of that enterprise’s MDM strategy will be.
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Overheard – D2D2T (disk-to-disk-to-tape)
Profile: Margaret Rouse
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With D2D2T, you can transfer your data to disk at night at a much faster rate than to tape, and then migrate that data to tape, as you need to.
Phil Pascarelli, D2D2T: is it quite right for you? |
Unlike tape emulation, which replaces a tape drive with a virtual hard disk equivalent, D2D2T allows users to manage the storage of data closer to an Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) model. Users can specify the destination and duration of stored data as well as its replication and archive life. In addition, D2D2T offers an excellent data recovery option, allowing instant retrieval of lost or corrupted data. D2D2T is also able to address compliance legislation-based storage requirements.
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Overheard – Energy Star 5.0
Profile: Margaret Rouse
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Only 25 percent of PCs could qualify for Energy Star 5.0 compliance.
Andy Patrizio, Dell Goes Green With Energy Star 5.0 Push |
The changes from Energy Star 4.0 to 5.0 are in three main areas:
– minimum power supply efficiency was raised from 80 percent to 85 percent.
– the formulation of criteria changed to get a measure of annualized kilowatt hour power usage based on typical energy consumption metrics.
– the AC power conversion rises to 87 percent efficiency.
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Overheard – Google’s patent for Ringback Advertising
Profile: Margaret Rouse
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A patent assigned to Google describes how the search giant can monetize its Voice service: play ads while a call is dialing or placed on hold.
John Timmer, Google patent could bring ads into your phone |
The patent application, called “Ringback Advertising,” is assigned to Google. In general terms, it describes a system for delivering ads to any sort of phone system, including IP, cellular, or landline phones. The idea is to place software somewhere within the flow of telephony data that can identify when a given call is not active, then request audio ads for delivery during that time. Although this obviously pairs nicely with Google’s Voice service, there’s no reason it couldn’t be rolled out to telcos that choose to partner with the search giant.
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Overheard – Origins of Amazon Mechanical Turk
Profile: Margaret Rouse
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“Mechanical Turk began life as a service that Amazon itself needed…Amazon had millions of Web pages that described individual products, but it wanted to weed out the duplicate pages.”
Jason Pontin, Artificial Intelligence, With Help From the Humans |
Amazon makes money from Mechanical Turk by charging companies 10 percent of the price of a successfully completed HIT. For simple HITs that cost less than 1 cent, Amazon charges half a cent. ChaCha intends to make money the way most other search companies do: by charging advertisers for contextually relevant links and advertisements.
If you haven’t heard about ChaCha yet, it’s a free voice search service for mobile phones. It’s interesting that one of ChaCha’s investors is Bezos Expeditions, the personal investment firm of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. According to marketing literature:
ChaCha, a free mobile answers service, allows users to call 1-800-2ChaCha™ or text questions to ChaCha (242242™) on mobile phones and receive answers within minutes. Its unique advertising solutions provide pay-for-performance opportunities for advertisers to precisely target and embed their messages within millions of text conversations.
Aha! So maybe Mechanical Turk isn’t so much about enterprise search — it’s really about mobile voice search! Makes sense. Amazon would have a revenue stream by serving highly targeted ads along with the search results.
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Overheard – JeOS and VM sprawl
Profile: Margaret Rouse
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“If you are feeling the pangs associated with VM sprawl, I strongly suggest a healthy slug of JeOS each morning and once again in the afternoon to clear your system of the painful bloating that is brought on by virtualizing the general purpose OS.”
Billy Marshall Is JeOS a Tonic for VM Sprawl? |
JeOS is an acronym for “just enough operating system.” It’s pretty much what it sounds like and it’s handy for building virtual appliances. You include just the parts of the operating system that are required to support a particular application. The idea is to make the appliance smaller and more stable than it would be if it was running under a full-sized general purpose operating system. It’s pronounced “juice.”
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Overheard – application streaming
Profile: Margaret Rouse
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Centralizing the desktop image does not magically protect it from viruses, intrusion attempts, system compromises, or operational failures. It does, however, allow for rapid recovery or return to homeostasis if an event warrants such action.
Amrit Williams, Client-Side Virtualization Part III: HAL 9000, Hosted Virtual Desktops, and the Death Star |
Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) seems to be the generic umbrella term that gets slapped on any initiative that involves centralized desktop management. There’s a lot of lingo being tossed around. Today’s Word of the Day is application streaming. In this distribution model, software is housed on a centralized server and is streamed to the client upon demand.
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Overheard – Computer hardware visual reference
Profile: Margaret Rouse
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“This idea grew out of the need of a visual aid for customers while I worked at CompUSA.”
Sonic84, Artist’s comments |
Today we’re featuring Sonic84’s excellent fast reference chart for hardware. He’s created an illustrated cheatsheet for RAM, hard drives, ports, slots and connectors. Sonic told me he took most of the photos with a Canon Powershot A630. Sonic says “the thing has a great macro.” When asked where he found all the hardware, he said:
“I collect old computers and for a while my local Goodwill had a lot of vintage stuff going through it. Combined with the techshop I worked in, I had a lot of diverse hardware at my disposal. Sometimes I’d find hardware eBay. I had to do that when I was searching for rare stuff like a PAC418 socket and 32Bit RAMBUS chip.”
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