Search

In the article, the author assumes that the rebirth of the computer industry has begun. According to him, there are a number of signals pointing in this direction, including the general state of the IT industry, awareness of enormous risks associated with the Internet, the U.S. and European antitrust litigation, the open source movement, the IBM autonomous computing announcement, redirection of Microsoft product development, competition from telecommunications industry, and resistance in investing in new general-purpose computer products and services. Regardless of whether Microsoft, IBM, or telecommunications industry establishes the basis for rebirth, this scenario would stimulate worldwide competition in providing highly integrated hardware-software stableware platforms. Stableware and valueware competition would provide opportunities for existing as well as new suppliers around the globe. If this transpires, the general-purpose computer industry would be well on its way to maturity and society would be the benefactor of trustworthy products and services.

The article discusses about the development of information technology (IT) in India. The industry has nearly quadrupled in the past six years, exceeding sales of $1 billion in 1991-1992. In a year marked by global recession, Indian IT sales grew by nearly 24% over 1990-1991. Western computer and business publications have begun to draw attention to India's potential for developing software and providing on-site software services. International computer companies including Hewlett Packard, DEC and IBM have begun staking out positions in the Indian industry. Since 1991, the new government under Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh has placed even greater emphasis on the growth of private sectors. Domestic IT companies can forge joint ventures with foreign corporations who are not allowed to acquire majority ownership. The domestic hardware and software industries continue to receive protection, often to the detriment of the Indian consumer. The Department of Electronics (DOE) is the primary agency over seeing government IT policy formulation and implementation.

The profile of people who use software and hardware systems has changed, while systems and the culture in which they are developed have not made the necessary adjustments. In order to transform the culture in which information technology systems are designed, developed and manufactured and to meet growing needs of computer users, the author recently proposed a User's Bill of Rights, a set of goals to challenge the computer industry to respect and address needs of computer users. The fundamental principle of the bill is that the user is always right. The user's rights define computer industry goals. Technology solutions are composed of a variety of hardware and software components and need to be tested as complete systems. End users and customers need to have results of these tests available. Technology magazines and journals could improve product reviews by testing with real user scenarios. Tasks users want to complete, not features that are available, are key to the value proposition when considering a technology purchase. Consumers can be supplied with the summary user data on performance and satisfaction based on working with different systems to complete real work. INSET: The User's Bill of Rights..

This article reports global developments related to the computer industry as of July 1982. Special research initiation awards for new investigators in information science and technology are available from the Division of Information Science and Technology of the National Science Foundation. Basic and applied research is supported in three related programs: Information Science, Information Technology, and Information Impact. Particular research problems of interest in the Information Science Program include the formal characterization of the properties of information and information systems as well as the definitions of objective and quantitative measures of attributes of information such as complexity, meaning, utility, and value. The winner of the first homebuilt robot picture contest sponsored by the journal "Robotics Age" was a robot named Avatar, designed and built by Charles Balmer of Urbana, Ohio. Avatar is an autonomous mobile robot with sensors that allow exploration of a home or office environment and an on-board computer with 64K bytes of memory. This computer doubles as Avatar's software development workstation when the robot is immobilized; it is connected to floppy disk, conventional CRT terminal, and a printer.

The article offers suggestions on how information technology (IT) companies can manage operating systems (OS). It states that companies should see whether OS supports their existing applications and thus have right selection criteria. It mentions that rather than having a separate team to select it, there should be more collaboration and all the teams need to create a common vision for what OS will provide. It highlights that they should be committed to desktop management.

The article focuses on the use of the international character-encoding standard Unicode in computer software. The development and adoption of Unicode in computer software and fonts makes it possible to send and receive and read text electronically for hundreds of languages, all in their original scripts. The character-encoding standard underlying this multilingual capability is the Unicode Standard, which also has a parallel International Standard maintained by the International Organization for Standardization, called ISO/IEC 10646. Chinese, Greek, German, and Arabic can now be included in Web pages and email without the text getting garbled or marred with square boxes as placeholders. This multilingual capability frees users from ASCII's limited repertoire. Communicating with people in their own language and script also gives the world's diverse populations an electronic presence in the global information economy. Because Unicode is a single international standard, it marks a significant improvement over the earlier situation in computing where competing standards rendered the interchange of text often nearly impossible.

Presents an update concerning the information technology. Issue on computer software quality; Information on IT executive's technology and business priorities for 1999; Forecast on the revenues of IT companies for 1999. INSET: Behind the Scenes.

The article reports on the availability of the SecurityReporterT, a new security event management (SEM) reporting solutions for both SidewinderR and snapGeaR appliances, from Secure Computing Corp. in the U.S. It is designed to deliver central monitoring and to identify real security threats from meaningless noise. It offers prompt action points to keep the enterprise or small-to mid-size business safer. It also furnishes evidence of regulatory compliance and proves the effectiveness and value of information technology (IT) security investment to management.

The article presents information on some useful tips as well as a collection of the most-useful keyboard shortcuts for Apple Computer Inc.'s Safari, a computer software, and Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox. If someone wants to see those pages that have been visited last week then the person should click on the Bookmarks icon in the Bookmarks bar in Safari. Also, the users of Firefox can select View to open a drawer, to the side of the browser window, that holds a useful list of bookmarks and a search field.

The article offers tips for operating the Mac Operating System X (OS X). It states that the shutdown process can be cancelled by launching an application such as a Save dialog box in any application. The shutdown process will stop as soon as it reaches the program with the open Save As dialog box. It offers tips for editing smart playlists in iTunes. It informs that all OS X folders have a built-in spring mechanism. It informs that many widgets of Mac OS X 10.4's dashboard support drag and drop.

The article presents various developments related to the computer industry in the U.S. Bank of America Corp. spent $23M on an initial 5-year development of MasterNet, a new computerized trust accounting and reporting system. After abandoning the old system, they spent $60M more trying to make the new system work, and finally gave up. Departed customer accounts may have exceeded billions of dollars. Allstate Insurance began in 1982 to build an $8M computer to automate its business, with Electronic Data Systems Corp. providing software. The supposedly 5-year effort continued until at least 1993, with a cost approaching $100M. Blue Cross and Blue Shield United of Wisconsin hired EDS in late 1983 to build a $200M computer system. It was delivered on time in 18 months, but didn't work, issuing $60M in overpayments and duplicate checks. By the time it was finished in 1987, Blue Cross had lost 35,000 policy holders.* The U.S. Office of Surface Mining spent $15M on a computer system intended to prevent violators of strip-mine laws from getting new permits. The system could not keep identities straight, and the GAO called it a failure.

The article presents nine ideas to help information technology (IT) managers negotiate with software vendors in the U.S. IT managers need to know their existing contracts, give back shelfware and understand the terms of pricing before signing a contract. They must ask vendors for concessions, determine the software contracts in place and how efficiently software was being used and ensure software maintenance. IT managers must negotiate a software deal toward the end of a vendor's financial quarter. INSET: DRIVE AHARD BARGAIN.

The article reports on the significance of enterprise application software for application service providers. The use of computer architecture helps in increasing customer satisfaction and aids towards efficient operation of an enterprise. The enterprise application performs business functions hosted on a server that provides services to users mostly over a computer network. Computer applications include the enterprise mashup technology, adopting the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services that formally specify business processes and interaction protocols. On the other hand, the service-oriented architecture expresses a perspective of software architecture that aims to achieve loose coupling among interacting software agents.

The article reports on the enterprise application integration of technology infrastructure for managing multiple computer software applications by application service providers. The integration process enables business developers to perform different applications and helps to manage large number of users and transactions within an enterprise. Furthermore, the applications include the integration of service oriented architecture that enhances performance of various computer operations, open source software, and the distribution of enterprise service bus that provides foundational services in the implementation of enterprise messaging system.

The article focuses on the relationship between Information Technology (IT) executives and software as a service (SaaS). It has been said that It executives did not values SaaS due to its competition with SaaS vendors when it comes to particular functions or types of computer software application. However, IT executives have to embrace SaaS to demonstrate their ability to facilitate and support business initiatives. In addition, SaaS offers several benefits including flexible payment terms and tiered feature sets, cut deployment burdens and time to deployment. INSET: NO EXIT?.

The article presents information on business process management (BPM) computer software. BPM starts with process modeling. Process modeling is a business-driven exercise wherein current and proposed process flows are documented in detail, linked to quantifiable performance metrics, and optimized through simulation analysis. Such optimized models automatically generate the skeleton of the information technology implementation in the process designer of a BPM suite. Process designer is a graphical development tool that incorporates human workflow, application integration, and business rules to develop an executable process solution.

The article provides predictions of executives on the future of information technology (IT) and the computer software industry. According to Proofpoint Inc.'s chief executive officer, Gary Steele, the blogosphere will become the richest source of material news leaks in the history of the stock market. Furthermore, Carl Weddle, Director of IT at Quality Trailer Products, said that the consolidation of hardware, software, and telecommunication is nearing both practical and legal maxima. In addition, customers of IT will demand Internet-quality search in the enterprise, as forecasted by Accenture Ltd.'s chief information officer.

This article provides information on the 2004 Computerworld Honors finalists. Finalists were selected by a panel of distinguished judges based on benefit to society, importance of IT, originality, success and difficulty. George Perretti had received a lot of praise for the business continuity and disaster recovery infrastructure he helped build six years ago for The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., which is responsible for clearing $23 trillion worth of securities annually. DTCC, a New York-based firm, provides the primary infrastructure for the clearing and settlement of the majority of the equity, corporate debt and bond transactions in the U.S. DTCC chose EMC Corporation's Symmetrix arrays and its Symmetrix Remote Data Facility multihop data-mirroring software. The remote data centers can provide disaster recovery within three hours of disruption and a period of data loss ranging from zero to 30 minutes. ForumPass 2.0 is an effort by Herndon, Virginia-based Exostar LLC to develop an external collaboration environment. Then, it became an industry-altering secure collaboration platform. The first version, developed in 2001, was based on Parametric Technology's ProjectLink software and designed to facilitate collaboration among companies involved in joint development projects. The key to success was enabling users from different companies to control the data they owned, regardless of where it was stored. Bill Johnson, reliability manager at Lyondell-Citgo Refining is using IntelaTrac handheld devices to move the refinery from paper-based systems to computerized workflow management.

The article provides information about the Kiosque, an innovative computer software product that has been developed by information technology (IT) experts Tribal and the University of Sheffield in Sheffield, England. It states that Kiosque allows public and education spectators to view high resolution images which scholars as well as historians have brought to life for them. In connection, the first public installation of the software was on four touchscreens for The Chronicles of Froissart Exhibition, an event that features rare and valuable manuscripts from the 1400s.

The article reports on the introduction of Microsoft Office 2007 to information technology (IT) industry from Microsoft Corp. IT professionals are facing a great challenge towards their approach on weighing the benefits and features of the new user interface. According to the survey conducted, 46 percent of respondents expressed no change in productivity with the use of the application while 24 percent indicated the benefits offered by the new software. The Office provides new resources which include Office Migration Planning Manager, the IT Resource Kit, and various electronic learning features available for users. However, training should be provided to users to gain knowledge on the features offered by the application. INSET: THE LOWDOWN on Office 2007.

The article reports on the move of International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) to reduce the size and cost of some of their System z systems in the U.S. The company introduced System z10 Business Class mainframe, a lower-cost and smaller version of the full-size. It is the second attempt of the company to offer a lower-cost mainframe to attract customers to Big Blue's signature computer system. The mainframe system is claimed to be an attractive offer for those smaller enterprises and midmarket companies seeking to integrate Linux workloads running on multiple x86 systems.

The article presents information on some steps that one should follow before selling his/her personal computers. One should gather all computer peripherals including system installation discs, product manuals, power cables and other included gear. One should polish his/her computer by wiping down the computer and deleting personal information from the hard drive. One should deauthorize all the programs registered within one's computer. One should remove both personal data and installed software from the computer.

The article presents information on the development of an old personal computer into a backup server by using ChronoSync 3.3.4 computer software from the company Econ Technologies and an AirPort Extreme software from Apple Inc. One should consider the size of all users' files to take the backup on the computer server. An external FireWire drive should be connected to the server. The setup of the server depends on backups by using hard disks. One should create folders for each user to keep backups separate.

The article offers various tips related to Internet-based mail reader. The mail reader, also called Mail and Automator, lets iPod read e-mails. Create a new Automator workflow and type Mail into the Search box to reveal all Mail-oriented actions. Drag the Find Mail Items action from the Action pane into the workflow. This action collects messages that match the terms you specify. Locate the Text To Audio File action, by using Automator's Search box, for converting written words to an audio file of spoken text.

The article reports on how content-addressed storage (CAS) systems can help information technology managers bring their organizations into compliance with regulatory mandates. CAS is an intelligent repository used to store and preserve compliance-sensitive documents such as medical records, blueprints, invoices and e-mail messages. Each piece of data that is fed into CAS are being stored using identifiers, which ensures that sensitive business content is not altered and that the paper trail is preserved within the context of a paperless environment. It also has the ability to perform high-speed searches through the repository.

Presents several letters to the editor related to the computer industry. Information on reports released by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, on the agency's inability to audit its information technology activity logs to detect unauthorized use or potential security threats; Advantages of combining software for Adobe Acrobat Reader and a Flash player; Significance of 64-bit computer systems.

This article focuses on innovations in the field of information technology. Looking back at the last 25 years of innovation, it is tempting to think that people are close to the limits of what they can do with computers. Computers have moved out of the IT department into almost every part of our lives. More than 600 million PCs are in use today, a number that will rise to more than a billion in the next five years. But it is the magic of software that will connect these devices into a seamless whole, making them an indispensable part of our everyday lives. In the back office, software standards are driving a more model-based approach to developing applications.

United Parcel Service of America Inc. is planning to expand into new markets globally and developing new lines of business, such as outsourced supply chain management solutions. At the same time, the company is not neglecting its core package shipping business and last week announced an enhanced shipping system called Package Flow Technologies, which is intended to shorten delivery drivers' routes by millions of miles per year. The company is also piloting new hand-held computers for its drivers and new combination Blue-tooth and 802.11 scanning equipment networks for its shipping hubs.

United Parcel Service (UPS) of America Inc. is using technology to increase efficiency in package delivery while it moves beyond that narrow discipline to become a broad supply chain integrator. UPS announced last week a suite of Package Flow Technologies, including software, hardware and new process. The software alone commanded a $30 million investment, both in new code and in integration with existing technology. The software includes such capabilities as allowing customers to make in-transit changes to delivery instructions. The automated route-planning system, called Package Flow, will reduce the distance driven by delivery-trucks by more than 100 million miles annually, saving 14 million gallons of fuel. Called the Delivery Information Acquisition Device (DIAD) IV, the new handheld is built on the Microsoft Corp. Windows CE operating system by Symbol Technologies Inc. and will be lower in cost yet higher in capability than the DIAD III it will replace.

Reports on developments relevant to the computer and information technology industry in the U.S. compiled as of September 2002. Manufacture of computer software; Emergence of software vendors; Effectiveness of instant messaging; Importance of knowledge management.

The article offers various updates related to information technology in the U.S. It presents a brief information of International Business Machines Corp.'s (IBM) Cognos TM1 in-memory analysis software tool used by financial planners as well as the introduction of the Itanium server processor from Intel Corp. which rivals IBM's Power7 processor. Also mentioned is the management software AmberPoint from Oracle Corp.

The article reports on the move of International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) to take step on Information On Demand (IOD) initiative. IOD is designed to help businesses better manage and gain deeper insight into data. As part of the initiative, company officials have introduced computer software tools and industry-specific information models, blueprints and consulting services for enterprises to value more its business data. It states that IBM's move is a way to demonstrate better business value and communication to staff and customers.

The article discusses the problem caused by the Google-backed stopbadware.org project as it struck the RealNetworks RealPlayer media player with problems such as disclosure and uninstallation. According to the article, RealPlayer 10.5 is a badware because it exposes the installation of an advertising software on the user's computer as well as Real Player 11 due to its installation of Rhapsody Player Engine software. In addition, it states that computer users are now to avoid installing the aforementioned versions until it is updated.

The article offers tips, from the Dell Computer Corp. experts, on assessment, design, and implementation of a systems management services. It notes that assessments are designed to help make informed decisions about how to maximize the benefits of integrated systems management solutions in the computer system management. It reports that design services lay the path for success by providing a comprehensive and detailed systems management and implementation plan. It suggests that the Dell's experts can implement a comprehensive systems management solution, featuring a carefully design pilots and knowledge transfer efficiencies that will be useful efficiently administer the system.

The article offers information on virtual application streaming, which involves streaming of application into a virtualized application environment. It discusses the idea of virtual application streaming and describes its implementation, as well as its advantages and drawbacks. Among the virtual applications currently available in the market are Thinstall and SoftGrid from Microsoft Corp. and Altiris from Symantec. Virtual application streaming can work from any Internet-connected computer and is always patched and current.