That was Then... This is Now

Last December I started shopping for a new cell phone. Although I had done my homework and was familiar with all the technical specifications my final decision wasn’t made until April after I finally had the time to play around with several examples at the local AT&T store. To be perfectly honest—there wasn’t one that I didn’t like. Considering the major “smartphones” available it would seriously be difficult to make a “bad” choice. I immediately liked the “feel” of the Blackberry and I really liked the fact that it had a slide-out keyboard. I was upgrading from an old Motorola Q9 and whenever I had used my friend’s smartphones or my wife’s iPod, I found the touch screen keyboard to be awkward and tended to make mistakes when texting but liked it for running applications. So this model seemed to offer the best of both worlds. Unlike other Blackberry’s the 9800 did not have a “trackball” but instead a touch pad. The main reason I had avoided getting a Blackberry until now was becaus...

At it's annual shareholder meeting May 17, Intel revealed that it is investing a lot of time and capital into emerging markets, such as China, Japan, South America and Eastern Europe. It is also changing its focus on servers to data center equipment including networking and storage. And it's coming out with a new product line of MIC (Many Integrated Cores) processors called "Knights," that will take the multi-core concept to a new level with up to 50 cores. This slideshow from eWeek highlights the key points from the meeting. Particularly interesting were the data on emerging markets, new uses for computing, and growth in cloud computing and storage in China and the US.