FiRe 2010: Two more days into the future
FiRe isn’t just a technology conference. After all, we live in a world where technology is only just part of the picture.
500 words into the future
Unapologetically opinionated views on technology, in the office and out
Simon Bisson
Simon Bisson is a freelance technology journalist. He specialises in architecture and enterprise IT. He ran one of the UK's first national ISPs and moved to writing around the time of the collapse of the first dotcom boom. He still writes code.
Mary Branscombe
Mary Branscombe is a freelance tech journalist. Mary has been a technology writer for nearly two decades, covering everything from early versions of Windows and Office to the first smartphones, the arrival of the web and most things inbetween.
Latest Posts
Into the FiRe: Future In Review 2010 Day One.
We’re currently at the annual Future in Review conference, just south of Los Angeles. FiRe’s one of those events that sets agendas, attracting an audience of CTOs and CEOs, entrpreneurs and investors.
IE 9; why the 'same markup' mantra?
Better support for standards and ‘same markup’ are more significant than improved Acid 3 results or even the faster results on the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark in the IE 9 Platform Preview 2.It can seem ironic when Microsoft calls for developers to demand more from browsers and repeats its ‘same markup’ mantra with the fervour of a convert, but Microsoft rarely implements a standard it doesn’t want to give a thorough workout.
Video codecs, IP and the passive aggressive voice
A patent pool is being assembled to go after Ogg Theora, Steve Jobs said in email; but why did he say it like that?Over the years, my editors - and I in my turn - have told writers that the passive voice is to be avoided.
HP buys Palm. A vote of no-confidence in Windows Phone?
The first PDA I owned was an Apple Newton. The next, it was a Palm III.
BlackBerry: It’s the platform, baby.
Mary and I have braved the remnants of the volcanic ash, and insane taxi drivers in tropical thunderstorms, to arrive safely in Orlando for Research In Motion’s annual Wireless Enterprise Symposium. WES 2010 is the latest instance of RIM’s biggest BlackBerry event, which mixes content for operators, phone vendors, system administrators, and developers.
The truth about the volcano and the Internet
Don't confuse headlines with truth or bad design and poor customer service with actual failure...I came across a blog suggesting that the Internet had failed stranded travellers and having been a stranded traveller, I disagree.
When it all breaks down…
Currently we’re stuck in Barcelona, waiting to find out if we can dodge the volcanic cloud by sea. The whole situation has made me think about just how connected the world is, and how well information technologies have kept us informed – and how they have managed to keep us, if not where we want to be, at least alive.
Oh Brave New (Parallel) World
We’re at Intel’s ISTEP software event in Barcelona, getting a deep dive into the world of parallel computing. It’s an interesting place to be, as the physics of silicon has put an end to the seemingly constant increase in speed and power of processors.
Memristors could save power as well as pack in more memory
Phase change memory will probably just miss the Windows 8 schedule but it's been looking the most promising advance on flash storage - which is going to hit a problem with density and storage life in the not too distant future. The larger your flash memory, the shorter the storage life and some of the really high density flash memory that's been talked about could store information for as little as an hour.