Servers and business storage

Microsoft store coming to an Apple Store near you?

Are we seeing a trend of Microsoft setting up shop next to Apple Stores?

If so, it's not a bad trend. Even a necessary one to check the Apple consumer Juggernaut.

At the Westfield Century City mall in Los Angeles, the Apple and Microsoft stores are close enough that when you leave one you'll almost immediately see the other.

That's helpful for consumers interested in exploring both rival camps. The Apple Store is a known quantity. The Microsoft Store isn't, for many people. That's too bad, because a Microsoft store offers a much better snapshot … Read more

Google building data center in Taiwan to meet greater demand

Google's upcoming data center in Taiwan will join those already being built in Hong Kong and Singapore as a sign of increased demand in Asia for the company's online services.

Costing a total of $700 million, the three data centers are being geared to provide users "with the fastest and most reliable access possible to all of Google's services," according to the company.

"More new Internet users are coming online everyday here in Asia than anywhere else in the world," Google said on its Web page for the new data center. "They … Read more

Windows PCs to decline as Android, Apple devices rise

The venerable Windows-Intel PC will see a sharp decline by 2016 while devices running Android and Apple's iOS are on the rise, market researcher IDC said today.

There will be a "dramatic shift" between 2011 and 2016, with the "once-dominant" Windows-Intel (aka, x86) PCs dropping from a market-dominating 35.9 percent share in 2011 to 25.1 percent in 2016," IDC said.

Mobile devices like Android phones and tablets and Apple iPhones and iPads will step into the void and begin to dominate. Android devices (using ARM chips) will grow from 29.4 percent … Read more

Google Drive due as soon as April

Considering how strong a leader Google is, when it comes to cloud-based productivity solutions (Google Apps), it's a little surprising that the company hasn't introduced a bona fide cloud storage service yet.

Google is expected to officially announce and launch an online storage service dubbed Google Drive, or GDrive, as soon as the first week of April, according to GigaOm and its sources.

Coincidentally, registration for Google I/O, Google's annual conference for developers in San Francisco, kicked off this morning. It would make sense, if Google waited until June to officially introduce Google Drive for added … Read more

Windows 8 PC-tablet 'mesh' to go slowly, says IDC

Global PC shipments are expected to pick up in the second half of the year, but Windows 8-based ultrabooks will go through a period of trail and error, market researcher IDC said.

The launch of Windows 8 on ultrabooks should drive stronger second-half PC shipment growth after a weaker first half, IDC said today.

For the whole year, worldwide PC growth will be a modest five percent with most of the growth occurring in the latter half of the year.

"Many consumers are holding off making PC purchases at the moment because tablet devices like Apple's iPad are … Read more

iPad and Kindle Fire both strong in recent quarter, says IDC

Lest we forget, Apple still has some competition. Though IDC confirmed big shipment numbers for Apple, the market researcher said Amazon made a good showing too.

Global tablet shipments into "sales channels" rose by 56 percent on a sequential basis in the fourth calendar quarter of 2011 to 28.2 million units, according to IDC.

That represents a whopping 155 percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2010.

IDC tablet shipment highlights:

In 2011, tablet shipments reached 68.7 million. In 2012, shipments will be 106.1 million, up from 87.7 million in previous forecast. Apple shipped … Read more

The sights of CeBIT 2012

HANOVER, Germany--CeBIT is a mammoth trade show that most people in the United States have never heard of.

It's a huge show, with more than 300,000 attendees--many of them ordinary consumers who show up on "family day" on Saturday, the last day of the show. CeBIT has waxed and waned over the years, losing some clout with the rise of Mobile World Congress and the shift of so much electronics manufacturing to Asia, but it remains a fixture of the European technology world.

Along with sections for personal computing, Internet companies, and IT services, you'll … Read more

Hacker 'Sabu' worked tirelessly as FBI informant

Some government witnesses do only what they must to help. Others do everything they can. Hector Xavier Monsegur, who was known as "Sabu" in hacking circles, was the latter.

According to unsealed court documents released yesterday and obtained by the Wall Street Journal, Monsegur was "proactively" cooperating with theFBI, helping the government agency build its cases against alleged hackers. Monsegur's work with the government became an around-the-clock job, as he stayed up all night at times coaxing alleged hackers into conversations that were recorded and eventually used against them by the FBI.

Sabu's true … Read more

Dropbox rival Space Monkey puts 'cloud' in your house

SAN FRANCISCO--I keep writing off online consumer storage as a business (see CX: Good sync product, doomed market), but there's still life left in the model. One of the most interesting new twists, Space Monkey, is a weird blend of Dropbox, BitTorrent, and Crashplan that just might work over the long haul. The product was announced today at the Launch conference.

There are three key technologies making up this cool but strange product:

1. Space Monkey is a synchronizing cloud storage provider like Dropbox. What you store on your account is automatically replicated to other computers you own. Like … Read more