Computer tech

SAN FRANCISCO--If the average person has heard of virtualization at all, the idea probably left little impression beyond something to do with running corporate data centers packed with computing hardware.

But the era in which virtualization directly affects ordinary folks, too, is on its way.

The company in the forefront of the technology, an EMC subsidiary called VMware, drew 12,488 people to its VMworld conference here this week, and one theme of the show was the growing push to move the technology beyond the server realm. Initially that means PCs, but the company demonstrated its technology on mobile phones, … Read more

At the time, it would have been hard to predict which of these events 40 years ago would prove to be most momentous:

• Humans step out of a spaceship and walk on the moon. • The Woodstock concert becomes a seminal cultural moment for the baby-boomer generation. • A New York City police raid leads to the Stonewall riots and modern gay-rights movement. • A handful of engineers at UCLA send some data from one computer to another.

You may disagree, but in my opinion, it's the last of the list: four decades ago today, the Internet was born.

Actually, it would … Read more

Google has begun work on a 64-bit version of Chrome for Linux, a move likely to whip Linux loyalists into a lather of excitement.

"The V8 team did some amazing work this quarter building a working 64-bit port. After a handful of changes on the Chromium side, I've had Chromium Linux building on 64-bit for the last few weeks," said Chrome engineer Dean McNamee in a mailing list message Thursday.

V8 is Chrome's engine for running programs written in the JavaScript language common on the Web. Chromium is the open-source project behind Google's branded and supported Chrome browser, and McNamee shared instructions for programmers to build 64-bit Chromium.

Virtually all PCs today come with 64-bit processors from Intel or Advanced Micro Devices, but for desktop computing, 32-bit operating systems and software are common. The transition to 64-bit software is well under way--notably with Linux and Mac OS X--but the change isn't simple. In the browser world, for example, it can be problematic running a 64-bit browser with a 32-bit plug-in such as Adobe Systems' Flash, Microsoft's Silverlight, or Sun Microsystems' Java. … Read more

Updated at 4:08 p.m. PDT April 1 with further details about Google's data center efficiency and shipping containers modules and 6:30 a.m. April 2 to correct the time frame of efficiency statistics.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google is tight-lipped about its computing operations, but the company for the first time on Wednesday revealed the hardware at the core of its Internet might at a conference here about the increasingly prominent issue of data center efficiency.

Most companies buy servers from the likes of Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, or Sun Microsystems. But Google, which has hundreds of thousands … Read more

Sports analysis software has been around for a while, it is basically software that allows you to compare and analyze any sports motion. You can capture your video to the hard drive of your computer via a firewire or USB 2.0 port and then use the software to measure performance of a specific motion. Most sports analysis software packages give you a variety of tools from graphics to multiple windows in order to compare one video clip to another, some software packages have more advanced features allowing for more in depth analysis via the internet between a coach and … Read more