Stories by Tom Kaneshige

What's Behind the Apple-Verizon Rumor?

The latest Apple rumor has Verizon peddling new iPhones, but industry watchers figure it's pure fantasy-at least anytime soon.

iPod Touch: The iPod of War

Apple calls the iPod Touch the "funnest iPod ever," but now the popular device has a new moniker: the iPod of war. The U.S. military is doling out the iPod Touch to soldiers in war zones in the Middle East, according to a Newsweek report.

Three Rules for Managing PC Power Usage

Nearly a third of tech's power usage comes from PCs and peripherals, according to a new Gartner report. How can companies stem this power flow? CIOs can follow a few simple rules for saving energy and reducing costs. For starters, they need to avoid ...

Desktop Virtualization and Licensing: IT Wary of Gotchas

CIO Roxanne Reynolds-Lair of The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising wanted to bring both Macs and Windows to her college's students, administrative employees and teachers. She bought a MacBook Pro and tested new-fangled desktop virtualizat...

The tricky math of server virtualization ROI

Server virtualization is supposed to save buckets of cash, largely from server reduction. After all, consolidating some 20 physical servers to three host servers means less hardware, power and cooling, and management overhead.

A future without programming

A few years ago, self-proclaimed non-developer Kevin Smith worked for a software company that tried to build a project tracking tool using Microsoft .Net. Some 15 developers spent a year with little success. "After burning though a million dollars an...

Will your IT job survive the financial meltdown?

Fearful tech workers tiptoeing along the shaky alleys of Wall Street -- and fretting about losing their jobs -- should take a deep breath. Of the more than 100,000 job losses expected as a direct result of the financial crisis, only a tiny slice will...

The devilish details of desktop virtualization

Faced with a massive PC refresh at a price tag of US$1.8 million, Jack Wilson instead rolled the dice on virtual desktops three years ago. The enterprise architect at Amerisure Insurance didn't just dabble in the nascent technology, he enacted a swee...

Social networking hype 2.0

Clever social networking-related startups with obscure taglines -- including Causecast ("Change your world, and the world will change"), Qik ("See what happens"), and Joongel ("Internet the easy way -- we have chocolate") -- line the showroom of Tech...

Open source: What you should learn from the French

A decade ago, European countries leapt out of the gate to take the lead in the radical open source movement -- none more so than France -- and left US developers in the proverbial dust. Through policies and high-profile projects, the French Republic ...

Taking advantage of multicore PCs

Call it the great multicore discord: a parade of major hardware and software vendors promising desktop applications powered by multicore chips yet all marching out of step, leaving confused software developers in the dust -- but times are changing.

Bye-bye, BlackBerry? Not so fast

Will Apple iPhone's "greatest show on Earth" sway Research in Motion (RIM) BlackBerry's business faithful? Hint: Bet on the BlackBerry for business.

Mac security gets a business boost

Businesses often thwart Macs from infiltrating their laptop ranks, and one reason given is that there's no good way of encrypting data. A lost personal Mac may bring a few tears to the hapless owner, but a corporate Mac with sensitive data falling in...

Does sandbox security really protect your desktop?

Two years ago, GreenBorder, one of the early "sandbox" browsers, received mighty applause from Wall Street Journal tech guru Walt Mossberg. The sandbox browser -- basically, a browser running in a virtual container -- promised to keep nasty code from...

Spam wars

Tech vendors have made headway in the war on spam, yet spammers are returning volley with sheer numbers. Perhaps it's time for more drastic measures? These are the rumblings from analysts, who reviewed anti-spam e-mail appliances and released their f...