How many stories have we read about financial institutions or corporate powerhouses losing what to many of us is akin to vast fortunes because of loss of data. It occurs on a daily basis. Read any major business publication and you will see headlines denoting this.

Theres many numerous ways to incur data loss. Theres those evil hackers ever plaguing the electronic world, theres fires, floods, acts of god, and most likely, data corruption or input errors. Whatever the cause data loss is an unacceptable and preventable issue.

I find myself wondering why these companies don’t use online backup solutions to constantly update and store their data to a remote location keeping it intact, safe, and always ready for retrieval.

There are solutions that include encrypting your data, and holding it for later use. This is much preferred and prevents hackers, floods, fires, or data corruption from ruining your data, and your profit.because of its ease anyone can do this, and because its always available with a few clicks, it means next to no downtime for your enterprise.

Computer seller, Acer, Taiwan’s main show is posed to buy Gateway computers for 710 million.

The conclusion of the deal will make Acer the third largest producer of computers int he world. They will ship 20 million computers and have sales average of 15 billion dollars a year.

Also of note, they may try to prevent their Chinese rival Lenovo from purchasing Packard bells European section.

Gateway wants to buy Packard Bell in a deal regard “first refusal” struck with its owner back in 2006.

Acer feels that with the purchase of gateway they will finally have visibility and presence in America.It strongly compliments their vast foothold in Asia and Europe.

Both Gateway and Acer feel that the deal is good for both of them and cuts the annual cost by 150 million annually.

Experts believe that Acer will act on the deal to acquire Packard Bell’s European Division, if only to get one over on Lenovo. Lenovo has been focused on the acquisition of the Dutch company to give them a European presence.

Perhaps they will simply have to pay more for Packard Bell…

System administrators get the head aches of the hi tech world. They are responsible for installing, monitoring, upgrading, and maintaining the hardware, systems, and the software. Things must run smooth, or someone will be yelling at the admin. Some larger groups have many admins, each with a specialization, but often they do everything.

System admins work on things like operating systems, server hardware, software programs, the devices on the network,the web servers, the email systems attached the them, the secuirty of each. Not a sexy job, but its very needed. A good admin is invisible, becuase if they do the job well you never need to call on them. Kind of like the cops that deter crime, they never need to make an arrest and so are never hailed as heroes.

Why does a enterprise need a sysadmin? They are the wood and nails of a the business’s IT building, so to speak. They do the boring, robotlike jobs daily to prevent the problems, and improve technical perfomance. If something does somehow break, they do the diagnostics. They must stay on top of the the changes to the quick technology changes to the systems of the enterprise, and because of that they often contain knowledge that most wont, and it will often prove to be a critical fact. Sysadmins will be needed throughout the foreseeable future. More and more systems go online daily and  they are variably complex, coupled with new technology.

Generally you want one with 3-5  years experience. For some positions companies might seek a 4 year degree, dependant on complexity. Many employers seek only a specific general certificate. Such as Cisco Certified Network Professional or Cisco Certified Network Associate.

Some innovative technology from Google again. YouTube, which is now owned by Google has created InVideo. InVideo is a animated overlay that plays inside a youtube video. It has a clickable message to it.

The ad is fairly simple and resides in the lower  20% or so of the viweing space. They start about 15  seconds into a video, are 80% see through and  remain up for about 10 seconds, then they are gone.

The video giant streams 3 billion minutes of video monthly. Well, thats alot of advertising dollars they weren’t using, alot of opportunities missed.

Its said that the embedded content wont have invideo, possibly because it may be embedded somewhere that wouldn’t flatter the advertiser.

You know, they should have this for television. Commercials are the worst part of TV. A nice little ad, quietly scrolling translucently at the bottom of the screen for 10 seconds, well I think thats hot!

Of course, when would we use the restroom if we didn’t have commercials? I hadn’t considered that. In that light its  as if they are doing a public service…

I jest, but how long until our web surfing is kept in a log and commercials are sent to individual sets based on the viewers surfing… Its coming. I just don’t know when.

Seagate is a disk drive maker that currently hold 30 percent of the market. And a chinese technology firm is interested in buying it.
Of course, this bears a bit of a concern, as the industry leader in a technology sector tends to possess alot of technology we as a nation dont want the chinese to have. The national security types are up in arms over this.

For quite some time, Seagate has controlled in a sense, the disk drive market. With numbers like 3 billion dollar quarters, its easy to see why. With products like 1TB capacity drives, and encrypted laptop drives, well that solidifies it.
The CEO of Seagate said the company isnt for sale, but  if the paid a high enough price, most investors would sell their stock.  Its folly to believe that there is not foreign companies that manufacture better products than our domestic ones. Thats what drives competition and makes us strive to be better.

the loss of jobs is the biggest threat here, in my opinion

In the hopes of allowing operating system diversity in India, Microsoft will create several projects around Linux, Unix, and BSD. The deadline will appear in about 1 month. Microsoft hopes to grab some market share in India for Windows. Microsoft’s goal is operating system interoperability.

Microsoft will commission a team of “interoperability experts” to better facilitate working in the Linux world. This will be comprised of key developers from both sides of the coding circle.

Last year Microsoft created a council of experts in the US to assist people using microsofts products in a non windows environment. This council will meet bi-annually. Its a normal progression for Microsoft to establish a similar council in India

As you may know having a fancy, full featured site is great, but if you make it and no one views it, or no one can find the information you post to it, it is ultimately useless. Webmastering is 5% site creation, and 95% marketing.

Thats where search engine optimization professionals enter the picture. They have techniques and the know-how to get your site some traffic, and to make it show in the search engines. We aren’t talking about the quick fix here, but solid methods that show us time tested results, if you are in it for the long haul, you should be looking at Apogee SEO Company in Austin to increase your visibility, and consequently , your site traffic.

DARPA has made driods that can pilot a plane during air to air refueling. This occurs when the fuel planes refuels an airborne jet, in flight. Its a technique  thats difficult at best.
Theoretically, an unmanned craft with the ability to air to air refuel would only need to land for occassional craft maintenance

In the past 12 months the droid pilots have successfully done an air to air refueling 11 times without any human input. The jet used in testing was an F18. The android was able to connect to the refueling jet in the toughest of conditions.

Not aonly could the robot pilot connect and take fuel in turbulence but even did so as the tanker was in a turn.
Human pilots have followed tankers through turns, but never connected during one.

The game “arm spirit” had to be removed from Japanese game rooms this past week after displaying inhuman strength, breaking the arms of 3 players.

The game is a version of arm wrestling, but your opponent is just an arm, connected to a box that beeps while snapping limbs on human players .

Atlus game distributor said their recall was just a precaution, implying that the Japanese should buck up and get tough!

An Atlus spokesperson says that their machine is only as strong as a muscular man, and that properly trained a woman can beat it.

I wonder how the spokesperson would do against the machine?

Your younger daughter a bit bored? Does she need a fun healthy activity that she care share with friends? I have the answer!

Cartoon Doll Emporium.

Its curiously addictive. Cartoon Doll Emporium is one of the fastest growing online communities for “tween” girls. They have fun online activities, like dressing some of their favorite stars in fashions they choose, and often times they can choose to change the colors of clothes, hairs, etc. Its YOUR style after all!

Cartoon Doll Emporium also has “webkinz”. These are hand drawn dolls that you take care of online, dress up and play with. Theres even tools that allow you to send the dolls and webkinz to your MySpace.

Another big thing alot of tweens enjoy is dressing up the Hannah Montana superdoll at Cartoon Doll Emporium. Yeah I tried it, its interesting because there was so many different combinations of clothes and accessories, plus I even got to pick my own pet.