Social networking services allow demonstrators to communicate with the outside world and each other.

Written by Chris Smith

When I was a boy, my father would send me postcards from Tehran, Iran, where he was on assignment from his Paris-based architectural firm. His company was under contract with an agency of the U.S. Government to design a new hospital for the citizens of Tehran. That was back in the 1950s under the rule of Reza Shah Pahlavi, the country's last U.S.-friendly leader.

One vendor is offering SD cards as a way to add removable storage to netbooks.

By Chris Smith

There is a little mesh box on my desktop now that contains a collection of flash drives, and it's a reminder of one more area of my life that needs organizing. Much the way Andy Rooney of CBS' 60 Minutes takes stock of his growing pile of aging memorabilia, I see the 13 drives I possess as a colorful set of treasures, all with different shapes, specifications, and case materials. They are a poignant reminder, however, of how easy it is to allow your technology to become antediluvian.

Concerns exist, however, over funding technology acquisitions and stock repurchases with borrowed money.

Written by Chris Smith

With several of the largest U.S. corporations, including GM, taking a nose dive recently, it's somewhat unsettling to look at the financial health of those companies on which we depend for our livelihood. Fortunately for those of us who depend on the health and wellbeing of IBM, Big Blue is doing remarkably well in weathering the recession, according to one of the nation's leading credit-rating services.

Wolfram|Alpha and Google Squared raise the bar on research tools as the world undertakes a critical search on the ocean floor.

Written by Chris Smith

While the mainstream media has been focusing on the struggling economy and a bizarre and tragic airplane crash in the Atlantic, it has all but wiped out a week of dramatic announcements in the world of computing.

OCEAN user group president stresses the importance of acquiring current job skills.

By Chris Smith

April was not a kind month for Americans. The unemployment rate rose from 8.5 to 8.9 percent in the course of four weeks, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Since the recession began in December 2007, some 5.7 million American jobs have been lost. Job losses continued at a sharp rate in April across all major private-sector industries. In one month alone, 611,000 Americans were bumped into unemployment lines.

Able to process hundreds of thousands of structured or unstructured data streams in real time, stream technology is expected to take analytics and decision-making to new heights.

By Chris Smith

IBM introduced a new software solution to investors and analysts last week that is the result of five years of research and some 200 patents. Called "stream computing," the solution captures and analyzes thousands of streams of data simultaneously in real time and then delivers them to business and/or scientific analysts.

Having the right hardware to support a virtualized system or data center may be key to future cost and energy savings.

By Chris Smith

IBM introduced some eagerly awaited hardware and some unanticipated, but very nifty, software for the i community at COMMON this week in Reno, Nevada.