Needs little or no introduction.

A new I.T. jobs explosion is looming. Not so much for those certified as MCSE’s as was the case around the year 2000. The new push will be for professionals well-versed in the emerging web, specifically for those strong with experience in user-generated content programming. Yes, the Web 2.0 evolution is here and let’s hope it keeps jobs in the states this time.

The Myth of High-Tech Outsourcing
A new report finds that U.S. demand for IT professionals in 2006 reached levels not seen since before the dot-com bust

by Catherine Holahan

High-tech employees are back in demand. The U.S. technology industry added almost 150,000 jobs in 2006, according to an Apr. 24 report by the American Electronics Assn. (AeA), an industry trade group. That was the largest gain since 2001, before the implosion of the tech bubble resulted in the loss of more than 1 million jobs in three years.

The findings counter concerns—sometimes voiced by opponents of outsourcing—that high-tech jobs are being sent overseas.

There’s plenty of domestic demand for a host of IT jobs, says Katherine Spencer Lee, executive director of Robert Half Technology, an IT staffing company headquartered in Menlo Park, Calif. On average, it is taking 56 days to fill full-time IT positions, she says. Firms that want IT managers are looking at an even longer search—about 87 days. And the wait is only getting longer.

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Hitachi announced yesterday its plans to roll out 3 disk drives that can be deployed in a variety of environments. From T1 business critical environments to T2 and T3 environments, their new drives will find a place in today’s high-end customer server rooms.

Hitachi rolls out new storage, server drives
Hitachi’s latest small form factor drive has up to 1TB capacity
Deni Connor

April 24, 2007 (Network World) — Hitachi Global Storage Technologies yesterday announced three disk drives that will be deployed in enterprise storage systems and servers.

The Ultrastar 15K300 is a 15,000 rpm, 300 GB capacity drive designed for use in Tier 1, business-critical storage environments. It boasts Ultra320 SCSI, 3Gbit/sec. Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and 4Gbit/sec. Fibre Channel interfaces.

The Ultrastar A7K1000 is a small form factor drive that runs at 7,200 rpm and has as much as 1TB of capacity. It has a 3Gbit/sec. Serial ATA interface and is intended for use in high-capacity but relatively inexpensive Tier 2 and 3 storage environments.

According to research firm IDC, disk drive shipments are expected to grow from 2.4 million in 2006 to 9.4 million this year as manufacturers transition to small form factor drives. These drives are denser than 3.5 in. drives, which means more of them can exist in a single server and use less power. The drives use the SAS interface, which gives them at least 3Gbit/sec. data transfer rates.

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Guard against mission critical equipment loss due to heat or humidity.

(PRWEB) April 19, 2007 — Today’s IT managers are required to secure both equipment and facilities against disruptive conditions that could hamper operations which result in system malfunctions, loss of data or damage to mission critical hardware. These conditions may include failure of air conditioning systems or dampness due to flooding or leakage from sprinklers or pipes.

Temperature in a computer room or around a rack may be 75 degrees or cooler, but it can be as high as 95 degrees inside the computer cabinet or rack. If equipment overheats for more than six hours, it must be replaced costing companies unplanned downtime and lost revenue. To help IT managers combat the effects of such conditions, Information Support Concepts, Inc. has designed a smart server rack system.

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Oracle is taking the lead in defining new strategies for content management. With content generation within companies growing on a massive scale, Oracle plans to release updates to its 3 content management applications over the next 12 months.

Oracle sets content management plans
China Martens

April 19, 2007 (IDG News Service) — Building on its December acquisition of Stellent Inc., Oracle Corp. on Wednesday began to flesh out its content management software strategy.

As the amount of content generated within businesses continues to grow rapidly, companies are looking for ways to handle that data, whether it’s structured information held in databases or unstructured content such as documents, video and audio. That’s why companies like Oracle and Microsoft Corp. are becoming more serious about content management and enhancing their own base-level software to encroach on more established offerings from EMC Corp., IBM and Open Text Corp.

There has already been sizable consolidation in the enterprise content management (ECM) market, as signaled last year by Oracle’s $440 million purchase of Stellent, IBM’s $1.6 billion acquisition of FileNet Corp. and the $489 million that Open Text paid to buy rival Hummingbird Ltd.

Oracle has now integrated Stellent’s technology into its existing content management software, which is part of its Fusion middleware family of products.

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Bill Gates pushes for cheaper and more accessible software subsidies in order to spike a technology revolution across the globe. His goal with such a bold offer is to ease the economic inequalities between nations.

Gates visits China and urges tech investment

BEIJING (AP) — Greater investment in technology to improve health care and education would help ease global economic inequality, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said Thursday, adding he saw no limits to the technological revolution.

“Health care … is right up there with education as a top area, a growing area, where we have to think about how the rich world is going to change what it’s doing and how we bring more equity and capability into the developing countries,” the world’s richest man said.

Gates on Thursday unveiled his company’s latest effort to bridge the digital divide worldwide, announcing several new ventures, including $3 software packages for government-subsidized student computers.

The software maker said it will sell a Student Innovation Suite, which includes Windows XP Starter Edition and Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, for $3 each to governments that subsidize a certain percentage of the cost of PCs for primary and secondary students for use at home and at school, starting in the second half of the year.

Gates said more opportunities would be created as technology becomes easier and cheaper to use as it advances.

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Seeing is not believing how stupid people can be. I guess we’ll categorize this under “humor”.

This is a good question. Here is what happened:

1. In 2006, our manufacturer came out with a new version of the digital current display. This unit displayed four different parameters (Amps, Volts, Watts, and Power Factor) in a rotating/scrolling format.
2. Since the new display was intended to replace the older display, no changes were made to the part numbers of those units containing the display.
3. Many clients preferred the old display, and prevailed on the manufacturer to offer it as well.
4. The manufacturer agreed and is now offering the old display which gave a steady display of Amps only.
5. Since all the part numbers were now being used to note the inclusion of the new scrolling display, the manufacturer created new part numbers for those units with the old style display.

Now that you are thoroughly confused, here is a summary of the situation. The old part numbers are for the new scrolling display (four parameters). The new part numbers are for the old style display. If you want the scrolling display, the part number has a C in it. If you want the older current display (Amps), the part number has an A in it.

IBM has announced laying its chips in stacks, as opposed to the normal side-by-side configuration. Placing the chips on top of each other has proven to increase the speed at which information can flow between the chips.

Chips stack up in third dimension

IBM is developing the technology for use in its supercomputers
Stacks of chips, one on top of the other, will power the next generation of superfast PCs, IBM has announced.

Laying chips vertically, instead of side by side, reduces the distance data has to travel by 1,000 times, making the chips faster and more efficient.

Big blue has said that it will start producing the compact silicon sandwiches in 2008.

Chip manufacturer Intel has previously announced that it is also developing similar vertical chip technology.

Last year, the firm unveiled a chip with 80 processing cores and capable of more than a trillion calculations per second (teraflops) that used vertical stacking technology.

Other firms, such as Tru-Si, have also developed techniques for creating 3D stacked chips.

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With ever-growing concerns about identity theft and the unintended exposure of private data, media destruction and computer recycling firms could find more business than they originally expected. Consider the story below…

The fine art of data destruction
Yes, tape cartridges blend
Michele Hope

April 12, 2007 (Network World) — Peggy Jones, a business manager for the information-management team at the College of Southern Maryland, was asked recently to help dispose of what she now estimates were about 1,200 old backup tapes and cassettes her IT organization had been storing in a relatively well-fortified walk-in vault.

The issue of what to do with the old tapes came to a head when renovation was scheduled for the building where the vault resided. “We had already moved to another backup system. So, these old tapes didn’t work in our current system anyway. Now it was just old data we needed to figure out how to dispose of properly,” Jones says.

Her research led her to Data Killers, a media-destruction and computer-recycling firm in Maryland that could shred tapes and hard drives securely, and provide a certificate affirming their destruction. It would even let you stay and watch the shredding process, if you wanted. Then the media’s “remains” would be delivered to a smelter for melting and recycling its various metals.

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