TECHTRENDS.BIZ

The End of E-Mail

From: Inc. Magazine, February 2006 |  Page: 41 By: Darren Dahl

It's supposed to make life easier, but e-mail has become a big pain. Enter the wiki, new software that could change the way you communicate.

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RSA confab: Boom times for security

By Joris Evers, CNET.com News

No longer just for cryptogeeks, RSA Conference attracts big-name speakers, product launches, underscoring security's growing importance.

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Self-Taught: Software That Learns By Doing

Machine-learning techniques to create self-improving software are hitting the mainstream.   
Future Watch by Gary H. Anthes

(COMPUTERWORLD) - Attempts to create self-improving software date to the 1960s. But "machine learning," as it's often called, has remained mostly the province of academic researchers, with only a few niche applications in the commercial world, such as speech recognition and credit card fraud detection. Now, researchers say, better algorithms, more powerful computers and a few clever tricks will move it further into the mainstream.

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Patently Aggressive

By Jennifer Reingold, Fast Company

Forgent Networks sues software giants for patent infringement. Is it protecting inventors--or driving a stake through the heart of innovation?

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Taking On the Database Giants

By Sarah Lacy, BusinessWeek

Can open-source upstarts compete with Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft? It's an uphill battle, but customers are starting to look at the alternatives.

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30 Trends for 2006: Pursuit of the Frictionless Business Platform

By Allan E. Alter, CIO Insight

It's not enough to run a cost-saving, well-aligned IT group anymore. This year's CIOs have to build platforms that can make their companies flexible, frictionless, "flat" and able to use technology to increase revenue as well as keep the infrastructure running.

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April 4 Event in Santa Clara

Software 2006: Unifying the Ecosystem
April 4-5, 2006
Santa Clara Convention Center
Santa Clara, CA

Software 2006 is the only event in the $600 billion industry that gathers software companies, customers, investors, service providers, analysts and media in one vendor-neutral forum.

Join 2,500 industry leaders on April 4-5, 2006 at the Santa Clara Convention Center for this third-annual gathering of the software industry.

More info: http://www.software2006.com

Three-Legged Race: A How-To on Delivering Effective IT

If there is one thing the best CIOs have learned, it's this: Managing technology is as important as the technology itself. Every company can buy the same machines and software, so the only source of competitive advantage lies in how the stuff is used.

More info: http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1540,1903977,00.asp

The Benefits of Making 'Partner' Deals with Vendors

By Rob Garretson, CIO Insight

...Thus the partnership Colorado Access forged last year with Thomson Medstat, which provides custom medical-decision-support applications to help integrate pharmacy and lab data—results from patient cholesterol screenings, blood tests, etc.—into the Medstat data warehouse of claims and treatment information.

Complete Article: http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1540,1867035,00.asp

Lights, Camera, I.T. Action!

BY MICHAEL SCHRAGE, CIO.com

If CIOs are serious about alignment, they might want to encourage their staffs to pick up video cameras and record users in action.

There's no business like show business, not even IT. Then again, there's no reason why show business can't play a starring role for CIOs desperately searching for enterprise hits. But don't think "big-budget blockbuster"—think "clever independent film made on a shoestring."

Complete Article: http://www.cio.com/archive/051505/schrage.html