Mark Hachman

Last summers major power blackout proved a wakeup call for IT managers to examine business continuity plans. Analysts say that some have taken advantage of new data replication solutions and technologies that can span geographically distinct locations to mitigate the effects of a blackout or other calamity. Still, a year after the six-state outage, analysts […]

A Taiwan-based site is offering to sell the DVD copying software once sold by defunct 321 Studios Inc., which was driven out of business last week. DVDXCopy2.com appears to have mirrored some of the content once found on the 321 Studios Web site, including images and endorsements from various computer magazines and review sites. Web […]

A second group is floating its technical proposal to replace Wi-Fi, in advance of a meeting next month to begin resolving the issue. The so-called WWiSE consortium–comprising Airgo Networks, Bermai, Broadcom, Conexant, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments–held a conference call Thursday morning to introduce its new proposal for the 802.11n standard. “WWiSE” stands for “World Wide […]

Two mesh networking companies have moved forward with design wins, tailoring their first products toward homeland security operations. On Monday, Motorola Inc. and MeshNetworks Inc. agreed to work together; initially, Motorola will resell the MeshNetworks product line, with the option to integrate the technology into its own products at a future time. In an unrelated […]

The nascent market for high-performance, short-range wireless peripherals took another step forward as Freescale Semiconductor Inc. received certification from the Federal Communications Commission on Monday for its ultra wideband chip set. According to industry analysts, some form of UWB (ultra wideband) wireless technology is expected to replace USB (Universal Serial Bus) as a peripheral connector […]

Seagate Technology has filed a complaint in a Minnesota court attempting to prevent one of its ex-employees from joining Western Digital, a competitor. Pete Goglia recently left Seagate Technology LLC to join Western Digital Corp., where he will lead that companys read/write head development after serving at Seagate for 16 years. Seagate is attempting to […]

Two-factor security aims to boost user identification beyond the simple password. However, StrikeForce Technologies Inc. offers a twist to this greater level of security: a verification technique that uses a wired or wireless phone. StrikeForce Technologies recently rebranded its authentication technology. Previously called COBAS (Centralized Out-of-Band Authentication Software) will now be know as ProtectID, company […]

Western Digital Corp. has designed a disk drive specifically targeted for RAID and other heavy-duty cycle applications. WD, based in Irvine, Calif., said Tuesday that it has begun shipping the WD Caviar RAID Edition (RE) drives, a family of three 3.5-inch, 7,200-RPM drives ranging in capacity from 120GB to 260GB. The drives are specifically designed […]

Server OEMs this week helped complete the second phase of Intels 64-bit “Nocona” deployment, although the launch was marred by a bug that affected the supporting chip sets. Intel first launched the Nocona chip in June as a workstation processor. Nocona was the first Intel chip to use Intels 64-bit extensions, dubbed the “EM64T” technology. […]

Major analyst firms such as International Data Corp. and Gartner Inc. recently began sharing their second-half forecasts with their clients, although the formal estimates arent expected to be released for a week or two. On the enterprise hardware side of the industry, the outlook is mostly cautious but positive. Analysts said theyre still operating under […]