Gartner: 10 critical IT trends for the next five years

ORLANDO — Trying to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to IT issues is not a job for the faint of heart. That point was driven home at Gartner’s IT annual IT Symposium fest here where analyst David Cappuccio outlined what he called “new forces that are not easily controlled by IT are pushing themselves to the forefront of IT spending.” The forces of cloud computing, social media/networking, mobility and...

Read More

Firefox begins testing Social API with Facebook Messenger, here’s how you can take part

By Ben Gilbert posted Oct 22nd 2012 12:15PM You live a fast-paced life, and you don’t have time to stop your high-speed internet surfing just to check up on Suzie’s latest Facebook update. Mozilla understands your plight, digital denizen, and its “Social API” is here to help — Firefox browser users can beta test Facebook’s Messenger functionality right this minute, should they be able to pause for...

Read More

Apple’s iPad mini event happens tomorrow, get your liveblog here!

By Tim Stevens posted Oct 22nd 2012 1:00PM It seems like just yesterday we were reporting on the launch of the iPhone 5, but already Apple has something else exciting to show us. What could it be? An iPad mini? A 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display? A new iMac? All of the above? We’d love to have you along as we find out, and the quickest way to take it all in is to watch the event brought to you live through our dynamic...

Read More

Isis’ NFC payments go live in Austin and Salt Lake City: 3 carriers, 9 phones, 1 long way to go (video)

By Jon Fingas posted Oct 22nd 2012 1:36PM To say that the launch of Isis has felt drawn out would be a mild understatement. The alliance first signaled its intentions two years ago, detailed its first markets one year ago and faced a last-minute delay. All the ducks are finally in a row, however, and residents of both Austin as well as Salt Lake City can tap to pay (or score discounts) at the “hundreds” of locations that...

Read More

Amazon EBS failure brings down Reddit, Imgur, others

Amazon Web Services has confirmed that its Elastic Block Storage (EBS) service is experiencing degraded service, leading sites across the Internet to experience downtime, including Reddit, Imgur and many others. AWS confirmed on its status page at 2:11 p.m. ET that it is experiencing “degraded performance for a small number of EBS volumes.” It says the issue is restricted to a single Availability Zone within the US-East-1...

Read More