IT Retrospectives

Microsoft's Desktop Graphing Calculator now Free

2011-01-18T07:26:23-06:00

Microsoft has started giving away their desktop graphing calculator for free. You can download it from the following link:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9caca722-5235-401c-8d3f-9e242b794c3a

NASA Finds New Life Form | Wired Science | Wired.com

2010-12-02T13:52:59-06:00

Not sure how much press this will receive but this is an incredible discovery. No, it's not life on another planet, but it's pretty "alien" in terms of what we consider normal biology for an organisims on Earth.

- Mark

"Hours before their special news conference today, the cat is out of the bag: NASA has discovered a completely new life form that doesn’t share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth. This changes everything...

By Jesus Diaz, Gizmodo

via www.wired.com

Amplifying Collaboration with Guerilla Facilitation

2010-09-16T07:15:27-05:00

Sometimes, an ineffective meeting can be more damaging than no meeting at all. But, if you're not the person in charge of facilitating the meeting, how can you help keep the group and the meeting in line? In this article, Ellen Gottesdiener offers some suggestions for both facilitators and non-facilitators that may help ease some of your meeting frustrations.

Read the full article by Ellen Gottesdiener here: Amplifying Collaboration with Guerilla Facilitation.

Making computer memory work like the human brain - CNN.com

2010-09-01T12:36:43-05:00

(CNN) -- How do computers remember things?

It's something most of us never think about. But you may start to take notice if HP Labs is successful in commercializing a new version of computer memory, which would make our electronics dramatically faster and more energy efficient.

The technology is called memristor, and it is designed to work more like our brains and less like the electronic on and off switches that run computer memory now.

Rackspace Open Sources Cloud Platform; Announces Plans to Collaborate with NASA and Other Industry Leaders on OpenStack Project

2010-07-25T14:35:47-05:00

OpenStack Open Source Cloud Computing Software

San Antonio, TX - July 19, 2010 - Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE:RAX) today announced the launch of OpenStack™, an open-source cloud platform designed to foster the emergence of technology standards and cloud interoperability. Rackspace, the leading specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry, is donating the code that powers its Cloud Files and Cloud Servers public-cloud offerings to the OpenStack project. The project will also incorporate technology that powers the NASA Nebula Cloud Platform. Rackspace and NASA plan to actively collaborate on joint technology development and leverage the efforts of open-source software developers worldwide.