Ever wonder how popular Ubuntu is starting to become? Take a look at some interesting statistics when looking at search popularity. If one looks at the trend of the search volume associated with the keyword "linux" and compares it to the trend associated with the search for keyword "ubuntu" we start to see some interesting results.

Powering and cooling data centers has always been one of the main challenges associated with data center operations. Businesses must have clean, reliable, steady, cost effective, and increasingly more “green” power solutions. New on-site generation systems such as microturbine technology may be the answer to the upcoming energy crisis we will soon be facing.

Yahoo! has become the first big search portal to allow users to search the web with their mobile phone using only their voice. The service is called Yahoo! oneSearch. It is currently available for BlackBerry Curves, Pearls and 8800 series phones. No mention of the iPhone yet, but they do plan on supporting other vendors soon.

Help solve the worlds problems by donating your unused CPU cycles to solve complex computational challenges. Known as grid or distributed computing it allows you to share your CPU to perform units of work when your PC is sitting idle. Most machines actually sit idle for a majority of the time. The idea is to take advantage of that idle time and scavenge cpu cycles.

These jobs will experience strong growth and be in great demand for the next decade, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics(BLS).

Information technology

1. Network systems and data communications analysts
Projected growth by 2016: 53 percent
Median annual salary: $64,600*

2. Computer applications software engineers
Projected growth by 2016: 45 percent
Median annual salary: $79,780

3. Database administrators
Projected growth by 2016: 29 percent
Median annual salary: $64,670

4. Computer systems software engineers

A survey of IT workers from Computing Technology Industry Association (CTIA) and Rasmussen Reports, taken in early March, shows Obama and McCain at a statistical tie, with each receiving 39 percent of the vote, and Hillary Clinton trailing at 13 percent.

The survey also shows that 35 percent of IT workers report themselves as Republicans while 26 percent call themselves Democrats, and 40 percent chose no party. Over 75 percent of IT workers classify themselves in the conservative-moderate political spectrum.

Marshal, and Email and Internet content security company, analyzes spam traps it has placed throughout the Internet and looks for trends in spam creation, distribution, and origination.

Firefox has many new plugins and features which make it a very worthwhile upgrade. Among one of my favorite additions is all of the improvements made to the way it handles memory consumption.

Much work has been put into optimizing memory usage for Firefox 3. Initial results show that Firefox 3 may be one of the leanest and meanest web browser out there today in terms of memory consumption.

How did Blu-ray come out on top? I'm sure we'll see many Harvard Business Review case studies on this. Everyone is already comparing this to the modern day VHS vs Betamax battle of the early 80s.

Just like Betamax Toshibas HD DVD format looked very good.

- They were first to market
- Quality was just as good as blu-ray
- Extra capacity for movie extras
- Lower cost for disk production. HD DVD didn't need blue laser diodes
- Almost just as many movie titles as blu-ray.

In hindsight they made several strategic mistakes:

Perception is reality? That's what they say. But is it? Baseline.com had an article posted today about a recent survey commissioned by Cisco. They wanted to find out what remote workers using their work PCs thought about the threats that lie on the Internet(full article: http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Security/Survey-Users-Believe-Internet-Is...)