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ZFS for your help desk

WORLDVIEW SEO PR BUSINESS-TECH WIRE — LiveTime Software announced today that it is adding ZFS support to its hardware appliances preconfigured to run its leading ITIL service management and help desk software. ZFS is the next new thing in storage. Additional hard disks are not seen as additional volumes but just added capacity for applications including MySQL and PostgreSQL databases. Sort of a LAN-based “distributed storage” model. ZFS comes out of the Open Solaris initiative. Look for a number of hardware vendors to announce soon ZFS for their server offerings. Possibly even Apple during MacWorld Expo next month.

Newspaper death spiral

According to TechCrunch, the Newspaper Association of America shows total industry advertising (both print and online) in the third quarter was $8.9 billion, down 18 percent from the year before. The online portion of that was $750 million, down 3 percent. So far in the first three quarters of 2008, the industry’s total advertising revenues have shrunk by $5 billion to $27.8 billion.

“Print advertising has been declining for ten straight quarters, but this marks only the second quarter that online advertising also went down. More concerning is that the overall rate of decline seems to be accelerating, a trend we noted in September.”

What’s amazing to me is to see that online ad sales have leveled off from the 30-percent per year gains to under 20 and falling. In my experience, this is more about the incompetence of newspaper online ad sales efforts once the low hanging fruit got picked clean.

Here is the percentage change in total newspaper advertising for the past five quarters:

3Q07: -7.4%
4Q07: -10.3%
1Q08: -12.85%
2Q08: -15.11%
3Q08: -18.11%

RagTime revs business publishing

WORLDVIEW SEO PR BUSINESS-TECH WIRE — RagTime announced that its RagTime 6.5 is now available from public beta. The new version for Mac and Windows runs even faster now on Mac Intel computers due to Universal Binary, and overall software optimization. OLE-automation for Windows is now available, in addition to enhanced layout options. See the full press release.

McDonald’s sandwich patent

McDonald’s filed a patent in 2006 for a sandwich assembly tool and methods of making a sandwich! The application and workflow may apply to either a hot or cold sandwich. Key to the workflow is the pre-assembly of various sandwich components and simultaneous preparation of different parts of the same sandwich. We hope Togo’s and Morucci’s take note. But that’s not a sandwich, is it?

Here’s the workflow diagram that accompanies the patent application.

Make water from thin air

Element Four will soon begin to market its WaterMill that turns air in to water via condensation. Uses include refrigerator water dispensers, your spigot, water coolers, up to 12 liters of water a day.

The atmosphere contains 4 to 25 grams of water vapor per cubic meter, while the WaterMill can change 10% to 40% of that to liquid. Water vapor is constantly replenished by Earth’s natural cycle, so extracting water from the air can continue indefinitely without impacting local ecosystems.

History of the LED

See the video clip that relates the history of the ubiquitous LED. Not that life would not go on without it, but it has an important place.

MAKE presents: The LED from make magazine on Vimeo.

Plasma zaps waste into energy

St. Lucie County in Florida announced its partnership with Geoplasma to develop the United States’ first plasma gasification plant. Original plans called for the plant to use super-hot 10,000 degree fahrenheit plasma to effectively vaporize 3,000 tons of trash each day, which in turn would spin turbines to generate 60MW of electricity - enough to power 50,000 homes! More recently Geoplasma indicated it may scale back the the first phase of the project to just 200 tons per day to get full support of community before expansion that would divert all waste from the County’s landfills.

Big demand for PHP coding skills

WORLDVIEW SEO PR BUSINESS-TECH WIRE — oDesk reports today that PHP job skills far outstrips demand for all other programming skills. In fact, demand for certified Open Source PHP developers is nearly double that of the next closest computer software development and programming skill set. Based in San Mateo, oDesk is the leading platform for managing online software development workteams.

Soros predicts deep recession

Billionaire philathropist George Soros, who already got his, says a deep recession is inevitable and does not rule out a depression.

Soros, founder and chairman of Soros Fund Management, told a Congressional government reform committee that, far beyond the Fannie Mae debacle, “hedge funds were an integral part of the financial market bubble which now has burst; predicting hedge funds will be “decimated” by the current financial crisis and will shrink by 50-75 percent. He called for the Treasury Department and SEC to take action to prevent future market bubbles. Want to buy shares in tulips?

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