On Mondays I offer comments on some   of the most interesting information technology stories that I have found on the web that week.  Please feel free to join in the discussion or suggest other stories.

Today’s comments were generated after I read a CNN story.  It is about the same message that they issue once per year.  I recommend it to you.  Give it a read below.

CNN.com – Are you ready for the big internet crunch?

“(CNN) — The internet as we know it is reaching its limits.

Within 18 months it is estimated that the number of new devices able to connect to the world wide web will plummet as we run out of "IP addresses" — the unique codes that provide access to the internet for everything from PCs to smart phones.

"The internet as we know it will no longer be able to grow," Daniel Karrenberg, chief scientist at RIPE NCC, the organization that issues IP addresses in Europe, told CNN.”

The basic problem is that when the Internet went mainstream in the mid-nineties, no one envisioned that every person on the planet would have multiple computers, let alone a smart phone, toaster, and Wii that needed an address.  The problem got very acute around the millennial, but was warded off by a new addressing scheme for downstream computers, called NAT, that allowed every computer on a local network to share a single point-of-presence connection to the Internet.  This is why, you are said to be sharing an internet connection on your local street, at the coffee shop, and at work.

The solution is to upgrade the address scheme to a newer version, called IP version 6 or IPv6.  You can read all about it at Wikipedia.  Don’t worry about version 5… it is caput.  IPv6 brings a host of new features in addition to its dramatically increased address space including quality of service, security, and expandability.  The good news is that every piece of networking hardware built in the past five years came out-of-the-box compatible.  The bad news is that people have continued to write online software code that only works on IPv4 even though they new it’s life expectancy was short. And thus lies the problem, the actual impact of shifting will be a crap shoot until we pull the trigger.  That, and no one wants to be the first penguin off the iceberg, and risk mission kill.

The best news is that this story has not changed on lick in the past eight years!  We will all gnash our teeth, complain a bit, and decide to put off the inevitable for another year.  Stay tuned in June 2011 for another CNN news story on this ery same issue….

What do you think about this topic?  Do you agree or disagree with me? Do you have a recommended news story for next week? Please share your ideas below.

That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for May 31, 2010  by Scott Coughlin.

Image Credit: VEED.in – Tech News

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On Mondays I offer comments on some of the most interesting information technology stories that I have found on the web that week.  Please feel free to join in the discussion or suggest other stories.

Today’s comments are associated with a recent, exciting declaration from Google.  The upcoming Google Chrome Operating System, is to be a completely minimalist, web-based, cloud aware platform.  As you will read, this comes with one major headache – Printing!  Give it a read below.

Tech Radar – Google Chrome OS brings printing to the cloud: How Chrome will play with printers

Read more:

“While the emergence of cloud and mobile computing has provided users with access to information and personal documents from virtually any device, today’s printers still require installing drivers which makes printing impossible from most of these new devices," says Jazayeri.

"Developing and maintaining print subsystems for every combination of hardware and operating system- from desktops to netbooks to mobile devices – simply isn’t feasible.

"Since in Google Chrome OS all applications are web apps, we wanted to design a printing experience that would enable web apps to give users the full printing capabilities that native apps have today."

As you all know so well, getting a printer to work is a required step in every computer system setup.  It is never as easy as they say it will be and every year brings some new initiative to make last year’s “zero configuration” solution have even fewer steps. But today, it still remains that every printer needs an operating system needs a printer driver for every printer – even networked printers.  That is where Google Cloud Print comes in.  It is essentially a new standard for new printer manufacturers to follow to make their networked printers accept cloud based print requests.  That is not very revolutionary, but it is a welcome bit of strong arming from our Technology Age Leader – Google.  Their dedication to providing a platform to enable legacy printers to print from the cloud, by their supplying an Internet based print proxy, is really innovative.  The basic idea is that your legacy networked or system based printer would connect not to the print server internal to it or on the machine connected to it, as is done now, but rather to a Google Print Server in the cloud.  This is very revolutionary and could actually permit a one printer, one driver solution.  If anyone could and should do it – Google can and should!

If you have a Smartphone, an iPhone or Blackberry for example, or an iPad, or even just a traveling laptop, you know what a pain it is to try to get a print out from your device at an unusual location.  This could be the solution that we have all been searching for to enable the ability for all of mobile devices to borrow printers, use public resources, and print at remote sites without configuration.  I hope that it works!  Thanks, Google, for taking the lead here!

What do you think about this topic?  Do you agree or disagree with me? Do you have a recommended news story for next week? Please share your ideas below.

That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for April 19, 2010  by Scott Coughlin.

[Editor’s Note: To my long time readers: This represents a change to my editorial schedule.  I have decided that going forward, The IT Thought of the Day Website will publish it’s weekly News Commentary articles, like this one, on Monday’s vice Sundays.  Sunday will become the day that I publish my Twitter Archive for the week.  Thank you for reading.]

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Friday, I wrote about how I believed that Saturday’s release of the Apple iPad represented a revolution in Information Technology.  Reviews continue to be outstanding.  On Sunday, I continued the discussion of the revolution… writeing about its one-of-a-kind media access. Today, we will look at the Apple iPad Application store and discuss what it means to the computing world.

Again, in the interest of full disclosure, I tell you that I have not touched an Apple iPad yet.  If Apple wants to give me access to one, I promise to fairly and rapidly review it and post my thoughts.  I should get to play with one today.

There is no peer in the computer world to the application set that is accessible from the iPad.  Simply None.  And that is completely amazing for a system that has been on the street for less than 2 days.

Take a look at these comparisons.  Remember that this is the state of play less than one full business day after release. 

Applications available for:

• Apple iPad = 3636 native plus 170,000 iPhone/iPod Touch applications
• Google Android = 40,000
• Palm Pre = 2000

There is no doubt that this bodes very well for the iPad.

What is amazing is that there are so many exclusive, one of a kind apps already, including:

• word processor (Pages)
• spreadsheet (Numbers)
• Presentation tool (Keynote)
• Streaming of Amazon and Netflix TV shows and movies
• Marvel Comic books
• The Wall Street Journal Digital Edition
• The New York Times Digital Edition
• Zinio Digital Magazines
• National Geographic Magazine

There is a real case to be made that the success of a platform in the digital age is directly proportional to its developer support as measured by the number of independent applications that are available for it.  By that measure, the iPad is already a home run.  The only real questions is whether it will be a grand slam.

Please go to Apple’s Official iPad site and see for yourself, on the eve of the Tablet Age on Information Technology, what all the news is about!  Welcome to the future of computing.

That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for April 6, 2010 by Scott Coughlin.

Image Credit: reuters.com

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Yesterday, I wrote about how I believe that today’s release of the Apple iPad represents a revolution in Information Technology.  Reviews continue to be outstanding with negative reactions seeming to have more with politics and long standing Apple hate than anything factual.  Today, I want to continue the discussion of the revolution… and write about its one-of-a-kind media access.

Again, in the interest of full disclosure, I tell you that I have not touched an Apple iPad yet.  If Apple wants to give me access to one, I promise to fairly and rapidly review it and post my thoughts.

There is no peer in the computer world to the media that is accessible from the iPad.  Here is just a short list of its capabilities.

• Full web access.
• Full iTunes store access to all of its movies to buy.
• Full iTunes store access to all of its movies to rent.
• Full iTunes store access to all of its songs and albums to buy.
• Access to all of your audio content on any computer.
• Full iTunes store access to all of its applications to buy.
• Access to iPad specific apps like a word processor (Pages), a spreadsheet (Numbers), and a presentation tool (Keynote).
• Full iTunes store access to all of its TV shows to buy.
• All Amazon Kindle content – books, magazines, blogs
• Any electronic book format in the world – including the millions of public domain ones.
• Streaming of Amazon and Netflix TV shows and movies (Mobile Computer First!)
• Marvel Comic books (Mobile Computer First)
• RSS Feeds of any site
• The Wall Street Journal Digital Edition (Mobile Computer First!)
• The New York Times Digital Edition (Mobile Computer First!)
• Zinio Digital Magazines
• National Geographic Magazine (Mobile Computer First!)

My point is simple – This is big.  There has never been a digital media content consumption device that has managed to get it ALL.  Every e-book reader, iPod, iPhone, slate, tablet, laptop, and palm computer that has come before has had compromises.  Either the screen, processor, form factor, or increasingly lack of access to copyrighted content from major publishers has limited it in some way.  The Apple iPad breaks down ALL of those doors for the consumer.  If the media exists in a digital format, then you can enjoy it on an Apple iPad .  It represents the first separation of hardware and software in the mobile space.  This is a sea change.  One that I warmly welcome.

Later this week, we will look at the Apple iPad Application store and discuss what it means to the computing world.

Please go to Apple’s Official iPad site and see for yourself, on the eve of the Tablet Age on Information Technology, what all the news is about!  Welcome to the future of computing.

That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for April 3, 2010 by Scott Coughlin.

Image Credit: The Huffington Post

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There is no doubt about it any longer… tomorrow’s release of the Apple iPad represents a revolution in Information Technology.  The reviews are starting to roll in and unanimously anyone who has touched it has loved it.  In addition, we are see game-changing media deals that will completely revamp the way that content is delivered.  Finally, the hundred of applications already available for it – pre-release – validate that it will be the next big thing.

In the interest of full disclosure, I tell you that I have not touched an iPad yet.  If Apple wants to give me access to one, I promise to fairly and rapidly review it and post my thoughts.

First of all, no matter what you may personally think of all the hype, one cannot ignore it.  Seriously, there are over 25,000 legitimate news stories listed on Google News so far reporting on the pre-release iPad.  Think about that for a second… tens of thousands of by-lines about an object that less than a hundred have even touched.  This IS something big.

The reviews really are universally positive … from people who have touched them.  Here is a selection of the luminaries who have already fallen for the iPad:

• Walt Mossberg – The Wall Street Journal
• David Pogue – The New York Times
• Andy Ihnatko – The Chicago Sun Times

Tomorrow, we will look at the incredible media deals from TV, books, magazines, and newspapers that Apple has secured for the iPad.

Later this week, we will look at the iPad Application store and discuss what it means to the computing world.

Please go to Apple’s Official iPad site and see for yourself, on the eve of the Tablet Age on Information Technology, what all the news is about!  Welcome to the future of computing.

That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for April 2, 2010 by Scott Coughlin.

Image Credit: The UK Guardian

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