Stories by Mark Gibbs

Why your next big IT project is doomed

Have you had a IT project go astray? Maybe you were lucky and it was a brief hiccup with minimal financial consequences. Or maybe you had a disaster of biblical proportions, such as the one that befell Levi Strauss in 2008.

Pneuron, an outstanding enterprise data infrastructure solution

How would you like to build a global enterprise-scale data access infrastructure? A daunting prospect, yes? Imagine creating a system that could make any subset of any significant data resource in your organization available where it's needed without incurring insane implementation and maintenance costs ... sounds too good to be true?

Directly connected to the Internet of Things

Last week here in Backspin I discussed how real-world "things" that aren't easily augmented with digital instrumentation, such as bicycles, cars and even dogs, can be indirectly connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) using physical ID tags and online proxies. This is, as I pointed out, a powerful concept.

Logitech Broadcaster Wi-Fi Webcam: Outstanding portable video

Considering the enormous webcam market and the number of products available it's hard to believe that anyone could come up with anything new, novel and useful but, impressively, that's just what Logitech has managed to do with its Broadcaster Wi-Fi Webcam, a really well-designed webcam for OS X and iOS only.

Being green and the madness of crowds

Some time ago I had a call with a company that ran data centers they claimed were "green." Their argument for their greenness was they purchased power with green credits, which meant they paid a premium for electricity to fund alternative energy programs. Along with that they had a car park full of solar cells.

Globalgig Hotspot: Taking the pain out of data roaming

Business travel is, under the best of circumstances, a royal pain in the butt, and when you're roaming internationally with a smartphone and need to make some calls and keep up with email, you face a zonking great bill when you get home.

Presentations and pointing with lasers

Every now and then a company appears that makes a slew of cool products. The latest of these is Satechi, which I think should use the tag line "purveyors of fine gadgets." Satechi just sent me a few very cool items and in a couple of weeks I shall review their remarkable Wireless Mini Router/Repeater. Today, I have two of their presentation controllers, both of which include laser pointers.

The 'Minority Report' shopping experience

Everywhere you go these days -- every store, every urban street, every car park, every ATM -- there are video cameras watching where you go and what you do. Just what are "they" (whoever "they" are) doing with all of that video surveillance?

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