I wouldn’t even say they announced it. Apparently Michael Dell just casually mentioned it at Oracle-related conference. Of course, we already knew there would be larger versions of the streak. What I don’t understand is why they released the tiny version first, and not a larger version with wider appeal?
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According to a SpiceWorks report released today, Information Technology related budgets at small and medium sized businesses are up over 4% vs. figures announced for January through June 2010. Notable high spending points points are in the areas of virtualization as well as optimistic staffing increases, especially in companies with under 20 employees. Over 3,011 IT professionals from over 117 countries were surveyed by SpiceWorks between July and August 2010 to come up with this data.
Key highlights from the survey:
- IT Budgets for the second half of 2010 increased 4 percent over figures reported in the first half of the year. The average annual IT budget for small and medium businesses is now $121,770, vs. $117,200 in the first half of 2010.
- Increasing virtualization for efficiency and security is a key focal point for budgeting, as 68% of IT professionals plan to utilize some form of virtualization by the end of 2010 vs. 63% reported for the first half of 2010.
- 20% of small to medium sized businesses plan to add full-time IT staff by the end of 2010, the most notable growth being in companies with less than 20 employees, 23% of companies with less than 20 employees.
- Less money is being spent on hardware, with 42% of IT budgets for the remainder of the year allocated to hardware purchases, down from the 47% reported for the first half of 2010.
- 35% of IT budgets for the second half of 2010 are allocated to software purchases.
- 34% plan to tackle server operating system upgrades before year-end, antivirus/anti-spam software is a popular choice with 67% of respondents planning to buy new, upgrade or renew.
Amidst recent reports that venture investment in IT has stagnated, the sector seems to be growing, at least as far as company spending is concerned. You can find a PDF of the completed survey here.
In terms of blog networks, no one ever seems to talk about Google, but they actually have one of the biggest. The search giant has well over 100 blogs devoted to everything from general company news to niche things that only webmasters will care about. And with over 100 different blogs pumping out a wide variety of content, it can be hard to keep up with all the Google news. That’s why Google has created Google New.
Google New, not to be confused with Google News, their news aggregation property (which turned 8 today, coincidentally), is a landing page that gives you a quick overview of the latest news from all the various Google blogs. The default view is to show snippets from the latest blog posts in reverse chronological order, but you can also tailor the experience to be just about things you actually care about. At the top of the page is a big area that allows Google to showcase something particularly newsworth — in this case, Google Instant.
In their blog post about Google New today, Google notes that this was a 20 percent project that a few Googlers worked on to better showcase what the company is doing as a whole. You can hear more of their perspective in the video below.
Given the rate of new products Google has been pumping out recently, I’m already wondering how long it will be until we need a New Google New.
Amazon's recent announcement of 
Photo by NNE
Street Art legend Shepard Fairey teamed up with Fuji bikes to make hipsters everywhere wet themselves in spasmodic glee with the release of this fixed gear bike. The OBEY x FUJI bike carries a hefty price-tag of $1,500 and the fact that it’s also a limited edition, Deviant Decorum predicts that hipster’s everywhere will be waiting anxiously at the ATM for their parent’s bank deposit to post so they can snatch one before they’re gone. Oh, wait…they’re already sold out. Our advice, start being “over it” right now while people are still hyped about this thing, you’ll score some major points from the other kids who were also left out and who knows, Banksy could still drop a limited edition Razor Scooter next month. To see some more pictures of the bike, click that link right HERE:
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