Park & Fly? Your Car Will Power the Cloud
Cars are a staple of IoT. That comes as no surprise. But what about a car-based data center? Welcome to the vehicular cloud, a new idea that the researchers of the Old Dominion University in Norfolk started outlining. It’s based on the notion that a few hundred, or thousands, of cars sitting idle in a parking lot could be grouped into a powerful cloud computing network. Read more about how the car-based cloud will put your parked car to work.
Wi-Fi Goes Green (Saving Battery Life, Too)
With the fast move towards cloud-everything and connected devices, the connectivity to off-site data is still a prominent obstacle. But you can already prepare your thank-you note to students at the University of Washington, where a group of engineers is trying to solve the Wi-Fi battery-drain challenge. They’ve developed new type of hardware called passive Wi-Fi and it’s 10,000 times more energy efficient than today’s Wi-Fi, with the potential of preventing more than 7 billion pounds of annual greenhouse gas emissions. Read it here.
Cracking the Code for Battery-Less Tech
What wouldn’t be better if it would use less power? With the rise of IoT and everything chip-ed all the way to your toothbrush, the amount of batteries to be charged or changed on a regular basis will become nonviable. A new startup, PsiKick Inc, has set out to solve the problem from the other end by designing self-powered chips. Whether it’s your body heat or the soles of your shoe here’s how they power the chips that make things talk.
The Death Star vs. Big Data
Ever thought about how much data the Death Star in the Star Wars anthology would generate? Well, the folks at FairCom have done the math for you! They think IT support will be on high demand for the Death Star, with database administration, Big Data experience and compression skills a plus. Get to know a galaxy of tens of thousands of Yottabytes.
Blu-ray to Take Over Archival Data Center
Blu-ray is finding a new life in data centers as storage that can retain data for up to 100 years at a lower cost than ever. Facebook has already used this technology and Sony announced a massive new system called Everspan that can store up to 181 petabytes of data. With eight lasers, the drives have an average write speed of 140MBps, and a read speed of 280MBps. Not bad for a spinning device. Move over hard drives and tape? See the new generation of Archival Discs.
How Netflix Knows What You Want Before You Do
Until we get to the dimensions of the Death Star, Netflix is a good place to look at how big, Big Data works. With two million new subscribers joining the media streaming empire every month, how do they manage to curate content that feels hand-picked by your best friend? Here’s how Neflix knows what you want to watch.
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