IT Trends :: Thursday, March 8, 2007

Opinion

Are You Drowning in Data?
By Terry Calhoun

Tech analyst John Gantz estimates that in 2007 the world will for the first time generate more "data" than it has storage space for. But that's not really the major kind of crisis it might seem. After all, a lot of the data are things no one intends to store in the first place. (Witness, for example, live, 24-hour video feeds of building construction on many campuses. Nobody plans to store all of that video!)

I wrote recently about a book in which one narrative subplot was the digitization of the entire British museum and library, and then storage of basically all of the world's knowledge, culture, and history on a single chip. That chip was generated, fictionally, in 2025 and had a capacity of 128 petabytes. Gantz calculates that in 2006, humans generated 161 exabytes (164,864 petabytes) of digital data....

IT News

East Carolina U Supports Distance Learning with Saba
East Carolina University in Greenville, NC is implementing Saba-Centra Live from software provider Saba to support distance learning through the university's academic outreach program....
OSU Mobile Facility Adopts Spacenet Satellite Networking
Oklahoma State University's Center for Health Sciences has selected Spacenet as the provider of satellite network services for its new mobile telemedicine unit, the Telemedicine Center....
Florida Atlantic U Adopts WebFocus for Data Management
Florida Atlantic University (FAU) has implemented a data management system from Information Builders to track and analyze data across multiple departments....
Colgate University Implements Network Analysis Tool
Colgate University recently implemented NetMRI E-400, a network analysis and reporting tool from Netcordia....
Berners-Lee Lectures Congress on U.S. Digital Future
World-wide Web "inventor" Tim Berners-Lee made a rare public appearance last week to talk to federal legislators about the "digital future of the United States."...
Black Colleges Study Distance Learning Patterns
A recent survey by the Digital Learning Lab at Howard University shows that 40 of 103 historically black colleges and universities are offering distance courses this year, up from 29 a year ago....
Villanova U Rolls Out Meru Wireless LAN System
Pennsylvania's Villanova University has upgraded and expanded its WLAN infrastructure, replacing its legacy network with Meru Networks' Wireless LAN System....
UPMC Center for Biosecurity Adopts SiteExecutive
The Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) has launched two websites using SystemExecutive from Systems Alliance, an IT and business consulting firm....
SunGard Launches Banner Enrollment Management Suite
SunGard Higher Education has debuted a new tool for recruiting, admissions, and retention management. Designed specifically for higher education, the new technology--Banner Enrollment Management Suite (BEMS)--is designed....

Featured

  • interconnected blue glass cubes

    Anthropic Expands Enterprise Deployment Options for Claude Desktop with New Controls and Cloud Integrations

    Anthropic is adding new enterprise deployment options for Claude Desktop, saying organizations that use the app through Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Foundry can now access the full desktop experience across chat, Claude Cowork, and Claude Code.

  • Robot typing on fluorescent keyboard

    The Wrong Battle: Why Your Institution's AI Policy Is Probably Solving the Wrong Problem

    The conversation on most campuses has become consumed with detection: How do we catch students using AI when they shouldn't? The impulse to protect academic integrity is legitimate, but the detection-first approach has a fatal flaw.

  • abstract smartphone translucent screen displaying AI interface

    Apple Introduces Redesigned Siri AI

    At its recent Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple introduced Siri AI, a redesigned version of its voice assistant that Apple describes in its own announcement as "a profoundly more capable and personal assistant." The update is intended to make Siri more conversational, more context-aware, and more useful across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro.

  • Silhouettes of business professionals stand against a blurred futuristic city skyline at night, with a glowing digital network data connection

    It's Time for Higher Ed to Get Serious About AI Strategy

    Without a coordinated strategy that involves multiple academic and administrative units across the entire campus, colleges risk wasting resources, duplicating efforts, and ultimately failing to deliver on the promise of deploying technology to improve learning and operations.