Technology

Cloud computing is on the rise. Over 90 percent of recently surveyed companies expect to be using cloud computing in the next three years. Still, securing access to the cloud poses significant challenges for IT departments. Mission-critical, cloud-based business applications such as Salesforce.com, SharePoint and SAP are often prime targets for continuous, persistent criminal attack from sophisticated, profit-driven and even politically motivated hackers.

The rise of cloud applications is growing strong enough even to force Microsoft to adapt its latest web browser, IE9, to the trend, as I wrote earlier today. Coincidentally, a separate launch yesterday addressed the same trend, but from a different direction. The vendor, Appirio, is a consulting client [see disclosure] and shared an early preview with me.

Shipments of 3G tablets are expected to grow from 3.65 million this year to 50 million by 2014, according to projections from research firm Informa Telecoms and Media.

Multifunctional devices such as the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab combine the best features of smartphones and netbooks, and are likely to surpass sales of dedicated e-readers, according to Informa.

Robots from MARRS could one day run automated farms in Australia, a futuristic researcher from the University of Queensland says.

Dr Adam Postula says Mechanisation Automation Robotics Remote Sensing (MARRS) technologies can control unmanned aircraft or unmanned tractors. They can also use detection systems capable of observing environments using visual, infra-red or laser light wavelengths.

In the not too distant technological past, a computer’s storage drives filled a space not much smaller than my living room. The new 64-gigabyte solid-state drive from SanDisk is the size of a postage stamp.

Miniaturization, except when it comes to S.U.V.’s and flat-panel televisions, is a key and crucial formula these days in gadgets, and the SanDisk “iSSD”—for integrated solid state drive—will end up in tablet PCs, netbooks, smartphones and other mobile products.

How can you make tiny, flexible materials that conduct electricity more efficiently than today’s batteries? You can engineer expensive, high-density carbon nanotubes. Or you can use the original nanobots, made by nature itself: viruses.

An MIT group recently described an advance that brings us closer to the day when freaky, half-alive nanomachines assemble batteries you could wear.

An Iranian journalist imprisoned in that country without trial since June 2009 is suing telecommunications concern Nokia Siemens for allegedly providing the surveillance equipment that led to his capture.

Smartphones are on the verge of getting a major boost as chip makers ready dual-core chips that could accelerate performance for both applications and multimedia files.

Unlike current brain-controlled computers, which require users to imagine making physical movements to control a cursor on a screen, the new technology will be capable of directly interpreting words as they are thought.

Intel's scientists are creating detailed maps of the activity in the brain for individual words which can then be matched against the brain activity of someone using the computer, allowing the machine to determine the word they are thinking.

Bank of America Corp, the largest U.S. consumer bank, and Visa Inc, the world's largest payment processor, plan to begin a test program next month that lets customers use smartphones to pay for purchases in stores.

The program, to run from September through the end of the year in the New York area, is the biggest step yet by the two companies toward creating a "digital wallet" with a host of financial capabilities built into the latest, most sophisticated mobile phones.