Stories about: ARC

What started out as a banking crisis became, in 2008, a story for everyone: retailers, consumers, auto workers -- and tech professionals. Though it wasn't business as usual, some big mergers -- like HP buying EDS -- were executed. Long-awaited products like the Android-based G1 "Google phone" were launched. Standards wars involving file formats like OOXML and hardware technology like Blu-Ray concluded. The battle against spam purveyors like McColo went on ... and on. Microsoft, moving into middle age and struggling to gain ascendance on the Web, was involved in many of the biggest stories of the year. The most influential entrepreneur of our time, Bill Gates, moved on to focus on philanthropy. Here, not necessarily in order of importance, is the IDG News Service's pick for top 10 technology stories of the year.

The New York Times used Ruby on Rails to pull together, analyze and display election results in near real time on one of its busiest Web traffic days ever. How did nytimes.com scale up Rails -- a framework known for quick development turnaround but less than lightning fast performance?

A decade ago, it was a clever novelty: a webcam pointed at an office water cooler. The first one is still online, at www.coolercam.com, broadcasting a fresh picture every 10 seconds.

I'm writing about Aspen Technology today not because you are likely to ever need its software (unless you own an oil refinery) but because the way the company allows its customers to purchase its smorgasbord of software applications is unique -- so much so that you may want to consider putting a little pressure on your vendors to consider the same.

Researchers at the University of Sydney have developed technology that could boost the throughput of existing networks by 100-fold without costing the consumer any more, and its all thanks to a scratch on a piece of glass.

The departure of Microsoft's founder and iconic leader Bill Gates comes at a pivotal time in the company's history as it struggles to compete with Google, the architect of the new Web economy and perhaps the company's most formidable foe ever.

If you want to squeeze the greatest amount of data onto your hard drive, compression is the way to go -- and the ZIP format has long been a trusted method that nearly any Windows user can invoke. SmithMicro's StuffIt Deluxe 12 is a file-compression utility on steroids: it can archive and compress files of all types (to the Stuffit format and even to ZIP itself). The real question is: How well does it hold up against a well-known and popular application such as WinZip?

With stories surfacing on news channels regularly about lost or stolen data or the ability to recover data from discarded or resold computers and their hard drives, we decided to look at some cheap methods of removing that sensitive data from your hard drive permanently. And, what better place to look than YouTube?

Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB's first Windows Mobile device, to appear in the second half of 2008, will be called Xperia X1.