Toshiba’s high-end Qosmio G45-AV690 is great for movies and multimedia, and its onboard controls are fun to use–but the recordable HD DVD drive means you’re paying extra for a dead technology.

Toshiba’s high-end Qosmio G45-AV690 is great for movies and multimedia, and its onboard controls are fun to use–but the recordable HD DVD drive means you’re paying extra for a dead technology.

  Qantas, the Australian national airline, has endured two high-profile IT failures in recent years and a third major project appears to be at substantial risk. In many respects, the company offers a case study for examining how underlying management issues can cause multiple IT projects to go bad. Project eQ. In late 1995, Qantas canceled its project eQ technology services contract with IBM, four years into a ten-year agreement. The overall program cost was $200 million. According to The Australian Financial Review (1/31/06): The project is understood to have run into trouble early last year after the human resources element was completed. People close to the project say deadlines started to slip as attempts were made to map the…

The Fujitsu LifeBook S7211 boasts a lengthy battery life, but its bare-bones feature set and mediocre performance suffer in comparison with competing low-cost laptops.

The Fujitsu LifeBook S7211 boasts a lengthy battery life, but its bare-bones feature set and mediocre performance suffer in comparison with competing low-cost laptops.

Though the Plantronics Calisto Pro Series is easy to use and has excellent sound quality, we ultimately wanted more cell phone and VoIP integration.

Though the Plantronics Calisto Pro Series is easy to use and has excellent sound quality, we ultimately wanted more cell phone and VoIP integration.

Tianjin, China’s third largest city, has become the first city in that country to join the LED City program backed by Cree and other cities that support the installation of energy-efficient LED lighting. The Tianjin Economic Development Area (TEDA) teamed up with Tianjin Polytechnic University over the past two years as part of a graduate student project to install about 1,500 LED streetlights that illuminate the university’s streets. As a result, TEDA is now evaluating the deployment of LED as part of its municipal “infrastructure.” LED City is a organization focused on promoting LED as a way to save energy, reduce municipal maintenance costs and improve public safety.

Airport security is obviously a major concern in our country, and I’ve made some observations that I’d like to share from my recent travels. February and March has turned out to be an insane travelling road show for me. When March completes, I will have spoken at Black Hat twice (Washington D.C. and Amsterdam), met with numerous clients in Indiana, Minnesota, California, and Seattle, travelled to Houston a number of times to catch up with the Ernst & Young Advanced Security Center guys (where I’m employed), and somewhere in that mix I actually went snowboarding in Utah. What I’ve learned during this time is that I hate flying. Also, I noticed several things that really concern me about airport security….