TECHNOLOGY TOOLS of theTRADE 600, delivering 169 pixels per SplashID inch. There are six font sizes. Password The entire Barnes & Noble cata- Manager log of books, newspapers, and Multiply your number of magazines is available via the connected devices times the built-in Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n). logins that require unique The 8GB of internal memory passwords, and you have what will hold up to 5,000 e-books, might be called your password and you can add up to 32GB headache index. One common, Samsung accessories include an HD web- with microSD™ memory card although risky, palliative is to Chromebook cam with a noise-cancelling for books and music. As a use the same password over The first Chrome-based note- microphone and a mini VGA tablet, the Nook has a selection and over. Another is to keep an books will be available from port. Battery life is 8.5 hours. of apps on everything from organized directory of strong Samsung and Acer this month. Like other Chromebooks, this is gaming to learning, while Web password logins someplace The Samsung Series 5 Chrome- essentially a Web-centered com- browsing runs video in a variety where you have easy access to books will feature the Chrome puter that boots up in about of formats with the Adobe® it as well as encrypted backup Web browser that has been eight seconds and has its apps Flash® player, and audio in- somewhere else in case you converted to an operating sys- and your information living cludes sites like Pandora. Bat- lose a device or a desktop tem by Google. See Tech Forum online in cloud environments. tery life is about eight hours per crashes and burns. One of the for more on the Chrome OS www.samsung.com charge, and the overall size is oldest solutions to the problem (next page). The Samsung 8.1" 5.0" 0.48".The is SplashID—a “secure wallet” Chrome notebooks are slimmed- Nook Color Nook Color weighs 15.8 that goes back to the early down, lightweight laptops With recent speculation about ounces. www.bn.com days of the Palm PDAs. weighing 3.26 pounds. They the survivability of dedicated SplashID stores usernames, feature a 12.1-inch (1,280 readers in a world inundated passwords, credit cards, bank 800) screen and full-size key- with seven- and 10-inch accounts, PINs, frequent flyer board with an oversize, clickable tablets, the Nook Color looks numbers, and all kinds of other trackpad. The processor is a like it might be able to sidestep data. You set up your SplashID Dual Core Intel Atom. Connec- extinction—or replacement. The Safe on your Windows or Mac tivity is through a dual-band e-book reader from Barnes & desktop and then wirelessly Wi-Fi and World-mode 3G Noble is both a reader and a sync your other devices, includ- (optional). Basic storage is tablet computer. The seven-inch ing an Android phone, iPhone, designed to be online, so there’s VividView™ color touchscreen iPad, BlackBerry, and so on. no hard drive, but there are two displays more than 16 million SplashID Safe utilizes dual USB 2.0 ports and a built-in colors and has reduced glare encryption with both 256-bit 4-in-1 memory card slot. Other and high resolution at 1,024 AES and 256-bit Blowfish 66 STRATEGIC FINANCE I June 2011 TECH FORUM A Very Different Kind of Computer By Michael Castelluccio, Editor It wasn’t too long ago that a computer was either a desktop or a laptop. Then the PDA (personal digital assistant) gave way to telephones that began to behave like computers—they even had little keyboards and little office productivity suites. Soon these phones morphed into more computer than phone. Then a couple years ago, something called a netbook layers, reducing the security Logitech poked the beveled profile of its smaller nose onto the risks for those who tend to use Harmony One scene. Looking back, these miniature laptops seem to be the same or similar passwords The role of the universal remote some kind of placeholder. Essentially, they are eminently across multiple accounts. The became much more complicated portable laptops with a diminished set of capabilities in a interface is customizable to when people began connecting clamshell case. They’re a branch, not a new species. handle unlimited data or pass- more than just their television, Last year, on April 3, a truly new format for computers words. You sort the items into VCR, and speaker system to- exploded onto the scene when the iPad tablet set new land personal and business cate- gether. The Logitech Harmony speed records for sales and adoption. The fallout shook gories and tag each with sub- One remote offers support for the traditional laptop producers as many of them stepped categories like credit cards, 5000+ brands and 225,000+ over each other to get to any microphone where they e-mail accounts, serial num- devices. On the Logitech web- could announce their own tablets, soon to be released bers, memberships, Web logins, site you can enter the brand here and abroad. Samsung, Dell, HP, Acer—even RIM, the etc. There are two methods to and model numbers of your producer of the BlackBerry—are scrambling to catch up. help you generate truly random devices to see how your home- The tablet has been one of the most overwhelming revo- secure passwords with the entertainment setup would lutions in computer format to ever send shockwaves built-in password generator work with Harmony. A full-color through what is a relatively slowly evolving industry. and a pattern method for touchscreen offers a simplified And now, this month, there’s another new variety of creating them. There’s an menu for accessing and activat- computer being introduced. This one’s a little deceptive enterprise version of the ing your video, audio, gaming, and probably won’t be seen for what it really is. The solution as well. and computerized systems. Chromebook from Google and several hardware manu- www.splashdata.com www.logitech.com facturers looks just like a normal laptop or netbook, but it’s as different as cloud computing is from corporate networks—as different as a set of computing services that lives outside your computer. It’s stateless computing. NO OS, NO DRIVES, NO WORRIES The browser wars, for those who remember them, weren’t just about who would download Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and who would choose Netscape’s continued on next page June 2011 I STRATEGIC FINANCE 67 TECHNOLOGY TECH FORUM “loading your preferences” is replaced on a stateless Chrome netbook by an eight-second boot and an eight-hour battery life. Technically, there’s a state the Chromebook depends on, but that’s stored in the part of the cloud hosting your applications and files. By moving Navigator. Both sides in that conflict understood that the all of this additional information to the cloud, the computer browser might one day replace a computer’s operating sys- can be faster, simpler, and, according to Google, more tem, and for Microsoft that was a potential death threat. For secure. Marc Andreessen and the crew at Netscape, it was an almost Updates are done automatically and remotely. Security is limitless horizon. achieved by sectioning off all the different applications from The replacement of the OS didn’t happen, but that was each other in a sandbox environment. If a Chromebook is more because of the “cloudless” Internet skies than the found to be infected during the verified bootup, the architecture of the two browsers. This month, that has machine is directed to find and load that last known good changed, but it hasn’t been one of the old combatants who backup to replace the current environment. has unplugged the laptop from its operating system. It’s You don’t load programs ontp your Chrome netbook— Google, and the new computer is a Chromebook. you access them from cloud providers. The desktop is also Google’s Chrome is a Web browser as well as an operat- on the Web, and your work is saved on the Web “since it has ing system—Chrome OS. The search company began writ- more space than any computer.” That can be a scary notion ing the code for Chrome OS in 2009, releasing the source for some, but if you ever lose your computer, you won’t lose code in November of that year and turning the project into your stuff, even though you might never see that missing an open source effort called Chromium OS. The reduced Chromebook again. Likewise, all your stuff is accessible on hardware requirements for netbooks made those small com- other computers, and you can even allow a guest to access puters a possible platform for this new system. your apps and files. And your Chromebook doesn’t need The difference between a laptop running a conventional virus protection, nor does it need an endless succession of operating system and a Chromebook running Chrome OS is patches. As Google claims, “It’s a new thought.” almost metaphysical, at least in a digital sense. The Chrome- Because a Chromebook is essentially a netbook, you book is a stateless computing platform, and a Windows net- won’t be running process-intensive programs like Photo- book is an example of computing that depends on Shop on it. At the LinuxWorld and Next Generation Data remembered states. Center Expo two years ago, Merrill Lynch’s chief technology The Webopedia™ defines “stateless” as: architect, Jeffrey Birnbaum, explained that the real value of “(adj.) Having no information about what occurred cloud computing is that it makes programs and files avail- previously.