In these times where we are looking for efficiency in every aspect of one’s business one will find that warehouse management software and third party logistics software is generally worth its cost in orders of magnitude greater than its price. 3pl is the word.

If you need to satisfy real time information for your customer, or if you want to provide your customer demands in advanced services, or if you want to accurately bill your company, or if you want to increase automation profits the above mentioned software is for you. Automation in resource management is the new essence in warehousing.

One cannot allow the logistic now endemic overseas to take over the resilience of American ingenuity. After all most these technologies originated in our warehouses. Many of these technologies originated in our software houses. Many of these technologies are our national treasure. A national treasure is preserved. It is not allowed to be exported unadulterated or out sourced.

If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It: Ancient Computers in Use Today

From 1970s minicomputers used for military programs (including nuclear weapons) to an IBM punch-card system still keeping the books at a Texas filter supplier, these are the computers that time forgot.

By Benj Edwards, PCWorld    Feb 19, 2012 8:00 pm

It’s easy to wax nostalgic about old technology–to remember fondly our first Apple IIe or marvel at the old mainframes that ran on punched cards. But no one in their right mind would use those outdated, underpowered dinosaurs to run a contemporary business, let alone a modern weapons system, right?

Wrong!

While much of the tech world views a two-year-old smartphone as hopelessly obsolete, large swaths of our transportation and military infrastructure, some modern businesses, and even a few computer programmers rely daily on technology that hasn’t been updated for decades.

If you’ve recently bought a MetroCard for the New York City Subway or taken money from certain older ATMs, for instance, your transaction was made possible by IBM’s OS/2, an operating system that debuted 25 years ago and faded out soon after.

A recent federal review found that the U.S. Secret Service uses a mainframe computer system from the 1980s. That system apparently works only 60 percent of the time. Here’s hoping that uptime statistics are better for the ancient minicomputers used by the U.S. Department of Defense for the Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missile system, Navy submarines, fighter jets, and other weapons programs. Those systems, according to the consultants who help keep them going, will likely be used until at least the middle of this century.

Here are a few stories of the computers that time forgot, and the people and institutions that stubbornly hold on to them.

Punch-Card Accounting

Sparkler Filters of Conroe, Texas, prides itself on being a leader in the world of chemical process filtration. If you buy an automatic nutsche filter from them, though, they’ll enter your transaction on a “computer” that dates from 1948.

Sparkler Filters’ IBM 402, with self-employed field engineer Duwayne Leafley in the foreground. Sparkler’s IBM 402 is not a traditional computer, but an automated electromechanical tabulator that can be programmed (or more accurately, wired) to print out certain results based on values encoded into stacks of 80-column Hollerith-type punched cards.

Companies traditionally used the 402 for accounting, since the machine could take a long list of numbers, add them up, and print a detailed written report. In a sense, you could consider it a 3000-pound spreadsheet machine. That’s exactly how Sparkler Filters uses its IBM 402, which could very well be the last fully operational 402 on the planet. As it has for over half a century, the firm still runs all of its accounting work (payroll, sales, and inventory) through the IBM 402. The machine prints out reports on wide, tractor-fed paper.

If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It: Ancient Computers in Use Today | PCWorld

Guest post from: Kent Lara

I was so excited when my husband and I found out I was pregnant that I immediately went to the store and made a baby registry. I registered for everything I thought I would need for a new baby. However, as I talked to women at my work, as well as my sister and my mom, I realized that what I thought we needed and what we actually need are very different. I did not want to go back and forth to the store throughout my entire pregnancy to update my registry, so I decided that we needed to get internet at our house so I could update it from home. Thankfully my husband agreed and he did a search at work for “Internet Tuttle” and found out that we could get satellite internet at our house. That made everything so much easier. I have since changed the items on our registry several times. I guess I actually will not know exactly what I really need until the baby is here. It is nice to receive the gifts that I want for the baby.

DOJ approves Google, Motorola Mobility merger

By Rachel King | February 13, 2012, 2:09pm PST

Summary: Following a seal of approval from the European Commission, now the U.S. Department of Justice is reportedly following suit in the matter of Google’s proposed acquisition of Motorola Mobility.

Google could be well on its way to finalizing its proposed $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility.

Following the news earlier on Monday that the European Commission has cleared the way for the merger between the Android OS maker and its mobile OEM partner, now the U.S. Department of Justice has approved the deal as well.

Reported first via Twitter by Reuters technology correspondent Poornima Gupta, Google confirmed the news shortly later on its official blog.

The DOJ published a report after closing its investigation of this proposed merger as well as a few others, and all of them seem to have a common thread: patents.

After a thorough review of the proposed transactions, the Antitrust Division has determined that each acquisition is unlikely to substantially lessen competition and has closed these three investigations. In all of the transactions, the division conducted an in-depth analysis into the potential ability and incentives of the acquiring firms to use the patents they proposed acquiring to foreclose competitors…

DOJ approves Google, Motorola Mobility merger | ZDNet

Microsoft to launch Windows 8 Consumer Preview at MWC

By Mary Jo Foley | February 8, 2012, 10:06am PST

Summary: The Windows 8 Consumer Preview is launching in Barcelona during the Mobile World Congress on February 29.

Microsoft is holding an event at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona on February 29 to launch the Windows 8 Consumer Preview.

The event will be a two-hour affair (from 3 pm to 5 pm) on Wednesday.

February 29 also happens to be the last day of February. Microsoft officials have said the Consumer Preview, aka the public beta, is slated to arrive at the end of February.

Microsoft officials said last fall that Microsoft planned to deliver a developer preview (which went out in September), a single beta (the Consumer Preview), a Release Candidate and then release Windows 8 to manufacturing.

Microsoft officials continue to decline to provide a ship target for Windows 8, though it is widely believed at this point that it will be available on new PCs and tablets starting this fall.

Microsoft’s top brass also has continued to decline to say whether the x86 and ARM versions of Windows 8 will ship simultaneously. However, a member of the company’s communications team said this was the plan a couple of months ago.

For those asking whether the Windows 8 Consumer Preview launch will be Webcast, there’s no definitive answer at this time.  A spokesperson said when I asked: “There will be lots of online content on Microsoft News Center the week of February 29th. ”

I have to say, other than the fact that the MWC show happens to fall at the end of February, this strikes me as an odd place to launch the Windows 8 public beta. MWC is a gadget show. And sure, Microsoft wants to position Windows 8 tablets as mobile consumer gadgets — but supposedly Windows 8 is an operating system for business users, too, right?

Microsoft to launch Windows 8 Consumer Preview at MWC | ZDNet

Motorola Droid 4 Release Date, Price Announced By Verizon

The Huffington Post Jason Gilbert First Posted: 02/ 7/2012 1:29 pm Updated: 02/ 7/2012

The Motorola Droid 4, with its trademark slide-out keyboard, has gotten an official price and release date. The Droid 4 will be released on Friday, February 10, for $199 with a two-year Verizon contract.

Verizon has confirmed the price and release date of the newest Droid phone in a press release, touting the Droid 4 as "the thinnest and most powerful 4G QWERTY smartphone measuring at less than half an inch thin."

Among the other tech specs of note: a dual-core 1.2 gHZ processor; a 4.0-inch display screen; an 8 megapixel rear-facing camera and a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera; and Android 2.3.5 "Gingerbread" (no timeframe yet for Ice Cream Sandwich, though Motorola has stated before that it is "planning on upgrading as many of [its] phones as possible."

The real star of the Droid 4, and its single defining feature, however, is that slide-out keyboard, a five-row QWERTY keyboard with edge-lit keys.

The Droid series was first promoted as an iPhone alternative in 2009, positioning itself as a better phone for texting and productivity than Apple’s keyboard-less offering; Kevin Fitchard of GigaOM notes that this incarnation of the Droid is the first to support 4G LTE.

With its launch on February 10th, the Droid 4 will join another recent high-profile release from Motorola: The update to the Droid RAZR, the Droid RAZR Maxx, whose apparently incredible battery life has garnered rave reviews since the device debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January.

The Droid 4 will be available on Verizon in stores on Friday, February 10; Cnet notes that this coincides with a Verizon promotion that doubles the amount of data one gets for $30/month, from 2GB per month to 4GB per month. That promotion will be available to both new customers and existing customers signing new two-year contracts — perhaps, Motorola and Verizon hope, those picking up a new Droid 4.

Motorola Droid 4 Release Date, Price Announced By Verizon

Film is the past. Most of us have hundreds if not thousands of pictures in a shoe box or in albums either for display or somewhere in the attic. With the advent of computers and inexpensive  storage as well as great graphic tools turning paper pictures and photographs into digital files make sense.

It makes sense because a digitized photograph can be uploaded to digital albums and online albums. Digitized photographs can be used in power points to relate stories. Digitized photographs can also be imported into movie presentations for family reunions, business marketing, and much more.

Finding photo scanning services for photo scanning that will assist in moving photos to cd is not difficult at all. In fact your one stop shop for this should be ScanDigital.com. They provide all the necessary services to get the job done. The process is simple and can be found at http://www.scandigital.com/photography.php.

I have personally started the process of digitizing the photos myself. It is a daunting task. If you value your time you should not waste your time doing this yourself. Why not relegate it to a company who has experience and the equipment that can accomplish the task efficiently and timely.

Windows 8: Why the coming beta is likely to be labeled the ‘consumer preview’

By Mary Jo Foley | January 23, 2012, 11:38am PST

Summary: The coming Windows 8 beta is looking more and more like it will be called the “consumer preview.” Why the change in nomenclature?

Is Microsoft going to position the coming Windows 8 beta as a “consumer preview”? And if so, why?

Microsoft officials have repeated recently that the Windows 8 beta release is on track for late February 2012. But one public relations official with the Windows team provided a slightly different message — and one that escaped notice by most of those who read her quote — during the Consumer Electronics Show.

As reported by Pocket Lint, Windows Director of Consumer PR, Janelle Poole, stayed on message regarding Microsoft’s continued reluctance to talk about its release-to-manufacturing/ship targets for Windows 8. But, as Windows SuperSite’s Paul Thurrott noted last week, part of Poole’s message deviated from the usual script. Poole called the coming Windows 8 beta “the consumer preview.” Here’s her quote:

“We haven’t talked about the release date and we generally don’t. We are talking milestone to milestone, so for us right now we’re talking about the next milestone being the consumer preview happening in late February.”

If you know anything about the Windows org, you know words matter. This wasn’t a random throw-away.

My first question was whether it’s just the internal Windows consumer PR team calling the beta “the consumer preview” or if the Microsoft brass plan to do the same. I’m hearing that the Windows organization is highly likely to settle on “consumer preview” as the name for the late-February beta.

The bigger question — which Thurrott and I discussed during the most recent episode of Windows Weekly — is why Microsoft may label this the consumer preview.

Thurrott’s theory was that maybe the developer preview (the September Build version) will be followed by a consumer preview (the beta) and finally the enterprise preview (the release candidate).

Windows 8: Why the coming beta is likely to be labeled the ‘consumer preview’ | ZDNet

Jerry Yang resigns from Yahoo’s board of directors

By Rachel King | January 17, 2012, 2:15pm PST

Summary: Yahoo’s former CEO and co-founder appears to be leaving the company for good with his resignation from Yahoo’s board of directors.

Just a few months after the sudden (and forced) departure of former CEO Carol Bartz, we have another major resignation from Yahoo.

This time it is former CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang, who announced his resignation from the Yahoo board of directors — as well as all other positions within the company — effective immediately.

Yang wrote in a letter to the Yahoo board chairman Roy Bostock:

My time at Yahoo!, from its founding to the present, has encompassed some of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life. However, the time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo! As I leave the company I co-founded nearly 17 years ago, I am enthusiastic about the appointment of Scott Thompson as Chief Executive Officer and his ability, along with the entire Yahoo! leadership team, to guide Yahoo! into an exciting and successful future.

Yang also resigned from the boards of Yahoo Japan Corporation and the Alibaba Group, effective today.

Yahoo has had a major reshuffle at the top lately, most recently with the hiring of PayPal’s chief executive Scott Thompson as its new CEO.

Jerry Yang resigns from Yahoo’s board of directors | ZDNet

Guest post written by Ronnie Gibson

I’ve been writing poetry and short stories for a while now. It’s something that I kind of do in private and don’t exactly share with my loved ones, or even strangers in that matter. But I decided that it would do me some good to finally just take a creative writing class and get some feedback on my writing.

I’ve looked online for the right class to take and while I was doing that a few nights ago, I ran across some info on debtsettlementfamily. My family has been in debt for a few years and I really want to do something about it. So I’m going to use the services that I found online to help us with that.

I did find a good sounding and affordable creative writing class that I signed up for. I already have a few things ready that I think I might get the teacher to look at in addition to the stuff that I’ll be writing for the course. Plus, I think that I’ll also learn quite a few things just from taking the class.