By Jay Fidell We've lost so many things in recent years: an airline, an interisland ferry, a second daily paper, a symphony, a refinery, Dan Ino­uye.
By Mike Meyer We started paying attention to BoxJelly, the 307-A Kamani St.-based co-working spot in Kakaako, back in 2011.
By John Agsalud "Big data" is the latest in a long line of new technologies to take the world by storm. While the promise of big data is as grand as its moniker, many wonder how to get started on such an endeavor.
By Beau Monday Ransomware is a type of malware that some analysts predict will be the most prevalent in 2013. Hackers use it for a number of scams, including planting pornographic images on computers and "locking" them, making it impossible to use or shut down the devices without pulling the power cable.
By Jay Fidell We all know water is getting scarce around the world. The population is growing by more than 75 million persons a year. Demand for water is growing twice as fast.
By Mike Meyer Shannon Pierce is a striking person. She's tall, blond, smart and entrepreneurial. A former attorney with Wilson Sonsini, a top Silicon Valley law firm, she's now at Goodsill Anderson Quinn & Stifel, where she is counsel in the areas of technology transactions and intellectual property.
By John Agsalud Often referred to as a choice between “best of breed” and “single vendor,” both sides offer compelling arguments. The arguments for single vendor focus on compatibility and cost.
By Beau Monday Cybersecurity threats are becoming increasingly targeted and sophisticated, which means businesses, individuals and government need to be vigilant and proactive in deterring breaches that could be devastating.
By Jay Fidell Judging from the recent rhetoric, we seem to be in a state of cyberwar coexistence with China. What are the risks? What role can Hawaii play?
By Mike Meyer It's time for a look into the future to see what technologies will make it this year. Last year we predicted that LTE, the real 4G cellular technology, would flourish. It's now a growing percentage of cellphone sales.
By John Agsalud Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer recently announced that she was eliminating telecommuting as an option for more than 11,500 of her underlings.
By Beau Monday Smartphones, tablets and mobile devices are revolutionizing the business landscape and how employees engage with their employer, customers and each other.
By Jay Fidell AMOOC is a free massive open online course. There are hundreds of MOOCs, many coming from the best schools in the country. MOOCs have gone global in the past year, and millions of students are taking them.
By Mike Meyer In the past few years, tourism, Hawaii's No. 1 economic driver, has adopted greener, more sustainable ways of doing business and attracting visitors to boot.
By John Agsalud The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's recent announcement of a major security flaw in Java was the latest in a series of shots across the bow of the venerable computing platform.
By Beau Monday Facebook recently generated a lot of buzz when it unveiled its new search function "Graph Search." The new feature, which has been enabled for only a small list of beta customers so far, allows Facebook users to enter queries to find information about friends, friends of friends, or people who have public Facebook profiles.
By Jay Fidell The state's High Tech Development Corp. operates the Manoa Innovation Center on land leased from the University of Hawaii. The 20-year lease expires in 2015.
By Mike Meyer As everyone knows, last year ended with Sandy ripping the East Coast to shreds. I have no doubt that Sandy's destructive power reinforced the notion of how vulnerable we are in the Aloha State.
By John Agsalud The concept of "Big Data" has been bandied about for a couple of years now. Many organizations have explored, if not implemented, methods to take advantage of this idea.
By Beau Monday Give your computer a fresh start to the new year by following these simple steps.
By Jay Fidell The sinking of the Hawaii Superferry will soon be 4 years old. Are we ready to try again?
By Mike Meyer When the holidays come it's all about family. At this time of year, I can't help but get a little misty-eyed when I think of my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and those in the distant past who made me what I am.
By John Agsalud A key component when negotiating with a software-as-a-service provider or hosting facility is the Service Level Agreement. SLAs, however, are used for more than just vendor-customer relationships.
By Beau Monday By now everyone knows what a phishing email is — one that attempts to lure you to a fraudulent website under the pretense of winning a prize, or claims it can help fix a problem with your online account.
By Jay Fidell In the fifth year of the Clean Energy Initiative, its progress is now being undermined by contention. Wind and photovoltaic give us 200 megawatts, but they, as well as the undersea cable, agricultural biofuel, liquid natural gas and geothermal, are in contention.
By Mike Meyer As it turns out, local kids are not only good at surfing. They shine when it comes to creating robots. Hono­lulu Community College students Harris Oka­zaki and Ryan Yamada, who participated in the 21st annual International Micro Robot Contest in Nagoya, Japan, made this evident.
By John Agsalud The advent of social networking has provided a method for many businesses to advertise on the cheap. A social networking presence, however, is sometimes obtained unknowingly, and can be a dual-edged sword.
By Beau Monday The average Internet user regularly visits 25 different password-protected sites but uses only six different passwords.
By Jay Fidell Hawaii has some tough problems: traffic congestion, the rail controversy, energy costs, the ravages of obesity and shrinking disposable income. Bicycles could be a broad solution, right under our noses.
By Mike Meyer When people ask me what's going on in the tech community, I never hesitate to say, "There's a lot of young entrepreneurship."
By John Agsalud In this age of the Internet, businesses and government agencies face increasing pressure to keep their systems up and running at all hours.
By Beau Monday If I asked you to name the most dangerous behavior you could engage in over the Internet, what would you say?
By Jay Fidell A wildfire of anti-American uprisings from Libya to the Philippines is not the Arab Spring we wanted.
Social media is something we're all told we need to market our goods and services, but few small businesses really get around to tapping its potential.
By John Agsalud As cloud computing matures, it's become pretty clear that the heaviest use of the technology is around Software as a Service, or SaaS. Many business functions are provided by SaaS, chief among those sales management, accounting and human resource management, including payroll.
By Beau Monday Have you ever been surfing the Internet, minding your own business, when suddenly a pop-up appears, warning you that you have a virus? And, as luck would have it, the pop-up offers a downloadable tool that will cure your ills — for a small fee, of course.
By Jay Fidell The word "robot" used to evoke the 1920 play "R.U.R.," "Rossum's Universal Robots," by Karel Capek (from the Slavic "robota" for serf labor) and Isaac Asimov's 1942 "Three Laws of Robotics" (coining the term "robotics").
By Mike Meyer It has been more than a year since Amazon.com announced that sales of electronic books had overtaken those of printed versions for the first time.
By John Agsalud A key catchphrase when defining computer system requirements is "timely."
By Beau Monday Imagine your phone rings one evening and the caller addresses you by name claiming to be from Microsoft (or one of Microsoft's partners). He says the company has detected a serious security problem on your computer and asks you to open your computer's event log.
By Jay Fidell As the University of Hawaii medical school was going up in 2002, Dean Ed Cadman recruited Duane Gubler, a world-famous researcher in tropical and infectious diseases, to come and build an infectious disease laboratory in Hawaii.
By Mike Meyer As an educator, I've watched the popularity of online learning go ballistic over the last few years. Online tutorials are efficient, available 24/7, and you can replay them till they sink in.
By John Agsalud At the risk of overstepping the boundaries of a business technology column in this election year, we'll compare and contrast the concepts of "outsourcing" and "offshoring."
By Beau Monday Hackers are increasingly targeting children to spread viruses and malware on the Internet.
By Jay Fidell On July 19, George Ari­yo­shi, 86, will be honored by the East-West Center for his dedication to strengthening the bonds between Asia and the United States.
By Mike Meyer Raising money for nonprofits is big business in Hawaii. Every organization faces this task whether it's buttoned-down professionals on Bishop Street or guys in board shorts in Kaimuki.
By John Agsalud LinkedIn.com's recent announcement that its user passwords had been hacked sent shivers through the World Wide Web community.
By Beau Monday If you could prevent a risk that had a 70 percent chance of putting you out of business, would you? About that percentage of small businesses close within a year of suffering a computer system breach.
By Jay Fidell This fourth year of the Clean Energy Initiative is a good time for the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum to look at what's working and what's not. That's what HEPF will do at its fourth Clean Energy Day at Laniakea on July 6.
High above the Hamakua Coast, beneath the windy slopes of Mauna Kea, is a young koa wood forest.
By John Agsalud Like a hungry lion coming over the hill, massive amounts of data are hitting businesses and government agencies at an increasing pace.
By Jay Fidell In 1955, student elections at Forest Hills High School were memorable. The front-runner for president was Chester Brewsky. The cheerleaders extolled his virtues; posters and pamphlets praised his name. He was wildly popular, even though no one seemed to know him personally.
By Mike Meyer The social media revolution has taken Hawaii — and the rest of the world — by storm. As we all know, it's not just the kids who spend hours communicating with their friends.
By John Agsalud With the increasing popularity of smartphones and tablet computers, businesses and government organizations are faced with a dilemma.
By Jay Fidell Last week ThinkTech and the Hawaii Venture Capital Association presented a program titled “The Press Weighs In on Rail,” with Mayor Peter Carlisle, then two panels of journalists.
By Mike Meyer Ever since Business Week published a landmark article in June 1975 titled "The Office of the Future," we were led to believe the dream of the paperless office was only a matter of time.
By John Agsalud Like any good netizen, if you live in Central Oahu and need a widget, what do you do? Of course, you crack open your favorite search engine, whether it be Google, Yahoo, Bing or, let's face it, Google, and run a quick search.
By Jay Fidell Our energy goals are commendable (the state hopes to get 40 percent of our energy from renewable sources by 2030), but the real deadline will be determined by the cost of imported oil, now at $103 per barrel.
By Mike Meyer The growth of Hawaii's alternative energy sector over the last few years has been nothing short of spectacular.
By John Agsalud So-called viral videos have been around for nearly two decades now, but it seems as though such content has greatly increased in the past year. Many folks have tried to capitalize on viral videos, but there are very few examples of success.
By Jay Fidell To Mayor Peter Carlisle and all 2012 candidates for mayor: If you haven't noticed it, our congestion is getting worse. It's clogging up our highways and economy. Rail is not the answer. What are you doing to deal with the congestion?
Nowadays everyone, even grandma, logs onto YouTube. Not only does it convey popular culture (such as those too-cute cat videos), but it has increasingly become an important medium for businesses to deliver their messages.
By John Agsalud Years ago, we received a rather disturbing letter from a mainland-based employee working for one of Hawaii's most important and prominent companies.
By Jay Fidell Social networking has created groups on just about everything, so why not a tech Facebook group in Hawaii? It's therefore no surprise that the month-old Hawaii Innovation Alliance already has signed up more than 500 members.
By Mike Meyer Last year was all about social networking and cloud computing. And yes, that was the year you got your first iPad. Technology moves at lightning speed, and the landscape can change in a matter of months.
By John Agsalud Apple recently announced that the iPad3 will be released in March. As its moniker suggests, this is the third generation of the computer. To many this means the comfort level with the platform enables it to be used for critical business applications.
By Jay Fidell That we are an island state is perhaps our greatest strength. Islands, and island states, are fragile. By definition they're isolated and vulnerable and have to work harder to stay on the same page.
By Mike Meyer It's impossible to escape the influence of social media. As a more "mature" member of the tech community, I must admit it took me a few years to get with the program. I cubby-holed Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and the like incorrectly as something for kids.
By John Agsalud On Saturday the U.S. and other nations will recognize Data Privacy Day. This is a good opportunity to remember to keep your personal data safe and sound. While new scams seem to come out daily, we continue to be amazed by the number of folks who still fall for tricks that have been around for years.
By Jay Fidell Although photovoltaic provides only a small part of Hawaii's base load, it is going center stage for the 2012 Legislature. In popularity, PV is the leader of renewables, even though it's the least firm and most costly of the front-runners.
By Mike Meyer It's that time of year to wipe the slate clean. Instead of asking you to make promises that you can't keep, I'd like to suggest that you look at your home office and make a few investments in your security and productivity.
By John Agsalud Walk into any meeting with more than a couple of people nowadays and what do you see? That's right, electronic devices of every kind, laptops, tablets and smartphones. While this may seem foreign or even rude to old-school business folks, the fact of the matter is that this is now standard operating procedure.
By Jay Fidell At the hands of the Friends of Lanai, Lanai has been doing ritual seppuku. Now the word is that David Murdock, owner of Castle & Cooke, is putting Lanai up for sale. This is dire news for the people of Lanai.
By Mike Meyer For those who haven't been to Ala Moana Center or any other shopping meccas lately, be warned that it's pretty crazy out there in brick-and-mortar land.
By John Agsalud When evaluating someone to install their systems or develop software, organizations often wonder whether the prospective firm or individual is qualified to do the work. While not a universal solution, IT industry certifications are often a meaningful barometer.
By Jay Fidell The blockade at Kaunakakai is an outrage and should not be tolerated. On Nov. 26 a seagoing assemblage blocked a 145-foot tourist cruise boat from landing on Molokai, demanding that it stay away until "the community can hash out its concerns over the direction of the tourism industry."
By Mike Meyer One of the most common cliches heard (especially around the holidays) nowadays is "TMI," which of course means "too much information." In short, we're all overloaded.
By John Agsalud While computers have shown incredible progress in utility since inception, there is still a tremendous amount of potential to be realized.
By Jay Fidell Here's a story of perseverance, then of pure luck, told to us at the HVCA-ThinkTech Update on Agriculture on Oct. 27 and now being played on ThinkTech on OC16.
By Mike Meyer We've all seen them around town: groups of young people (or not so young people) in animated conversations at Starbucks, Coffee Talk or other caffeine-fueled gathering places. They are there for the Wi-Fi and the java, but often it's not just a social event. In the tech world it can be serious business.
By John Agsalud Information technology has always been a bastion for confusing buzzwords. Adding to the confusion, buzzwords often have multiple definitions or even change meaning over their lifetime. Of course, we're referring to the aptly named "cloud computing."
By Jay Fidell Local biofuel is the latest target in the war against renewables, and now the state Public Utilities Commission has issued a ruling based on its concern that biofuel will cost too much. Is that concern valid or shortsighted? Will it take us forward or back?
By Mike Meyer In our last column we looked at several new USB 3.0-ready external drives from Western Digital and Seagate. These are must-haves for home offices and small businesses that need to speedily back up reams of data. The caveat is that to get the most efficiency out of them, you'll need to plug in a USB 3.0 port on your desktop.
By John Agsalud Walk through any business or government agency and there is one thing you are guaranteed to see on at least one person's computer display. That's right, Facebook.
Sempra Generation has announced that it wants to build 300 megawatts of photovoltaic energy on Oahu, enough to rival Big Wind. Should we now run to that side of the boat? Is that the path we’re on? Is this the next step? Does anyone know where we’re going? Do you?
By Mike Meyer In a recent “Tech View” column, I suggested that readers with a small business or home office avail themselves of hard drives as an inexpensive data insurance policy. The same goes for the new crop of low-priced USB 3.0-ready external drives.
By John Agsalud Despite the incredible advances in technology, the methods by which systems are implemented have not changed. Although cloud computing is all the rage, certain processes still need to be followed to ensure a successful systems implementation.
By Jay Fidell Ten years after 9/11 is a time for introspection and rededication. Hawaii should do that, too, not only about 9/11 but about how we can get going on a clean energy economy for the future.
By Mike Meyer Cloud services are a much-discussed subject in technology and business circles. However, there's one question about the cloud service revolution that is often asked but rarely answered.
By John Agsalud Ever since computers were put into widespread use, many businesses and government agencies have put IT-related costs high on the list when looking to cut costs. This has been true whether the economy is booming or in recession. The fact of the matter, however, is that IT is the last area that should be cut and carefully thought-out expenditures will pay off.
By Jay Fidell The new Android phones are starting to eat Apple's lunch. Apple knew the Androids could go beyond iPhone, so no surprise. But with the iPhone 5 and some advanced Androids coming out in September, will Apple stay on top?
Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, famously said, "You can never be too rich or too thin.
By John Agsalud Walk into any office nowadays and what do you see? Or, more to the point, what don’t you see? Wires. Computers, printers, keyboards, mice, even display monitors are capable of operating wirelessly. Wireless technology has matured to the point of ubiquity, but that’s not to say it’s perfect. Several considerations should be explored when implementing wireless solutions.
By Jay Fidell The East-West Center is under attack, and there are those in Congress who would like to see it eliminated. Our delegation defends the center, but what will happen when our senior senator isn't there?