What IT skills and roles could be well-known this year? Recruiters share the inside track. 10 Jobs Destined For Robots (click image for larger view) Sorry, IT job-hunters: If you are hoping for startling predictions about what 2014 has in store, you’re probably going to return away dissatisfied. That’s because it’s unlikely there’ll be any seismic shifts that totally upend the technology skills, roles, and titles that employers want. “There’s nothing that i’d say is the recent ‘hottest thing ever’ ” coming in 2014, said Jack Cullen, president of IT staffing firm Modis, in an interview. Indeed, much of what follows should sound familiar. This might be an even thing. Earth-shattering predictions have a knack for missing the mark. (Apocalypse 2012, anyone?) So the job-market calls that Cullen and other industry experts shared with InformationWeek are more realistic and more useful in case you are in quest of a brand new position in 2014. Here they’re, in no particular order: 1. Big data experts. Yesterday’s... Read More »

As PayPal transforms itself for transactions over smartphones and other mobile devices, it’s found Node.js to be an indispensable tool. PayPal was undergoing a makeover for roughly two years now, and the company’s senior director of user interface design, Bill Scott, says Node.js has become one of many top tools in its transformation. Scott, a former head of Netflix e-commerce user interface design, says Node is an indication of the deeper changes underway at PayPal. One of Scott’s assignments at Netflix was designing an ideal way for Sony PlayStation 3 owners to download movies. Other than creating one user interface to check, his team came up with four and tested they all with PlayStation users. He said in an interview with InformationWeek that the one who won was not the single the developers would have chosen. The tale shows how he prefers to select technologies that let him to experiment and test different options quickly. Scott described how PayPal has used Node.js, in addition to... Read More »

What TV technologies will shine at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show? Take a sneak peek. The annual Consumer Electronics Show starts January 7, and we have already got quite a lot of hints about what TV technologies are inclined to make an appearance. Here’s a listing of 5 tech trends to observe for at CES 2014. 1. HDMI streaming sticks. Google gave everyone the proverbial swift kick within the pants when it launched its Chromecast streaming stick. Now copycat products are on their way. We all know that Alticast plans to demo an HDMI dongle, while Arris Group has hinted at an identical product inside the works. LG Electronics announced a handle Azuki Systems last summer to bring a collaborative HDMI adapter product to market. Prepare for dongles on parade! (See Arris RDK Boxes Coming Soon and Azuki, LG Counter Google Chromecast.) 2. 4K TV everywhere. It is not just the television display companies with the intention to be showing off their ultra-high-definition wares at... Read More »

Pivotal takes on Cloudera and Hortonworks with GemFire XD, enhanced SQL querying, and new machine-learning options in Pivotal HD 2.0. 8 Datacenters For Cloud’s Toughest Jobs (Click image for a bigger view and slideshow.) Pivotal, the EMC spin-off company pursuing modern application development within the context of cloud computing and massive-data analysis, on Monday released Pivotal HD 2.0, an update of its Hadoop distribution incorporating an in-memory database and a battery of latest analysis capabilities. Pivotal HD 2.0 is the vendor’s first distribution in keeping with Apache Hadoop 2.2, the newest release of the open source platform incorporating YARN system resource management controls. The discharge also integrates and supports Apache GraphLab, an open source framework for derivatives monitoring, recommendations, and graph analytics. The big news, however, is the addition of GemFire XD, an in-memory database designed to execute algorithms and analytics on data in real time. Blending elements of Pivotal’s GemFire (in-memory object grid) and SQL Fire (in-memory database), GemFire XD puts a SQL-compliant, in-memory... Read More »

Philip Rosedale’s new startup, High Fidelity, hopes to make virtual worlds mainstream by clearing technical hurdles that Second Life stumbled over. Second Life founder Philip Rosedale says he knows why the virtual world did not achieve mainstream acceptance. He’s got a plan to do it again, and do it right this time.  You remember Second Life. It is a so-called “virtual world,” a 3-dimensional digital environment where people drive cartoon-like “avatars” to chat, role play, dance, play music, make art, create virtual landscapes, buildings, and vehicles, do business, make fortunes, or even have cybersex. Evangelists predicted in 2006 to 2007 that it’d be as big because the web itself, and shortly we’d all be living our lives in virtual worlds.  Second Life proved bewitching for plenty people. i used to be one in every of them. But the general public sneered. It’s still around, and it got lots right, but it’s mostly forgotten. But not by Philip Rosedale. The boyish, 45-year-old Second Life founder stepped... Read More »