sloan

MIT Sloan CIO Symposium takes on mobile, data, clouds

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Most discussions about where computing is and where it's going end up touching on three big themes: mobility, big data, and cloud computing. Yesterday's MIT Sloan CIO Symposium was no exception, whether those precise terms were used or not.

Perhaps the most striking example of just how rapidly mobile devices are forcing IT organizations to adapt came from Scott Griffith, the CEO of Zipcar, who said that "60 percent of interactions are now through an Android or an iPhone." He also noted that essentially BlackBerry's entire share had shifted to Android over a … Read more

What the universe looked like 11 billion years ago

It's hard to imagine what the universe looked like 11 billion years ago, especially when I have trouble imagining what I want to do this weekend.

Scientists with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey are helping out by creating what they say is the largest 3D map of our universe. They did so by relying on ancient light emanating from quasars situated many eons away.

Quasars are extremely bright, remote objects that are often referred to as a "galactic nucleus" and emit incredible amounts of energy. A total of 14,000 quasars were tapped to create the map, and mapmakers used them in conjunction with interstellar hydrogen gas clouds that absorb light as it travels to Earth.

The detail in the map is based on wavelengths of quasar light that are absorbed by hydrogen gas clouds, revealing specific wavelengths of light and the distance between each. The result is a stunning 11-billion-year-old cosmological model. … Read more

Wikimedia Foundation gets $500,000 donation

It's been a good week for the coffers of the Wikimedia Foundation.

On Tuesday, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced it was giving $3 million over three years to the organization that runs Wikipedia.

And on Thursday, top-dog venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and his wife, Neeru, said they were going to donate $500,000 to the foundation.

This is good news for an organization that has been recently criticized over its finances, particularly from those who say founder Jimmy Wales may have played a little fast and loose with the foundation's credit card when it came to personal … Read more

Sloan Foundation gives Wikimedia Foundation $3 million

Talk about hot foundation-on-foundation action.

On Tuesday, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced it was giving the Wikimedia Foundation--which runs Wikipedia--$3 million.

The money will go toward supporting "Wikimedia's organizational development and help to increase the quality of its content and the reach of its services."

Among other things, the announcement said the money would go specifically to a new Wikipedia feature called "flagged revisions," which will "allow experienced editors to publicly and visibly grade the quality status of articles--in effect, functioning as a kind of 'nutrition labeling' for Wikipedia content."

I … Read more