3 Tech Stories You Should Read Today (4/13)

Here is a new feature on the site. Every day, we are going to feature three must-read stories. Some got a lot of attention, some flew under the radar.  In general, we are going to aim for stories that are interesting and provide background information about current trends in the world of tech.

Have ideas for stories we should feature here? Email us at tips@siliconfilter.com


Please Stop Saying ‘Cloud’

Redmondmag.com’s Don Jones talks about his feelings when he hears the word cloud:

“Okay, we need a serious dose of reality here. I just finished a customer engagement where the company’s IT director, in no uncertain terms, told me that his company was having nothing to do with “the cloud.” I nodded, and asked why. Turns out he’d recently attended a tech conference, where the keynote address (according to him) was basically summed up as, “no company is going to outsource their IT to the cloud.” He agreed that outsourcing his IT was a bad idea, and so no cloud for him.”

An Interview With Twitter’s Forgotten Founder, Noah Glass

Silicon Alley Insider got an exclusive interview with Noah Glass, “the Twitter co-founder you’ve never heard of.” Glass talks about the earliest days of Twitter and how he was pushed out of the company by Evan Williams.

“Odeo was supposed to be a podcasting platform. But then Apple launched iTunes and everyone at Odeo panicked. Williams told everyone: come up something for us to do next! Along with Jack Dorsey and a developer named Florian Webber, Glass pitched something called Twitter. Glass came up with the name. Williams liked it enough to put Glass in charge. The product became Glass’s obsession. He told Williams he wanted to spin it out of Twitter as its own company.”

Related (also from Silicon Alley Insider): The Real History of Twitter. A good story, especially for those who didn’t follow the ups and downs of Odeo back in the day.

A5: All Apple, Part Mystery

The most detailed look at Apple’s A5 processor yet. Highly technical but more than worth a read (or just Instapaper it for the weekend).

“Bold is the only word that can be used to describe Apple’s A5. It was bold to design such a large device. Certainly the CPU+GPU combination is significantly larger than the comparable portion of the A4. However, this is only the beginning of the story. Going beyond these basic elements leaves an additional 34 mm2 or 64 percent of the whole A4 die. Yes, there are very likely additional IP cores there, but there might also be some clever custom design that leverages Apple’s integrated approach.”

Image credit: losmininos