The brutal economic downturn that’s being called “The Great Recession” is, at least in a technical sense, over. Online advertising and IT spending are inching back up, and many tech companies have seen their stock prices more than double from the lows reached in March. Even if it’s not the most robust of recoveries, it’ll do. So why are tech companies suddenly slashing jobs again?

The past couple of months have brought a renewed surge in job cuts at technology companies, including many that were undergoing second or third rounds of layoffs. Take AOL: It laid off 700 workers in early 2009. Earlier this month it cut another 100, followed by news this week that additional 1,000 would go. Those layoffs may cut operating costs, but they’re not exactly a cheap undertaking. AOL said that, all told, it will incur $283 million in restructuring charges. Continue »

Android is like a snowball rolling downhill — it won’t be long before it’s moving too fast for anything to stop it. That movement is surely going to spread from the smartphone sector, where Android has its roots, to that of smartbooks. Knowing this, ARM and the Android folks have put their heads together and formed the Solution Center for Android Alliance. Continue »

As compute demand increases, demand for power in data centers is soaring. To help IT professionals halt the spread of watt-consuming servers, the industry needs to develop software that can communicate the ways in which the various layers of the data center perform and interact. They need a binary version of Cesar Millan — a data center whisperer.

Speaking at a panel held Wednesday night in Austin, Texas, several folks from the large server shops and a distinguished engineer who runs a data center for IBM spoke about the challenges of keeping power consumption down in a world where computing demand is going up. (For a truly in-depth look at this topic, check out our GigaOM Pro report — subscription required.) The panel went beyond just power and cooling (thank goodness) to focus on how companies are increasingly viewing power consumption in the data center as a whole, rather than merely as the sum of of the data center’s processors. Continue »

Layoffs are cropping up all over the tech industry, with workers at companies ranging from AOL to Adobe to Microsoft getting pink slips. But while most people know to turn to the big online job boards and social networks ranging from LinkedIn to Facebook to help land a new gig, there are a lot of off-the-beaten-track online paths that can be taken as well. Below are 12 proven tech job search resources that you may not be using yet. Good luck! Continue »

You’ve gotta hand it to Google: The company is never shy about throwing the proverbial spaghetti against the wall to see if it will stick. Over the years, it’s introduced countless projects that have gone through long beta cycles only to fail miserably — or achieve a degree of success far below what was expected. Google Docs, for example, was supposed to topple Microsoft Office, and is still predicted to do so, but if that ever happened, I missed it.

Next year, Google will introduce one of its most ambitious projects yet: Chrome OS (GigaOM Pro, subscription req’d). There are quite a few misconceptions going around about the new operating system, among them that it’s aimed squarely at Microsoft’s operating system hegemony. It’s not. Chrome OS is targeting netbooks, not desktop and server systems. Still, the operating system includes some bold gambles from Google. Here are four of them. Continue »

Air Canada is testing an in-flight Wi-Fi service from Aircell on its flights between Toronto and Los Angeles and Montreal and L.A. From now until Jan. 29, passengers can plunk down $9.95 per flight to surf on a laptop and $7.95 to access the Internet on smaller devices such as a smartphone or WiFi-enabled media players like the iPod touch. AirCell also provides its GoGo in-air Wi-Fi service on Delta and American Airlines flights in the U.S.

And because Aircell currently only has regulatory approval and the antenna coverage that enables airlines to offer Wi-Fi in the U.S., Air Canada passengers can only get their Wi-Fi fix when flying over U.S. soil. Perhaps that accounts for the slight discount on Air Canada’s prices for Wi-Fi when compared to American’s charge of $12.95 for in-flight access.