2008 Technology Innovation Awards

The Wall Street Journal's 2008 Technology Innovation Award winners included Salesforce.com's Force.com software tool suite, which enables companies to build their own specially tailored business applications that are developed and delivered over the Internet. The cloud computing service enables companies to access computing power on an as-needed basis. Globalstar's Spot unit earned an award in the consumer electronics category for the Spot Satellite Messenger, a handheld device that transmits preprogrammed messages such as "I'm OK," along with users' whereabouts. Software that tests for security holes in new applications by searching for flaws in binary code netted an award for Veracode, and company co-founder Chris Wysopal says the method offers the accuracy of source code analysis without the need for disclosing proprietary source code. The winner in the network/Internet technologies category was Xsigo Systems for hardware and software that allows the replacement of physical cables in a data center with virtual connectors, each of which is capable of mimicking the performance of up to 14 separate cables. Dispersed Storage software from Cleversafe won for a technology that allows sensitive computer files to be stored more securely and reliably by slicing them up and sending the slices, which by themselves are unreadable to unauthorized parties, over the Internet to multiple storage locations on a network. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology professor Jane Royston says the software "could be an important part of Internet data storage systems." The winner in the wireless category was Tata Consultancy Services' mKrishi service, which can supply crop advice to farmers in rural India via cell phones using a combination of remote sensors, a voice-enabled text-messaging service, and a camera phone.