Up-to-date, often plagiarises a bit
May get diverted into opinions
Sometimes inaccurate (like all encyclopedias)
Wikipedia gets its info from its references
Once you have the basic idea, start following the references
e.g HomePlug is a standard about ethernet over domestic power lines
It references Technical whitepapers
Slashdot carries technical news stories
What is LTE? - emerging mobile technology
What's happening with patents? - ongoing changing issue
What's a patent pool?
What's a patent troll?
"Byte" was a fantastic source of technical information, back on at www.byte.com "
Dr Dobbs was a similar one, more oriented to software, that survives as a web journal
Others such as Linux Journal now only has online existence
They all tend to be short-range and narrow in focus
The IEEE and the ACM are the primary international professional organisations for IT
The ACS is the major IT professional organisation in Australia and is recognised by the Australian government
All have journals, conferences, workshops, training courses etc
All are high-value, and cutting edge
You may have to work hard backtracking through references to get good overviews
For current technology overviews see IEEE Computing and Communications of the ACM
Don't ignore the popular scientific (but high quality) journals such as
Individual vendors want to sell you stuff, and so may exaggerate the benefits and ease of their products
e.g. Texas Instruments sell Low-Power Bluetooth devices and say things like
" Bluetooth low energy is an emerging open standard under development by the Bluetooth SIG that will offer state-of-the-art communication technology..."
"Though Bluetooth low energy is a separate standard from Bluetooth, it can be easily integrated into existing Bluetooth chipsets and is poised for extensive roll-out in cellular phones and Bluetooth-enabled devices in 2010."
The phrases "state-of-the-art", "easily integrated" and " poised for extensive roll-out" are all potential advertising-speak
Standards bodies play a significant role in the adoption of new technologies
"Standards are great, everyone should have one" Bob McWhirter
There are several major organisations in IT: the IETF, IEEE, W3C, Apache
There are always new ones popping up, e.g. cloud computing has several including the Open Cloud Consortium , OGF Open Cloud Computing Interface Working Group and Open Group Cloud Work Group
The Internet Engineering Task Force is responsible for internet standards
This is a highly technical engineering group
The World Wide Web Consortium is responsible for many Web standards, including
Presentation: HTML 5, Cascading Style Sheets v3, XML, Video and Audio
Protocols: HTTP, Web services, REST
Semantic Web: RDF, OWL, Web 3.0
Scripting: JavaScript, AJAX, DOM
The Apache organisation not only builds the server, but also
Jakarta for Java servlets
Hadoop for "for reliable, scalable, distributed computing"
SpamAssassin
Subversion: one of many open source distributed software development version control systems
Struts "is a free open-source framework for creating Java web applications"
Some mailing lists, blogs and technical websites can also be of value, but often short-range
Code Project : free Software development and Design articles
Tech Web : "The Global Leader in Technology Media and Business Information"
internet.com Tech Alerts : The Network for Technology Professionals
Whirlpool : Australian broadband news and information
Network Computing : "For IT by IT"