Features Information Technologies

Brian Anderson has spent a whole lot of time in kitchens, and one recent afternoon was no different. Except, on this particular day, the one he was sitting in was a rough-hewn mock-up made of plywood, blue painter’s tape and hand-written signs designating where items such as “future braise #1” and “soup #3” would go. […]

We’ve all been there, at the back of a grocery store checkout train, texting loved ones not to file a missing person report; or doubling back through the aisles in search of an overlooked item. According to Paul Scorza, those hassles will soon be in the past, thanks to innovative technologies designed to make the […]

Editor’s note: A year ago or so, Toggle did a story on the Windy City, which also turned out to be one of the most connected cities; so sophisticated it can check the temperature between neighborhoods and use that data to tell which areas should be snowplowed first. Below is an update from Chicago on […]

Yorck Haase has been in IT since what he calls the “dawn of the internet” in the early 1990s—back when, if you owned a PC, you were among the techiest of techies. It was the evolving nature and continuous emergence of new technologies that drew him in; he loved getting his hands into increasingly complex […]

Several years ago, spurred by growing student demand, the faculty and students of Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College (WITC) were invited to The Next Generation of Learning Town Hall to give feedback on how to bolster the school’s technology capabilities. One by one, attendees wrote their wish lists and concerns on pieces of paper, sticking each […]

Jeremy Walczak says the brakes on a car aren’t just for stopping, they’re for letting you accelerate with confidence. His philosophy regarding information security isn’t so different—strong security measures don’t just protect, they let a company aggressively pursue its goals, he says. Walczak is the mechanic tuning up the brakes on Buffalo, New York-based Independent […]

Nearly 50 years after Corning Glass Works unveiled the first fiber optics, the world’s wireless revolution sure feels like a permanent one, with providers offering ever-faster speeds at relatively stable prices. As with any upheaval, however, there is a downside: by 2020, a full 31 billion devices—everything from phones to cars to refrigerators—will be internet-connected, […]

If you’ve enjoyed a heaping helping of pulled pork with slaw on a bun at one of the many Sonny’s BBQ restaurants in the Southeast, you probably weren’t thinking: Compliments to the chief information officer. Understandable enough; your gratitude just naturally tended toward the pitmaster who sliced, seasoned and smoked the meat on an oak-infused […]

Throughout his 20-plus-year career, Eshwar Pastapur has operated on a sort of special ops basis: Parachuting in, so to speak, to a company, and helping to solve a technological challenge. It keeps him interested in and dedicated to his work as a respected IT leader, and it landed him at his current position as CIO […]

Depending on whom you ask, a college degree is either an overpriced piece of paper—a ticket to 20 years of hemorrhaging salary to pay down student loans—or an absolute must, without which professional success is near-unattainable. As the narratives surrounding higher education become ever more muddied, millions of would-be undergrads are left searching for clarity; […]