Punxsutawney Phil’s shadow was MIA, which points to an early spring in our future. But we’re a little skeptical of wagering our bets on the absent shadow of a groundhog, in spite of his good track record (and what was up with last weekend’s blizzard? Oh, Phil!). Weather, life in general, it’s all unpredictable, and your data can be caught in that unforeseeable cyclone and annihilated before you can say, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

Ajax is “Asynchronous JavaScript and XML”. If you’ve ever used Microsoft Outlook Web (OWA), then you’ve used AJAX. Microsoft wrote OWA with hidden embedded web requests, so OWA could get and display new mail without refreshing the page all the time. Within a few years, everyone was doing this in several different ways. Microsoft was a pioneer, but AJAX is not Microsoft technology.
We’ve heard the phrase “one in a million” but how about “one in a quintillion”? Now there’s a term that will make you feel microbial.