Windows 8 is grabbing good press across the net for the features disclosed at the Windows Build Conference earlier this week. With the exception that it still doesn’t work right with the drivers for some of our equipment, Windows 7 was certainly an advance over Vista and XP. We particularly appreciate its fast loading time compared to Vista, which, it sometimes seemed, would grind on and on for interminable lengths.

Windows 8 will boot in about 8 seconds, due to a new method that puts the kernal session to sleep rather than shutting it down completely so that it needs to completely reboot. Eight seconds! Now that’s an improvement we like.

Here’s a video demo of the quick startup:

Other features in Windows 8: it provides an Android like touch and swipe method with a picture password for unlocking your PC, as opposed to the text password used now.

The lock screen will display your battery information, time, instant messages and email you missed while away, and upcoming calendar events. Here’s a slideshow Windowof all the changes.

UNC Chapel Hill launching Virtual Digital Humanities Lab

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will launch a new virtual Digital Innovations lab that will encourage collaborative, interdisciplinary and innovative digital humanities projects.

Brett Bobley, director of the Office of Digital Humanities at the National Endowment for the Humanities, will give a free public talk Oct. 10 to celebrate the kickoff of the Digital Innovation Lab, which will be affiliated with the American studies department in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences. Bobley will speak at 2 p.m. in the University Room of Hyde Hall, home of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, located off East Franklin Street.

The Digital Innovation Lab will encourage the production of digital “public goods”: projects and tools that are of social and cultural value; can be made publicly available; are scalable and reusable; and/or serve multiple audiences. One immediate focus will be the use of large-scale data sources – maps, newspapers, city directories, public records – by scholars and the public in understanding the history of communities. The lab, accessed at http://digitalinnovation.unc.edu,
was created with a startup grant from the college.

“Digital technologies have the potential to transform how our faculty in the humanities ask questions about the world, engage with local communities, create learning environments for our students and collaborate with partners within and beyond the University,” said William L. Andrews, Ph.D., senior associate dean for the fine arts and humanities in the College.

The lab will build on the nationally funded digital humanities work of its UNC co-directors and co-founders – Robert Allen, Ph.D, and Richard Marciano, Ph.D. Allen is the James Logan Godfrey Distinguished Professor of American studies, history and communication studies. Marciano is a professor in the School of Information and Library Science and affiliated professor in American studies and director of Sustainable Archives and Leveraging Technologies (SALT).

Cloud storage firm Zetta lands $9M round

Sunnyvale, CA-based Enterprise cloud storage provider Zetta today announced that it has raised $9 million in its third round of funding, bringing the total funding to $31.5 million. Both existing investors Foundation Capital and Sigma Partners participated. Funds from this new investment will be used for sales, marketing and product development that will help the company increase market share of its award-winning cloud backup services in the small-to-medium business (SMB) market.