Saturday, April 23, 2011

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) violated patent rules by using Linux in its backend servers.

A number of software giants who are using Linux kernels from different providers without owning the proper rights are expected to face patent violation issues in future.
The jury said that Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) violated patent rules by using Linux in its backend servers. The search giant has been ordered to pay an amount of $5 million to Bedrock Computer Technologies, a Texas based small business. This may be the  beginning of many future disputes.


Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) company shares are currently standing at 525.1.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Has Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) entered healthcare sector too?

Has the search giant Google unwittingly entered the health care sector?

I visited the doctor recently to seek medical advise and the doctor said that I can find a lot of health related information on Google. I am not sure if the doctor was trying to impress me with his knowledge of the IT world or he was simply too lazy to provide with good advice. No matter what his reasons were - healthcare providers are turning to the web to provide more information related advise.

Recently, I have received invites from my friends to join this new social networking site which provides health advise. Visit http://www.livehealthclub.com/ to find out more. Surely, health concierge services are on the rise and it may not surprise me that Google with its huge reputation may extend its dominance to this sector through a variety of partners.

Needless to say, what the doctor meant was that the information was readily available in the World Wide Web rather than on Google. What this basically means is that Google will continue to extend its dominance into other sectors and coner stone its competitors.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

HP (NYSE: HPQ) Poised To Capitalize On Apple, Amazon Lessons

HP’s new CEO, Leo Apotheker, sees the broad pattern that Apple represents and seems to position HP (NYSE:HPQ) to do what Apple did — both in the enterprise and consumer business. A distinct departure from Mark Hurd.



HP is well positioned to be a dominant player in the cloud space with an assortment of partnerships from software vendors, ISPs and other service providers

Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) downgraded to Neutral from Buy

Nomura expects Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) to guide Q2 below Street estimates given weak PC demand and for enterprise PC and server demand to moderate in 2H11. Price target lowered to $22 from $27.

Intel (NASDAG: INTC) Talks About Itanium and Xeon E5 CPUs

Just before this year's Beijing Intel Developers Forum closed its gates, the Santa Clara chip giant held one last keynote which reaffirmed the company's support for the Itanium architecture as well as the Q4 release of the first Xeon E5 processors.


During the presentation, Intel (NASDAG: INTC) admitted that its Xeon processors have come to catch up, and even surpass, Itanium in terms of reliability and performance, but the company still believes there is a place for this chip in the server world.

This is true especially for customers who need to run HP-UX (NYSE:HPQ), OpenVMS, HP NonStop and other mainframe operating systems that have full support for the Itanium architecture.

In addition, although the Itanium market represents only a fragment of the total x86 server shipments, this still accounts for about $4 billion US, which is considerably more than AMD's (NYSE:AMD) share of the same market segment.

“The Tukwila product is on the market place now, Poulson will double the performance [of Itanium product line in 2012] and we have the Kittson in development.

“But now Xeon is in the space when there is no workload on the planet that Xeon cannot handle,” said Kirk Skaugen, vice president of the Intel architecture group and general manager of Intel's data center group.

Poulson is Intel's first processor to feature more than 3.1 billion transistors, occupies a die area of 544mm2 and, during the keynote, Intel even presented a wafer that featured the new chips.
In addition to Itanium, Intel also wanted to reassure everyone that all is in order with its upcoming Xeon E5 processors and that these will be available by the end of the year.
The Xeon E5 CPUs are based on the Sandy Bridge EP architecture, feature up to eight processing cores and are targeting multi-socket servers. (via Computer Base)

HP (NYSE:HPQ) poised to take market share from Apple’s (NASDAQ:APPL) iTunes

PreCentral is reporting that HP (NYSE:HPQ) has sent VIP contacts a PowerPoint presentation which details features and functions being developed for the HP TouchPad, Veer, and Pre 3. It turns out that in that presentation HP also unwittingly revealed its plans for a cloud-based music and movie service. The service will cache tunes most likely to be accessed by a user to their device and even let folks listen to tracks not yet purchased. Will HP beat Apple (NASDAQ:APPL) and Google to the punch? With HP’s widespread channels and distribution, it may just edge out some market share from Apple’s iTunes.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Intel Redeploys Itanium Engineers to Xeon Projects

Intel Corp's (NASDAG: INTC)  officially claims that Xeon processors may offer better level of performance and availability than the company's Itanium. According to people with alleged knowledge of the matter, Intel had been specifically reappointing engineers from the Itanium teams into development of Xeon central processing units (CPUs).


"Nearly all the Itanium engineers, save a small development team working on Poulson and then rotating over to Kittson, have been redeployed on Xeon-related projects," said person with knowledge of the situation, who wanted to remain anonymous.

At Protegesoft, we have migrated our flagship application Financial Portfolio Builder and have optimized it for the Xeon Chipset. With Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL) and RedHat (RHT) withdrawing their support for the Itanium architecture, the commercial viability for Itanium market is suspect.

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) chips away Intel’s (NASDAG: INTC) chip market share

FOR many years, Moore's Law was regarded the sacred rule of information technology. It predicted that industry advances would require a doubling of chip capacity every 18 months. 

The law was named after Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel, who first postulated the idea in 1965. Unfortunately for Intel, the company paid too much attention to the law and too little attention to what was really going on in the consumer electronics world. Personal computers, the old industry standard, were becoming eclipsed by mobile Internet devices like tablets and smartphones that required a new kind of chips.

Intel officials attending the annual Intel Developer Forum held in Beijing last week admitted with some embarrassment that Moore's Law no longer holds true. 

"It's a pity that we looked forward, but we acted at a slow pace," said Ian Yang, Intel China's president.

It was a remarkably frank admission from the world's biggest computer chip maker, a company that many think blew the opportunity to position itself early in the market for chips operating on mobile Internet devices. That market is now dominated by the likes of Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and ARM.

For past decades, Intel developed chips for computers and set market trends because of its huge market share and influential sway over the industry, The company captured around an 85 percent share of the computer chip market, especially after it developed products for netbooks - super mobility computers with basic Internet functions.

Moore's Law might have held true for Intel had not seen the tablet computer suddenly burst on the scene. When Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) launched its iPad globally last year, the industry framework changed dramatically - and not in a way favourable for Intel.

Compared with the traditional computer and the lightweight netbook, the iPad provides users a long battery life, touch screen and huge amount of online applications that add up to a popular user experience.

For the industry, it has boiled down to a battle between computing power and user experience, and Intel is finding itself on the wrong side of the trend.

Intel has focused its chip development on computing ability and now the firm isn't able to provide a chip with what is known as "good enough" power consumption for mobile devices.

"'Good-enough computing' has become a firm reality," said Jay Chou, an analyst at IDC, a research firm. "The real question PC vendors have to think hard about is how to enable a compelling user experience that can justify spending on the added horsepower." 

In 2010, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)  sold 15 million iPads. In the United States, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) 's mobile computer sales, including iPad and Mac laptops, have surpassed that of Hewlett-Packard, the world's No. 1 PC maker.

In the past two weeks, Lenovo, RIM, Motorola and other companies have launched their own tablet computers in China. 

Acer was the latest to join them with a new line of tablet products unveiled last Friday. Most tablet products now feature ARM chip architecture and Qualcomm chips, though Apple uses its own chips. In short, Intel has been bypassed. 

The popularity of tablets and even smartphones is hurting PC sales, a segment that Intel heavily depends on at present. 

Global PC sales fell 1.1 percent in the first quarter compared with the same period last year, according to Gartner.

IDC estimates PC sales have fallen 3.2 percent because consumers are flocking to the newer mobile technologies. 

The consumer wave has not only hit Intel but other industry players who put their faith in Moore's Law.


Source: Shanghai Daily

Saturday, April 16, 2011

System Integrators are monolithic creatures soon to become relics in this fast changing world.

You are not very smart if you’re running a Systems Integrator business or a professional services company. You either need to be super large global player (like Accenture), or a national icon (like Infosys) or you might as well get out of business. With project risks underwritten by large SI firms, the burden to deliver projects on time within budget is onerous. The perennial issue of project and scope creep is always there which erodes any profit margins, actual or imagined. And if you come from the old-school of giving the client superior customer service at any costs; it may really cost you an arm and a leg. Good luck!

Let’s face it – there is always someone who can deliver at a fraction of what it costs you internally. So it makes sense to outsource, right!  Given the time, everybody gets it right anyway. Besides, your client knows someone, a niece or cousin or somebody who can do it within a week for next to nothing. Seriously, I do believe them – there are real people living in India, Vietnam, China, Ukraine or the Philippines who can do it at unbelievable prices. The difference is so vast, you will begin to start asking, what’s our obsession with superior client services or CMMi Level 5 and all that jazz. There is one business maxim – ‘Businesses seek optimal returns’.

If you a marginal player in the industry, you become the price taker. In fact, even the large players are not immune from this problem. It is a matter of time arbitragers equalise any price premiums in the market place. Get out before it’s too late. 

In my next blog, I’ll discuss about where I think we are going to gravitate to in the near future.  i.e. where the money is!

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Free2move announces wireless sensor-logger for humidity & temperature monitoring Addresses requirements for monitoring of buildings, machinery and sensitive goods

2011-04-15, Free2move Holdings AB

The Ison™ is a new member of Free2move’s FS800 family of ultra-low power wireless
sensor technologies with advanced sensor and logging capabilities. The sensor can
store up to 10,000 log-points with simultaneous humidity and temperature
measurements into its protected memory. Log-intervals are configurable and alert
threshold values are configurable. It is self-calibrating and maintenance free. In its
most advanced variant, it can provide battery life in excess of 30 years.
The small size of the Ison™ along with its wireless reporting of sensor data makes it
possible to conceal it within building structures, from where it can report humidity and
temperature variations. It may also be employed for the monitoring of warehouses,
transportation environment, healthcare, sports facilities as well as industrial
environments. Logged sensor data can be uploaded to USB, WiFi or LAN compliant
reading devices at a range of up to 100 metres (300 feet) in free air.
The Ison™ supports both on-demand reporting and alert reporting. On-demand
reports are mainly used for compliance verification and for statistical measurements.
Alert reports are used for operational rectification and preventive maintenance; for
instance to prevent dew-point issues in electrical installations.
“We are delighted that initial orders for the Ison™ have already been secured and the
product has started shipping”, says Martin Harnevie, Chief Executive of Free2move’s
RFID unit. “Strong interest has been received from the construction sector, marine
technology sectors, agriculture, consumer goods manufacturing, and healthcare.”
An evaluation and development kit for Ison™ is also available from Free2move.
About Free2move
There are two subsidiaries of Free2move Holding. Free2move AB is a global provider
of wireless audio communication products and Free2move Asia is a global provider of
wireless sensor and RFID technologies.

More information
For more information please see www.free2move.us. Or contact Martin Harnevie, +60
19 312 9026, martin@free2move.us or Per-Arne Wiberg, +46 702 20 33 82, perarne.
wiberg@free2move.se.