OCC TECH NEWS
February 8, 2010
Google, the largest search engine company that also manages many other technologies, has stated that it is working on universal translator, for voice. The idea is not that new, but Google plans to be able to have the creation ready to use in a few years to come. As of now, many programmers are planning on using current voice detection software, like that seen on Android mobile devices. The problem however is when accents are used in different speaking languages, but fixes are planned to be implemented for the system in he following years upon release. Even instant translation is being expected, so users of the technology can have the new language spoken for them by a computer almost instantaneously. If this technology does in fact take off, it will be interesting to see the widespread use of it not only on vacation trips, but in phone calls across the world in everyday life, including business.
The iPad had been extremely hyped and talked about before its official announcement. However, a recent poll indicates that consumers are not as interested as they once were. The survey asked 1,000 people if they had heard of the iPad. After the announcement, 70% of people indicated they were not interested in the product, up from 61% before the announcement. The number of respondents who thought they needed the iPad remained largely unchanged, but an increasing number thought they did not need one. A further turnoff to consumers was the price premium for 3G access. On top of this news, an analyst following the iPad at Credit Suisse believes Apple will drop the price early on if the early adopters do not come out. An announcement like this would put me off from buying one to get it for a lower price. Regardless, the iPad should be very popular and will find its way into many hands. There are always people who will buy the latest gadgets just to have them.
The Nook, the e-reader from Barnes & Noble, is finally available to consumers again. The Nook had been available for purchase before now, but demand for the device caused some delays. The device is currently available and listed as in stock on the retailers website, and should be in stores sometime this week. The Nook enters the market that has long been dominated by the Kindle from Amazon, and will soon face further competition from Apple among others. The influx of devices in this sector should prove beneficial to both consumers and book publishers. The competition will likely keep prices down, while the publishers will be able to play the devices against each other to get prices they deem fair.
 Today IBM has finally launched their anticipated Power7 processors. You can expect quite a punch from this new processor, especially since servers are becoming more and more demanding as time passes by. The processor is made up of 8 physical cores, which are able to execute four threads per core meaning a total of 32-Threads. This shall rival Intel’s 8-Core Xeons, which have a total of 16-Threads. This new chip contains technology from their own, old Cell processor, "We took some of that genetic material from the Cell program--ways to do floating point (calculations)--and embedded that right into the Power7 core," said Bradley McCredie. They won’t be able to be bought separately though, you’ll have to purchase them in servers directly from IBM themselves:
• IBM Power 780: a new category of scalable, high-end servers, featuring an advanced modular design with up to 64 Power7 cores.
• IBM Power 770: a midrange system with up to 64 Power7 cores, featuring higher performance per core than Power6 processors and using up to 70 percent less energy for the same number of cores as Power6 processors.
• IBM Power 755: a high-performance computing cluster node with 32 Power7 cores.
February 6, 2010
 Chassis manufacturer NZXT has unveiled its latest products, premium cables and case fans. First up is the new family of premium cables, consisting of various VGA, PSU and HDD cables. All cables are sleeved in black and are designed to offer easy cable management and enhanced airflow. Next is the range of case fans which incorporate nine fins and rifle bearings for effective cooling. The fans are available in 120mm, 140mm and 200mm variants.
The Chief Designer at NZXT, Johnny Hou says "Our new line of premium cables eliminates the need to sleeve cables on your own and provides a simple solution that will enhance aesthetics, improve cable management and increase airflow so internal temps remain low. Additionally, our new high performance fans provide our enthusiast community additional options when choosing effective airflow for their rig."
The NZXT range of premium cables and case fans will be available this month ranging between $2.99 and $14.99.
SilverStone has unveiled a new hybrid drive which claims to boost HDD performance by up to 70%. The drive connects virtually any 2.5" SSD to any 3.5" HDD to enable users to experience the benefits of both drives. The device, named HDDBoost creates a mirror of the HDD's front end data onto the SSD to allow the computer to access data in under a millisecond. This effectively combines the strengths of both drives: fast data seek times and a large capacity, accelerating the HDD by up to 70% depending on the SSD's speed, according to SilverStone. The HDDBoost hybrid drive is only available in Japan at the moment, but if it works like SilverStone says I'd expect it to be available in other countries soon. And at $50 (€37) it looks like an interesting gadget to try out.
February 5, 2010
Aided by the upcoming iPad, book publishers are standing up to Amazon's pricing model for e-books. Amazon wants to have a $9.99 price point for e-books, while the publishers want to charge more. Regardless of the price Amazon will still collect 30% of the sale price. Hachette joins Macmillan as the first two publishers to follow the so called “agency model.” Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. stated that the deal worked out with Apple for iPad distribution will allow for more flexible pricing. Steve Jobs has said that publishers can set their own prices, with Apple taking 30% of the price to cover distribution costs.
Facebook, the site which seems to never stop growing celebrates its 6th birthday today. The social networking site now boasts 400 million users, according to founder Mark Zuckerberg. Events planned for the occasion include a party at Facebook headquarters and "a handful of new things" for the site, such as a top menu and a "Windows Explorer-style" left menu. A complete list of the recent updates can be viewed here. Lets face it, Facebook is a part of many of our lives and we just wouldn't be the same without it. So here's to many more years of Facebook!
February 4, 2010
The SlingPlayer Mobile app, which allows users to view television streaming on their iPhone, has made its return to the iPhone. The app was originally removed after it was ruled to have violated the AT&T terms of service, and it was also an intense bandwidth hog. Sling Media made changes to the app that allowed it to stream video over 3G using less resources than it previously had. Also coming out of this announcement is the information that AT&T will soon publish a list of wireless network optimization requirements. This move is likely an attempt to provide relief to a network that many claim cannot support the iPhone.
During yesterday's earnings call, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and COO Steve Burke announced that in order to rebuild the company image, they were simply going to rebrand as XFINITY. Ok, that isn't exactly how the announcement went, but it might as well. Beginning next week Comcast TV, Internet, and Digital Voice products will begin carrying the name XFINITY. Yes, you'll be seeing XFINITY TV, XFINITY Internet, and XFINITY Digital Voice. The rollout will begin in 11 markets (Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Hartford, Augusta, Chattanooga, parts of the Bay Area and San Francisco) with more markets to come later this year.
...XFINITY, the new brand for our technology platform and products. Simply put, XFINITY is about offering our customers more — more HD, more speed, more choice and more control over their services. XFINITY is the culmination of years of work to transition Comcast’s network and products to a platform that will now offer 100+ HD channels, 50 to 70 foreign-language channels, approaching 20,000+ VOD choices, incredibly fast Internet speeds (50 Mbps growing to 100+ Mbps) and thousands of TV shows and movies online for our customers to watch whenever and wherever they want.
Of course, the new brand is open to all kinds of interpretation. "Finity" is that for infinity or finite? Yes, yes, it is clear Comcast wants to play on word infinity in an attempt to play up the claims of having the fastest high-speed internet and offer a lot of TV channels, HD-TV options, and VOD stuff. But what is the "X" for? Expensive? Excessive? Excruciating? Extreme? Ten? Christ? Or "X" could simply represent a mathematical variable based on what a consumer is willing to pay.
February 3, 2010
Game sales fell about 8 percent this year compared to the previous year. The data was collected from the top 3 gaming markets, the United States, Japan, and the UK. Even though the gaming sector as a whole declined, it could have been much worse if not for Modern Warfare 2, which sold nearly 12 million copies. Other top games included Wii Fit and Wii Sports Resort. The news isn't all bad, however, as a good portion of the drop in sales can be attributed to the 57% decrease in sales of PS2 games. The PS2 has been out for almost 10 years, and many gamers have likely moved on to newer consoles.
 Cooler Master is introducing a new line of power supplies designed for upper- and high-end gaming systems. The Cooler Master GX Series power supplies will be offered in 550W, 650W and 750W models, although Cooler Master has said it will only offer the two latter models in the U.S. The PSUs feature a single 12V rail designed to power dual graphics card systems whether you're running a SLI or CrossFireX setup. The 750W model comes with NVIDIA SLI certification and offers four PCI Express power connectors.
The GX-series power supplies are all up to 85% power efficiency and are 80 plus rated. The units also feature bulk capacitors with a >17ms hold up time which means that the power supply will be able to handle peak loads better, low noise dual layer EMI filters that reduces noise in the power lines and an energy efficient dual mode Active PFC/PWM controller. Cooling for each unit is provided by a single 120mm fan and all are backed by a five-year warranty. Cooler Master didn't provide any pricing or availability information.
February 2, 2010
As we hope, OLED display devices are the way of the future. They produce higher quality images, better colours, the brightest whites and the darkest blacks. Only problem is, it’s expensive and not as profitable as LCD TFT displays are. LG plans to release 20” OLED displays in the later part of this year, with 30” displays coming in 2011 and 40” coming in 2012, although Engadget has reported that they will be coming this year as well, but we’ll have to wait and see. Soon, the largest OLED screen to be available at retail is LG’s own 15” TV. It’s only 0.1” thick, but will come at a hefty price of $2,000 which is at least more reasonable than Sony’s $2500 11” display. Still, we can only be assured by that fact that the 20” TV will cost a whole lot more, definitely into the $3000 range, possibly even more. Stick around for hopefully some more news later on throughout the year.
Ever since Apple introduced the new 27 inch iMac, it has been plagued with problems. Notably cracked screens, yellow screens, and other graphical issues. Apple tried to fix the issue in December, but users reported that the issues that Apple hoped the firmware could fix were still affecting their systems. Firmware updates of course couldn't fix the cracked screens. Another firmware update has just been released, which Apple hopes will solve all remaining problems. I still don't get how companies can let issues that seem to happen to so many consumers out the door without catching them in testing.
February 1, 2010
Nothing keeps on giving like a thoughtful gift of technology and what better way to celebrate this Valentine's Day than with the gift of a new computer courtesy of Thermaltake and its partners ZOTAC, Western Digital and Patriot Memory.
Thermaltake is giving away three systems based on its small form factor Element Q chassis with 200W power supply. The system makes use of the ZOTAC ION platform motherboard which combines the power of the NVIDIA ION graphics processor with Intel's Atom processor. Patriot Memory has equipped each machine with 2GB of PC2-6400 low latency memory. To top it of, Western digital is providing its Caviar Green 2TB hard drive. Each unit will also contain a DVD-RW with the only thing left for you to provide is your favorite brand of operating system. To go with the Valentine's Day theme, the Element Q cases will feature a unique paint job to remind your special someone of your love and affection.
In order to participate in the contest you need to head to the Thermaltake "Be Our Valentine" page and follow the instructions for becoming a fan of the sponsors on Facebook. The contest runs from 2/1/2010 through 2/8/2010 12PM PST and the prizes will be awarded that day with plenty of time to receive your prize by Valentine's Day. So hurry up and check out the contest page.
SAMSUNG Electronics, a provider of a wide range of products have announced the development of 30nm DDR3 DRAM in 2 Gigabit (Gb) densities. The new modules of RAM will utilise voltages from either 1.5V down to only 1.35V, for all types of computer systems, including Desktops, Laptops and Servers. "Our accelerated development of next generation 30nm-class DRAM should keep us in the most competitive position in the memory market," said Soo-In Cho, president, Memory Division, Samsung Electronics.
Another advantage of having DRAM in such a small fabrication process is that yields greatly increase by up to 60% than 40nm DDR3 DRAM, and even double the cost-efficiency of 50nm and 60nm DRAM. The claimed total reduction in power will be up to 30% less than for 50nm products and a 4 Gigabyte (GB) module will only use up to 3 Watts per hour. Soo-in Cho added, "Our 30nm-class process technology will provide the most advanced low-power DDR3 available today and therein the most efficient DRAM solutions anywhere for the introduction of consumer electronics devices and server systems." Production will start in 2H 2010.
January 31, 2010
The year long exclusivity deal Microsoft had with Rockstar over the Grand Theft Auto 4 DLC is soon coming to an end. PC and PS3 gamers will be able to get their hands on The Lost and The Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony on March 30. The two games will be available individually or as a pack on the PlayStation Network and Games for Windows Live. The exclusivity deal cost Microsoft $50 million, but with a $20 price tag on each DLC it surely recouped most of its investment, if not turning a large profit. There is no word on pricing, but it will likely be similar to whatever the current price is on the XBOX 360.
January 30, 2010
January 29, 2010
January 28, 2010
The demos presented at the iPad reveal were plentiful. One that was particularly interesting was the Need for Speed: Shift demo from EA. The game was adapted from the iPhone version and features several improvements. The larger screen provides for better graphics as well as more items that can fit on the screen. This is evident from the multi-touch gear shift and rear-view mirror. The team at EA was able to accomplish all this in just 14 days. An EA VP has stated that the possibilities opened up by the large multi-touch screen will allow games to run better on the iPad than they might on other hand held gaming systems. Scrabble was a game that was mentioned for the ability to have several people play together. I can't personally get too excited about Scrabble, but the technology available should bring some interesting games from developers.
January 27, 2010
AMD has been struggling the past few years, releasing nothing new or innovative for quite a while. All that will hopefully change in 2011 with the release of Bulldozer. Until then though, AMD will have to hold out with 4 new processors based on the Thuban chip. The TDP of these chips ranges from 95-125W, depending what version you get. Three of these processors will be native Hex-Cores, while one of them will be a Quad-Core with two cores disabled. We're not solid on the frequencies of what they will run at, but they will be named as Phenom II X6 1035T, 1055T and 1075T and the Phenom II X4 960T. Unfortunately no other details are available yet, but hopefully will be closer to release.
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