Tuesday, March 31, 2015

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IBM takes internet of things to the enterprise

Posted: 31 Mar 2015 02:31 AM PDT

Screen Shot 2015-03-31 at 10.30.39Space isn't the final frontier for IBM these days – it got out of storage, printers and even PCs years ago.

But just because it doesn't do what it used to do it's difficult to discount its influence and power.

Today it said it will plunge three billion dollars over four years to create an internet of things unit – and guess what – it will be a cloud based unit.

IBM said that it has already pioneered "smarter planets" and "smarter cities", focusing on water management and making shops easier to walk around.

IBM's unit will use its experience to help its customers integrate data from what it described as an "unprecedented" number of IoT andother sources.

It will build an open platform.

Bob Picciano, a senior IBM suit, said: "Our knowledge of the world grows with every connected sensr and device, but too often we are not acting on it."

He estimates that 90 percent of data generated by tablets, smartphones, cars and appliances is never analysed. This may be a good thing in our view, but Picciano thinks not.

"As much as 60 percent of this data begins to lose value within milliseconds of being generated," he said.

Where have we been?

Posted: 31 Mar 2015 01:51 AM PDT

Actually, we’ve always been around but re-directing to our sister magazine, Channel Eye and re-directing there.  But now the twins are living separate lives again, once the redirection is done.  So see you here!  And there!

Doom over for PC industry says Intel

Posted: 16 Jul 2014 02:03 AM PDT

Chipzilla is telling the world+dog that the worst is over for the personal computer industry.

Intel forecast third-quarter revenue above Wall Street’s expectations.

Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith told Reuters that PC sales had stabilised and he expects shrinking demand from consumers in China and other developing countries to rebound, just as it recently has in the United States.

Of course the tame Apple Press claims that it is all to do with how Apple created a mobile revolution with the launch of its keyboardless netbook in 2010. There was talk of a “mobile revolution” which tied with the downturn of the worst PC sales in years.

While many believed that the fall in PCs was because of the increase in mobiles, some of us thought that the two were a parallel development. PC sales fell because of company retrenchment during an economic downturn, while consumer sales went up as punters searched for the latest shiny thing. PC sales have risen as companies are forced to upgrade their dying machines. PCs are cheaper and attempts to bring in BYOD policies for mobile gadgets proved pretty useless.

Intel now expects the market’s recovery to help it grow its full-year revenue about 5 percent, slightly higher than prior expectations.

Chief Executive Officer Brian Krzanich told analysts on a conference call that improved demand from companies replacing old PCs would last at least through the end of 2014.

Intel increased its share buyback program by $20 billion. It wants to buy $4 billion of stock in the current quarter, thinking tht there will be more interest in “two in one” devices with detachable keyboards and screens.

Intel said in a statement it expects third-quarter revenue of $14.4 billion, plus or minus $500 million. Analysts had expected $14 billion on average.

Revenue from Intel’s PC group rose 6 percent in the quarter while its data centre group, a big contributor to gross margins, had revenue jump 19 percent.

Chipzilla’s profits have been made without much interesting in its mobile offerings. Intel said its mobile and communications group’s revenue fell 83 percent to $51 million and had an operating loss of $1.12 billion.

Intel’s second-quarter revenue was $13.8 billion, compared with $12.8 billion in the year-ago quarter.

Chipzilla posted second-quarter net income of $2.8 billion, compared with $2.0 billion at the same time last year. 

Microsoft’s job cuts are going to be nasty

Posted: 16 Jul 2014 01:35 AM PDT

It is starting to look like the expected job cuts in Redmond are going to be severe and a lot worse than those announced by Steve Ballmer in 2009.

Ballmer made the controversial decision to release 5,800 voles back into the wild with many saying that slimming down was not needed.

Now it looks like Chief Executive Officer Satya Nade’s cuts are going to be much worse. Part of his cuts will be as a result of integrating Nokia Oyj’s handset unit. More than a thousand Nokia workers are expected to be given their P45s and pink slips.

Rumours are that the reductions will probably be in engineering, marketing and areas of overlap with Nokia.

Nadella, who took over from Steve Ballmer in February, flagged the cuts last week and said that Vole would have to become more focused and efficient.

His first company mission statement called for greater emphasis on mobile devices, cloud computing and productivity software as consumers and businesses buy fewer personal computers to check e-mail, browse the Web and access data and software.

“Nothing is off the table in how we think about shifting our culture,” Nadella said.

Some of the job cuts will be in marketing departments for businesses such as the global Xbox team, said the people. The European Xbox team is based in Reading, UK.

The company had 127,104 employees as of June 5, after adding about 30,000 in its acquisition of Nokia’s handset unit. 

TechEye downed by flying ants

Posted: 15 Jul 2014 11:32 AM PDT

Your super flyaway mag TechEye has been down for a few weeks.

Sorry about that. We’ve been filing stories on our sister pub channeleye.co.uk in the interim.

But now we’re back after we put our boots into the database and kicked it back into the land of the living.

So stick with us. We’re the original, and the best!

 

Windows 9 rumours abound

Posted: 15 Jul 2014 11:19 AM PDT

Software giant Microsoft has been hinting that it will make changes in Windows 9 which should satisfy those who are using Windows 7 and will not upgrade.

While Windows 8 has been a disaster for Microsoft because it forced desktop users to conform to a tablet format and download Apps which did not function as well as their desktop version.

Word on the street is that Vole is planning to further merge the Modern UI with the desktop in Windows 9 and might reduce the OS’s use for tablet users.

According to WinBeta  the cunning plan is that tablet users will see the demise of the desktop in Windows 9.  Instead Microsoft is set to replace Win32 applications with Modern UI alternatives in Windows 9, meaning Windows is set to get a full on Modern UI facelift when it rolls around next year.

This means that the desktop will no longer have a place for tablet users running Windows RT.

This fits into rumours regarding Windows Phone and Windows RT becoming one operating system. This would see Windows Phone devices and Windows RT tablets run the same operating system with no desktop.  If the device hardware requires it, a cut down version of the desktop will be available, but this is not likely to be seen much.

Vole is apparently worried about Chrome OS.  It wants to make Windows Phone free, and Windows RT being merged with it.  This will use this as the cheaper alternative for OEMs to sell tablets and cheap laptops too.

These laptops will run apps from the Windows Store just like on Chrome OS, which is limited to Chrome OS apps, the Windows Phone/RT devices will be limited to Windows Store apps.

This means that Windows 9 will be different depending on the hardware you use and you will only see a desktop if you are actually on the desktop.

Word on the street is that Microsoft will allow Modern UI apps to run in the desktop, in windowed mode, and have Modern UI apps pinned to the Start Menu instead of a Start Screen.

Intel’s eight core plans revealed

Posted: 30 Jun 2014 01:12 AM PDT

While Intel is about to release some of the first processors based on its Haswell-E specifications, it is starting to look like they will not be the eight core fiestas expected.

Of the three Haswell-E Core i7 CPUs expected, only one of them, the Core i7-5960X, will actually come with 8 cores, and that is the one which will cost an arm and a leg to buy.

The Core i7-5960X and the other two, the i7-5930K and i7-5820K, will contain only six cores.

Dubbed the Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition, the flagship CPU of the first Haswell-E lineup and will have two more cores and four more threads than the company’s current Ivy Bridge-E based Core i7-4960X Extreme Edition processor.

Built around the 22nm Haswell architecture, this new 8-core CPU will head to the deep-pocketed gaming community.

The Core i7-5960X will be clocked at a 3.0GHz base, with a 3.3GHz boost frequency. It will also include support for the latest DDR4 2133MHz memory, and 20MB of L3 cache as well. In addition, its power rating will be 140 watts TDP, or only 10 more watts than the 6-core i7-4960X.

The new DDR4 memory controller resides on the processor and the RAM is directly connected to the CPU. The DDR4 modules themselves use only 1.2 volts of power, compared to DDR3’s 1.65/1.5 volts.

The two other Haswell-E Core i-7 chips are 6-core, 12-thread processors. Aside from clock speeds, their specifications are primarily the same. The i7-5930K runs at 3.5GHz, about a 3.9-4.0GHz boost, but it is nearly half the price. The i7-5820K, will run at a 3.3GHz base, with a 3.6-3.8GHz clock boost. It will list for around $300. Both will support a 15MB L3 Cache.

So the question is what is it about eight cores that make shelling out that sort of money cost effective? At that price Intel has priced the 8-core i7-5690X out of mainstream machines.

All three processors will be compatible with Intel’s upcoming x99 chipset and motherboards. We expect them out during the fourth quarter.

It is possible however that next year will be the year of the less-expensive, 6-core CPU. 

South Korea gives up on Microsoft

Posted: 30 Jun 2014 01:10 AM PDT

South Korea is using the fact that Windows XP is no longer supported as a reason to walk away from Microsoft completely.

According to a government statement, South Korea wants to break from its Microsoft dependency and move to open source software by 2020″

In a statement the government said that it will invigorate open source software in order to solve the problem of dependency on certain software. The government has invested in Windows 7 to replace XP, but it does not want to go through the same process in 2020 when the support of the Windows 7 service is terminated.

Korea has a long way to go. So far it has not even bought in the standard e-document format which is widely seen as stage one.

However it seems that the government hopes to lean on the creation of a “local open source alternative” which basically means designing its own Linux fork.

Under the plan support will be provided so that it will be possible to freely connect to the Internet with all operating systems and browsers by 2017.

Starting next year the pilot open sources OS project will be carried out for 10 public and private institutions, and the expenses related to employee education and systems will be supported.

By 2018, the government is planning to review whether the introduction of open source software for PCs reduced expenses and institutionalise the result so that the open OS-related private project can be further expanded. 

Schmidt hits Cuba

Posted: 30 Jun 2014 01:08 AM PDT

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt made a secret visit to Cuba as part of his campaign to get all sorts of black listed stamps into his passport.

Schmidt has been touring authoritarian governments with less-than-favourable internet access, in a bid to get them to join the internet revolution.

In doing so he has ignored US laws which have forbidden its citizens from traveling to Cuba or spending any money within the country. The US was always miffed that it lost a fortune when its corporate backed puppet government in Cuba was overthrown by a Communist revolution.

Even though the cold war is over, the ban remains in effect, mostly because of a politically powerful Cuban ex-pat community.

Schmidt has made controversial visits to North Korea and Myanmar to promote internet freedom, and has previously spoken out against online censorship happening in both China and India.

Schmidt was joined by a crew of former Google employees as well as author Jared Cohen. Schmidt and company were apparently there to get a tour of Cuba’s University of Information Sciences in Havana and discuss life within the country.

Less than three percent of Cuba’s population has access to the internet, which is expensive. Google has been looking at ways of increasing internet access in developing countries lately and it might have been that Schmidt was interested in talking to the Cubans about the project. 

California allows Bitcoin

Posted: 30 Jun 2014 01:07 AM PDT

A Californian law has removed a ban on using currencies other than the US dollar.

The new law will allow for the growing use of alternative payment methods such as bitcoin.

Signed by state Governor Jerry Brown, the new law will boost confidence around bitcoin, as regulators and tax authorities worldwide examine how to handle it.

For years Section 107 of California’s Corporations Code has prohibited companies or individuals from issuing money other than US dollars.

The bill was introduced by Assembly Member Roger Dickinson who said that digital currencies, community currencies and reward points were technically in violation of the law but not penalized.

Amazon’s Coins to Starbucks‘ Stars were cash alternatives and were illegal too.

In March, the US Internal Revenue Service said it will treat bitcoin as a form of property for tax purposes, rather than as currency, making it subject to similar rules as stocks and barter transactions.

Those receiving goods and services in bitcoin will have to add the value of the virtual currency at the time it was received into their gross income.

In the UK, HM Revenue & Custom said exchanging or mining bitcoins was exempt from value added tax (VAT) in the UK, but accepting the virtual currency for goods and services is subject to it.
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