September 28, 2012 by admin
Filed under Computing, Smartphones
An Intel powered phone powered by a 2GHz Medfield processor is a huge leap forward for Intel. After few tries they finally got a significant design win.
Still many want to see an Intel design win the US market and we were told that this can be expected at 2013 as the USA network providers demand a LTE capability for all their new phones. Now even the iPhone has LTE and it was getting hard even for Apple to convince people in the US that LTE is not relevant.
Intel is aware of that and it is expected that Intel can finish its LTE modem in 2013 and that it will have a LTE enabled chip with its next generation. It’s interesting that this is the same timing for Nvidia LTE while Qualcomm already stunned the market with its S4 LTE enabled chip that everyone wants.
The new Intel-based RAZR doesn’t have LTE support, but even in the US only major cities and metropolitan areas have it decent LTE coverage. Even the suburbs in Silicon valley and surrounding towns have weak and intermittent LTE coverage, while 3G has been almost everywhere you can have a cell signal.
Intel got its first major designs out, and it plans to continue winning the major manufacturers with Intel inside powered phones.
Adobe said today that the current CS6 version of Photoshop will be the last one to support the operating system.
Adobe Product Manager Tom Hogarty said in a blog post that the Photoshop team would like to provide advanced notice that Photoshop CS6 (13.0) will be the last major version of Photoshop to support Windows XP. He said that modern performance-sensitive software requires modern hardware graphics interfaces that Windows XP lacks, in particular a way to tap into the power of GPUs. By only working on newer operating systems and hardware Adobe can bring in significantly better performance.
Photoshop CS6 already demonstrates that relying on a modern operating system, graphics cards/GPUs and graphics drivers can lead to substantial improvements in 3D, Blur Gallery and Lighting Effect features not available to Windows XP customers, he said.
Adobe hopes that by providing this information early it will help you understand our current decisions around operating system support and where we we’re headed with future releases of Photoshop. It is hard to see how any serious user of Adobe products could be using an XP machine anyway. The move away from XP started with CS 5 which only ran on Vista.
Kaspersky Lab has discovered three Flame spyware related malware threats that it said use “sophisticated encryption methods”.
Kaspersky claims that it uncovered the three new hostile programs while analysing a number of Command and Control (C&C) servers used by Flame’s creators.
“Sophisticated encryption methods were utilised so that no one, but the attackers, could obtain the data uploaded from infected machines,” the firm’s statement read.
“The analysis of the scripts used to handle data transmissions to the victims revealed four communication protocols, and only one of them was compatible with Flame.
“It means that at least three other types of malware used these Command and Control servers. There is enough evidence to prove that at least one Flame-related malware is operating in the wild.”
The discovery of the three programs indicates that Flame’s Command and Control platform was being developed in 2006, four years earlier than first thought.
Flame was originally uncovered in May targeting Iranian computer systems. The malware drew widespread concerns within the security industry regarding its advanced espionage capabilities.
The full scale of Flame and its overarching implications remain unknown, despite the ongoing joint research campaign being mounted by Kaspersky, IMPACT, CERT-Bund/BSI and Symantec.
“It was problematic for us to estimate the amount of data stolen by Flame, even after the analysis of its Command and Control servers,” said Kaspersky’s chief security expert, Alexander Gostev.
Following the discovery of the three new related programs, Kaspersky’s chief malware expert Vitaly Kamluk told The INQUIRER that Flame is not the only one in this big family.
“There are others and they aren’t just other known malwares such as Stuxnet, Gauss or Duqu,” he said. “They stay in the shadows and no one has published anything about them yet. Others were probably used for different campaigns.”
Kamluk added that it is “very possible” there are more than the three listed in Kaspersky’s report.
“They started building RedProtocol, yet another ‘language’ for unknown malware. No known client types are using that one, which means that there is even more malware out there,” he added.
September 25, 2012 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
Research In Motion’s shares jumped on Tuesday after it inked a patent licensing deal with Microsoft Corp to use one of the technology company’s file storage systems.
Microsoft said the patent being licensed by RIM greatly expands the size of files that flash memory devices can handle and increases the speed at which those files can be accessed. The technology also provides the ability to seamlessly transfer data between a variety of different devices.
“This is potentially money out of RIM’s coffers for the right to use the ex-FAT patent in its technology. But what it does for investors and others is provide a glimpse into what the BlackBerry 10 devices can do,” said Kevin Restivo, a mobile device analyst at global research firm IDC.
RIM has seen its once dominant position in the smartphone market slip away to Apple Inc, Samsung and other competitors, and the company’s fate may depend on the success of its new line of devices, the BlackBerry 10, which is set to hit the market early in 2013.
RIM hopes the BlackBerry 10 will help it regain market share that has been ceded to snazzier devices such as Apple’s iPhone and others that run on Google Inc’s Android operating system.
“I think there is some anticipation and speculation around the devices that RIM will launch as a result of the announcement today,” Restivo said.
September 24, 2012 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
Google Inc said it purchased Instagram rival Nik Software, which makes award-winning photo editing application Snapseed, for an undisclosed amount.
Google and Facebook Inc are locked in a battle for social network followers that has increasingly shifted to mobile applications, such as photo editing.
While not as famous as Instagram, available for free on Apple’s mobile devices, Snapseed has won a following for its editing prowess among photographers, despite a $4.99 price tag.
Nik Software says Snapseed has more than 9 million users while Instagram says it has more than 100 million.
“We want to help our users create photos they absolutely love, and in our experience Nik does this better than anyone,” Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president, engineering, said on a Google+ post.
Facebook this year bought Instagram, which made an app for users to add filters and effects to pictures taken on their smartphones, for a cool $1 billion.
“Google’s playing chase up in social,” BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis said. “It’s yet another tuck in they have done, trying to boost their Google+ offering.”
Snapseed won Apple Inc’s “iPad App Of The Year” award in 2011 for its multitouch photo editing interface.
“We’ve always aspired to share our passion for photography with everyone, and with Google’s support we hope to be able to help many millions more people create awesome pictures,” Nik Software said on its Website.
Google’s Gundotra also said that Google+ had hit over 400 million users this week and had just crossed 100 million
IBM is unveiling a new version of its Connections enterprise social networking (ESN) software, which businesses use to give their employees social media capabilities adapted for workplace collaboration, such as employee profiles and blogging.
Enhancements in IBM Connections 4.0 include a more interactive activity stream, broader support for mobile devices, more granular usage analytics and integration with email and calendar systems, according to Heidi Ambler, director of product management for IBM Social Software. It is available immediately.
“This new release helps customers grasp the power of social analytics, gives them anytime-anywhere access to the software and provides cutting-edge capabilities,” she said.
Instead of a list-like news feed, the new software has an activity stream in employee profiles that users can filter for relevance, as well as act on the notifications right from the Connections interface.
For example, users can trigger pop-up boxes from the activity stream notifications and see the latest comments made about a file, see who posted the latest version of it and add tags to it.
An integration with IBM’s own Lotus Notes-Domino and with Microsoft’s Outlook-Exchange email and calendar systems lets users manage email messages through Connections.
Intel has been hinting that it is developing high-performance lower power server chips to speed up cloud services or data-intensive applications like analytic.
Apparently this will involve the integration of a converged fabric controller inside future server chips. This will make server communication faster while helping data centers operate at peak efficiency.
Raj Hazra, vice president of the Intel Architecture Group said that Fabric virtualises I/O and ties together storage and networking in data centres. If you add in an integrated controller you get a wider pipe to scale performance on cloud platforms. He said that the integrated fabric controller will appear in the company’s Xeon server chips in a few years as part of Intel’s cunning plan to bring the controller to the transistor layer.
Autodesk announced today that its 3D simulation tool called Simulation 360 will be available through the cloud to reduce development time in product manufacturing by up to three times compared to the desktop version.
In order to provide services quicker and make it easier for its customers to collaborate internally, Simulation 360 means that cloud based simulation tools take away all hardware requirements and thus lower costs for businesses.
Speaking at an exclusive launch event, Autodesk’s technical sales manager Jonah Normand introduced the new software as “a change in business model”. He explained that it can advantage businesses by outsourcing product design rendering to the cloud and sending the results back instandly as they are being calculated, thus giving more flexibility in development time.
Referring to the Microsoft Xbox 360 recall that cost the firm $1bn after it found Xbox systems were overheating shortly after launch, Normand said simulation is an important step in the development process because it helps reduce risk for customers and avoid potential product hiccups.
However, Normand said companies have specific barriers preventing them from employing simulation tools in their product development, such as hardware requirements, costs and ease of use, but Simulation 360 aims to make simulation more accessible to everyone.
“Our strategy at Autodesk is to remove these barriers and give access to simulation,” he said. “Our vision is to move simulation to the front end of design.”
Therefore, Autodesk has developed the cloud based service so that companies can more easily make the transition to having simulation in their product development.
TSMC is expected to spend $10 billion next year in capital works as Apple plans to contract the outfit to build its next-generation processors.
According to the Chinese-language Economic Daily News TSMC has informed the equipment suppliers of its decision to hike capital expenditure for 2013 to US$10 billion. This indicates that TSMC has overcome technical problem with 20nm process, which Apple’s next-generation processors are said to use.
It also suggests that Jobs’ Mob is speeding up its reduction of work it gives Samsung. Apple has reportedly sent around 200 design engineers to help TSMC get familiar with the company’s next-generation processor designs at TSMC’s facility in Central Taiwan Science Park.
Worldwide IT spending remains on track to increase by 6% in 2012 despite the grim economic conditions in Europe, thanks to strong software, storage, smartphone and tablet sales, according to IDC.
While 2012 has been a tough year for many IT vendors, they have done better overall than many expected in the first half of the year, IDC said.
For example, software spending has been robust, even in parts of the world where the economy has been weakest, as businesses hope software tools and applications will help them implement cost-reduction strategies.
The 6% growth compares to a 7% increase in worldwide IT spending last year. IDC expects 6% growth in 2013.
Software, storage, enterprise network and mobile device markets have offset weaker sales in servers, peripherals and PCs. However, the launch of Windows 8 during the fourth quarter should help the PC market recover next year, IDC said.
U.S. IT spending will grow by 5.9% in 2012, compared to 8.5% last year. However, the strength of the dollar during the first six months of the year means that IT spending in dollar terms will grow just 4% for the full year.
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