Obama announces America's first Chief Technology Officer
Barack Obama has now formally announced and presented the first Chief Technology Officer for the United States of America. In President Obama's weekly radio address to the American people, he announced that the current Technology Secretary of Virginia state, Aneesh Chopra, would now become the country's CTO.
Obama has promised for the appointment of an individual to such a position since the early days of his presidential campaign, as part of an effort to help connect the federal government to what is happening on-line.
As well as making an administrative position to connect his staff with the world of the internet, Obama wants to now ensure that the nation as a whole is internet ready with a highly ambitious broadband expansion. The administration says that Chopra's job will be to "promote technological innovation to help the country meet its goals from job creation, to reducing health care costs, to protecting the homeland."
Chopra will also work with the White House CIO Vivek Kundra and Jeffery Zients, the nominee for deputy director for management of the office of management and budget.
"The goal is to give all Americans a voice in their government and ensure that they know exactly how weأ¢آ€آ™re spending their money, and can hold us accountable for the results," Obama said.
Read More ...
MSI unveils the Atom N280-powered Wind U100 Plus
The (dare we say?) classic Wind U100, MSI's first netbook is about to get an update, or a Plus if you will. Set to be available in -Imperial Black, Angelic White, Regal Red, Rose Champagne and Metallic Blue, the Wind U100 Plus has specs similar to its predecessors - 10-inch (1024x600) LCD, 1GB of RAM, GMA 950 integrated graphics, 160GB hard drive, WiFi, Ethernet, 4-in-1 car reader, 1.3 megapixel webcam - but comes with an updated CPU, the 1.66 GHz Atom N280, and offer more battery life, up to 7 hours when using the 6-cell battery.
The Wind U100 Plus should become available in the next few weeks. No word on its price tag though.
Read More ...
Fujitsu announces the LOOX M 10-inch netbook
Aiming to turn a few heads, Fujitsu has now introduced the LOOX M series 10-inch netbook. Coming in Milk White or Ruby Red, the new ultra-portable machine features a 10.1-inch LED backlit screen with a native resolution of 1024x576 pixels, an all too common 1.6 GHz Atom N270 processor, 1GB of RAM, GMA 950 integrated graphics, an 160GB hard drive, WiFi, Ethernet, a memory card reader, and Bluetooth 2.1.
Powered by Windows XP Home Edition SP3, the LOOX M netbook is set to start selling in Japan on Thursday (April 23rd) and cost a lot more than you'd guess/want - around $610.
Read More ...
Intel plans more SSD price cuts
Three months after the last price adjustment (read price cut), Intel is gearing up to once again slash the price tags of some of its solid state drives. The four models set to get cheaper on April 26 are the 80 and 160GB 1.8-inch X18-M and 2.5-inch X25-Ms.
The 80GB X18-M and X25-M will go from $385 to $335, while the 160GB SSDs will drop from $760 to $660. Intel will not be making any cuts for its 32 and 64GB X25-E drives so these will remain at $410 and $790 respectively.
Read More ...
Noctua introduces the NF-S12B 120mm fan
The Austrian cooling connoisseurs at Noctua have no released the NF-S12B 120mm fan, the successor of the cool and quiet NF-S12. Still bearing that distinct Noctua color scheme, the NF-S12B features a long lasting (MTBF of over 150,000 hours) SSO-Bearing, the Smooth Commutation Drive 2 drive system, and a blade design featuring Bevelled Blade tips, something that has been introduced with the NF-B9 fan and is supposed to deliver improved airflow efficiency.
"Our popular NF-S12 series is renowned for its excellent airflow/noise ratio, so further improving it was by no means an easy feat", explains Mag. Roland Mossig, Noctua CEO. "It took us quite a lot of time and effort, but we couldn't be happier with the result. The new NF-S12B doesn't only provide more airflow at the same noise level than the original NF-S12, it also produces higher static pressure."
Backed by a 6-year warranty, the NF-S12B is shipping in two versions - the NF-S12B FLX (Flexibility), which works at 1200, 900 and 600 RPM, and is bundled with both a Low-Noise and Ultra-Low-Noise adapter, and the NF-S12B ULN (Ultra-Low-Noise), which spins at 700 or 500 RPM. The NF-S12B FLX and NF-S12B ULN are priced at $24.90 / 19.90 Euro.
Read More ...
VMware to improve cloud conjuring with vSphere 4
Virtualization expert VMware has now announced vSphere 4, the "industry's first" operating system aimed at helping enterprises set up their own internal clouds. The software is able to manage large pools of infrastructure as a seamless, flexible and dynamic operating environment, thus enabling for a quick and efficient delivery.
"Since pioneering virtualization for x86 systems 10 years ago, VMware has delivered an impressive list of 'industry-firsts' - the first hypervisor, the first VMotion capability now synonymous with VMware, and the first platform for pooling servers, storage and network, allowing customers to decrease the capital and operating cost of computing by up to 60-70 percent," said Paul Maritz, president and chief executive officer, VMware. "VMware vSphere 4 is the next evolution along this path of innovation. By giving IT organizations a non-disruptive path to cloud computing, we will be leading our customers on a journey that delivers value every step of the way, delivering up to an additional 30 percent cost reduction today while enabling IT to provide reliable and adaptable IT services."
According to VMware, vSphere 4 is able to provide a solid mix of efficiency, performance, control, and choice by pooling together up to 32 physical servers with up to 2048 processor cores, 1,280 virtual machines, 32 TB of RAM, 16 petabytes of storage and 8,000 network ports.
vSphere 4 is set to start shipping later this quarter in six editions - Essentials, Essentials Plus, Standard, Advanced, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus, with prices per processor going from $166 to $3,495.
Read More ...
Google Labs spawns Similar Images, Google News Timeline
While the G-men keep on experimenting, two new test-worthy features have escaped the Google Labs. Accessible here Similar Searches is an image search tool that enables users to quickly find more images related to one of the displayed results. For example, if you search for paris the results will include images of France's capital and of Paris Hilton so if you only want to see pictures of the city simply click on the "Similar images" link.
As for Google News Timeline, it organizes information chronologically by presenting results from Google News and other data sources on a zoomable, graphical timeline. Navigating through the news is as easy as scrolling up and down (actually left to right) the timeline. The user can easily choose from what sources he wants the results, with the options available including new or archived news, scanned newspapers and magazines, or blogs.
To try out these and other experimental features visit Google Labs.
Read More ...
Celebs would recommend Xeon 5500, says Intel
Released less than a month ago, the Xeon 5500 processors have obviously been heralded (by Intel) as the next best thing since... the last best thing, but the chip maker has taken the praise one forward and claimed that even celebrities would recommend the Nehalem-based server CPUs. As written in the Server Room Blog, Intel's Shannon Poulin believes that, if they would be geeky enough to go out buying for a server or workstation, pop sensations Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus would conclude that the Xeon 5500s are the "best choice." Of course, in Paris Hilton's case, the conclusion would be "Xeon 5500, that's hot" but you get the marketing idea.
Likely sensing that the celeb comment wouldn't be all that popular, Poulin moves to more familiar IT&C ground by saying that everything from benchmarks, blogs and press articles can attest to the new Xeons' 'appeal' and concludes with - "These Xeon 5500 servers and workstations represent a shiny new toy that IT professionals can use to have a material impact on the bottom lines of their companies." Hopefully AMD won't 'retaliate' by saying that its upcoming 'Istanbul' Opterons are recommended by Oprah. or David Beckham.
Read More ...
IBM reports revenue, profit drops for Q1
The original Big Blue has continued to feel the heat from the financial and economic crisis in Q1 when it saw both its revenue and profits go down. According to its own papers, IBM's Q1 revenue reached $21.7 billion, down both on-year and sequentially, while the net income settled at $2.3 billion, a far reach when compared to the $4.4 billion profit of Q4 2008. During the quarter only the company's Total Global Services business saw its revenue dropping 10% on-year, while the Software and Systems and Technology segments went down 6% and 23% respectively.
"IBM continued to perform well in a very difficult economic environment. This was due to our long-term strategic focus: shifting into software and services, divesting of commodity businesses, and creating solutions that help clients reduce cost and conserve capital. At the same time we have a disciplined approach to cost and expense management giving us a strong financial position," said Samuel J. Palmisano, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer. "We are well-positioned to continue to move aggressively and leverage our strong cash performance to make the most of the opportunities that arise, including smarter planet initiatives and other strategic options."
Said to be prepping more price cuts, IBM seems to be quite optimistic about its performance this year as it still expects to report earnings of at least $9.20 per share, quite a bit over last year's $8.93. All we can say is good luck with all that.
Read More ...
Samsung to roll out rugged Spinpoint M7 500GB HDD
South Korean heavyweight Samsung has now announced its latest mobile storage solution, the 500GB Spinpoint M7 hard drive. The new 2.5-inch spinner features a rugged base and cover design which enables a shock operation tolerance of 400G/2ms, it makes use of two 250GB platters, has a SATA 3.0 Gbps interface, a working speed of 5400 RPM, 8MB worth of buffer memory and Native Command Queuing.
"Our customers have been requesting hard drives with higher density, lower power and greater reliability for their mobile applications," said C.H. Lee, vice president, Storage sales & marketing, Samsung Electronics. "The Spinpoint M7 answers these needs with a high-speed operating shock specification and extraordinary drive capacity for storing large data files, music, photos and videos."
Also boasting SilentSeek and NoiseGuard technologies, the 500GB HDD is said to be equipped with a new controller that reduce power consumption in seek mode to up to 25% over other 2.5-inch drives. Samples of the new 500GB Spinpoint M7 are being delivered to OEMs, with global shipment being planned to kick off by the end of this month.
Read More ...
No comments:
Post a Comment