Author: Eva Glass

Eva Glass first rose to prominence in The INQUIRER. She continues to work behind the scenes to dig out the best stories.

3D printer could build a house in a day

Posted on October 1, 2014 by - News

Contour CraftingA company called Contour Crafting that offers a method of 3D printing large structures direct from CAD packages, has won a prize in a design competition.

Contour Crafting claims it automates building whole structures and cuts down the time and cost of construction.

It said the 3D printing technology may lead to printing affordable high quality low income housing, quick construction of emergency shelters and “on demand housing” in response to disasters.

NASA, claimed the firm, is investigating its technology to build bases on the moon and on Mars.

Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis, from the University of Southern California invented the concept and claims it’s viable.

“Bringing 3D to construction is bringing a concept to a proven application.  For many years, building has been done in layers – concrete foundation blocks, brick laying, structural framing and the like,” he said.

Samsung tablets up, Apple iPads down

Posted on October 1, 2014 by - News

cheap-tabletsA report from ABI Research said that sales of branded tabets such as those from Samsung and Apple only grew by 2.5 percent in the first half of this year.

The report said that sales of Apple iPads fell by 13 percent while sales of Samsung tablets grew by 26 percent year on year.

Jeff Orr, an analyst at ABI Research, said: “The roller coaster ride from the leading two tablet vendors has market watchers looking to other vendors to create sustainable growth. All eyes are on Lenovo as it is one of the few to demonstrate consistent growth over the past year.”

But there is some good news for Intel. It is showing progress towards the goal it set itself of 40 million devices using its microprocessor in 2013. Orr described 2014 as the “tipping point” for Intel’s mobile stategy.

”Forty million units is only a minor dent in ARM’s domination of tablets, though Intel is quickly becoming a formidable applications processor architecture competitor,” Orr said.

Security incidents soar by 48 percent

Posted on September 30, 2014 by - News

PwC logoA report from PwC said the number of reported security incidents with tech rose 48 percent in 2013 to hit 42.8 million attacks.

That, said PwC, is equal to 117,339 attacks every day.  The Global State of Information Security Survey said the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) has increased by 66 percent year over year since 2009.

But the reported security breaches and the cost are probably just the tip of the iceberg, according to David Burg, PwC’s cybersecurity supremo.  “The actual magnitude of these breaches is much higher when considering the nature of detection and reporting of these incidents,” he said.

PwC said that large organisations with annual revenues of $1 billion or more detected 44 percent more incidents this year.  But medium sized organizations, which PwC defines as having revenues of $100 million to $1 billion saw a 64 percent increase.

But even though the breaches have increased, the amount of money devoted to security fell by four percent compared to 2013.

But high profile attacks by nations, gangsters and competitors are the lest frequent incidents yet the fastest growing. The survey claimed a compromise by nation states increased by 86 percent, while there was a 64 percent increase in security incidents associated with competitors.

Only 49 percent of respondents said their organisations had a cross enterprise team to dicuss, coordinate and communicate info security concerns.

Sandisk releases enterprise flash drive

Posted on September 30, 2014 by - News

Sandisk X300 SSDMemory company Sandisk said it has introduced the X300 solid state disk (SSD), suitable for corporate environments.

The drive uses its X3 flash technology and also builds in nCache 2.0.  This is next generation tiered caching technology that uses SLC and X3 flash blocks to improve life, increase efficience and give faster performance for large organisations.

Those corporate workloads include office productivity apps, media creation, or financial transactions.

The drive becomes available in October and comes in capacities of 128GB, 256GB, 5GB and 1TB.

The drive comes with a dashboard application giving management tools include measuring drive performance, checking the health of the drive, firmware update alerts and embedded applications such as the ability to create exact replicas of old hard drives onto the X300 SSD without the need to re-install operating systems.

No pricing details are available.

British don’t understand the interweb

Posted on September 30, 2014 by - News

ukflagA survey showed that UK users of the internet are still a bit confuzzled by the pesky thing.

Tata Communications revealed its report today – garnered from 9,417 people across the world – and including 1,770 internet users in the UK.

Two thirds of Brits, for example, think that the World Wide Web and the internet are one and the same.  And 62 percent suffer from anger or anxiety when they’re unable to connect to the net.

But 72 percent of Brits say the internet belongs to everyone, compared to Germany where 80 percent of people say the same. This is, technically, the wrong answer but demonstrates a sense of freedom.

People in the UK between 15 to 35 use the internet for six or more hours of day.  And five percent of 12 to 25 year old people say they couldn’t survive “even 15 minutes” without an internet connection.

What do people want to see next.  Fast downloads (35%) and smart cities (17%), it appears.  Only 15 percent are looking forward to wearable technology.

NCR claims we all love self checkout

Posted on September 30, 2014 by - News

A supermarket checkoutA report commissioned by NCR claims that the world and its dog all love to use self checkout when we’re shopping in supermarkets.

The survey covered nine countries – Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Spain, the UK and the USA – and polled 2,800 shoppers.

It shows that 90 percent of the respondents use SCO technology and most of them – 78 percent – agree or strongly agree that shops using this tech give better customer service.

The results fly in the face of our own experiences in the UK where most people grumble when they’re forced to use self checkout and many line up to see a friendly human face.  Of course, the supermarkets are saving money and costing jobs by employing this technology.

And NCR’s survey, obliquely shows that’s right because suggestions to improve self checkout showed 43 percent of people would always like an attendant to assist.

NCR said that self checkout is “an important component” of many shops’ “omni channel” strategies. NCR bends the truth a little by saying self checkout “helps increase customer satisfaction, customer loyalty” and – this is the crunch one – “profitability”.

Lenovo carves up Chinese server pie

Posted on September 30, 2014 by - News

lenovo-logoAs we reported yesterday, Lenovo will acquire Intel’s X86 server business this week and that means it will be the biggest server company in mainland China.

Market research firm IDC released its figures for server sales in China for the first half of this year and Lenovo – which includes prior IBM system business – comes out the leader at 23.91 percent (see chart).

IDC said that the Lenovo/IBM X86 server line and IBM’s System x mainframes are highly complementary and Lenovo will use that synergy to sell more X86 systems into large organisations.

But Dell has been highly competitive in the Chinese market, and Lenovo’s entrance into this space is likely to lead to even more competition.

IDC thinks that Lenovo will integrate channels to market of IBM’s System x machines with its own routes to market and the entry of Lenovo as a player is likely to lead to better cooperation with Microsoft and VMWare.

And in the global market, Lenovo shows up as a leader with a market share of 11.7 percent.
Global X86 server market 1H 2014
China X86 server market H12014

Apple suffers more iCloud woes

Posted on September 30, 2014 by - News

stormNot satisfied with a security hole which allowed 4Chan users access to minor celebrities’ porn stashes, the Fruity Cargo cult Apple has some more problems with its cloud.

According to MacRumours there is a serious bug with the “Reset All Settings” option in iOS 8, causing users who activate the feature to lose all of their iWork documents stored in iCloud Drive.

Using the “Reset All Settings” option under General –> Reset has caused documents to be permanently deleted from iCloud Drive.

The “Reset All Settings” option explicitly says that “No data or media will be deleted,” which means that Apple was lying when it told users they were safe. It is meant to reset all user preferences to the default out-of-the-box settings not kill the documents.

MacRumours tested the bug and found that “Reset All Settings” deleted all iWork documents stored in iCloud Drive on the iPhone and on iCloud.com.

“After allowing time for syncing to a Mac running OS X Yosemite, all of the documents disappeared from that machine as well. Preview and TextEdit documents, which cannot be accessed on the iPhone, remained untouched on the Mac,” the magazine said.

Cisco gets into cloudbusting

Posted on September 29, 2014 by - News

Clouds in Oxford: pic Mike MageeNetwork giant Cisco said it has added 30 partners to its Intercloud initiative.

Customers want the cloud to be less hazy less than it is and Cisco believes it can help itself and them by developing standardised cloud apps as well as very secure hybrid clouds.

New partners include Deutsche Telekom BY, NTT Data and Equinix and said it will put up $1 billion for cloud financing using its equity arm, Cisco Capital.

Cisco claims that its announcements will expand the reach of its cloud initiative across 250 datacentres in 50 countries.

Rob Lloyd, Cisco’s president of sales and development said that his company is in a position to connect different cloud services by using a common stack.

Cisco signed a number of providers to build a channel programme using Comstor, Ingram Micro and Tech Data.

The firmis offering Cisco hybrid cloud bundles – a combination of tech and services – to help enterprise customers to build different kinds of cloud environments.

IBM Lenovo sale is a done deal

Posted on September 29, 2014 by - News

A not so mobile X86 PCLenovo’s offer to buy the remainder of IBM’s X86 business is likely to be concluded this Wednesday.

IBM is disposing of the deal to the Chinese manufacturer for $1.8 billion and when the acquisition is complete, it will finally have washed its hands of all of its X86 business.

That doesn’t mean its out of the hardware business completely, of course.  It will carry on selling its mainframes and a number of other high profit and enterprise standard appliances.

It was the first to launch an X86 personal computer back in the 1980s but its exclusive hold in the market was swiftly dented by competition from clone makers such as Dell and Compaq.

The deal will be completed because it waited approval from the European Union, China and the USA. But authorities in these territories have raised no objections to the sale.

When the deal is complete, it will catapult Lenovo into the major league of X86 players and will let it diversify its business by targeting the lucrative high end of the market.

China clamps down on iPhone smugglers

Posted on September 29, 2014 by - News, Products

gala_appleApple is not set to launch its iPhone 6 family in mainland China for a while, but that’s just created a smuggling racket as crooks try to cash in on demand for the devices.

According to the Taipei Times, crooks are selling imported iPhone 6s for as much as $3,000 – but authorities have made several seizures of the machines in the last week.

Some have tried to import the iPhones by using speedboats into mangrove swamps while others have taken the more direct route of stuffing their suitcases with contraband Apple phones.

The same report said that “hundreds” of devices had been taken from passengers who sought to import a phone without declaring them.

Greed for Apple iPhones is apparently so high that authorities are suggesting that people despise rather than envy those who have one of the overpriced devices.  The Taipei Times report is here.

Microsoft turns on the heat on notebooks

Posted on September 29, 2014 by - News

Microsoft campusA report said Microsoft is cutting the licence cost on Windows 8.1 in a bid to offer notebooks costing $250 or less.

Digitimes Research said manufacturers will be offered Windows 8.1 with Bing with a tentative release date of February next year.

Microsoft has the problem that people who already produce notebooks running the Windows 8.1 operating system can’t compete with tablets at retail prices of $250 or lower.  So it is aiming to mollify its partners by limiting the cheap version to notebooks with screen sizes 14-inches and below.

That’s unlikely to mollify manufacturers of notebooks – their margins are already cut to the bone.

Microsoft has been pursuing this strategy since the Computex show in June last year, but so far there hasn’t been much sign of progress.  It is worried about Google with its Chromebook device but Microsoft’s core revenues depend on fat Windows licensing fees.

HP intros ARM into datacentres

Posted on September 29, 2014 by - News

HPIn a sign that things wont be what they were in the past, HP said it has announced two servers based on ARM architecture, rather than the old fashioned Intel stuff.

The two enterprise class servers use 64-bit ARM microprocessors which it said “offer value choice in their compute strategy”.  Translated out of marketing speak, this means ARM based chips are much cheaper than Intel X86 chips.

HP is also offering a production platform letting software developers create, test and port applications to the ARM server.

The servers belong to HP’s Proliant Moonshot family –  the company claims that they will let companies scale to any workload, and are specifically aimed at datacentres.

The HP Proliant m400 server is part of a strategy the company has developed over some years to fit high engineering standards.

“ARM technology will change the dynamics of how enterprises build IT solutions to quickly address customer challenges,” said Antonio Neri, senior vice president and general manager, Servers and Networking, HP. “HP’s history, culture of innovation and proven leadership in server technology position us as the most qualified player to empower customers with greater choice in the server marketplace.”

The servers will support Ubuntu, Metal as a Service (MAAS) software preinstalled, and also offers IBM Informix.

HP customers already include Sandia National Labs, the University of Utah and Paypal.  The servers are available today.

Intel invests $1.5 billion in Chinese chip firm

Posted on September 26, 2014 by - News

Intel-logoChip behemoth Intel said it will plunge $1.5 billion into a Chinese company called Tsinghua Unigroup.

The firm is wholly state owned but funded by Tsinghua University.

The chip giant said it and Tsinghua have signed a series of agrements with the aim of expanding products for Intel mobile device in China and worldwide.

The two companies will jointly develop architecture and communications devices for mobiles.  The Intel investment will give it a 20 percent minority stake of the holding company.

It’s complicated but Tsinghua Holdings control two companies Spreadtrum and RDA, which are fabless semi conductors making chipsets for smartphones and the like.

One of the joint agreements is that Spreatrum will create and sell Inel based system n a chip products (SoCs), with products available in the second half of next year.

Brian Krzanich, Intel’s CEO, said China is biggest market for smartphones and has the biggest number of net users too.

IT infrastructure worth $2.4 billion

Posted on September 26, 2014 by - News

IBM logoSales of worldwide integrated infrastructure and platforms rose by a third in the second quarter of this year with a net worth of $2.4 billion, compared to the same quarter a year back.

IDC defines integrated infrastructure and platforms as pre-integrated certified systems containin server hardware, disk storage systems, networking equipment and systems management software.

IDC said over 833 petabytes of storage capacity shipped, up 63.4 percent compared to the same quarter in 2013. All in all, the first half of 2014 showed the market grew by 35.9 percent compared to the first half of 2013 and was worth $4.3 billion.

IDC believes that integrated systems are considered critical by business.  Jed Scaramella, research director of enterprise servers at IDC said enterprise customers were “bullish” in adopting integrated systems and many more consider these when making IT procurement choices.

The top vendors in integrated platforms, were Oracle, IBM, HP, Hitachi and the usual “others”.  But an examination of the revenue growth delivered by these companies showed that HP managed to grow revenues by 92.1 percent compared to the same quarter in 2013, while IBM was in stasis and Oracle grew by 18.3 percent.

In the field of worldwide integrated infrastructure, the top three spots were occupied by VCE, Cicsco/Netapp and EMC.