Foxconn Sets Sights on Servers, Storage

Taiwan-based Foxconn, which churns out most of world’s iPhones and iPads, has set its sights on servers and storage that help back up your pictures on Facebook and data on other Internet-based applications.

The company, officially known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, is the world’s largest contract manufacturer of consumer electronics. But the major assembler of AppleAAPL +0.73%’s products has been diversifying its operations and expanding into the corporate market as revenue from key consumer-brand clients slows.

Demand for servers and storages used in data centers continues to rise as Internet-based services such as online storage Dropbox and online computing platform Windows Azure get more popular. The server and storage needs of major Internet companies such as Google and Amazon also continue to grow to support their online applications.

Seeking new avenues of growth, Foxconn—having won orders to make servers and storage for U.S. companies including Facebook and Hewlett Packard, according to a company official—is looking to expand into China’s nascent online-computing market. It formed a partnership with Beijing-based 21Vianet Group, which operates Internet data centers, to provide equipment and design services for its projects both in China and overseas, the two companies said in a statement.

While providing equipment and services for data centers would command a better profit margin than assembling consumer products, analysts are skeptical about Foxconn’s capabilities, notably in the key area of power management.

“Foxconn is trying hard to move away from low-margin pure hardware manufacturing but its ability in system design is still weak compared to other Taiwanese manufacturers such as Delta and Quanta,” said CIMB analyst Wanli Wang.

Mr. Wang also said Foxconn is likely to face political hurdles in China and other markets; for national-security reasons, many governments favor local vendors for data-center equipment and services.

Nasdaq-listed 21Vianet Group is an independent data center company that partners withMicrosoft and IBMIBM -0.31% to sell online computing services in China, which could make it difficult to win “juicy” orders from state-owned and major Chinese companies in the country, he said.

“China wants to build its own data-center supply chain,” said Mr. Wang. “That explained why Lenovo has decided to acquire the low-end server operation from IBM. It is always difficult for foreign companies such as IBM and Microsoft to break into China market.”

___________________________________________________________________________________

source:Digits

Cloud computing enters its second stage, hypergrowth ensues

The public cloud services market exited 2013 with $58 billion in revenues according to Forrester estimates. Strong growth and maturity over the past three years has put fuel in its tank, which will push this market to $191 billion by 2020.

While the last several years can best be characterized as exploratory for most enterprises, cloud services and cloud platforms are now an undeniable part of the IT landscape. And based on Forrester enterprise CIO inquiries, the shift has begun from exploration of cloud as a potential option, to rationalization of cloud services within the overall IT portfolio. And this shift to the second stage of technology adoption yields significantly higher market revenues than the exploratory phase.


CIOs should start considering clouds as a core deployment option within their formal budgets.

Clearly, the bulk of this market’s revenues come from Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions which accounted for $36 billion in revenue in 2013. This segment of the market is significantly more mature and well established in several application categories. Cloud platforms, led by Amazon Web Services LLC, were only collectively $4.7 billion last year but are maturing quickly thanks to stronger recent solutions from traditional IT partners IBM, HP and Microsoft.

Drilling into the key market segments we see:

SaaS will shift toward replacement of existing systems.

SaaS has grown primarily in the form of new categories of applications that complement existing core, transactional solutions. However, in sales force automation, customer relationship management, human resource management, and eProcurement and ePurchasing, replacement of existing licensed software is becoming more common. This trend will spread to other application categories, providing a second front for SaaS growth from 2014 through 2018.

Public cloud platforms will rival traditional infrastructure deployments by 2020.

The growth in use, maturity, and financial viability of public cloud platforms are proving their longstanding value as legitimate deployment options for enterprise applications. While not a one-for-one replacement for on-premise, hosting, or colocation, cloud platforms fit well as ideal deployment options for elastic and transient workloads built in modern application architectures. And as the seismic shift in application portfolios progresses, public clouds will capture a significantly larger addressable market. As such, CIOs should start considering clouds as a core deployment option within their formal budgets.

Public cloud services will rival traditional middleware for systems of engagement.

For applications and services built in an agile mode with modern architectures, discrete cloud services, such as database, storage, integration and other standalone cloud middleware components, will empower developers by freeing them from the management and maintenance of these components and reduce overall deployment footprint and cost. As these services are consumable by-the-drink, they free organizations from the traditional licensing constraints that are misfits with elastic or transient applications. They are also managed and enhanced by vendors as often as daily delivering new capabilities that can help a company maintain pace with the changing desires of an empowered customer base

Cloud services and SaaS bring high degrees of automation, standardization, and autonomy that empower the business to work faster, more flexibly, and adopt new capabilities more readily. The economic model of cloud computing yields greater efficiencies through shared consumption, pay-per-use pricing, and volume economics. it will increasingly be difficult to justify not leveraging cloud services.

As the largest clouds continue to invest in efficiencies that can only be achieved at their massive scales, the gulf between the cost efficiencies that can be had from the cloud and what is possible on-premise or through other outsourcing and hosting options will widen dramatically. And as clouds deliver a growth proliferation of services, components, and applications that accelerate new business service creation, their appeal will widen further.

Still, inertia is difficult to overcome in the enterprise market, and there remain legitimate concerns about the security and performance of cloud solutions in certain parts of the world and for certain use cases and data types. As the past three years have shown, these will be overcome. The CIO’s biggest battle will be the internal cultural, psychological and financial accounting barriers born in a different age that will take decades to change. Start the fight now.

___________________________________________________________________________________

source:ZDNet

Apple Shoots for 'Better'

In honor of this year's Earth Day, celebrated Tuesday, Apple is showcasing its efforts to lessen its carbon footprint and become more environmentally sustainable as part of its 'Better' Campaign.

The company released new promotional material, including a video narrated by Tim Cook, that outlines its commitment to increasing energy efficiency in an effort to reduce its impact on climate change.

The campaign focuses on Apple's efforts to increase the energy efficiency of its devices, to ethically source materials, to recycle more of its products and to work toward the goal of powering its data centers and its campus with 100 percent renewable energy (right now it is at about 94 percent, a significant jump from 35 percent in 2010).

The company is especially reliant on solar energy, particularly at its new data center in Yerington, Nev., which features a massive solar farm.



Apple's Influence

Apple touts its position as a green leader in the tech space. One print ad includes a dig at Samsung: "There are some ideas we want everyone to copy."

Going forward, Apple Retail Stores will expand their recycling operations. In addition to accepting used Apple products, they will hold special events when consumers may bring in competitors' products for recycling.

Apple has made significant strides in environmental sustainability in its U.S. operations, and other companies should emulate its efforts, said Harvey Bryan, professor and senior sustainability scientist atArizona State University's Global Institute of Sustainability.

"Apple is doing really good things with renewable energy, particularly with using solar energy on some of its new buildings," he told TechNewsWorld. "The company understands the problem and are doing things to mitigate that, which is more than you can say for some corporations of its size."
Always Room for Improvement

However, Apple still has a way to go before it can claim it's the most environmentally sustainable company in the industry, Bryan added.

"You could say now that Apple is one of the leaders in this space, but it's certainly not at the front of the pack. Google, for one, seems to understand that the demand for power is growing rapidly, and is beginning to assemble companies like Nest that could help it be a power provider," he observed.

"If Nest can help it power household appliances, Google can actually wield power and help offset the load on more traditional power facilities. The demand for a smart power model like that is growing, and Google is there investing in that," Bryan pointed out.

Further steps for Apple could include reducing the carbon footprint at its data centers and updating office heating and cooling systems, which are two of its largest energy guzzlers, according to A.Vaidyanathan, founder and principal consultant at Cleantech Consultants.

"For data centers, Apple could optimize its cooling load substantially by relocating data centers, redesigning the cooling systems -- for instance, with natural cooling or sea water cooling -- or exploring geothermal cooling options," he told TechNewsWorld.

Apple's current efforts with the Better campaign and its commitment to further change should be applauded, Bryan said. Still, with a stack of cash and significant global influence, the company has the power to invest in much more research and development that could have a huge influence worldwide.

"There are some dual standards in this industry, so while Apple is doing some wonderful things here, it could also expand those efforts in places like China," he suggested. ""With the resources that Apple has, it could actually be nurturing some investments internally ... and then expanding those efforts to its global operations."

Rachelle Dragani is a freelance reporter based in Brooklyn, NY. She enjoys staying on top of e-commerce deals, reporting on what new gadget is coming your way, and keeping tabs on anyone trying to hack into your info. Feel free to e-mail her at rachelle.dragani@newsroom.ectnews.com. You can also connect with her on Google+.

___________________________________________________________________________________

source:TeckNewsWorld

NASA and Google Do the Tango

ManageEngine OpManager, a powerful NMS for monitoring your network, physical & virtual (VMware/ HyperV) servers, apps & other IT devices. Deploy and start monitoring in less than an hour. Trusted by over a million admins worldwide. Try it for free.


Google's Project Tango smartphone, which is jam-packed with sensors, soon will be used in the International Space Station.

The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration will swap out the smartphones it has used on two volleyball-sized free-flying satellites since 2011 with the Tango devices.

NASA, which announced the Tango tie-in back in February, has flown modified Tango phones several times on an aircraft that can simulate microgravity by taking a parabolic flight path. The phones' motion-tracking and positioning code was rewritten so it could work in the microgravity environment on the ISS.

"Not having gravity is a benefit with electronics, particularly if you want to move them in all three dimensions," he continued, but it would be necessary to "make sure the signals don't interfere with anything else in the station."



More on the Satellites

The flying satellites, called "Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites" or Spheres, are self-contained units with their own power, propulsion, computing and navigation equipment.

They also have expansion ports for additional sensors and appendages such as cameras, wireless power transfer systems and smartphones.

The smartphones let the Spheres take pictures and videos, conduct inspections, make calculations, and make real-time data transfers to the computers aboard the space station via WiFi, and to mission control back on Earth.

Astronauts on board the ISS have conducted 77 investigations using Spheres to test techniques for tasks including automated docking of service satellites and emergency repairs.
Stepping Out With Tango

The addition of the Tango smartphones will let researchers control the Spheres in real-time in space and from ground control stations on Earth.

In future, free-flying robots such as the Spheres might be used to inspect the exterior of the ISS or of deep space vehicles. So far, the Spheres have been used only inside the ISS.

"These increasingly sophisticated mobile devices could, after being our primary communication devices for two to three years, get a second life as spacecraft that could be used for Earth observation, monitoring asteroids and small bodies, and an avenue to perform science experiments in space," Jekan Thanga, an assistant professor at Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration, told TechNewsWorld.
Making the Tango Fit for Space

Tango devices may have to be heavily modified for use in space outside the ISS.

"The biggest challenge with using smartphones, as with other electronic devices, is determining robustness to the radiation in space," Thanga said.

While mass-manufactured smartphones are good enough for short-term missions in low-Earth orbit, they will "have to meet much higher standards if they are brought on board for spaceflight missions," he noted.

Smartphones likely will need radiation hardening and possibly some way to be heated to ensure they don't freeze in the depths of space, Enderle suggested.

Touchscreens will be a no-no because "astronauts' gloves would be really huge," Enderle continued. Voice control via radio might be a better option.
Mobile Tech Possibilities

"This will personalize space, providing the opportunity for possibly millions of citizens to have personal space and actively participate in space exploration," Thanga suggested, pointing out that this is already happening in astronomy where amateur astronomers are making "important discoveries."

Eventually, advanced smartphones might have sensors that can adjust to their environment, Jeff Orr, a senior practice director at ABI Research, told TechNewsWorld.

The Mars Rover program could benefit because local probes could capture more granular details of Mars' surface, Orr suggested. "We could have a Google Map of Mars."

___________________________________________________________________________________

source:TechNewsWorld

Windows Phone 8.1 Becomes Available to Devs and Risk Takers

After an 18-month lull, Windows Phone took a step closer to an upgrade on Monday as Microsoft released version 8.1 of the operating system to developers.

Unlike most developer versions of software, however, consumers can download and run the latest edition of Windows Phone on their mobile device -- as long as they're willing to void its warranty until their carrier OKs the upgrade.

Although developers and brave consumers can get their hands on Windows Phone 8.1 this week, it will be a few months before its fortunes in the market can be determined.



Catching Up

"It's a little too early to judge it," Yankee Group Research Director Carl Howe told TechNewsWorld.

"Is it going to take the world by storm?" he mused. "Only when people can get it. Most people aren't going to void the warranty on their phone to get Windows 8.1."

Consumers familiar with the major mobile operating systems, Android and iOS, will find many of the new features in Windows Phone familiar.

"A number of the features seem like catch-up features," said Ross Rubin, principal analyst with Reticle Research, told TechNewsWorld.

Features like a "shade" that can be pulled down to view recent notifications sent to the phone and a speaking digital assistant are already in Android and iOS, he noted. Word Flow is similar to the Android app Swype, a method for using a virtual keyboard by swiping keys instead of poking them.

Nevertheless, the new version will help keep Windows Phone in parity with its competition in the market, Rubin said.
New Digital Assistant

With WP 8.1, Microsoft has improved the software's distinctive home screen, increasing the number of columns available for live tiles, adding transparency to the tiles, and allowing them to be sized to taste. In addition, a user can choose a favorite photo as a background for the tiles.

Connecting to free wireless hotspots should be easier with Wi-Fi Sense, a feature that automatically connects to free hotspots and networks previously logged into.

The new version of Windows Phone offers tools for managing data, storage and power. Data Sense provides a picture of data use and offer solutions for conserving it. Storage Sense helps manage storage on a phone, including making recommendations when data should be shipped to an SD card in order to conserve on-board storage. Battery Saver can extend battery life by shutting down all but essential features as the battery's juice supply dwindles.

___________________________________________________________________________________

source:TechNewsWorld

100 Tesla Model S Convertibles Are Headed To China

Hold on to your hat. The Tesla Model S is about to get more breezy thanks to a drop-top conversion by Newport Convertible Engineering. Both hard and soft top conversions are now available — they don’t come cheap, though.

A soft-top conversion costs $29K and a hard-top $49K. Plus, the buyer has to supply the Tesla Model S. But, once converted, there’s no question that you’ll have the raddest Model S parked outside of your local Blue Bottle.

NCE just announced that an investor in China has already ordered 100 conversions. Because why not.

According to NCE, the conversion shop has been working on the project for six months with Tesla and recently asked the car company for assistance in supplying 5,000 more Model S’s to meet demand.

Of course as with any vehicle modification, the converted vehicle is often wildly different from a non-modified example. There is often extensive modification required to a vehicle’s frame when the top is removed, resulting in extra weight and, therefore, a car that handles differently (read: often poorly). But when the top is down and the wind is blowing through your hair, zero to 60 times are moot.

___________________________________________________________________________________

source:TechCrunch

Inside Microsoft’s New Platform And Services Strategy

Platform Convergence

At Build Microsoft discussed API harmony between Windows and Windows Phone, noting that it had now reached around 90% parity between the two. This ties into its new universal app category that will spread across phones and more traditional Windows devices. Guggs told TechCrunch that that number, 90%, is up from around 25% to 30% a year ago.

Regarding how much higher the 90% figure could go, Guggs indicated that Microsoft may not want 100% API unity, due to different device use cases: “[D]o you ever put printer drivers into a phone? Maybe. I don’t know yet. Do you ever put high-end camera support into a laptop? Maybe. I don’t know. So some of the things are logically not in the overlap API sets because they don’t make sense.”

Gallo agrees, stating that he wants “one API set, one design point that I can go target the breadth of devices, and so what developers are really asking for is hey, make it easy for me to hit this breadth of devices” regardless of what ‘flavor’ of Windows they are targeting.

This raises the question of the unification of Microsoft’s app stores. Will it eventually merge the Windows and Windows Phone stores? Guggs is optimistic: “I think in the long run you still want to get to one store.” There are features like carrier-billing that are prevalent in one and not the other, of course.

The gist is that apps are now systemized to a point, but not completely, and that the stores that vend them are similar, yet unique. The trend is pretty simple: More unification as time passes. It’s worth noting that this is not a new strategy. It’s continuation of prior efforts, now more, if still incompletely realized.

Windows Phone and Windows are smaller players in the app game when compared to their key rivals, iOS and Android. Gallo is frank on the matter: “When we look at [the actual] numbers, [we're still] small, but the numbers are growing.” Despite the modest figures, Gallo states that “nobody writes us off anymore.”

In Guggs’ estimation, there is a commercial advantage to having unified apps, as it helps Microsoft pitch developers on its platforms. He described that conversation as follows: “Now you go out and say, hey, look, if you write the app I can run it across both. Now let’s have a business conversation about what makes why is this interesting.”

So while Gallo is correct that Windows Phone is modest in size, when lashed to Windows 8.x’s app download figures, the value proposition — even if still smaller when combined than the upper echelons of Apple and Google’s platforms — makes more sense. It’s an open question as to how much this will help. The strategy’s effectiveness will be vetted by the rising, or falling download and development rates. It should be considered a positive sign if an acceleration of development work is realized once universal apps become the developer standard for the Microsoft platform world.

If development remains flat, that will be more than problematic for the company.

Windows Phone and Windows 8.x are not the only platforms on the shared Windows core: Xbox.
Xbox

Microsoft confirmed at Build that Xbox will eventually be brought into the universal app ecosystem. Gallo declined to discuss timeframes with TechCrunch, but did indicate that from a “visionary point of view,” Microsoft’s intention is to have “Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox [...] able to use the shared project.” The company has “a common API set to do that.”

Why is Xbox not yet part of the universal family? Gallo explained: “It’s on a slightly different cadence as far as code development, just because of timing of getting everything on the different platforms.”

It feels odd to discuss Xbox sales momentum as potentially important for the Windows platform, but if game developers could bring so-called ‘AAA’ games from the Xbox One to the Windows Store, it would help bolster the quality of that marketplace. That’s a long way from that actually happening, but it’s worth considering.

Note of course that this is all intention, and not completed action. Microsoft has to build the above, well, and get developers to use it. That’s a large task.
My Platform, Your Platform

Microsoft once ruled the platform space. It was the platform. Then the Web came along, and at least partially exploded that hegemony. With Internet Explorer bundling, Microsoft managed to claw a chunk of that back. Firefox, and then Chrome came to fore, challenging its dominance, and then Apple showed up and carved out massive chunks of the platform world with its iPhone and iPad devices. iOS was joined by, and then surpassed by Android.

Windows chugged along, slowly losing sales share to consumers and businesses alike. Microsoft now seems quite aware of its loss of preeminence. Guggs:


I think there was a time in history, not just our history but in general, where people said, okay, I have to go work on this ecosystem or that ecosystem or this tool chain or that tool chain. And nobody played with anybody else. And I think we had a reputation for some period of time of not playing well with others. I think I want to sort of make sure we’re tuning that reputation to say, hey, we play great with others, and the stuff we build, it’s really good actually.

Not that he wouldn’t love for you to use only Microsoft tools, but he admitted that “it’s not realistic today that all developers use all Microsoft. In fact there’s many developers who don’t.” Microsoft, in his view, is now trying to “both participate and support the broad set of developers by making sure that the services we use, even if [developers] don’t use all of our stuff,” those same people can employ whatever they find useful.

Gallo is in very much the same headspace, indicating that Microsoft recognizes “clearly that we are not the only game in town and that the world is diverse,” adding “and [the world is] going to stay diverse. People just don’t always think Windows first.” The market might have been saying that for some time, but to hear it from Microsoft itself remains refreshing.

Gallo admits that the stance is new: “We think it and we’re going to embrace it. That has not been a typical Microsoft stance embracing it. We’re embracing it and we’re going to thrive in it.”

I highlight this section from the transcripts to underscore that what we heard at Build wasn’t lip-service to a supposed new perspective. Speak to various Microsoft executives and you get the impression that they mean it – that Microsoft remains committed to building its own platform (that Widows unity bit), but is also hellbent on selling its services to anyone with an Internet connection, mobile or otherwise.

___________________________________________________________________________________

source:TechCrunch

AMD unleashes dual-GPU Radeon R9 295X2 graphics card

 The AMD Radeon R9 is already the leading graphics card family for the Bitcoin mining community, but the company is preparing to double their pleasure with its new R9 295X2, which manages to pack a pair of R9 290X GPUs into one board.

 As that suggests, the specs of the 295X2 are mostly those of the 290X -- times two. That means double the stream processors (5,632 total), double the video RAM (8GB in all), and, of course, double the power consumption (500 watts). There is a slight uptick in the peak clock speed, from 1000MHz to 1018MHz. In all, AMD claims there's 11.5 teraflops of computing power packed into the card.

 Because the 295X2 requires an additional 125 watts of power beyond what the company's previous dual-GPU card,the Radeon HD 7990, needed, AMD has enlisted Asetek to provide a closed-loop liquid cooling system with 120mm radiator (and a fan that lights up red) to keep things cooler and quieter. The card is built from powder-coated aluminum, though you'll only be able to appreciate the aesthetic appeal of the metal construction until you actually install it in your system.

 Once inside, the Radeon R9 295X2 performs, according to early reviews, as you might expect -- like a beast. Anandtech says AMD made "absolutely no performance compromises in putting a pair of Hawaii GPUs on to a single video card," while HotHardware concludes that "this is one of the most drool-worthy graphics cards to ever come out AMD."

 The price, however, will elicit more of a spit take than drooling. Expect the 295X2 to cost around $1,499 when it's released later this month -- obviously a ton of money considering that it will cost more than most PCs, but not crazy when compared to buying a pair of R9 290X cards and a liquid cooling solution separately. It's also half the amount for which Nvidia plans to sell its own dual-GPU super-card, the GeForce GTX Titan Z. If you'd rather purchase the 295X2 in a pre-built system, Maingear has already announced the Rush Vesuvius Edition, which starts at a cool $4,479 for a souped-up desktop that also includes an Intel Core i7-4820K quad-core processor, among other high-end specs.

___________________________________________________________________________________

source:ZDnet

The Navy Wants To Fire Its Ridiculously Strong Railgun From The Ocean

In 2016, the U.S. Navy is going to test a railgun—a weapon that can repeatedly launch a projectile at more than 5,000 MPH—from a boat. In 2018, they're going to do it again. And in the 2020s, the Navy is going to figure out just what to do with a gun that seemed like science fiction decades ago.

Speaking at the Navy League's Sea Air Space exposition in National Harbor, Maryland, Rear Admiral Bryant Fuller told the assembled crowd of journalists, servicemen, and defense contractors that railgun shots cost 1/100th the price of a “standard” missile. (In the age of austerity, even something as futuristic as a railgun is sold on the premise of cost savings.)

A railgun works by generating a strong electromagnetic current that flows from one rail, through a U-shaped back end of the projectile, and into another parallel rail. This generates three magnetic fields—a parallel one around each of the rails, and a perpendicular one around the projectile. Squeezed forward by the magnetic fields, the projectile accelerates rapidly along the rails and is then launched forward, breaking the circuit. The end result is a large metal slug that can go very far, very fast.

Scientist figured out the physics behind rail guns a while ago, and have tested them on land, but the main constraint on making a practical one is generating enough electrical power.

That's understandable. A railgun system needs 25 megawatts of energy flowing through it, and according to Captain Michael Ziv, the Navy's program manager for rail guns and energy weapons. Most currently serving destroyers don't have more than nine megawatts of electricity that they can shift around.

Future ships like the Zumwalt class of destroyers with "integrated power systems" that make it really easy to assign electrical power can get around this. The Navy is keeping open the option of outfitting current ships with railguns, as they can bring batteries storing the extra power needed on board. The Navy is going to test the railgun at sea in 2016 from the back of the USNS Millinocket, a transport and supply ship.

How far the shot goes depends on the power supplied. Smaller railguns might release a projectile at 20 megajoules, which means that at flying level it can go up to 60 miles. A larger railgun, the kind that draws 25 megawatts of power, can release projectiles at 32 megajoules of energy, where they will travel up to a 110 miles at a level trajectory. With the 25 megawatts, a railgun can also fire up to 10 times a minute, creating an anti-ship or anti-coastal weapon that's fast firing, cheaper than a missile, and at least as deadly.

If the tests go well, it's not just the Navy that's interested. The U.S. Army is working with the Navy to develop the railguns, meaning the weapon could one day attack both from the sea and the land.

___________________________________________________________________________________

souecw:Popular Science

Brazil will propose global Internet governance rules

Brazil is set to present a proposal for a global Internet Bill of Rights at a major conference on the subject later this month.

A board member of the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) and Internet pioneer in Brazil, Demi Getschko, told newspaper O Estado de São Paulo that the proposal is based on a document previously created by the entity, which describes the principles for Web use and governance and was also used as a foundation for Brazil's Marco Civil da Internet.

Getschko added that the recently drafted suggestions for a global governance model are a "simplified version" of the original CGI.br document and will be presented at NETmundial, a global multistakeholder meeting on the future of Internet, which will take place on April 23 and 24.

A CGI.br spokesperson told ZDNet that the manifesto "will guide the discussions at NETmundial" and that the draft will undergo further validation by the event committee before its public release on April 14.

The proposal will effectively be a compilation of the most relevant suggestions from a total of 188 entries received by 46 different countries, according to the steering committee. The suggestions were sent by civil society representatives, private sector, academia and the global tech community, with observations on the two topics that will be addressed, "Principles of Internet Governance" and "A Script for the Future Development of the Internet Governance Ecosystem."

The creation of global standards for Internet governance is supported by many influencers around the world, including World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, who stated: "by passing the Marco Civil, Brazil will cement its proud reputation as a world leader on democracy and social progress and will help to usher in a new era – one where citizens’ rights in every country around the world are protected by digital bills of rights."

Yesterday (3) Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff said on Twitter highlighted the support of the Web creator and added that she considers the Marco Civil "a tool of freedom of expression, individual privacy and respect for human rights."

After years of wrangling, the Marco Civil was approved by the Congress’ lower house last weekand now needs to be approved by the Senate. Campaigners and politicians that support the creation of the Internet framework are lobbying for the Bill to be voted before NETMundial takes place.

___________________________________________________________________________________

source:ZDnet

Apple in talks to buy Renesas stake in chip design unit: Nikkei

Apple Inc is in talks to buy Japan-based RenesasElectronics Corp's stake in a unit that designs liquid crystal display chips for iPhones for about 50 billion yen ($483 million), the Nikkei reported, without identifying a source.

Renesas owns 55 percent stake in Renesas SP Drivers, its joint venture with Sharp Corp and Taiwan's Powerchip.

Apple expects to complete the stake purchase by summer, thebusiness daily reported on Tuesday.

The U.S. company "apparently wants to meld" the design of core display components into its overall product development as image quality becomes a crucial selling point for smartphones, the Nikkei said.

Sharp, which owns 25 percent in Renesas SP, is expected to sell its stake to Apple if the U.S. company asks, the newspaper said.

Renesas has been hit by slowing orders and competition from companies such as SamsungElectronics Co Ltd.

The Japanese company received a 150 billion yen bailout from a government-led fund and its major customers in September to counter an earlier bid by U.S. private equity firm KKR & Co LP.

___________________________________________________________________________________

source:Reuters

Meet Microsoft’s Cortana, a More Personal Siri

REDMOND, Wash. — When Microsoft was developing Cortana, a virtual assistant for its mobile operating system that was unveiled Wednesday, the company thought, naturally, about how it could improve on Siri, Apple’s sometimes bumbling assistant for the iPhone.

Its development teams studied other assistants too — actual human assistants, those keepers of executive calendars and intercepters of phone calls. After interviews with several of them, Microsoft resolved that virtual assistants need to do a better job of anticipating their bosses’ needs.

“Siri is this anthropomorphized character, but Siri doesn’t know you personally,” Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s operating system group, said in an interview.

Mr. Belfiore showed the results of its work on Wednesday at an event for software developers in San Francisco held by Microsoft. Cortana is the most high-profile feature of Windows Phone 8.1, a soon-to-be-released update to Microsoft’s mobile phone operating system.

It’s another way in which Microsoft is seeking to narrow the technological gap between its competitors and Windows Phone, which is a distant third among smartphone operating systems, accounting for 3 percent of worldwide shipments in the fourth quarter, according to IDC, the technology research firm.

Late last week in a conference room at the company’s headquarters, Mr. Belfiore demonstrated how Cortana offers all the Siri-like basics, with a number of its same shortcomings. Mobile phone users can use her to set calendar appoints with natural voice commands (“Schedule a phone call with Jim at 2 P.M. tomorrow.”)

Ask Cortana basic trivia — “How old is Barack Obama?” — and she responds with the correct answer in a congenial, synthesized female voice. But ask her when Barack Obama was elected president — a question with two correct answers — and she gets stumped, displaying a list of web search results on the topic so you can do the leg work yourself.

Mr. Belfiore showed how Cortana tries to go beyond Siri to figure out what mobile phone users want before they ask for it. If you keep searching for N.C.A.A. basketball scores, local traffic conditions and news on the Washington State mudslide, she will start to proactively display fresh data about those topics prominently.

With permission, Cortana can examine a user’s email to look for airline reservations, warning them if a flight is delayed. If traffic to the airport is horrendous on the day of departure, Cortana will notify users that they should get in their cars early. When you land in Mexico, Cortana, without prompting, will display the local currency exchange rate, provide an airport map and offer a link to an English-Spanish translation app.

Cortana is named after a virtual character in Halo, Microsoft’s science-fiction video game series, that uses her encyclopedic knowledge about the universe to help the game’s protagonist, Master Chief. The actress, Jen Taylor, who does the voice for the character, also provided recordings for the phone assistant’s voice.

Only when Microsoft’s new software is in use by the masses will it become clear whether it has a real edge on Siri. Apple’s virtual assistant was ridiculed, especially during its early days, for performance problems that rendered it unavailable when people wanted to use it. Those early impressions have been hard for Siri to shake, even as Apple has improved its technology.

Microsoft appears to be making Cortana more open to independent app developers than Apple has with Siri. People will be able to use voice commands to watch a television show on Hulu and to compose and send tweets.

___________________________________________________________________________________

source:Bits

Why We Haven't Built A Better Black Box

 Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is all but certainly sunk in the Indian Ocean, yet time is running out to unravel its tragic story. The plane's flight recorder, or "black box" (which isn't actually black), sends out a detectable sonic ping for about 30 days; if investigators don't find it in that time, the chances of ever finding it plummet.

 We have the ability to take photos on Mars and then download the images to devices in our pockets. When a plane crashes in water, however, we scramble to assemble a national coalition tasked with locating even a general crash site. Surely there's a better way.

 Aside from some flight recording that started as early as World War II, black boxes as we know them today were invented in the late 1950s—and the general idea hasn't changed much since. Modern airplanes come with both a cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and a flight data recorder (FDR). The CVR records two hours of sound in the cockpit, constantly re-recording over itself. Meanwhile, the FDR measures and records datapoints like flight speed, altitude, time, direction, and as many as 2,000 other parameters. This information is logged on a continuous 25-hour loop inside most boxes, according to Anthony Brickhouse, an associate professor of aerospace and occupational safety at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University who worked on the infamous TWA Flight 800 crash.

 Flight recorders also meet absurd crash standards to ensure they're not damaged; they're fire-proofed, water-proofed, and encased in metal shells that can withstand ballistic punishment and the pressure caused by 20,000 feet of seawater overhead. (Despite their popular moniker, black boxes are actually painted bright orange for visibility.) When a box goes down in water, it sends out a sonic "ping" that investigators can detect from miles away. The underwater locator beacon or "pinger," however, only has enough battery power to last about 30 days—creating a race against time for investigators in the MH370 search. Only a handful of black boxes have ever been lost, yet this is a situation where it could happen again.

 It's tempting, in the age of streaming data, to call this an archaic, obsolete system—after all, there are better ways of recording and accessing flight data—but they face staggering problems in practice. After an Air France crash in 2009, for example, it took investigators two years to recover the black box. French safety officials drew up recommendations afterward to improve the flight recorders, and the FAA followed suit. Those recommendations included features such as adding a mechanism to catapult a black box into the air when it hit water, and tripling the battery life of the underwater locator beacons to 90 days. Air France incorporated such technologies into its airplanes, but U.S. airlines are lagging behind on the new regulations. Financial hurdles are the most notorious reason for an increasingly parsimonious airline industry. "As with everything, you know the money is always going to be an issue," Brickhouse says.

 The other option is to do away with the black box entirely. One deeply explored plan involves replacing it with an always-on record of cockpit sound and flight data that's sent by satellite to a storage facility. Not only would we never lose another black box—they'd become obsolete—but we could also prevent crashes by remotely detecting problems with an ongoing flight. This isn't quite the slam dunk it sounds like. If airlines and pilots consented to the plan, they would essentially be wiretapped at work. Then there's the muddled economics of safety to consider: the plan would be tremendously expensive for airlines to enact. They'd have to retrofit entire fleets, reserve satellite time, and secure adequate data storage facilities, among other costs. They could just point out that the black box system isn't perfect, but works well enough for almost every crash recovery.

 Can we hope for an improved system before the next black box goes missing? It's hard to say. But the airline industry is inertial—always taxiing, never quite moving as quickly as we'd like.

___________________________________________________________________________________

source:Popular Science

Intel is launching at least 9 new Bay Trail-T chips for tablets

 Intel’s Bay Trail-T processors are energy-efficient chips for tablets which offer long battery life, decent performance, and support for Windows and Android software. Most Windows tablets with 10 inch or smaller screens already have Bay Trail-T processors, and a handful of Android tablets with Bay Trail chips are on the way.

 Now CPU World reports Intel is getting ready to launch a second wave of Bay Trail-T chips with at least 9 new models, including some that offer up to 16 percent faster graphics.

 The most powerful new chip is the Intel Atom Z3795. It’s a 1.6 GHz quad-core chip with maximum burst speeds of up to 2.39 GHz and GPU speeds between 311 MHz and 778 MHz and support for up to 4GB of RAM.

 The least powerful might be the Atom Z3735E which has a clock speed of 1.33 GHz, a max burst speed of 1.83 GHz, GPU speeds from 313 MHz to 688 MHz… and support for only up to 1GB of RAM.

 All of the new chips are quad-core processors with Intel HD graphics based on the same technology used in Intel’s 3rd-generation Core “Ivy Bridge” processors.

 You can find detailed specs for 7 of the 9 new chips at CPU World. They’re all expected to ship in the first or second quarter of 2014.

___________________________________________________________________________________

sourceliliputing