Intel : Behind The Name

Intel hasn’t officially announced the code for deciphering the names of the soon-to-be-released Sandy Bridge chips, but Intel sources have confirmed the names will work as shown here.

Intel will retain the Core i3, i5, i7 brand names from the previous generation for these processors. Intel has changed the “badge,” or logo, for the Sandy Bridge processors, as the i7, i5, and i3 names are more prominent than they were with the Nehalem architecture. For comparison, you can see the previous generation i7 badge, where the “i7” text designation is shaded and not as obvious and prominent.

A sample model name is shown below—Intel Core i5 2500K—along with a photo of a Sandy Bridge chip. We’ve broken down each segment of the model name so you know exactly what’s going on with Sandy Bridge’s naming scheme.

• The brand name and chip designation will lead off the model name.

• Next, because Sandy Bridge is the second generation of the Core i3/i5/i7 chips, Intel will add a “2” in front of the model number.

• Finally, some chips will include a letter as a final designation. The exact significance of all of the different letters is still not official, but “K” should signify a chip that can be overclocked, for example. An “S” chip should be a chip with a low clock speed, while a “T” chip should be one that runs at a low clock speed with a low TDP. Not every chip will have a letter identifier.

Source of Information : Computer Power User (CPU) December 2010

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Gnome Census Results

At GUADEC 2010, Neary Consulting revealed the results of its Gnome Census, a report that studies who contributes to the Gnome project. The study found that some 70 percent of contributors are unpaid, but that the majority of paid commits come from paid participants. Seventy percent of contributors work on the project in their spare time, while an additional 20 percent of contributors do so on both a paid and voluntary basis. The study also looked at commercial developers’ contributions to Gnome. In the information collected, Red Hat had the highest percentage of contributions to the project with 16.30 percent. Immediately followed by Novell with 10.44 percent. The study stated that Red Hat’s ranking isn’t much of a surprise, considering the company employs 16 of the top 40 Gnome contributors. Red Hat has been key in developing middleware modules. The report also cautions about the compartmental nature of Gnome development. According to the report, specific companies have carved out areas of Gnome to maintain. From the report: “This compares unfavorably with the Linux kernel, where there are several active maintainers for each subsystem.”

Source of Information :  Linux Magazine No 120.November 2010

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SugarCRM Announces Sugar 6

SugarCRM announced the release of Sugar 6, an enterprise customer relationship management platform based on PHP. Three versions of SugarCRM are available: the fully open source and free Sugar Community Edition, Sugar Enterprise, and Sugar Professional. Community Edition contains roughly 85 percent of the onboard functionality found in Sugar Professional and Sugar Enterprise. Community Edition is released under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3.

SugarCRM also released a set of open source testing tools for testing PHP deployments.

• SODA is an XML-based testing environment for Watir, a Ruby library for automating web browser alternative.

• SodaMachine runs alongside SODA and is a GUI used for creating, editing, and debugging SODA tests.

• MeterMaid is a Java application that reduces the steps necessary in writing JMeter tests for HTTP protocol.

• SugarMMM creates XML data bundles for MeterMaid load testing.

• TidBit creates massive amounts of data to do SugarCRM performance testing.

SODA and SodaMachine are available under the BSD License. MeterMaid and SugarMMM are both available under the Apache license. TidBit is available under the AGPL v3. All tools can be downloaded at http://github.com/sugarcrm. More information on Sugar 6 can be found at http://sugarcrm.com/crm/.

Source of Information : Website Magazine November 2010

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Android Experiences Record Growth

A new report from NPD sees Blackberry dethroned as the most popular commercial mobile operating system for the first time since 2007. The NPD Group, which researches the commercial wireless market, announced the results of its Q2 wireless research, and the clear leader was the Android operating system.

According to the research, one in every three commercial smartphones activated in the US last quarter was Android powered. The top five Android phones purchased were the Motorola Droid, the HTC Droid Incredible, the HTC EVO 4G, the HTC Hero, and the HTC Droid Eris.

Research In Motion’s operating system fell to second for the first time since Q4 2007. RIM accounted for 28 percent of commercial smartphones activated in Q2 2010. iOS accounted for 22 percent. Verizon Wireless maintained its lead in the carrier market with 33 percent, followed by AT&T with 25 percent. Sprint and T-Mobile held 12 percent and 11 percent, respectively. NPD’s numbers are based on consumers age 18 and older. The research did not factor in enterprise/corporate purchases.

Meanwhile, international smartphone trend reporting firm Canalys released its Q2 2010 report highlighting the growth of Android compared to the previous year and the continued success of Nokia, though the competition is closing the gap.

From Q2 2009, Android deployments rose worldwide by a staggering 886 percent. Canalys VP and Principal Analyst Chris Jones said that this spike was largely due to carrier promotions and increased adoption by hardware vendors, such as HTC and Motorola.

Source of Information : Website Magazine November 2010

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New Danger In Online Gaming

Hackers are circling gaming sites, ready to infect.

Online gaming is huge. It’s also dangerous. According to a June 2010 Nielsen NetView survey on Internet usage, online gaming has overtaken e-mail in terms of the total percentage of time Americans spend online (10.2 percent versus 8.3 percent). Only social networking scores higher, with a whopping 22.7 percent. Online gaming now consumes a staggering 407 million hours of U.S. citizens’ time per year, according to Nielsen.

Nielsen’s not the only one that has noticed this trend; cybercriminals have taken note and are taking advantage of it, too, infecting games sites—from legitimate forums and tutorial sites to shadier download sites—to attack the unwary.

“As the gaming industry continues to grow, hackers will inevitably develop more ways to target this massive group,” said Ondrej Vlcek, chief technical officer of Czech security company Avast, makers of avast! Internet Security 5.0 and avast! Free Antivirus. Avast continually gathers data about infected sites, publishing a monthly Most Wanted List to highlight the worst sites in a given portion of the Web. For October, Avast sliced its data to reveal the riskiest gaming sites on the Web, to warn customers and raise awareness of the threat. Avast’s worst offenders, as of October 6:

• Gamesfactoryinteractive.com
• Games-digest.com
• Mariogamesplay.com
• Anywhere-games.com
• Galacticflashgames.com
• Towerofdefense.com

To safely game online, Avast recommends a few simple precautions:

• Keep all your apps, and especially your antivirus, updated.

• Don’t turn off your antivirus while you’re playing games.

• Instead, use your antivirus’ gaming function if you want to game uninterrupted.

• Beware of downloading games via warez sites, which are a known avenue for spreading malware.

Source of Information :  PC Magazine November 2010

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Open Source Hardware Defined

Members of the open source hardware community publicly issued a list of standards that define a specific piece of hardware as open source. There are 11 tenets to the open source hardware definition:

1. Documentation – The hardware must be released with documentation including design files, and must allow modification and distribution of the design files. Where documentation is not furnished with the physical product, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining this documentation for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, preferably downloading via the Internet without charge. The documentation must include design files in the preferred form for which a hardware developer would modify the design. Deliberately obfuscated design files are not allowed. Intermediate forms analogous to compiled computer code are not allowed as substitutes.

2. Necessary Software – If the hardware requires software, embedded or otherwise, to operate properly and fulfill its essential functions, then the documentation requirement must also include at least one of the following: The necessary software, released under an OSI-approved open source license, or other sufficient documentation such that it could reasonably be considered straightforward to write open source software that allows the device to operate properly and fulfill its essential functions.

3. Derived Works – The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original hardware. The license must allow for the manufacture, sale, distribution, and use of products created from the design files or derivatives of the design files.

4. Free Redistribution – The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the project documentation as a component of an aggregate distribution containing designs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale. The license shall not require any royalty or fee related to the sale of derived works.

5. Attribution – The license may require derived works to provide attribution to the original designer when distributing design files, manufactured products, and/ or derivatives thereof. The license may also require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original design.

6. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups – The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

7. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor – The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the hardware in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the hardware from being used in a business, or from being used in nuclear research.

8. Distribution of License – The rights attached to the hardware must apply to all to whom the product or documentation is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties.

9. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product – The rights attached to the hardware must not depend on the hardware being part of a particular larger product. If the hardware is extracted from that product and used or distributed within the terms of the hardware license, all parties to whom the hardware is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original distribution.

10. License Must Not Restrict Other Hardware or Software – The license must not place restrictions on other hardware or software that may be distributed or used with the licensed hardware. For example, the license must not insist that all other hardware sold at the same time be open source, nor that only open source software be used in conjunction with the hardware.

11. License Must Be Technology-Neutral– No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface.

Source of Information : Linux Magazine No 120.November 2010

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YouTube Marketing - Brand-focused videos

Viral videos in this sense — videos that seem authentic, but aren’t — may be too time-consuming or difficult for what you need to accomplish. But this doesn’t mean you can’t still use YouTube to create and curate more brand-focused videos that have the potential to drive business for your company or brand. A good example of the potential of more straightforward, brand-focused videos is seen in Old Spice’s recent campaign featuring the Old Spice Man. The Old Spice Man is a character from a wildly popular pair of Old Spice ads. He is over-the-top manly, amazing at everything and funny. Recently, the Old Spice channel on YouTube asked viewers to submit questions to the Old Spice Man. Some of the selected questions were then answered by an in-character Old Spice Man. The campaign was an astounding success. Immediately after it ended, the channel became the most viewed channel on YouTube, and the third-most subscribed YouTube channel of all time. Here are some pointers to keep in mind when trying to replicate the success of these brand-focused videos:


1. Make it very engaging. The Old Spice Man’s responses lack any special effects but are all strongly written and well-acted by Isaiah Mustafa. And the jokes are so rapidfire they encourage viewers to rewatch the videos to catch all of them. The lesson here is to keep your videos short, dense and, if possible, funny.


2. Make sure your video has important content. If comedy is not your strong suit, or your product or service is not something that lends itself to comedy, informative how to videos can be just as effective. The Internet is seen as a give-and-take medium, and viewers demand more than just an unfiltered sales pitch from advertisers.


3. Make it interactive. Another factor in the success of the Old Spice campaign is that the Old Spice Man is responding to viewers. Even if you are not as popular as Isaiah Mustafa, the ability to engage with customers’ concerns in video form shows that you care. Amazon did a good job of this when they provided a video explaining why they acquired Zappos.


4. Work across platforms. The Old Spice Man answers questions from Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Reddit and more. By drawing attention to and encouraging viewers to use the different platforms, you encourage consumers to get more deeply involved with your brand or company. Respond to a question from Twitter on YouTube, for instance. Consumers will appreciate that you put a human face behind the response.


5. Make it professional. Don’t sink a lot of money into it, but since these videos are seen as messages from your company, make sure they look and sound good. Hire a professional videographer if you have to. You don’t want people’s first thought when they think of your company to be “shoddy.”

Source of Information :  Website Magazine October 2010

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Google Knows Local (and Mobile)

Over the past two months, Google announced two enhancements to its local product offering and together they represent a significant development in the search advertising and mobile ecosystem.
In late June, Google rolled out its “Tags” offering in Google Places. Tags are essentially just yellow markers that allow business owners to promote a certain aspect of their businesses. For example, a flower shop could use a tag to showcase a website link to specials or a restaurant could use a tag to feature a link to daily menu specials. To use Google Tags, a Google Places account needs to be created and business information completed and claimed. Once the listing is validated, tags can be activated on the dashboard. Tags are currently available in all 50 U.S. states.

Keep in mind that Tags do not affect the rank of search results. They do, however, add more information to a listing and help it stand out when it appears in natural search results. The cost of this added exposure? That’s the best part. Tags are budget friendly — for a flat fee of $25 per month.

If Google Tags is not enough motivation to take mobile and local marketing seriously, Google then announced location extensions for search ads. The extensions can be used to help advertisers connect with mobile device users through browsers and applications.

The AdWords location extensions enable advertisers to feature a business location and phone number on an expandable map advertisement that appears on mobile websites and apps in the Google Display Network. Ads appear as a banner text ad with a business icon that expands to show the business location on a Google map along with ad creative, a click-to-call phone number and an option to get directions.

Advertisers will only be charged when a user clicks to call the business or visits a website, not when users click to expand the map or request directions. To utilize location extensions, advertisers need to opt-in to the Google Display Network, set up location extensions and choose to show ads on iPhones and mobile devices with full Internet browsers.

Source of Information :  Website Magazine October 2010

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Apple reinvents the iPod, again

AppleTV, iTunesand iPod updates announced in Jobs’ annual speech

Apple is seeing 230,000 new iOS devices go into use every day, said Steve Jobs, opening his annual September music product keynote speech. He introduced a new iPod touch, iPod nano and iPod shuffle. The iPod classic wasn’t updated but continues to be available for sale.

Apple also gave us a redesigned Apple TV and iTunes 10, now equipped with music-focused social network, Ping. Apple’s new range includes the £39 iPod shuffle; the iPod nano (from £129), the iPod touch (from £189), and the iPod classic in a 160GB model (£193).



iPod touch
The iPod touch boasts a Retina Display with front and rear-facing cameras and support for FaceTime video chat. You get HD video recording and, because the touch runs on Apple’s A4 processor, you can edit video using the iMovie app. Additional features include a three-axis electronic gyroscope, iOS 4.1 and Game Center. The latter is Apple’s new service, which lets gamers challenge and play against friends or new opponents. The iPod touch is like an iPhone without the calling features, but offers only half the memory – just 256MB. You can expect 40 hours of music playback and seven hours of video playback on a single battery charge. £189 gets you an 8GB model, 32GB (£249) and 64GB (£329) models are also available.



iPod nano
The all-new iPod nano loses the video camera and big screen to become an attractive touch controlled music player. You control what’s playing using a 1.5-inch Multi-Touch screen, through an interface that will be familiar to anyone who has used iOS, though the music player isn’t running iOS proper. Half the size and weight of the previous model, the de vice is manufactured in aluminum and glass, and boasts a robust clip, so you can wear the player if you like. Features include a built-in FM radio with live pause and support for Genius Mixes and playlists. ‘Shake to Shuffle’ means you can shake the device to mix up the song order. The 8GB model costs £129, while a 16GB model costs £159.



iPod shuffle
The new 2GB iPod shuffle lacks a screen but gains a familiar-seeming iPod control wheel. The player is tiny and has a strong clip to attach it to clothes or a bag, and can be controlled using VoiceOver spoken controls. Available in silver, blue, green, orange and pink, you get more than 15 hours of music playback on a single battery charge. The VoiceOver button on top of the iPod shuffle enables you to hear the name of the currently playing song and to switch between songs, playlists or Genius Mixes.



Apple TV
Apple is moving its ‘hobby’ device to an all-rental streaming model, which means the new Apple TV lacks any internal storage. Priced at just £99, Apple offers movies for rent in the UK, but TV show rentals are currently confined to the USA, where they cost just 99 cents. Apple had been expected to offer a range of subscription-based services to support the new device, but is understood to be stuck in tense negotiations for this.

Apple TV will stream content from Netflix (US-only), YouTube, Flickr and MobileMe, as well as music, photos and videos from PCs and Macs to your HD TV. Less than four-inches square, the charcoalgrey Apple TV uses 80% less power than the previous model. On-screen menus are clear and easy to navigate. The system runs on an A4 processor, but as yet lacks support for iOS apps.



iTunes 10 and Ping
Many users complained at the appearance of iTunes 10, which dispenses with those familiar-coloured controls in favour of a uniform grey interface. Some users have found ways to hack the software and put some colour back. There are a few improvements: for example, if you plug an iPhone or iPod into your computer, you can then play music contained on the device via iTunes by default.

The big new feature announcement was Ping, which Jobs describes as a “social network for music”. As part of iTunes 10, Ping will let you follow your favorite artists and link up with your friends, however it does have limited features for users: while artists can post images, videos and snippets of text, users can only comment and recommend tracks.



Apple bins free bumpers
Blink and you missed it, but Apple no longer offers a free case to iPhone 4 owners who find holding the device in certain ways can cut connections, saying the issue is “even smaller than we originally thought.” If your iPhone is afflicted, contact Apple and they may sort things out. For everyone else, Apple ended the free case offer on all iPhones sold after 30 September, 2010.

Source of Information : Mac Format November 2010 (UK)

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