2006/04/28

Digit news - NAB 2006: Apple Shake update to have Intel support

Digit news - NAB 2006: Apple Shake update to have Intel support

Apple are going to ship version 4.1 of Shake (their high end digital compositor) in the next few weeks. The big news it's a Universal binary so will work on both PowerPC and Intel based Macs.

The timing for other applications hasn't been announced, though Adobe are waiting until next year to release Photoshop in Universal binary format.

Digit news - PSP firmware update adds Flash, podcasts

Digit news - PSP firmware update adds Flash, podcasts

The new firmware will support Podcasts and Macromedia Flash 6 (well a subset of it). Future versions will support video podcasts and new video profiles (so UMD video can be stored on Memory Stick). The final version will allow running games from memory stick and VoIP.

The update will be available for Japanese units first, and either at the same time or shortly after for worldwide units. This will bring the firmware to v2.70

Digit news - Seagate goes to 750GB with new drive

Digit news - Seagate goes to 750GB with new drive

Seagate have just released the newest Barracuda range (7200/10 which come in capacities ranging from 200GB to 750GB using perpendicular recording. They support both Ultra ATA/100 and SATA interfaces with either 8MB or 16MB of data cache buffer.

No pricing has been made available yet, but the higher capacilty drives (if current drives are used as a basis) will command a premium.

This means "consumer" RAID NAS (network attached storage) devices can hit 3TB (with 2.25TB available for use such that a drive can fail completely before the RAID stops working) as most use 4 internal disks.

2006/04/27

FC5

Fedora may be on the bleeding edge, but it's very impressive (even having blogging software that works with Blogger and others).



The desktop can be GNOME or KDE and it all looks very pretty.


It makes a very good desktop machine.

2006/04/26

Digit news - AJAX in the spotlight

Digit news - AJAX in the spotlight

You know when a technology is making an impact when there's a conference dedicated to it. The Real-World AJAX Seminar is being held in San Jose, California, next week. Meanwhile, a two-day AJAX technical conference, AjaxWorld Conference & Expo, is planned for this October in Santa Clara, California.

AJAX is the front-end technology for sites like Google Maps/Calendar/etc and Flickr. It means Asynchronous Javascript and XML.

What it does it move the rendering of data to the client, which is done in the browser using Javascript and HTML. The client side then processes the XML from the server and can then send data back and request more. This means the server is just transferring data, which is what web servers are good for. As soon as they have to process/render information scalability becomes an issue. Transferring data can also be stateless so delivered from a number of systems in parallel where it doesn't matter what back-end system is connected to.

Digit news - Panasonic to launch Blu-ray Disc drive in June

Digit news - Panasonic to launch Blu-ray Disc drive in June

The BluRay drive suitable for use in PC's will be launched in Japan in June for about $850. It has an ATAPI interface and supports both 25GB and 50GB disks and BD-RE (rewritable) disks.

Users will need a pretty hefty CPU to use them to watch BluRay movies a 3GHz P4 for MPEG2 movies and a Pentium D for MPEG4AV movies.

Data backup applications will run on modest systems.

Digit news - Photoshop coming to Intel Macs next year

Digit news - Photoshop coming to Intel Macs next year

A Universal binary version of Photoshop will be made available in the 2nd half of next year. That's a long time to wait so there's still going to be a market for high end G5 based Power Macs for some time (which are 64bit compared to the Intel Macs which are still 32 bit).

It also means there's a market for booting Windows XP on Intel Macs so users can run Adobe applications natively without going through Apple's Rosetta translation service.

A big market for Macs is Adobe users, so maybe Apple will launch a Power Mac based on Intel 64bit CPU's prior to the Adobe ports - which will be a boost for both companies.

Digit news - NVidia upgrades 3D workstation graphics line

Digit news - NVidia upgrades 3D workstation graphics line

NVidia is upping the ante again with a new line of workstation 3D graphics chips.

The FX 5500 boasts 1GB of dedicated graphics RAM. The cards can be used for a variety of applications including 3D work and video rendering.

Cards are expected from vendors soon.

Digit news - Apple adds 17-inch MacBook Pro

Digit news - Apple adds 17-inch MacBook Pro

Apple has added a 17" MacBook Pro to its Intel line-up. It features a 2.16GHz Duo processor with 1GB of RAM (upgradable to 2GB), a 120GB hard disk and Superdrive (DVD +/- RW) and a n ATI Mobility Radeon which is PCI-Express based.

There's a DVI out for external displays which allow use of the Apple's 30" cinema display (using a Dual-link) as well as USB 2.0, Firewire 800, EDR Bluetoothand, Gig Ethernet and the iSight built-in camera.

Now they just need the 12" to complete the range.

Ofcom Website | Notices to applicants and bidders

Ofcom Website | Notices to applicants and bidders:

Ofcom has provisionally awarded wireless telegraphy licences for use of the frequencies 1781.7-1785MHz paired with 1876.7-1880MHz to the companies listed below, subject to full licence fees being received by Ofcom by 17:30 on Friday 28 April 2006.




Bidders

1 British Telecommunications PLC

2 Cable & Wireless UK ( England )

3 COLT Mobile Telecommunications Ltd

4 Cyberpress Ltd

5 FMS Solutions Ltd

6 Mapesbury Communications Ltd

7 O2 ( UK ) Ltd

8 Opal Telecom Ltd

9 PLDT ( UK ) Ltd

10 Shyam Telecom UK Ltd

11 Spring Mobil AB

12 Teleware PLC

Though not quite definitive as licensees could still pull out (losing their deposit) or not make final payments the list is pretty much who'll get licenses now.

Various telcos (BT, C&W, Colt and more than likely Carphone Warehouse) have said they'll use the license to offer in-office GSM services to companies. BT will use it in a similar way to their Fusion service.

This is the first of several spectrum auctions that Ofcom is intending to offer.