IBM shows smallest, fastest graphene processor
IBM on Thursday demonstrated its fastest graphene transistor, which can execute 155 billion cycles per second, which is about 50 percent faster than previous experimental transistors shown by the company's researchers.
The transistor has a cut-off frequency of 155GHz, making it faster and more capable than the 100GHz graphene transistor shown by IBM in February last year, said Yu-Ming Lin, an IBM researcher.
The research also shows that high-performance, graphene-based transistors can be produced at low cost using standard semiconductor manufacturing processes, Lin said. That could pave the way for commercial production of graphene chips, though Lin could not say when manufacturing of such chips would begin. Read more...
Facebook ‘open sources’ custom server and data center designs
Facebook has "open sourced" the specifications and design documents for the custom-built servers, racks, and other equipment used in its new Prineville, Oregon data center, the first data center designed, built, and owned by the company itself.
On Thursday morning, at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, California, the social-networking giant released the designs under the aegis of the Open Compute Project, an effort to encourage the big industry players to share - and collectively improve on - hardware designs suited to a massive online operation like Facebook. The move is in stark contrast to Google, Facebook's primary rival, which is famously secretive about its latest data center and server designs. Read more...
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 – 5 Reasons to Upgrade
Stanley Kubrick once noted that editing is possibly the most important phase in the film-making process. In spite of the most spectacular directing, riveting performances, expert camera work and cutting edge special-effects (get over yourself, James Cameron), the simple fact remains that the quality of editing can easily make or break a film. That being said, even the most talented editor is only as good as the tools that he uses. Why then, would any video editor or post-production artist choose to use anything but the latest, most up-to-date video editing applications to edit their films? Read more...
IBM jumps into cloud, customers tip-toe behind
In announcing its cloud computing services on Thursday, IBM stressed repeatedly that private clouds -- or those that exist behind the corporate firewall -- are as important to its strategy as those in the public realm.
It seems like a wise strategy, given that even the IBM customers brought to a company event here to showcase their cloud development efforts were either not using the public cloud at all, or still in the early stages with it.
Tony Kerrison, CTO at financial services firm ING, said his company is running "zero" applications today in the public cloud. Like other financial services firms, ING is heavily bound by regulatory requirements, as well as strict European Union rules about where its customer data can be stored. Read more...
You don’t know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz
It's spring fever time here in Quizland, where the biggest story this week was a data breach that put millions of email addresses in the hands of scammers. What else happened? Moribund video chain Blockbuster finally found a buyer, Anonymous found yet another target for its bottomless pool of anger, AT&T found itself at the bottom of yet another user survey, and we just found out Google has a serious sweet tooth. Can you find the inner strength to ace our quiz? Give yourself 10 points for each correct answer. Now find yourself a comfortable spot and begin. Read more...
Microsoft readies Silverlight 5 beta
Microsoft next week will ship a beta release of Silverlight 5, the next generation of the company's proprietary multimedia plug-in platform, Microsoft officials blogged this week.
Silverlight 5 will be available at the Mix conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft officials said in a blog post about the role of plug-ins in the context of the rival HTML5 Internet multimedia specification and the future of the Web. The post was co-signed by Walid Abu-Hadba, corporate vice president of Developer Platform & Evangelism; Scott Guthrie, vice president of the .Net Developer Platform; and S. Somasegar, senior vice president of the company's Developer Division.
"As part of the continued support for scenarios that require plug-in based capabilities, we will ship a beta of Silverlight 5 at Mix, with some great demos for compelling scenarios," the post said. Read more...
Google, ITA decision expected Friday: sources
The Justice Department is likely to announce on Friday that Google can buy airline ticketing software company ITA Software as long as ITA's products remain available to Google's rivals, a source close to the deal said Friday.
A second source said that a deal was "looking likely."
Google, the world's No. 1 Internet search engine, said in July it would buy ITA Software for $700 million in cash. The announcement sparked concerns that travel websites such as Kayak and TripAdvisor could be deprived of ITA's software. Read more...
Students aim to combat malaria with smartphone software
A team of graduate students has created a new smartphone application they say will allow healthcare workers in remote locations to diagnose malaria cases on the spot.
But first, the students hope their application wins this weekend's Imagine Cup 2011 national finals in Seattle.
The 9th-annual Imagine Cup, sponsored by Microsoft, asks student entrants to "imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems."
Tristan Gibeau, 25, a graduate computer engineering student at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, said his team's application fits the bill.
"It's going to make a difference in trying to contain the outbreak of malaria," said Gibeau, the project's software designer.
"In the big picture, it'll hopefully help in the fight against most diseases out there and make everybody's life a little easier."
His team's prototype is a Windows 7-equipped Samsung Focus smart phone modified with a microscopic camera lens.
Gibeau said the software application can take a picture of a blood sample, process the data to detect malaria parasites, quantify how much malaria is in the sample and point the parasites out to the phone user. Read more...
Security, collaboration updates for Android business users
With Android tablet usage on the rise, and technological and software advances being made to smartphones, more business professionals are going mobile with their work. Google’s (GOOG) anxious to facilitate adoption in this market, releasing three enterprise-oriented updates yesterday. They all aim at simplifying colleague collaboration, while also keeping data safe and secure. Read more...
Google claims better Web video with new VP8
Google's VP8 technology for encoding Web video just got a notch better at creating video, the Net giant says, and another round of improvements are set for a sequel due next quarter.
Yesterday, Google released its "Bali" version of VP8 software then announced a new Cayuga version set to ship late in the second quarter of 2011. The software doesn't change the VP8 technology, a codec that defines a method of encoding and decoding video, but works faster and does a better job than the preceding public version of VP8, called Aylesbury and released in November.
When encoding video with VP8's best quality setting on a computer with an x86 processor, "Bali runs 4.5x as fast than our initial release and 1.35x faster than Aylesbury," said John Luther, WebM product manager, in a blog post yesterday. A lesser improvement comes with the good quality setting. The new version also works better on ARM chips, particularly multicore ARM chips. That's important given the growing use of video telephony and the dominance of ARM processors in smartphones and tablets. Read more...