Archive: April, 2009

Opera Browser Celebrates 15th Birthday

April 29th, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Software No comments - Tags: , , , , ,

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Opera browser  turned 15 years old yesterday and celebrated with a cartoon and a list of reasons to switch to Opera, which now occupies over 40 million computers worldwide.

Way, way back in April 1994, two computer scientists were searching for a better way of browsing the internet than what was currently on offer. Finding no perfect solution, they decided to code the browser themselves. Opera was born.

The browser has grown in popularity over the years, and whilst it hasn’t got the sheer numbers of Firefox or Internet Explorer, it’s got a dedicated browser and engineers who demand innovation.

Yesterday, the browser turned 15 years old, and Opera decided to mark the occasion with a little bit of celebration. They’ve compiled a list of 15 reasons to switch to Opera (all 15 being good reasons), a list of Opera’s top innovations which details how far ahead of their time they were (they invented the use of tabs in browsing way back in 2000), as well as releasing a cartoon describing Opera’s creation seen above.

The Opera browser is currently in its 9th version, and nearing it’s 10th release (The post you are currently reading was typed with Opera 10 Alpha). The browser runs on multiple platforms, such as Mac, Windows and Linux. Opera has also successfully made the jump to mobile devices with Opera Mini, where it sits firmly in the number 1 spot.

Happy Birthday!

Google Launches “What’s Popular”, A Digg-like Clone

April 28th, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Internet One comment - Tags: , , , ,

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Google has released a iGoogle plug-in called “What’s Popular” that presents iGoogle users with a service similar to aggregation websites such as Digg or Reddit.

Google aggregates data from Youtube, Google’s Reader and combines them with links that have been submitted by users, resulting in a gadget that displays the (seemingly) best of the web. Users are able to rate the website with either an upwards or downwards arrow – allowing the cream to rise to the top.

Unfortunately a commenting feature is nowhere in sight. Not yet anyway.

Office 2007 Service Pack 2 Released, Adds Performance, Open Document Support

April 28th, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Software One comment - Tags: , , , , ,

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Microsoft released an anticipated Service Pack 2 for its Office 2007 suite of office software. The update adds both performance improvements and long-awaited Open Document Format and PDF support.

The second service pack in Microsoft’s most popular software suite brings with it the much anticipated ODF (Open Document Format) Support that allows Word to open various files from the ODF range listed below (source: Wikipedia):

  • .odt for word processing (text) documents
  • .ods for spreadsheets
  • .odb for object-oriented database
  • .odp for presentations
  • .odg for graphics
  • .odf for formulae, mathematical equations

This format has been the default format used by Microsoft’s biggest open source (and free to all) competitor – OpenOffice.org. The additional support is sure to make OpenOffice.org users happy, who no longer need to manually save their documents to the .doc(x) format.

Other changes include PDF and XPS support as well as much-needed performance and stability improvements, with special mentions about Outlook and Excel.

Service Pack 2 should be available for download via Microsoft’s website. Alternatively, you could simply wait for the update to be pushed to Windows Update in the near future.

World’s Highest Internet Cafe Opens On Everest

April 22nd, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Internet, World No comments - Tags: , , , , ,

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A cybercafe aimed at tourists has set-up shop near the Everest base camp in northeastern Nepal, providing the world’s highest internet access.

The cybercafe is 5,180m above sea-level and has turned into quite the hit for tourists and climbers, who wish to make contact with their families before setting out to conquer Mt. Everest – the highest mountain in the world (8,848m).

The Sherpa International Cafe is just about an hour’s walk from the Everest base camp, situated in Gorakse.

Apparently two more of these cafe’s are on the way, according to Chhetan Sherpa – the owner.

Looks like high-altitude connectivity is quite the lucrative business with every climber wanting to bare the good-luck wishes from friends and family.

Amazon Video On Demand Goes HD

April 22nd, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Internet No comments - Tags: , , , , ,

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Amazon’s Video on Demand service has finally started offering videos in high-definition.

Pricing will be in-line to that of Amazon’s competition for HD films / tv episodes. HD film rentals will cost you anything from $3.99 to $4.99 and standard definition TV episodes are available for purchase at a price of $2.99 per episode. There has been no word when HD TV episodes will be available.

Owners of a PC, Mac TiVO HD/Series DVRs, Roku Digital Video  Player, Panasonic VieraCast TVs and the Sony Bravio Internet Video Link will be able to choose from the 500+ HD films after an initial software update (Windows and Mac users will only need to visit Amazon’s website)

Oracle Buys Sun for $7.4 Billion

April 20th, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Industry No comments - Tags: , , , , , , ,

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Following Sun Microsystems’ decline of around $7 billion from IBM, the company has accepted an acquisition offer of $7.4 billion from Oracle.

The deal was announced today between Sun and Oracle that Sun will be purchased at a premium price of $9.50 per share in cash, valuing Sun Microsystems at a grand total of $7.4 billion. It was speculated that IBM also offered Sun $9.50 per share a few weeks ago.

Safra Catz, the president of Oracle said the following in a statement regarding the takeover:

We expect this acquisition to be accretive to Oracle’s earnings by at least 15 cents on a non-GAAP basis in the first full year after closing. We estimate that the acquired business will contribute over $1.5 billion to Oracle’s non-GAAP operating profit in the first year, increasing to over $2 billion in the second year. This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined.

The Sun-Oracle deal was unanimously agreed on by the Sun board, which means that Sun Microsystems is a lot more comfortable with the terms and agreements offered by Oracle. You may recall that the licensing agreements presented by IBM in their acquisition offer resulted in the deal falling apart at the last minute.

Oracle is planning to monetize Sun as much as possible in a bid to turn around the $209 million quarterly loss and 11% year over year drop in profits Sun has been suffering from. The acquisition boosted Sun’s shares by 35% to $9.07 per share.

With the Sun acquisition, Oracle has also managed to get its hands on both MySQL and Java in one move – something I’m sure their very pleased about. In 2007 Oracle reportedly offered Sun $850 million for MySQL, which Sun ultimately turned down. What’s worrying users is Oracle’s intent to make money from MySQL, which has been freely available (and has gained incredible popularity) as a web database, which powers the website you’re reading right now.

Windows 7 RC Open To Public On May 5

April 19th, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Software 2 comments - Tags: , , , ,
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Image Credit: Neowin

Earlier today on the Microsoft Partner website, it was stated that the official public launch of Windows 7 RC (Release Candidate) will be May 5.

The website initially stated that MSDN and Technet users could download the release candidate immediately and that the public would have access on the 5th of May, but after clicking through only Beta downloads were available from the download page to both forms of users.

The page has since been taken down, displaying only Beta information.

The May 5 release date seems to coincide quite nicely with a Technet page that Microsoft put up a little too early, which hinted at a May RC release. The page has also since been taken down.

Intel Ships 1 million Nehalem Processors, 32nm Chips Coming Early

April 18th, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Hardware No comments - Tags: , , , , , , ,

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Intel chief executive Paul Otellini announced at the Intel Q1 2009 earning’s call that over 1 million Nehalem processors have been shipped worldwide since their first inception in November 2008. Otellini also announced that the the new 32nm “Westmere” processors will be available “earlier than expected”.

Paul Otellini claimed that the milestone was reached thanks to the introduction of it’s brand new Nehalem-based Xeon 5500 server processors, which made up for around 50% of the 1 million Core i7 / Nehalem based chips:

“the real interesting is what happens on the dual-processor server product. About half the volume that I referenced was in servers, about half of it was in the desktop machine.”

This comes as great news, considering Intel has been feverishly reducing its workforce in an attempt to curb expenses.

Other great news for OEMs and customers is the unexpected announcement that Intel’s 32nm processors (and Nehalem’s successor), codenamed “Westmere” are expected to ship early, or more precisely in Q4 2009:

“We have pulled in Westmere, our fist 32-nanometer product family, and will now be shipping those products later this year,”

said Otellini at the event.

This caused a bit of confusion however. Intel announced that the Westmere chips will be shipped in Q4 2009, but when asked about an official introduction / launch, Intel maintained the notion that that is a completely different story – yet the Westmere chips are slated for a 2009 introduction – leaving everybody a little confused.

Minor announcements from the event include an update on Intel’s Larrabee GPU, which should be ready in 2010 and is currently in debugging.

IT Pay Drops Slightly In Q1 2009

April 17th, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Industry No comments - Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

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Photo by Cayusa

A recently released study reveals that there has been a 0.5% decrease in the amount of money IT experts are being paid for services in the first quarter of 2009.

The study was conducted by Foote Partners, a research firm that actively monitors IT skills payment.

The main casualties are C++, AIX, dBase and AIX, which saw a 25% drop in pay when compared to Q1 2008. This isn’t as bad as PowerBuilder however, who’s coders’ pay declined by 50% when compared to a year before in the uncertified skills category.

Not all is looking down however – 46 skills actually rose in value in Q1 2009. Linux skills grew a whopping 28.6% in the uncertified skills category. As did Apache Web server skills and Java skills, whom also saw significant gains to 25% and 20% respectively.

The certified skills pay tell a similar story, with both major gains and losses. Pay for HP/Certified Systems Engineers grew by a solid 14.3%, with Sun Certified Java programmers and HP/Accredited Integration Specialists got a comfortable bump of 13.5% and 12.5% respectively.

On the other end of the spectrum, Prosoft Master CIW Administration payment fell by 25% – which is rather significant.

The full report is available here.

Intel Releases SSD Fix

April 14th, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Hardware No comments - Tags: , , ,

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Intel has released an updated firmware, fixing an internal fragmentation issue on its X25-M and X18-M solid-state drives.

Intel announced yesterday that the end-user firmware is available to OEM customers and those who purchased the drive separately.

This firmware update has several continuous improvement optimizations intended to provide the best possible user experience with the Intel SSD.

The flaw in the current firmware was first detected by PC Perspective in mid-February this year, whilst doing a long-term performance analysis. Although this may sound like a serious issue, Intel stated that most customers won’t ever be affected by the bug,

Keep in mind that the risk of a typical PC user experiencing this issue is very low.

Said Intel in the announcement of the release.

Grab the updated firmware here.