Business News Holding

Tag: hardware-and-technology

  • BT Trials OnRelay's MBX Software


    The cellular Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) software provider OnRelay announced today that it has entered into a customer trial agreement with BT Global Services.

    This will allow BT to begin on-site trials of OnRelay’s MBX software with a number of UK-based and multinational customers as part of its Unified Communications offering.

    OnRelay MBX allows companies to replace some, or all, of their IP desk phones with mobile phones – and removes the need for PBX hardware.
    The software works over any public mobile network, anywhere in the world.

    Upon completion of these trials, it is expected that the OnRelay solution will join the successful BT Corporate Fusion portfolio.

    Malcolm Pilcher, head of voice CPE & FMC at BT Global Services, said the customer trials of OnRelay’s cellular FMC solution reflected BT’s ongoing commitment to addressing the demand for global fixed mobile convergence technologies.

    "We see this demand accelerating as our customers look to maximise their existing infrastructure, improve employee productivity and continue their drive to manage and control costs," he said.

    Ivar Plahte, OnRelay’s CEO, is confident that mobile PBX is the future – with smartphones increasingly replacing desktop phones to become the sole business phone.

    "BT’s evaluation further validates OnRelay’s focus on enabling enterprises to cost-effectively extend Unified Communications to mobile phones," he said.

    "2009 will be the year of cellular FMC."

  • Symantec Launches Norton Online Backup Web Service


    Symantec, makers of Norton security software, has announced the availability of an online backup service.

    Norton Online Backup, which automatically stores files and digital assets, is the first Web-based consumer offering delivered by Norton.

    Intended as a simple-to-use backup system, it allows digital photographs, financial documents, music collections and archived e-mail to be stored through a website.

    Up to five household computers can be safely backed up, managed and restored through a single, central, remotely-accessible account.

    Once users have downloaded a small desktop agent, which manages a backup of the PC, a Web browser is used to restore or download previously backed up files from anywhere.

    This sets it apart from many other online storage technologies that require the user to use the same PC for backing up and accessing online files.

    Rowan Trollope, senior vice president, Consumer Products, Symantec, said more and more of people’s most valuable assets are stored on computers.

    "Norton Online Backup offers total peace of mind through a comprehensive, easy-to-manage backup solution that not only safeguards users from data loss, but makes valuable assets available from any Internet-connected PC in the world," he said.

    Norton Online Backup is available now for purchase in the US. It will be available worldwide in the coming weeks.

    The suggested retail price for Norton Online Backup is USD $49.99 per year, which includes 25 GB of online storage to backup files from up to five of family PCs.

    Additional storage space can be purchased in increments of 10, 25, 50 and 100 GB.

  • 1080p Processing Added to Elgato H.264 Dongle


    Elgato has launched a successor to its Turbo.264 USB video conversion dongle with the addition of 1080p compatibility.

    Called the Elgato Turbo.264 HD, the upgraded – and much faster – device converts videos into the H.264 format from camcorders and digital cameras.

    The converted video is compatible with iPods, iPhones, Apple TV and Sony’s PSP and similar devices.

    Users simply plug the dongle into a Mac and the software allows video to be previewed and trimmed before converting – without the need to import into iMovie.

    The device also adds support for HD camcorder formats such as AVCHD as well as MPEG-2- and MPEG-4-encoded HD content.

    Elgao says that while it normally takes an hour to make a fifteen minute movie from video taken on an AVCHD camcorder, the Turbo.264 HD takes less than 20 minutes.

    The Turbo.264 HD is priced at USD $150/ €149.

  • Envivio Selected For Türk Telekom's New IPTV Service


    Envivio has announced that its Convergence Series video headend has been selected for Türk Telekom’s IPTV project in Turkey.

    The IP video convergence provider said Türk Telekom will use its 4Caster C4 SD and 4Caster HD30 HD MPEG-4 AVC encoders and the 4Manager NMS, to deliver standard and high definition channels for its new IPTV service.

    The 4Caster C4 provides video compression for all three screens of consumer video – TVs, PCs and mobile devices – on a single platform.

    Envivio’s 4Caster HD30 delivers high quality, high definition encoded content at less than half the bit rates required by MPEG-2.

    The company’s Convergence Series architecture allows MPEG-2 content downlinked from satellite to be delivered to the compression system directly over a local IP network.

    This all-IP, all-digital processing of content eliminates the need for traditional intermediate analog or digital video and audio interfaces between MPEG-2 decoders and MPEG-4 encoders.

    Julien Signès, president and CEO of Envivio. said: "Forward-thinking operators around the world recognize that quality of service is a dominant factor in their success and the C4 and HD30 both deliver the very highest picture quality."

    The IPTV headend for Türk Telekom, which serves more than 30 million customers, is being installed by Birtel the partner of Envivio in Ankara, Turkey.

  • Broadcom's Offers New VoIP Chipset For Next Generation IP Phones


    Broadcom has launched a new VoIP chip set for use in the next generation IP phones and multimedia terminals.

    The Persona IP Communications Platform gives enterprise and consumer IP phones multimedia capabilities, premium audio, robust Ethernet switching, enhanced security and extensive peripheral support.

    The platform offers feature-enhanced IP phone system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions for each product segment.

    This includes:

    • the Broadcom BCM11107 for higher end Gigabit multimedia telephony applications
    • the BCM11109 for mainstream Gigabit enterprise applications
    • the BCM11170 for value-line and low-end enterprise, small-to-medium-sized business (SMB) and small office/home office (SoHo) applications
    •  

    Martyn Humphries, vice president & general manager for Broadcom’s VoIP line of business, said next generation IP phones are positioned to become the central communications portal of both the office and home.

    He said they enabled users with advanced applications to take advantage of multimedia features, streaming video and touch screen interfaces.

    "Multimedia functionality should ultimately increase user efficiency, and productivity thereby accelerating high quality, advanced IP communications devices in the enterprise and a high quality experience in the home," he said.

    The Persona platform processors are now sampling to early access customers. Pricing is available from Broadcom.

  • iPhone Gets Copy and Paste – Finally


    Apple has released details of a new version of the iPhone OS, with over 100 new features including finally adding copy and paste.

    However, another much desired issue – allowing for background tasks from third party applications – remains unresolved, despite rival handsets running Google Android and the as-yet unlaunched Palm Pre able to support background apps.

    The reason given for the delay in delivering such an obvious feature as copy and paste – Apple said it wasn’t easy to do and security issues needed to be resolved with copying information between applications.

    Apple also announced that there are to be over 1,000 new APIs for iPhone developers.

    Among some of the other new features that will be introduced on OS 3.0 this summer are:

    • Push notifications will be standard in iPhone 3.0.
    • In-App purchasing
    • MMS
    • Peer-to-Peer connectivity
    • Third-party Accessories
    • Turn-by-Turn directions
    • A landscape keyboard option
    • Voice memos
    • System-wide Spotlight searching
    • Stereo Bluetooth audio devices are now supported through the use of A2DP technology

    iPhone OS 3.0 will be available in the summer. It will be a free update to all iPhone users, while iPod touch owners will have to pay USD $9.95 for the upgrade.

    Due to hardware differences, features such as A2DP and MMS won’t be available on the original iPhone.

    iPhone developers will be able to get the beta of OS 3.0 almost immediately.

    During today’s iPhone 3.0 Preview Event, Apple announced that its iPhone OS, which powers both the iPhone and the iPod touch, is now on 30 million devices — including 17 million iPhones by December, 2008.

    Apple also announced over 800 million App Store downloads to date, and 800,000 iPhone SDK downloads.

  • Samsung Selects Streamezzo For Its Rich Internet Portal


    Steamezzo has announced that Samsung has selected its software products and professional services to develop, deploy and run its Rich Internet mobile portal.

    The French company’s Mobile Open Development Platform is already certified on hundreds of handsets and compatible with all mobile operating system.

    By using the paltform, Samsung hopes to encourage the usage of its mobile services as well as to accelerate their deployments on the largest range of devices.

    The Rich Internet application, natively embedded on multiple Samsung devices, allows subscribers to access to a large variety of free and premium services such as news, ringtones, music, video-on-demand, and games.

    Special announcements or latest news from Samsung are also directly accessible from this portal. The service offering is continuously extended and provisioned over the air, without requiring any software upgrade on the devices.

    Dr Anthony Park, director business development at Samsung Telecommunication Europe, said the technology opens up attractive business models that end users will really get excited about.

    "Mobile users want everything perfectly adjusted to the mobile device here and now," he said.

    "And that is precisely what Rich Internet applications are all about."

    The first releases of the Rich Internet Portal were in Russia, Germany and United Kingdom. Several other countries are planned to be rolled-out in the coming months.

  • Apple TV To Get a Wii-like Remote?


    Apple     has filed a set of patents for a Wii-style remote control for Apple TV.

    In the two patent applications Apple describes a "wand" for controlling the operations of a media system, suggesting the iPhone-maker may be considering games for Apple TV.

    That would involve distributing them to the device through the iTunes App Store, as is currently the case for the iPhone.

    In January, it was suggested that NVIDIA’s Ion platform is likely to be included in the next Apple TV.

    Among the uses proposed by Apple for the wand are zoom operations, a keyboard application, an image application, an illustration application and a media application.

    Other possiblities for the wand include it being used to call up a dock, and then to select an option from the menu by moving the wand across the screen.

    The controller could also scroll through a CoverFlow display and be used to manipulate photos by zooming in and out and rotating.

    It will be interesting to see how this develops – and how Nintendo reacts to the Apple application.

  • iPhone Likely to Get Background Application Support?


    Apple has flagged up March 17 for a special event to preview its new iPhone 3.0 software.

    One issue that could be addressed with the new OS is allowing for background tasks from third party applications.

    While the iPhone currently doesn’t allow this, rival handsets running Google Android and, crucially, the as-yet unlaunched Palm Pre, are able to support background applications.

    Since user pressure hasn’t done the trick then maybe the Pre’s imminent arrival has provided Apple with the stimulus it needed to remedy this shortcoming on the iPhone.

    With the new software expected to be available by June/July, this would be perfect timing for Palm’s planned launch of its new smartphone by the end of the first half of 2009.

    Among the other expectations ahead of next week’s Apple event is the suggestion the iPhone OS could find its way into a device somewhere between an iPhone and laptop.

    OK, so Apple recently ruled out a "netbook", but what if it’s a big screen iPod Touch?

  • Intel's X25-M SSD Judged Insufficient For "Heavy Use"


    Intel’s much-hyped X25-M SSD is being marketed as a quicker and much more energy-efficient option for laptops than the traditional hard disk drives, but a review site finds it slower under heavy use, writes M Asim for storage-biz.news.

    According to PC Perspective, this solid-state drive has problems in the sector relating to wear leveling algorithms and remapping that are considered relatively effective to boost performance.

    PC Perspective says that they it does the opposite and becomes fragmented when used heavily.

    The problem becomes even worse with usual defragmentation programs.

    "If a laptop user places light workloads on its X-25 M, it may not find such issues",the review says.

    "But there are some users who are opting for SS drive for the OS partitions, and these drives can be fragmented by a standard power user workload."

    Intel responded by saying that its labs couldn’t duplicate the reviewers’ tests results.

    "We have contacted PC Perspective’s reviewers to find out about their method to duplicate and scrutinize the data," an Intel spokesman said.

    "We think that the imitative workloads they have tested do not represent real world use."

    According to the chip maker, almost every storage device can prove a fiasco if tested for anything other than normal use.

    PC Perspective’s reviewers, meanwhile, say that this performance problem can be fixed with a firmware update from the chip maker.

    Intel unveiled the X25-M last December and has already lowered its price.