Futuríveis
sexta-feira, dezembro 10, 2004
Em directo das frentes da tecnologia...
The growing popularity of online gaming could spell problems for net service firms, warns network monitoring company Sandvine.
It issued the warning following analysis which shows that traffic on the Xbox game network increased fourfold on the launch day of Halo 2.
The 9 November traffic explosion has continued into December, said Sandvine.
Service providers now need to make sure that their networks can cope with the increasing demands for bandwidth.
BBC
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Lenovo's purchase of IBM's PC business is such an unprecedented coup for a Chinese technology company that even some local journalists joined the cheers when it was announced on Wednesday. But that does not mean all their compatriots will be rushing to buy PCs and laptops from the “new Lenovo”.
Ma Liyuan, a government worker in Shanghai, says Lenovo is “really something” to have pulled off such a deal, but adds that her next PC is more likely to be from rival Hewlett-Packard.
“I didn't think much of the Lenovo PC I used to have and I feel IBM has now suddenly lost a lot of its cachet,” she says.
Previously loyal IBM user and network engineer Song Yingqiao is more blunt: he will not buy IBM again. “It's a gut feeling. It feels uncomfortable; international IBM has become domestic Lenovo.”
Such reactions in Lenovo's home market, where it accounts for an estimated 27 per cent of PC sales, is a stark reminder of the challenges facing the company's $1.75bn attempt to transform itself from national champion to global computer powerhouse.
...
If Lenovo can acquire the brand loyalty commanded by IBM along with the US company's laptop production lines, product developers, and distribution networks, then it will be well on the way to success. If it cannot, on Wednesday's deal could prove an expensive disaster.
Competitors are already circling hungrily. Lenovo's acquisition will “create a lot of turmoil within IBM accounts” from which HP will benefit, says Duane Zitzner, head of HP's PC division.
...
DMEurope
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Go to Google, search and scroll results, click and copy. When students do research online these days, many educators worry, those are often about the only steps they take. If they can avoid a trip to the library at all, many students gladly will.
Young people may know that just because information is plentiful online doesn't mean it's reliable, yet their perceptions of what's trustworthy frequently differ from their elders' — sparking a larger debate about what constitutes truth in the Internet age.
...
In a study on research habits, Wellesley College researchers Panagiotis Metaxas and Leah Graham found that fewer than 2 percent of students in one Wellesley computer science class bothered to use non-Internet sources to answer all six test questions.
And many students failed to check out multiple sources. For instance, 63 percent of students asked to list Microsoft Corp.'s top innovations only visited the company's Web site in search of the answer.
It's a paradox to some that so many young Americans can be so accepting of online information whose origin is unclear.
"Skepticism ... is part of their lives, yet they tend to believe things fairly readily because it appears on the Internet," said Roger Casey, who studies youths and pop culture at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla.
One concern is commercial influence online; some search engines run ads and accept payments to include sites in their indexes, with varying degree of disclosure.
"If I'm going to go to the library, chances are somebody hasn't paid a librarian 100 bucks to point me to a particular book," said Beau Brendler, director of the Consumer Reports WebWatch.
Another potential minefield is the growing phenomenon of collaborative information assembly. The credentials of the people writing grass-roots Web journals and a committee-written encyclopedia called Wikipedia are often unclear. Nevertheless, some Internet users believe that such resources can collectively portray events more accurately than any single gatekeeper.
In many ways, the greater diversity of information is healthy.
...
Adults who should know better get duped, too.
Georgia Tech professor Colin Potts said he recently received by e-mail a photograph said to be a 1954 projection of what a home computer would look like in 2004. Instead of the small boxes we know of today, the image shows a giant contraption that resembles an airplane cockpit with a large steering wheel.
"I thought this was hilarious and filed it away in a scrapbook for my lecture next semester on the perils of technology forecasting," Potts said. "I also forwarded it to several people. Unfortunately, as another colleague informed me by e-mail a few minutes later, it's a hoax."
Peter Grunwald, president of Grunwald Associates, said many older Internet users, familiar with the editorial review that books and newspapers go through, may assume incorrectly that Web sites also undergo such reviews.
Youths, many of whom have created Web sites themselves, tend to know better.
In the end, it's just a matter of adjusting to how information gets around now that the Internet has revolutionized communication.
Every new medium has its challenges, said Paul Saffo, a director at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif., yet society adapts.
Referring to the 1903 Western "The Great Train Robbery," Saffo said audience members "actually ducked when the train came out on the screen. Today you won't even raise an eyebrow."
It issued the warning following analysis which shows that traffic on the Xbox game network increased fourfold on the launch day of Halo 2.
The 9 November traffic explosion has continued into December, said Sandvine.
Service providers now need to make sure that their networks can cope with the increasing demands for bandwidth.
BBC
----------------------
Lenovo's purchase of IBM's PC business is such an unprecedented coup for a Chinese technology company that even some local journalists joined the cheers when it was announced on Wednesday. But that does not mean all their compatriots will be rushing to buy PCs and laptops from the “new Lenovo”.
Ma Liyuan, a government worker in Shanghai, says Lenovo is “really something” to have pulled off such a deal, but adds that her next PC is more likely to be from rival Hewlett-Packard.
“I didn't think much of the Lenovo PC I used to have and I feel IBM has now suddenly lost a lot of its cachet,” she says.
Previously loyal IBM user and network engineer Song Yingqiao is more blunt: he will not buy IBM again. “It's a gut feeling. It feels uncomfortable; international IBM has become domestic Lenovo.”
Such reactions in Lenovo's home market, where it accounts for an estimated 27 per cent of PC sales, is a stark reminder of the challenges facing the company's $1.75bn attempt to transform itself from national champion to global computer powerhouse.
...
If Lenovo can acquire the brand loyalty commanded by IBM along with the US company's laptop production lines, product developers, and distribution networks, then it will be well on the way to success. If it cannot, on Wednesday's deal could prove an expensive disaster.
Competitors are already circling hungrily. Lenovo's acquisition will “create a lot of turmoil within IBM accounts” from which HP will benefit, says Duane Zitzner, head of HP's PC division.
...
DMEurope
--------------------------------------------
Respondents to SDD's survey posted on surveymonkey.com provided us with intriguing information on individuals' relationship to their portable devices. The survey was carried out amongst over 200 UK and over 200 German consumers to identify how the increasing storage capabilities of portable devices such as mobile phones and mp3 players, has directly impacted social and cultural behavioural patterns.
Based on the average number of text messages, emails, digital images and mp3 files consumers are storing on mobile devices today, users are carrying on average a maximum of ten gigabytes of data on their person daily. Based on research carried out by the University of Berkeley, California, one gigabyte of data is the equivalent to one pick-up truck full of books. That is a lot of data!
Some of the more quirky findings from the survey shows that over 80 per cent of UK respondents admitted to storing illicit messages about private affairs on their mobile phone for more than one month - leaving them at risk of being exposed to their partners. Not surprisingly, over 76 per cent of respondents claimed that storage capabilities have become even more important when selecting their next mobile phone and cited storage dependent applications including a camera, video capture and email/internet support as the top three features in next generation devices.
Based on the average number of text messages, emails, digital images and mp3 files consumers are storing on mobile devices today, users are carrying on average a maximum of ten gigabytes of data on their person daily. Based on research carried out by the University of Berkeley, California, one gigabyte of data is the equivalent to one pick-up truck full of books. That is a lot of data!
Some of the more quirky findings from the survey shows that over 80 per cent of UK respondents admitted to storing illicit messages about private affairs on their mobile phone for more than one month - leaving them at risk of being exposed to their partners. Not surprisingly, over 76 per cent of respondents claimed that storage capabilities have become even more important when selecting their next mobile phone and cited storage dependent applications including a camera, video capture and email/internet support as the top three features in next generation devices.
--------------------
Go to Google, search and scroll results, click and copy. When students do research online these days, many educators worry, those are often about the only steps they take. If they can avoid a trip to the library at all, many students gladly will.
Young people may know that just because information is plentiful online doesn't mean it's reliable, yet their perceptions of what's trustworthy frequently differ from their elders' — sparking a larger debate about what constitutes truth in the Internet age.
...
In a study on research habits, Wellesley College researchers Panagiotis Metaxas and Leah Graham found that fewer than 2 percent of students in one Wellesley computer science class bothered to use non-Internet sources to answer all six test questions.
And many students failed to check out multiple sources. For instance, 63 percent of students asked to list Microsoft Corp.'s top innovations only visited the company's Web site in search of the answer.
It's a paradox to some that so many young Americans can be so accepting of online information whose origin is unclear.
"Skepticism ... is part of their lives, yet they tend to believe things fairly readily because it appears on the Internet," said Roger Casey, who studies youths and pop culture at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla.
One concern is commercial influence online; some search engines run ads and accept payments to include sites in their indexes, with varying degree of disclosure.
"If I'm going to go to the library, chances are somebody hasn't paid a librarian 100 bucks to point me to a particular book," said Beau Brendler, director of the Consumer Reports WebWatch.
Another potential minefield is the growing phenomenon of collaborative information assembly. The credentials of the people writing grass-roots Web journals and a committee-written encyclopedia called Wikipedia are often unclear. Nevertheless, some Internet users believe that such resources can collectively portray events more accurately than any single gatekeeper.
In many ways, the greater diversity of information is healthy.
...
Adults who should know better get duped, too.
Georgia Tech professor Colin Potts said he recently received by e-mail a photograph said to be a 1954 projection of what a home computer would look like in 2004. Instead of the small boxes we know of today, the image shows a giant contraption that resembles an airplane cockpit with a large steering wheel.
"I thought this was hilarious and filed it away in a scrapbook for my lecture next semester on the perils of technology forecasting," Potts said. "I also forwarded it to several people. Unfortunately, as another colleague informed me by e-mail a few minutes later, it's a hoax."
Peter Grunwald, president of Grunwald Associates, said many older Internet users, familiar with the editorial review that books and newspapers go through, may assume incorrectly that Web sites also undergo such reviews.
Youths, many of whom have created Web sites themselves, tend to know better.
In the end, it's just a matter of adjusting to how information gets around now that the Internet has revolutionized communication.
Every new medium has its challenges, said Paul Saffo, a director at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif., yet society adapts.
Referring to the 1903 Western "The Great Train Robbery," Saffo said audience members "actually ducked when the train came out on the screen. Today you won't even raise an eyebrow."
---------------------------------------------
Mobile phone subscribers around the globe totaled nearly 1.5 billion by the middle of this year, about one quarter of the world's population, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) said on Thursday.
The figure reflected a sharp surge in the mobile telephony business, especially in developing countries, over the first half of the decade, with subscribers doubling since 2000, according to the United Nations agency's annual report.
The ITU said the growth in mobile phone subscribers had outpaced that for fixed lines, who totaled some 1.185 billion today against 1 billion at the start of the century, and was also outstripping the rate of increase in Internet users.
Driving the mobile phone phenomenon, according to the report, was a rapid rise in subscriber numbers in three of the world's most populous nations--China, India and Russia.
And by the middle of the year, developing countries as a whole had overtaken rich nations to account for 56 percent of all mobile subscribers, while accounting for 79 percent of growth in the market since 2000.
By July this year, China was reporting 310 million users--about one-quarter of its total population and more than the entire population of the United States, the ITU said.
India, with a much smaller current subscriber base, was beginning to experience exponential growth, seeing an increase of 11 million, or 25 percent, so far this year to reach a total of 44.5 million subscribers.
In Russia, according to the report, mobile phone subscriber numbers jumped from 36.5 million a year ago to 60 million by September of this year.
The value of global mobile business reached $414 billion in revenues in 2003, a tenfold increase in the decade since 1993, while over the same period the overall telecommunications sector grew by an average of 8.8 percent to reach $1.1 trillion
The figure reflected a sharp surge in the mobile telephony business, especially in developing countries, over the first half of the decade, with subscribers doubling since 2000, according to the United Nations agency's annual report.
The ITU said the growth in mobile phone subscribers had outpaced that for fixed lines, who totaled some 1.185 billion today against 1 billion at the start of the century, and was also outstripping the rate of increase in Internet users.
Driving the mobile phone phenomenon, according to the report, was a rapid rise in subscriber numbers in three of the world's most populous nations--China, India and Russia.
And by the middle of the year, developing countries as a whole had overtaken rich nations to account for 56 percent of all mobile subscribers, while accounting for 79 percent of growth in the market since 2000.
By July this year, China was reporting 310 million users--about one-quarter of its total population and more than the entire population of the United States, the ITU said.
India, with a much smaller current subscriber base, was beginning to experience exponential growth, seeing an increase of 11 million, or 25 percent, so far this year to reach a total of 44.5 million subscribers.
In Russia, according to the report, mobile phone subscriber numbers jumped from 36.5 million a year ago to 60 million by September of this year.
The value of global mobile business reached $414 billion in revenues in 2003, a tenfold increase in the decade since 1993, while over the same period the overall telecommunications sector grew by an average of 8.8 percent to reach $1.1 trillion
...
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...
R. Craig Hogan, a former university professor who heads an online school for business writing here, received an anguished e-mail message recently from a prospective student.
"i need help," said the message, which was devoid of punctuation. "i am writing a essay on writing i work for this company and my boss want me to help improve the workers writing skills can yall help me with some information thank you".
Hundreds of inquiries from managers and executives seeking to improve their own or their workers' writing pop into Hogan's computer in-basket each month, he says, describing a number that has surged as e-mail has replaced the phone for much workplace communication. Millions of employees must write more frequently on the job than previously. And many are making a hash of it.
"E-mail is a party to which English teachers have not been invited," Hogan said. "It has companies tearing their hair out."
A recent survey of 120 American corporations reached a similar conclusion. The study, by the National Commission on Writing, a panel established by the College Board, concluded that a third of employees in the nation's blue-chip companies wrote poorly and that businesses were spending as much as $3.1 billion annually on remedial training.
The problem shows up not only in e-mail but also in reports and other texts, the commission said.
"It's not that companies want to hire Tolstoy," said Susan Traiman, a director at the Business Roundtable, an association of leading chief executives whose corporations were surveyed in the study. "But they need people who can write clearly, and many employees and applicants fall short of that standard."
Millions of inscrutable e-mail messages are clogging corporate computers by setting off requests for clarification, and many of the requests, in turn, are also chaotically written, resulting in whole cycles of confusion.
"i need help," said the message, which was devoid of punctuation. "i am writing a essay on writing i work for this company and my boss want me to help improve the workers writing skills can yall help me with some information thank you".
Hundreds of inquiries from managers and executives seeking to improve their own or their workers' writing pop into Hogan's computer in-basket each month, he says, describing a number that has surged as e-mail has replaced the phone for much workplace communication. Millions of employees must write more frequently on the job than previously. And many are making a hash of it.
"E-mail is a party to which English teachers have not been invited," Hogan said. "It has companies tearing their hair out."
A recent survey of 120 American corporations reached a similar conclusion. The study, by the National Commission on Writing, a panel established by the College Board, concluded that a third of employees in the nation's blue-chip companies wrote poorly and that businesses were spending as much as $3.1 billion annually on remedial training.
The problem shows up not only in e-mail but also in reports and other texts, the commission said.
"It's not that companies want to hire Tolstoy," said Susan Traiman, a director at the Business Roundtable, an association of leading chief executives whose corporations were surveyed in the study. "But they need people who can write clearly, and many employees and applicants fall short of that standard."
Millions of inscrutable e-mail messages are clogging corporate computers by setting off requests for clarification, and many of the requests, in turn, are also chaotically written, resulting in whole cycles of confusion.
...
posted by CMT, 10:22 da manhã
