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Blog Commenting
February 5th, 2010
A bleak future for chipmakers?
February 4th, 2010
Intel has long since been an established name in the world of processor manufacture, but with the release of Apple’s iPad and its own unique Apple A4 processor, could this be a new trend – companies developing their own chips (e.g. processors), cutting out the cost of out-sourcing that technology ‘processor tax’. Do companies however, such as Apple, have the resources to research and develop cutting edge processor technology that rivals that of Intel and AMD? Will the consumer be comfortable switching or is their loyalty to previous brands stronger than one would anticipate? Could we see this flagship guiding companies such as Lenovo & Hewlett Packard to develop their own chips and bringing them to the home consumer? We’ll just have to wait and see how the iPad fairs; it’ll give us an initial insight to the trend and whether it is viable. Assuming that the trend would take off and would see desktops and laptops featuring their own ‘blend’ of processor, it could hopefully lead to a decline in prices!
Other things I’ve found interesting recently:
Intel Wireless (display) technology – streaming HD video from your laptop to your television wirelessly? (Hello Netgear Router)
USB 3.0 picks up speed!
Ministry of Sound, the Annual 2010
December 22nd, 2009
What a treat! I’ve never been so impressed by the tracklist of an album ever before! The Annual is normally a mediocre collection of has-been tracks, but this year I’ve found that I’ve fallen in love with it! Mixing an eclectic selection of old and new, the Annual showcases some of Data Record’s finest as well as some future hits, e.g. Pegasus – Freemasons and some of 2009’s big hits remixed to perfection. Check out a few of my favourites:
Track 10, CD3 – [Kid Cudi Vs Crookers] Day N Nite (TC Remix) **Something new!**
Track 13, CD3 – [DJ Fresh] Gold Dust **Something old!**
Track 3, CD2 – [Pegasus] Freemasons **Something new! – I think will be a future hit**
A personal favourite of mine, Digital Dog, have come a long way since their early days of unknown remixes! Now they’re featured heavily on MOS albums, check their latest mix ‘Rockin at the Disco‘ (Track 7, CD2)
As per usual, they’ve got a couple of September remixes (pretty bog standard),a new mix of Gathina’s ‘Blame it on You’ – doesn’t beat the Wideboys attempt, however! ( back in March last year) and a couple of Chart Hits (Pitball – I Know you Want Me).
Speaking of Pitball, check out this Mash-up of Hotel Room Service & Nightcrawlers, Push the feeling on (one of my all time favourite tracks) – This isn’t included on the Annual but just f.y.i!
A couple of Vandalism remixes are also featured – I recently discovered their mix of Fragma’s Miracle – how many times can a single song be remixed!? (Evidently a lot!). CD1 is probably the one most people will find they enjoy – it features many chart hits that have just been spiced up a bit, nothing too heavy!
A great CD – don’t wait for Christmas, buy it yourself! 
Merry Christmas All!
ITMB ‘Feeder Schools’
November 18th, 2009
As discussed in a previous post, I mentioned ‘Feeder Schools’. Feeder schools, in an academic sense are Secondary schools that connect with Primary schools, making the transition from Primary to Secondary education easier. Our team decided to expand the meaning of ‘Feeder Schools’ to include a technological aspect. We proposed that Primary schools [in a given region] could collectively, buy, share and utilise IT equipment, ‘feeding’ off of Secondary schools for their IT needs. Secondary schools would host and provide the infrastructure [authentication, mail, filestore etc] thus removing the need for Primary schools to have individually configured servers (primary school servers are heavily underutilised). A single physical server [with multiple virtual instances] would provide required local resources [e.g. student database, dhcp etc etc] but also act as a relay to the main resources hosted at the Secondary school. Our ultimate aim was to cut educational spending on IT in Primary and Secondary schools. Our ‘Feeder School Concept’ is a somewhat tried and tested method at Collingwood, but has not advanced to the level of sophistication which we were proposing. Our concept received first-place! *See PDF for conceptual/technical diagram – this caused controversy with our judge from IBM!*
Virtualisation – ITMB Evidence
November 18th, 2009
Worth 20% of a module, we were asked to design a poster relating to one of our ‘Guru lectures’ – [Guru lectures are when guest speakers either come to Loughborough or one of the other ITMB institutions in the UK and give a presentation on a particular aspect of IT, from a Business or Technology perspective]. The ‘Guru Lecturer’ and thus the inspiration for this poster was Peter Rawlinson, from ‘App Sense’. Having recently completed a mini-project on ‘Feeder schools’ (also for ITMB), where my team and I explained the advantages of using virtualisation to maximise the use of hardware but limit spending, it seemed logical to carry on that theme in to this project. Take a look:
Server 2008 R2, a brief look.
October 21st, 2009
With the release of Server 2008 R2 just around the corner, let’s take a quick look at what it promises to offer and what it means to businesses and organisations today:
Gavriella Schuster explores the concept of the 5 C’s –
- Consumerisation
- Carbon Neutral
- Contingency
- Costs
- Compliance
These are 5 common business trends – essential to follow to ensure profitability within the current business climate. Organisations are increasingly under pressure to provide the resources necessary to meet their employee’s needs. Users are becoming more aware and as they begin to use more technology at home, it’s difficult to keep up! As well as providing the technology, it is key to make sure that it is scalable (sustainable) and reliable:
Microsoft ‘new efficiency’ programme – looking at saving costs and maximising productivity within your Organisation.
Using methods such as virtualisation, to reduce the need for physical hardware, the Remote Desktop protocol has undergone serious improvements for the upcoming Server 2008 R2. The RDP protocol available in this latest release offers a much richer experience to the end user – bi-directional audio support, high quality video at 30 fps, Multi-screen capabilities and more – it’s as if the user were sitting in front of the machine locally! It’s not just the experience that you get when using ‘virtual hardware’ – the resource usage footprint on the server itself is much less. In addition to Virtualisation, the ‘efficiency programme’ also looks to offer desktop experiences that are similar to that of Exchange – you open Outlook on your machine at home, it connects directly to an Exchange Server and syncs everything you need and you start working straight away. With the technologies built in to R2, the relationship between a Windows 7 Client and a Server ‘08 R2 gives users access to their organisation’s resources remotely, in a secure and robust manner. RemoteApp & Desktop allows applications to run as if they were locally installed on the machine, but are in actual fact, remotely installed and configured. Will this approach, rather than serving a complete desktop experience, be more widely adopted by organisations? It certainly comes under the ‘new efficiency’ heading, reducing the work-load and overheads on the network and server infrastructure.
Hyper-V technology unveiled in the initial ‘08 release, has also undergone several changes – with updates such as the ability to hot-swap virtual storage and a reduction in the time taken to ‘migrate’ a virtual OS across physical hardware; thus, improving the desirability to virtualise!
Active Directory – The central resource in all domains, containing all organisation objects and providing the link between each of the integral Microsoft Server components; One of the nifty features about the R2 update is the addition of an ‘AD Recycle Bin’ – I recently witnessed the impact that a single deletion of an organisational unit can cause. With the AD recycle bin, it provides a safe-guard against administrative, human error – for example, delete a user or distribution group, this change is dropped into the recycle bin (just like when you delete a word document), it stays within this recycle bin, ready for restoration or for purging – no more network downtime where you’ve got to get out the backup-tapes and restore that missing AD object! Again, here is where the ‘efficiency’ part of that programme comes in!
Just a quick overview, but they are just some of the things I’ve picked up through looking at the ‘new efficiency’ website – check it out for yourself, there’s much more to look and think about!
(An) Ultimate Steal! – Office’07 & Win’7 <£40!!
October 13th, 2009
Once again, Microsoft is offering all UK University students the opportunity to purchase Microsoft Office 2007 (Ultimate edition), for just £38.95 – that’s a saving of over 90% on the rrp! As well as Office 2007, the eagerly anticipated Windows 7 is also being offered to students at a heavily discounted price of £30 ( Home Premium or Professional edition).
For those of you who are still on XP and never made the leap to Windows Vista, I really do encourage you to upgrade this time and give Windows 7 a go. If your system never made the grade for Vista’s hardware requirements, do not fear – run the compatibility tool and you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised with the result!
Back to uni – win an experience day for you and a friend
October 12th, 2009
To celebrate the launch of Microsoft Hardware’s new line of peripheral devices, they are giving away an experience day for two at Microsoft’s Reading HQ. Simply log on to microsoft.com/uk/hardware/backtouni to find out more & enter the competition.
The winner and 4 runners up will receive a ‘back to uni kit’ – including a high definition webcam and bluetrack mouse!
