Archive for 2011

Akamai and TM Establish Strategic Partnership for NetStorage Deployment

Tuesday, November 8th, 2011

The partnership will see TM hosting Akamai NetStorage  – a secure managed service for the storage of large volume of data – via its Internet Protocol-based (IP-based) network to customers in South Asia.

Akamai is the leading global service provider for accelerating content and business processes online.Akamai Technologies is a leading cloud platform provider while Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) is a New Generation Network service provider in Malaysia.

TM’s IP network is delivered over its diverse international network infrastructure with worldwide Point of Presence (POPs) connectivity.

“The Akamai NetStorage will attract a high voume of Internet traffic to TM’s network, and definitely strengthen Malaysia’s position as a regional Internet hub,” said Rozaimy Abd Rahman, Executive Vice President of TM Global.Akamai NetStorage will be deployed in TM’s Data Center in Cyberjaya, Malaysia, which is targeted for completion by end of 2011. This will be Akamai’s only such storage facility in South Asia.

Historically, Internet users in Asia used to receive large amounts of content such as websites and videos from North America only.

The partnership with TM will allow Akamai to gain storage and co-location capacity in South Asia, and will serve to increase the transit bandwidth on the Akamai Intelligent Platform, Akamai’s cloud-based platform with global reach and local delivery capabilities.

Akamai Intelligent Platform delivers astronomical amounts of Web content on its infrastructure:

  • 1M mobile apps delivered day
  • Over 1 trillion Internet interactions daily
  • 85% of Internet users are a single network hop away
  • More than $200B in online commerce enabled annually
  • Scalable and 100% available

Akamai NetStorage service offers multiple terabytes of storage capacity on demand, automatic failover capability, content replication and connectivity to multiple Internet service providers. It also intelligently monitors network traffic and automatically avoids congestion and overloads for better overall user experience.

“With the collaboration, TM’s customers will be able to enjoy excellent internet connectivity and enhanced surfing experience as the source of content is stored locally here, which will result in seamless network performance,” Rozaimy added.TM has aggressively enhanced, improved and upgraded its IP service platform to further meet the ever demanding customers’ expectations. Earlier this year, the company has embarked into IPv6 capability to address the exhaustion of IPv4 in the region.

TM IP service is equipped with the latest security features such as black hole and clean pipe to secure its IP network against any unwanted threats.

VADS Berhad, a subsidiary of TM, provides global storage and serves as a major hub for data in the region.

As the largest Data Centre provider in the country, TM leverages on its 14 carrier-neutral data centres nationwide which are ISO 27001 certified and which fulfill all Tier 3 standards and Tier 4 ready.

Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM), Malaysia’s broadband and integrated information and communications group.This is backed by its extensive nationwide and global high-speed IP network, and its existing vast customer base to offer high Service Level Assurance, superlative levels of availability, security with high redundancy for its clients.

It will enable companies to have an IT infrastructure without the complexity of procurement and capital investment.

Reminiscing Elite Model Look Singapore 2011

Monday, November 7th, 2011

In any contest, everybody focuses on the prize-winners. Here we take a look at all the finalists that made the Elite Model Look Singapore 2011 Finals such a wonderful show.

Below we see 19-year-old Brit Rachel Dean, 16-year-old Singaporean Cazmeer Leenher, and 15-year-old Swede Josephine Gardin.

19-year-old Brit Rachel Dean 16-year-old Singaporean Cazmeer Leenher 15-year-old Swede Josephine Gardin

Next we have 14-year-old Brit Leehe B, 14-year-old Australian Mikaela Bartlett, and 16-year-old Singaporean Nessa Lee.

14-year-old Brit Leehe B 14-year-old Australian Mikaela Bartlett 16-year-old Singaporean Nessa Lee

Following that we have 15-year-old Singaporean Bianca Tijuana White, 15-year-old Australian Rachel Issenberg, and 20-year-old Singaporean Amanda Neo.

15-year-old Singaporean Bianca Tijuana White 15-year-old Australian Rachel Issenberg 20-year-old Singaporean Amanda Neo

Another look at the four prize-winners of the night: 15-year-old Singapore resident Fiona Fussi, 18-year-old Singaporean Putri Diana Abdullah, 16-year-old Dane Louise Arild and 15-year-old Brit Maddie Cox.

Winner was 15-year-old Singapore resident Fiona Fussi 1st Runner-up 18-year-old Singaporean Putri Diana Abdullah 2nd Runner-up was 16-year-old Dane Louise Arild Blueprint Runway Model Award winner was 15-year-old Brit Maddie Cox

Congratulations again to all the girls who made it to the Elite Model Look Singapore 2011 Finals!

GarageBand now available for Apple iPhone and iPod

Sunday, November 6th, 2011

GarageBand 1.1 for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch is available on the App Store for USD$4.49 to new users, or as a free update for existing GarageBand for iPad customers.

GarageBand 1.1 for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch is available on the App Store

GarageBand 1.1 for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch is available on the App Store

GarageBand is a universal app that runs on iPad, iPad 2, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and iPod touch (3rd & 4th generation).

GarageBand 1.1 for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch is available on the App StoreThe music creation app from Apple was Introduced earlier this year on the iPad. GarageBand uses Apple’s Multi-Touch interface to make it easy for anyone to create and record their own songs, even if they’ve never played an instrument before.

GarageBand features a collection of fun Touch Instruments that sound great and make it easy for beginners or experienced musicians to play and record keyboards, guitars, drums and basses in a wide variety of styles.

“The innovative Multi-Touch interface combined with Smart Instruments makes it easy to create great sounding music, even if you’ve never studied music or played an instrument before,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing.Smart Instruments now allow you to choose from an extensive new library of custom chords so you can play and strum along with your favourite songs.

You can plug your electric guitar into iPad, iPhone or iPod touch to play and record through classic amps and stompbox effects, or record your voice or any acoustic sound using the built-in microphone.

GarageBand allows you to record and mix up to eight tracks and then share your finished song with friends or send it to your Mac to keep working on it in GarageBand or Logic Pro.

Seagate streamlines Barracuda product family of desktop drives

Saturday, November 5th, 2011

Seagate is streamlining its flagship family of desktop drives under a single product that focuses on performance and big capacities – to cater to the explosive growth in content creation and consumption by businesses and consumers.

Seagate is a worldwide leader in hard disk drives and storage solutions.The new Barracuda family makes it easier for consumers to find the product they need and reduces costs for Seagate’s original equipment manufacturer and distribution channel customers by reducing the number of product qualifications and amount of inventory they need to manage.

The new Barracuda hard drive – to be available first at online retailers – is designed for desktop, tower or all-in-one personal computers; workstations, home and small business servers; “Our OEM and channel customers want to reduce overhead costs by having fewer product lines to qualify and manage in their inventory,” said Scott Horn, vice president of Marketing at Seagate.network-attached storage devices; direct-attached storage expansion; and home and small-business RAID solutions.

Capacities of the family range from 250GB to 3TB.

The simplification of the Barracuda family comes as Seagate begins volume shipments of its 1TB-per-disk Barracuda hard drive. Seagate plans to end production of its Barracuda Green drive in February 2012.

Seagate analysis shows that its new Barracuda drives have a nearly identical power-consumption profile as energy-efficient desktop drives but deliver much higher performance. Barracuda XT, Seagate’s fastest desktop hard drive, will be folded into the new Barracuda family and re-emerge, in name, as the company’s desktop solid state hybrid drive.

Technical specifications

The new Barracuda hard drive features a SATA 6GB/second interface, 7200RPM spin speed and up to 64MB cache to deliver high performance across all capacities.

Seagate’s SmartAlign technology, a feature of Seagate’s Barracuda Green drives, will continue to ship with the flagship Barracuda drives to help the hard drive industry segue from the current 512-byte sector standard for hard drives to the new 4096-byte sector size.

The new 4K standard enables the use of stronger error correction algorithms to maintain data integrity at higher storage densities and capacities.

Elite Model Look Singapore 2011 Finals

Friday, November 4th, 2011

15-year-old Fiona Fussi will represent Singapore in the Elite World finals on 6 December 2011 in Shanghai and compete with 80 others for a modelling contract with Elite Paris worth up to US$350,000.

Winners of the Elite Model Look Singapore 2011 at the Red Dot Museum.

Winners of the Elite Model Look Singapore 2011 at the Red Dot Museum.

Both first and second runners-up, 18-year-old Putri Diana Abdullah and 16-year-old Louise Arild will be flown to Paris and London respectively for an all expense paid trip to cast in the two offices.

They emerged from the 13 finalists at last night’s Elite Model Look Singapore 2011 Finals at the Red Dot Design Museum.

The winner was 175 cm tall Fiona Fussi, a 15-year-old Singapore resident of Hong Kong and Austrian descent.

Winner was 15-year-old Fiona Fussi Winner was 15-year-old Fiona Fussi Winner was 15-year-old Fiona Fussi

The first runner-up was 175 cm tall Putri Diana Abdullah, an 18-year-old Singaporean. The second runner-up was 177 cm tall Louise Arild, a 16-year-old Dane.

In addition to the three Elite Model Look Singapore winners, the Blueprint Runway Model Award 2011, representing Singapore’s fashion industry across Asia and the world, was presented to the 178 cm tall Maddie Cox, a 15-year-old British.

1st Runner-up was 18-year-old Singaporean Putri Diana Abdullah 2nd Runner-up was 16-year-old Dane Louise Arild Blueprint Runway Model Award went to 15-year-old Brit Maddie Cox

The Elite Model Look Singapore 2011 competition saw over 300 online applications and close to 1000 applicants throughout casting sessions leading up to the semi-finals which unveiled 45 contestants from various ethnicities.

13 finalists showcased the Guess 2012 Spring Collection of sportswear, swimwear, ready-to-wear and evening wear in the Finals at the Red Dot Design Museum.

Micro Focus announces new Test Server

Friday, November 4th, 2011

The new Test Server from Micro Focus offers a revolutionary approach and additional test capacity to IBM Mainframe Application Testing.

“We needed to find an innovative solution that would facilitate higher quality, scalable testing,” explained José Caetano Pereira, Senior IT Manager at BES. “By detecting errors earlier in the software development lifecycle, we will be able to deliver changes faster and deliver more robust software through to the User Acceptance Test phase and subsequent production.”Micro Focus, a leading provider of enterprise application modernization, testing and management solutions, has released Micro Focus Test Server – a unique technology that promises to accelerate testing processes while significantly reducing operating costs.

Customers such as the largest listed Portuguese bank, Banco Espirito Santo (BES), are implementing Micro Focus Test Server to enable them to improve software quality by increasing available mainframe test capacity on a Windows platform.

Micro Focus Test Server is an IBM z/OS compatible environment where application execution behaves just as it would on the target production mainframe. This makes it possible to perform a broad range of preproduction testing on readily available hardware. Testing capacity can now be easily increased to meet business-critical timeframes without incurring prohibitive costs.

Micro Focus Test Server is the first and only IBM mainframe-compatible solution for system, user acceptance and integration testing.

Micro Focus Test Server features:

  • Support for a wide range of mainframe COBOL and Assembler applications and data including batch with JCL, online CICS or IMS TM, DB2, IMS DB and VSAM files.
  • A black box test execution environment for composite applications where .NET and Java programmes invoke mainframe COBOL resources.
  • Close integration back to the mainframe with seamless and secure access to mainframe source code libraries, applications and data, enabling organizations to integrate testing with resources that continue to reside on the mainframe.
  • A proven test server engine that provides a high performance, robust execution environment for multi-region, multi-user testing.

Main specifications for Samsung NX200

Thursday, November 3rd, 2011

The Samsung NX200 was first unveiled on September 1, 2011. It has just become available yesterday, with prices in Singapore set at S$1,099 (incl 7% GST and 18-55 mm kit lens).

Samsung Electronics Co LtdHere are the main specifications for the Samsung NX200 mirrorless interchangeable lens digital camera:

NX200 Main specifications
Image Sensor 20.3 Megapixels APS-C Size CMOS (23.5 x 15.7mm)
Lens Samsung Lenses for Samsung NX Mount, bundled with Standard Kit Lens: Samsung 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 OIS i-Function lens
Image Stabilization Lens Shift (depends on Lens)
Shutter Speed Auto: 1/4000sec. – 30sec.

Manual: 1/4000sec. – 30sec. (1/3 EV step)

Exposure
  • Compensation: ±3 EV (1/3EV step)
  • ISO Equivalent: Auto, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, 12800 (1 or 1/3EV step)
  • Metering System: TTL 221(17×13) Block segment
  • Metering: Multi, Center-weighted, Spot
  • Metering range: EV 0 – 18 (ISO 100 · 30mm, F2)
Focusing Contrast AF (100ms AF Speed)

  • Modes: Single AF, Continuous AF, MF
  • Focusing Point: Selection (1 point), Multi (Normal 15points, Close up 35points), Face Detection (max.10 faces)
Shooting
  • Modes: Smart Auto 2.0, Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Manual, Lens Priority, Magic, Panorama, Scene, Movie
  • Scene Modes: Beauty Shot, Night, Landscape, Portrait, Children, Sports, Close-Up, Text, Sunset, Dawn, Backlight, Fireworks, Beach & Snow, Sound Picture, 3D Photo
  • Smart Filter: Vignetting, Miniature, Fish Eye, Sketch, Defog, Halftone Dots, Soft Focus, Old Film 1, Old Film 2, Negative
  • Magic Frame: Holiday, Old Film, Ripple, Full Moon, Old Record, Magazine, Sunny Day, Classic TV, Yesterday, Wall Art, Billboard 1, Billboard 2, Newspaper
  • Picture Wizard: Standard, Vivid, Portrait, Landscape, Forest, Retro, Cool, Calm, Classic, Custom (1 – 3) / Contrast, Sharpness, Saturation, Color
  • White Balance: Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent (W, N, D), Tungsten, Flash, Custom, K(Manual)
  • Size (max.): JPEG 20.0M,  RAW 20.0M (5472 x 3648)
  • Quality: Super fine , Fine, Normal, RAW (SRW format)
Drive
  • Single
  • Continuous: High (Up to 11 Shots at 7fps), Low (Up to 15 Shots at 3fps) in JPEG
  • Burst (5M): 10, 15, 30fps by 1 release
  • Bracket (AE/WB/PW)
  • Self-Timer: 2 – 30sec. (1 sec. step)
Movie 1080p/30fps Full HD Movie Recording with MP4 (H.264)

  • Modes: Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Manual
  • Quality: High Quality, Normal
  • Recording time: 25mins
  • Movie Editing: Still Image Capture, Time Trimming
  • Smart Filter: Vignetting, Miniature, Fish Eye, Sketch, Defog, Halftone Dots, Soft Focus, Old Film 1, Old Film 2, Negative
Flash External Flash only (Bundle with SEF8A) with 28mm wide-angle

  • Modes: Smart Flash, Auto, Auto+Red-eye reduction, Fill-in,

Fill-in + Red-eye reduction, 1st Curtain, 2nd Curtain, Off

  • Guide number: 8 (SEF8A at ISO 100)
  • Sync. Speed: Less than 1/180sec.
  • Compensation: -2 – +2EV (1/2 EV step)
Physical Specifications
  • Dimensions: 116.5 x 62.5 x 36.2mm (exclude projecting)
  • Weight: 220.4g  (without battery and card)
  • Battery Life: 165min / 330shots (CIPA Standard)
Additional features
  • Supersonic Dust Reduction drive
  • 3.0” VGA AMOLED Screen (614,000 dots)
  • Samsung External Flash available
    (SEF42A, SEF20A, SEF15A: Optional)
  • Hot Shoe
  • Software: Intelli-Studio 3.0, Samsung RAW Converter 4. Adobe Reader
  • Storage File Formats: RAW (SRW), JPEG (EXIF 2.21), DCF, DPOF 1.1, PictBridge 1.0

Google withdraws Gmail app from Apple iOS devices

Thursday, November 3rd, 2011

Having just launched the new e-mail app earlier in the day, Google has withdrawn it new Gmail app from iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices after users started getting error messages.

“Unfortunately, it contained a bug which broke notifications and caused users to see an error message when first opening the app,” the company said in a blog. “We’ve removed the app while we correct the problem.”The newly-launched app is the first Gmail app for Apple’s iOS devices.

Google is now fixing the software bug and will release a new version. In the meantime, users who have already installed the app can continue using it, despite the bug.

Read the breaking story on Bloomberg.

Apple acknowledges iOS 5 impact on battery life

Thursday, November 3rd, 2011

Apple has finally broke its silence on the matter. A spokeswoman for Apple, Natalie Harrison, acknowledges that a “small” number of customers have reported “lower-than-expected battery life on iOS 5 devices.

"The power-efficient A5 chip and iOS 5 deliver outstanding battery life," says Apple's website.

"The power-efficient A5 chip and iOS 5 deliver outstanding battery life," says Apple's website.

It’s interesting that she mentioned iOS5 devices, instead of specifically iPhone 4S, when referring to the customer complaints.

So the problem is not confined to just the newly launched and hugely popular iPhone 4S. It’s just that the 4S has been hogging the headlines.

She tells Bloomberg that “We have found a few bugs that are affecting battery life and we will release a software update to address those in a few weeks.”

£5,000,000 for an iPad 2

Thursday, November 3rd, 2011

Anybody up for an iPad 2 crusted with T-Rex bone, 24-carat gold and 12.5 carats of diamonds? Better hurry cos’ it’s already 50% sold out and it’s only going for — £5,000,000!

£5,000,000 for an iPad 2 encrusted with T-Rex bone shavings, 24K gold and 12.5 carats of diamonds.Only two will be made by British designer Stuart Hughes, and one has already been sold to an undisclosed customer, so hurry before you miss the purchase of a life time.

Stuart is well-known for a series of ‘ultra-luxury’ gadgets, which includes the world’s most expensive phone – a £5,000,000 gold and diamond encrusted iPhone; and a £219,000 Macbook Air that’s coated with 24-carat gold 53 diamonds.

Check out the original story by Rob Waugh of Daily Mail.