Father of C language dies at age 70

Father of C language, Dennis Ritchie has passed away this week. He was one of leading innovators and tech gurus of this generation. C language marks a big milestone in programming languages. It converged many developers to one platform due to its powerful nature, easier syntax and all rounded performance as compared to other task focused languages. C and its variants like C++, Visual C, C# are still the most dominant language used in the world. Death of its founder marks a sad day in tech history for us.

Ritchie was not only founder of C, but also co-author of “The C programming language”, which is termed as the definite guide to C language. He also made significant contributions to development of Unix OS. He received Turning award in 1983, National Medal of Technology in 1999 from President Bill Clinton and many other national and international awards.

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Dad in the day, Gamer by night. Loves everything Geek. By profession an Engineer but my hobby has been Video gaming on PC since 1989.

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MapsGL: Google Maps now using WebGL

WebGL is a web 3D graphics standard which was developed mainly by help of Mozilla and Khronos group. Google jumped the bandwagon also by providing support in Chrome and launching lots of WebGL demos for Chrome. But it has not been embraced by the web developers till now. Those who want 3D applications use Unity 3D engine but forget that WebGL is native web language now which doesn’t require any plugin on supported browsers. But now Google is first major company to use it for more than just some tech demos in their Google Maps. This new 3D layers is called: MapsGL which allow you to view 3D translucent buildings on top of web based maps.

3D buildings aren’t the only thing brought by WebGL, but Google has added a lot of animations as you zoom in, shift to street view tilt the map etc. The MapsGL is not openly available right now in Google Labs to be enabled. If you see a “Want to try something new?” in the bottom of your screen then the option is available to you and you can click it to enable the MapsGL feature.

WebGL is supported in latest Firefox and Google Chrome browsers. If you use Safari then you have to enable it first in your browser options. If you are an Opera user, then you will have to shift to Opera 12 alpha version for now. Android maps app has MapsGL support too.

About karar

Dad in the day, Gamer by night. Loves everything Geek. By profession an Engineer but my hobby has been Video gaming on PC since 1989.

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Berisiko Overheat, Sony Tarik 1,6 Juta Televisi Bravia

Berisiko Overheat, Sony Tarik 1,6 Juta Televisi Bravia

Jakarta - Sony akan melakukan penarikan atau recall 1,6 juta unit TV LCD Bravia di berbagai belahan dunia. Berbagai model Bravia yang akan ditarik terindikasi mengalami cacat produksi di mana ada komponen yang mungkin overheat dan bisa menimbulkan asap, bahkan api.

Insiden malfungsi TV Bravia tersebut dilaporkan sebanyak 11 kali di Jepang. Namun berbagai model tersebut tidak hanya dijual di Jepang saja, namun juga di berbagai wilayah lainnya.

Televisi yang berisiko adalah buatan tahun 2007 dan 2008, semuanya model 40 inch LCD. Model yang bakal di-recall adalah KDL-40D3400, KDL-40D3500, KDL-40D3550, KDL-40D3660, KDL-40V3000, KDL-40W3000, KDL-40X3000, dan KDL-40Z3000.

"Jika Anda memiliki salah satu produk tersebut dan Anda menemukan sesuatu yang abnormal - suara aneh, bau tidak biasa atau asap - tolong matikan segera dan cabut kabel power," kata Sony, seperti detikINET kutip dari DailyMail, Sabtu (15/10/2011).

Tidak ada laporan cedera atau luka terkait malfungsi di televisi tersebut. Sebagian besar model di atas dijual di Eropa dan Amerika Serikat serta Jepang. Beberapa lagi di negara-negara lainnya. Sony pun menjanjikan perbaikan gratis.

"Jika Anda memiliki salah satu produk yang disebutkan, kami mengundang Anda menghubungi Service Center terdekat. Perwakilan servis Sony akan datang untuk meneliti TV Anda dan akan memperbaikinya jika memang ada komponen yang terpengaruh," demikian pernyataan Sony.




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Patuhi BRTI, Indosat Stop Penawaran SMS Premium

Patuhi BRTI, Indosat Stop Penawaran SMS Premium

Jakarta - BRTI (Badan Regulasi Telekomunikasi Indonesia) baru saja mengeluarkan surat edaran agar seluruh operator telekomunikasi segera menghentikan penawaran layanan SMS premium. Indosat terindikasi siap mematuhi instruksi tersebut.

Dalam surat edarannya pada para content provider (CP), Indosat menyatakan akan menghentikan seluruh layanan push SMS premium per tanggal 14 Oktober. Hal ini untuk menindaklanjuti instruksi BRTI dalam surat no 402/BOO-BOFD/MKT/11 pada tanggal 14 Oktober.

Dalam suratnya itu, Indosat menyebutkan bahwa mereka akan mengirimkan broadcast pada seluruh pelanggan yang berisi informasi bahwa layanan akan diberhentikan. Bagi pelanggan yang akan melanjutkan layanan dapat melakukan registrasi ulang.

Sehubungan dengan 2 poin tersebut, Indosat minta seluruh Content Provider dan Label untuk mengirim daftar short code dan keyword yang dimiliki masing-masing CP beserta jumlah member paling lambat tanggal 17 Oktober. Indosat menganggap instruksi BRTI adalah instruksi pemerintah yang harus dipatuhi.

Surat bertanggal 14 Oktober 2011 tersebut ditandatangani oleh Dhoya S Sugarda, Division Head Gaming and Content Indosat.



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Patuhi BRTI, Indosat Stop Penawaran SMS Premium

Patuhi BRTI, Indosat Stop Penawaran SMS Premium

Jakarta - BRTI (Badan Regulasi Telekomunikasi Indonesia) baru saja mengeluarkan surat edaran agar seluruh operator telekomunikasi segera menghentikan penawaran layanan SMS premium. Indosat terindikasi siap mematuhi instruksi tersebut.

Dalam surat edarannya pada para content provider (CP), Indosat menyatakan akan menghentikan seluruh layanan push SMS premium per tanggal 14 Oktober. Hal ini untuk menindaklanjuti instruksi BRTI dalam surat no 402/BOO-BOFD/MKT/11 pada tanggal 14 Oktober.

Dalam suratnya itu, Indosat menyebutkan bahwa mereka akan mengirimkan broadcast pada seluruh pelanggan yang berisi informasi bahwa layanan akan diberhentikan. Bagi pelanggan yang akan melanjutkan layanan dapat melakukan registrasi ulang.

Sehubungan dengan 2 poin tersebut, Indosat minta seluruh Content Provider dan Label untuk mengirim daftar short code dan keyword yang dimiliki masing-masing CP beserta jumlah member paling lambat tanggal 17 Oktober. Indosat menganggap instruksi BRTI adalah instruksi pemerintah yang harus dipatuhi.

Surat bertanggal 14 Oktober 2011 tersebut ditandatangani oleh Dhoya S Sugarda, Division Head Gaming and Content Indosat.




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Apple Siap Produksi iPad 3

Apple Siap Produksi iPad 3

Jakarta - Setelah iPhone baru dirilis dengan nama iPhone 4S, perhatian kini mengarah pada generasi baru iPad. Menurut pengamatan analis teknologi, Apple sudah memulai proses produksi iPad 3.

Christopher Caso dari Susquehana Financial Group menyatakan kemungkinan 1 juta unit iPad 3 atau apapun namanya nanti akan dibuat Apple sampai akhir tahun 2011. Kemudian proses produksi bakal dilanjutkan pada tahun mendatang.

Apple dikabarkan sudah menekan angka produksi iPad 2 yang dipesannya dari manufaktur, yaitu Foxconn. Hal ini dilakukan karena Apple mulai beralih fokus membuat generasi iPad selanjutnya yang kemungkinan dipasarkan tahun 2012.

"Pengamatan kami mengindasikan iPad 3 telah masuk dalam perkiraan produksi Apple untuk akhir kuartal 4 2011," kata Caso yang detikINET kutip dari Venture Beat, Sabtu (15/10/2011).

iPad 3 akan diproduksi Foxconn di pabriknya yang berlokasi di China atau Taiwan. Atau malah kemungkinan besar di Brazil di mana Foxconn juga sedang membangun pabrik di sana.




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Prihatin Pencurian Pulsa, Ajakan Matikan Ponsel Hari Ini Muncul

Prihatin Pencurian Pulsa, Ajakan Matikan Ponsel Hari Ini Muncul

Jakarta - Prihatin atas banyaknya pencurian pulsa, gerakan mematikan HP selama dua jam hari ini akan dilakukan. Gerakan yang akan dimulai tepat pukul 10.00-12.00 WIB ini sebagai protes kepada BRTI, operator seluler, serta content provider yang dianggap bertanggung jawab atas tersedotnya pulsa para konsumen.

"Sabtu (15 Oktober 2011) pukul 10.00-12.00 WIB, 11.00-13.00 WITA, dan 12.00-14.00 WIT, 70 juta pengguna akan serentak mematikan ponselnya. Traffic voice, SMS, dan data akan anjlok selama 2 jam," kata koordinator aksi dari Konsumen Ponsel Indonesia dan Komunitas Voice of Humanism, Harja Saputra dalam rilis yang diterima detikcom, Sabtu (15/10/2011).

Angka 70 juta lebih atau 30% konsumen ponsel ini menurut Harja bukan angka yang asal tebak. Harja mengklaim tahu pergerakan penyebaran ajakan untuk mematikan HP sudah sangat mewabah. "Ada hitungan matematisnya dengan perhitungan probabilitas yang tidak mungkin dituliskan di sini karena banyak akun-akun FB Group, forum-forum, hashtag twitter, dan media-media lain yang harus disimpan sendiri," ungkapnya.

Dia memaparkan, gerakan ini bukan tanpa hambatan. Menurutnya pasti ada resistensi termasuk makian-makian di berbagai forum. "Makian di forum-forum itu sudah biasa. Karena pro-kontra itu pasti ada," ucap Harja.

Harja mengatakan, tujuan gerakan ini adalah bukan gerakan teror yang menebar ketakutan ke semua orang. Gerakan ini bukan gerakan brutal. Hanya ingin menunjukkan bahwa konsumen itu eksis.

"Bisa melawan dengan cara mereka. Bahkan mereka bisa diarahkan ke satu tujuan tertentu. Gerakan ini secara kasat mata saya optimis akan diikuti oleh minimal 70 juta konsumen ponsel Indonesia," paparnya.

Menurutnya, gerakan ini akan memberikan efek psikologis. Karena menurutnya, ini bisa memberikan pembelajaran bahwa konsumen adalah kumpulan massa yang bisa digerakkan. Jika penggeraknya destruktif maka akan melahirkan kerusakan.

"Untungnya gerakan kami bukan destruktif tetapi gerakan damai. Tapi yakin akan memberikan efek positif dan efektif agar operator, CP, dan regulator berpikir 1000 kali," katanya.




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Google's Buzz Is Dead

Buzz is dead. Google said Friday it was shutting down the social-networking product to focus on its new service, Google+.

Buzz had been launched in 2010 as the software giant's social-networking vehicle. But it quickly became embroiled in privacy issues that led to an investigation and settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, and an international uproar.

'Learned a Lot' from Buzz

In a posting on The Official Google Blog, Vice President for Product Bradley Horowitz wrote Friday that Buzz and the Buzz API will be shut down within a few weeks. "We learned a lot from products like Buzz," he wrote, "and are putting that learning to work every day in our vision for products like Google+."

He said that while users "obviously won't be able to create new posts" with Buzz following the shutdown, they will be able to look at existing content on their Google Profile, and download it using Google Takeout.

Buzz was built around the company's popular Gmail, and it enabled the sharing of updates, photos, videos and other material and information with friends. But it caused an uproar when the automated process revealed users' e-mail contacts and friends, without their permission. With Buzz, lists of friends were automatically created from Gmail contacts and most-frequent e-mail contacts, even though some might not be friends.

At the time of the controversy, the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Marc Rotenberg told The New York Times that there was concern that "Gmail users are being driven into a social-networking service that they didn't sign up for." Google said the auto-friend feature was intended to get people started.

40 Million Users

Buzz got the buzzer about privacy violations not only from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, but such other countries as France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

In a letter to Google, privacy officials in those countries wrote at the time that Buzz, "in essence," took Gmail, a private one-to-one e-mail service, and turned it into a social networking service "without adequately informing Gmail users about how this new service would work or providing sufficient information to permit informed consent decisions." The officials said this violated a basic principle that users should be able to control their private information.

In the FTC settlement last fall, Google agreed to establish a $8.5 million fund to support organizations focusing on Internet privacy policy or privacy education, in addition to covering lawyers' fees.

Chief Executive Larry Page said this week that Google +, which was launched over the summer, now has more than 40 million users. By comparison, social-networking giant Facebook has more than 800 million users.

Buzz's demise is only one of the products that Google is shutting down. Horowitz also said that Code Search, which had been designed to help searches for open-source code, and Jaiku, a product purchased in 2007 that allows users to send updates to friends, will both close in January.

Additionally, social-networking features on iGoogle will also end at that time, and the University Research Program for Google Search, providing API access to search results for some academic institutions, is ending. And Google Labs closes Friday, with its experiments becoming part of product efforts.
 

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Some face delays activating new iPhone 4S

Rosa Golijan/msnbc.coma

By Rosa Golijan

Updated at 5:53 p.m. ETa

Uh oh! Some of the folks who managed to get their hands on iPhone 4S devices are dealing with quite a headache right now: Thanks to overloaded activation servers, they can't get their shiny new Apple gadgets up and running.a

The issue — while incredibly frustrating — isn't exactly unfamiliar to those who have set up iPhone devices in the past. Almost since the very beginning, iPhone launches seem to have been plagued by the same problem — which has occasionally been dubbed an "iPocalypse."a

A look at Twitter reveals that despite the fact that the iPhone 4S is being offered on three major carriers, it is AT&T that appears to be struggling the most to keep up with new device activations. (I've reached out to the carriers for details regarding the delays and will update when I hear back.)a

In the meantime, feel free to head into the comments below and tell us how you're faring. Did you manage to activate your new iPhone 4S right away? Was there a delay? Are you still waiting for your gadget to get activated?a

Oh, and in case you're wondering: Yes, my own iPhone 4S activation was delayed as well — but only by about 10 to 15 minutes.a

Update: AT&T provided the following statement regarding the activation delays experienced by some new iPhone 4S owners:a

As of 4:30 pm ET today, AT&T had already activated a record number of iPhones on our network – and is on-track to double our previous record for activations on a single day. These record volumes may produce slower activations for some customers, though our systems continue to run at record levels.a

Related stories:a

My iPhone says the darndest things (thanks to Siri) iPhone 4S now available, here's what you need to know The early iPhone 4S reviews are in!

Want more tech news, silly puns or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.a

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Apple co-founder 'Woz' first in line for iPhone 4S

Foursquarea

Steve "Woz" Wozniak checked in the Apple iPhone 4S line on Foursquare.a

By Rosa Golijan

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was first in line for an iPhone 4S at an Apple Store in Los Gatos, California on Friday morning, sharing his status on Twitter and location on Foursquare.a

His location was also noted by Firefox co-founder Joe Hewitt, who just might be the "pissed" guy on the wrong side of the store described by Wozniak on Twitter and Foursquare. Hewitt, however, seemed more excited than angry, tweeting himself:a

Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, is first in line at the Apple store in Los Gatos, California on Friday, Oct. 14, 2011.a

Woz and his Segway first in line at the Los Gatos Apple Store. Only one in line too!a

And the excitement grew, as Hewitt tweeted later:a

Still only one other guy in line at the LG Apple Store with Woz, but the TV news trucks are swarming. I expect hysteria tomorrow.a

According to a report by USA Today, Wozniak waited in line since about 2 a.m. on Thursday even though two of the new Apple devices are being shipped to his home.a

He explained, in an interview with TechCrunch, that he decided to wait in line — where he held the number one spot — because "it has meaning." He feels that the product is "an important part of life and this is just [his] way of recognizing it."a

When asked about which features he was most excited about, Wozniak listed the upgraded camera and Siri voice recognition app found in the iPhone 4S.a

Oh, and in case you're wondering: Woz said that he's purchasing a white Verizon iPhone 4S (for his wife) at the Apple Store. The devices being shipped to his home, on the other hand, are AT&T-based models.a

Related stories:a

Fans cue for iPhone, despite criticism iOS 5: Should you upgrade? iPhone 4S now available, here's what you need to know The early iPhone 4S reviews are in!

Want more tech news, silly puns or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.a

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Teknologi Dolby Perkuat HDTV First Media

Teknologi Dolby Perkuat HDTV First Media

Jakarta - Penyedia layanan televisi kabel First Media menerapkan teknologi Dolby Digital Plus surround sound sebagai bagian dari upaya meningkatkan penawaran layanan TV berbayar high definition (HDTV).

"Dengan Dolby Digital Plus sebagai bagian dari layanan HD kami, sekarang pengguna dapat melengkapi kualitas gambar yang tinggi dengan suara surround mendalam," papar Hengkie Liwanto, Chief Executive Officer PT Link Net, pemilik brand First Media di Jakarta, Jumat (14/10/2011).

Tambahan Dolby audio ini, kata Hengkie, merupakan salah satu upaya untuk meningkatkan layanan dan bersaing dalam industri TV berbayar di Indonesia.

"Adopsi Dolby Digital Plus oleh First Media merupakan tonggak penting dalam memberikan pengalaman hiburan yang baru bagi pemirsa Indonesia," kata Mahesh Sundaram, Wakil Presiden Dolby Laboratories Asia Pacific.

Dengan Dolby Digital Plus, Sundaram menyebutkan, First Media dapat memberikan surround sound premium secara efisien, melengkapi layanan video HD.

Dolby Digital Plus sendiri telah digunakan dalam standar penyiaran di seluruh dunia untuk layanan HDTV, termasuk spesifikasi terestrial di Prancis, Italia, Polandia, Swedia, dan Inggris. Baru-baru ini ia juga terpilih sebagai teknologi audio opsional untuk Receiver DTMB Nasional China, set-top box dan TV yang akan berlaku 1 November 2011.

Meski demikian, untuk menikmati audio tersebut, pelanggan perlu menambahkan kotak digital HD. Codec dari kotak digital ini berguna untuk mendistribusikan data digital melalui infrastruktur serat optik dan menyalurkannya ke layar TV.

"Lewat Codec dengan harga yang relatif terjangkau ini, pemirsa hanya perlu menyalakan televisi lalu langsung dapat menikmati pengalaman baru menonton gambar dan audio yang tajam dan jelas," kata Hengkie.



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Layanan BlackBerry Mulai Pulih

Layanan BlackBerry Mulai Pulih

Jakarta - Tiga hari yang berat bagi Research In Motion (RIM) tampaknya segera usai. Pembesut BlackBerry ini mengumumkan layanan BlackBerry yang sempat tumbang selama tiga hari di empat benua, berangsur membaik.

Melalui situsnya, RIM secara resmi mengumumkan layanan BlackBerry telah pulih dan beroperasi dengan baik secara global. Di halaman yang memuat update kondisi layanan BlackBerry itu pun terdapat video berdurasi 1 menit 40 detik yang menampilkan permohonan maaf langsung dari President dan co-CEO RIM Mike Lazaridis.

"Sejak meluncurkan BlackBerry di 1999, adalah tujuan kami menyediakan komunikasi real-time yang terpercaya di seluruh dunia. Namun kami tidak memenuhi tujuan kami pekan ini. Untuk itu kami memohon maaf atas gangguan yang terjadi pekan ini. Kami telah mengecewakan Anda," ujarnya seperti dikutip detikINET dari situs RIM, Jumat (14/10/2011).

Disebutkannya, RIM bekerja keras memulihkan kondisi tersebut. Perbaikan pada layanan terus mereka lakukan. Kondisi saat ini, layanan BlackBerry di Eropa, Timur Tengah, India dan Afrika hampir mencapai level normal.

Dia pun memohon maaf karena tidak bisa memberitahukan jangka waktu pemulihan layanan BlackBerry. "Kami tidak bisa menentukan rentang waktu layanan pulih di seluruh dunia. Terlalu dini jika kami mengatakan masalah ini rampung sepenuhnya," ujar Lazaridis.

RIM menyampaikan, sejauh ini sistem email mereka beroperasi baik. Layanan BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) pun kembali online dan trafiknya berjalan sukses. Namun perusahaan asal Kanada tersebut akan terus memantau, guna memastikan stabilitas layanan.




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Pendiri Apple Ikut Antre iPhone 4S

Pendiri Apple Ikut Antre iPhone 4S

Jakarta - Steve Wozniak (Woz) adalah salah satu pendiri Apple dan 'Bapak Mac'. Meski demikian, untuk membeli iPhone 4S Woz tetap mau mengantre.

Hal itu dilakukan Woz di toko Apple yang berlokasi di Los Gatos, California. Ia muncul hari Kamis, 13 Oktober 2011, waktu setempat dengan mengendarai Segway-nya.

Seperti dikutip detikINET dari NBC Bay Area, Jumat (14/10/2011), Woz mengaku sudah siap untuk bermalam di depan toko Apple demi menunggu waktu penjualan resmi iPhone 4S.

Padahal, Woz sebenarnya sudah pasti akan memiliki iPhone 4S itu dari Apple. Sebanyak dua unit akan dikirimkan ke rumah Woz, namun ia mengaku masih akan mengantre satu unit lagi untuk istrinya.

Rupanya, Woz memang hampir selalu mengantre untuk membeli perangkat Apple terbaru seperti iPhone atau iPad. Tradisi ini sudah dijalankannya selama beberapa tahun.

Kehadiran Woz jelas memicu reaksi fans Apple. Mulai dari yang sekadar mengajaknya berbincang hingga meminta foto bersama sosok legendaris ini.

Penggemar Apple pun dikatakan sering mempersilakan Woz untuk maju dalam antrean dan jadi orang pertama yang masuk ke toko. Meskipun ia mengaku tak keberatan jika harus mengantre di belakang orang lain.









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Polycom launches tablet video conferencing app

Polycom is a well known name in offices as they provide majority of conferencing related audio and video equipment. To cater for the emerging market of tablets they have launched their video conferencing app for Android tablets and iPad 2. This app runs on same Polycom RealPresence platform which is used in their dedicated video conference equipment. This will allow people in a conference room to have video conference with some executive on the move as well as discuss things in the field with the field team using tablets.

Polycom is also in talk with Skype and Apple to make their app compatible with Skype and Facetime. But their app already has an edge especially for business users. The video conference app can connect up to 16 users at a time. You can share documents on screen with them or display presentations etc using same technology. Moreover the app comes with a built-in VPN, which allows users to share data / send files from office to remote sites easily.

Polycom is offering the application in Apple’s App Store and Android Marketplace for free. It currently work on the iPad 2, Motorola Xoom and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, and will eventually expand to other tablets.

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Dad in the day, Gamer by night. Loves everything Geek. By profession an Engineer but my hobby has been Video gaming on PC since 1989.

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Run Android apps on PC now with BlueStacks

BlueStacks have released their Android app players which allows you to run Android apps in a virtual environment on PC in full screen. This software for Windows, comes preloaded with many android apps and you can install more via their service. There is also BlueStacks Cloud connect app on Android market which will allow you to push your mobile apps to your PC so that you can run those apps and games on the big screen too.

Since the virtual environment runs like Google Android emulator, so you will get 100% of same results as on android phone but controls would suffer as most of the apps are made for touch screen and using a mouse and keyboard may not feel just as easy. But the app does support multi-sense touchpads of laptops so that may feel a tad bit better.

Although this software may not be ideal for news or software apps, as PC has alternate of those already. But it does come in handy for exclusive apps and especially games that are released only on android.

Download Android app player @ BlueStacks official site

About karar

Dad in the day, Gamer by night. Loves everything Geek. By profession an Engineer but my hobby has been Video gaming on PC since 1989.

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Reports: Google readying online music store

By Suzanne Choney

Google, which announced its own cloud-based music service in May, is also planning to starts its own online music store that would compete with Amazon and Apple, according to reports.a

The New York Times said Thursday that according to "numerous music executives," the store would "most likely be connected to Google’s existing cloud service, Music Beta, which lets people back up their songs on remote servers and stream them to mobile phones and other devices, said these executives, who all spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were private and continuing."a

Google would reportedly start the service even before it has the rights to sell songs from some of the biggest labels, "according to people familiar with the matter," said The Wall Street Journal:a

According to these people, all four of the major music companies have held talks to license their catalogs to Google for the new online store. But only the smallest, Citigroup Inc.'s EMI Group, is close to a deal, they said.a

Google and record labels declined comment to the Times, which noted that Google may aspire to get online store going before Apple starts its new cloud-based music service called "iTunes Match," expected to available by the end of this month.a

Related stories:a

Google Translate adds more languages to the conversation Apple update felt like it broke the Internet iTunes 10.5 now available, prepares you for iOS 5 Cloud music to your ears from Google Google launching cloud music service, followed by Apple Get your music anywhere with Amazon Cloud Player

Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.a

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U.S. Carriers Swamped by iPhone 4S Pre-orders

An avalanche of pre-orders for the 16 GB model of Apple's new iPhone 4S has forced Sprint to stop accepting online purchases at its Web site. However, the wireless carrier said the phone will be available for sale in Sprint stores nationwide beginning Friday morning, when it goes on sale in the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom.

AT&T 's Web site promises to ship online pre-orders of the 16 GB iPhone 4S in 21 to 28 days, whereas new pre-orders for the 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB models placed online at Verizon's Web site are expected to ship within two weeks.

Apple received more than 1 million iPhone 4S pre-orders within the first 24 hours when it began accepting online purchases last Friday.

"While it is still early, this data point increases our confidence that iPhone 4S has the momentum to meet or exceed our 25-million-unit estimate [for the fourth quarter of this year]," said Piper Jaffray analysts Gene Munster and Andrew Murphy.

Piper Jaffray's holiday season estimate represents a 77 percent increase "from the 14.1 million iPhones Apple sold in the September 2010 quarter, when the iPhone 4 launch sales hit," Munster and Murphy wrote in an investor note. The investment firm also expects Apple will sell 111 million iPhones overall in calendar year 2012.

Apple's Pied-Piper Strategy

The new iPhone 4S is widely expected to be a huge hit among younger smartphone users. In a recent Piper Jaffray survey of students, 38 percent of the respondents indicated they intend to purchase an iPhone within the next six months -- an all-time high for the investment firm's semiannual surveys.

"It is clear to us that Apple has retained the 'cool factor' among high school students across America," Munster and Murphy wrote. "We believe the teen demographic is a critical component of long-term growth in the mobile market, and Apple is taking its lead in music and leveraging it in the mobile category."

And in advance of Apple's iPhone 4S unveiling Oct. 4, Piper Jaffray surveyed a small sample of U.S. mobile phone users overall, of which 64 percent indicated they intended to buy an iPhone when they purchase a new handset. What's more, 36 percent of the survey's respondents said they were waiting specifically for the availability of Apple's next-generation handset. (continued...)

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BlackBerry users tweet about pre-smartphone world

Research in Motiona

BlackBerry Curve 9350a

By Athima Chansanchai

After four days of outages that deprived them of smartphone basics like email and Internet, BlackBerry owners cried out their collective angst and rage on Twitter, even as the service sputtered back to life early this morning.a

Whether it was a symptom of withdrawal from their CrackBerry, or the end of CrackBerry addiction as we know it, the tweets that flew every which way showed how vulnerable a once mighty telecomm force can be, and how quickly they can fall.a

Some forgot they could still text, they were so used to BlackBerry Messenger. Others put their devices aside, rested their thumbs and decided to experience life away from their little keyboards or touch screens, hoping by morning it was all a bad dream. For Research in Motion, taking such a long time to resolve the problem may have cost them the battle to stay relevant in a smartphone and tablet race dominated by Android and iOS. RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis tried to do what damage control he could, with a YouTube apology.a

Live PollAre you going to dump your BlackBerry?a

NO. I can forgive them for this. For now.YES, and I'm going to get an Android now.YES, and I'm going to get an iPhone now.VoteView Results163238NO. I can forgive them for this. For now.23%163239YES, and I'm going to get an Android now.33%163240YES, and I'm going to get an iPhone now.44%VoteTotal Votes: 43a

In a press call this morning, RIM execs said the problems were of "great concern," and that they were committed to working with their customers "to earn that trust." If there are still any delays, it's because of the backlog of data that has accumulated in the absence of access these past few days. (The execs advised pulling the battery and restarting to resync the device.)a

Maybe the reaction was so strong because usually, that's the one thing that BlackBerry is: reliable, with a "99.97 percent uptime for 18 months" until this "service degradation."a

This "service degradation" played out on the social network as a constant barrage of complaints, with some tying the breakdown with the death of Steve Jobs, which preceded the first outages in Europe,  the Middle East, Africa and India by a few days.a

Others made wry observations about BlackBerry's nostalgia factor, as a remnant of a bygone era for those who were too stubborn to accept the reality of other mobile operating systems.a

Take our poll and let us know if this is the last straw for you and your BlackBerry, or whether you're willing to give it a second chance.a

More stories:a

RIM co-CEO apologizes for BlackBerry outage on YouTube Richest phone owners use BlackBerrys Teen charged for inciting riots using BlackBerry New BlackBerry 7 smartphones coming out today?

Check out Technolog on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Athima Chansanchai, who is also trying to keep her head above water in the Google+ stream.a

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GITEX ’11: Playing pong with our minds

‘No hands, no aggression, no violence.’ Those are the ground foundations of Mindball, a basic two-player game from NovelQuest where each player must control a small ping-pong sized ball with their minds.

The basic rule of the game is to relax. Seriously. The more relaxed a player is, the quicker the ball will move away from him and towards the opponent, eventually handing him defeat without ever uttering an expletive.

And it works. The accompanying electrodes-equipped headband accurately reads the electrical activity of our brain, called EEG (electroencephalogram), and adjusts the ball accordingly. The more excited we were, the quicker we were getting closer to defeat.

There is no better way to explain it than a video itself, so here we go:

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Hollywood stars get heroic, villainous for Spider-Man, X-Men games

Val Kilmer and his hat give evil a voice in "Spider-Man: Edge of Time."a

By Winda Benedetti

One look at actor Val Kilmer's hat ... and you know he's got villainy in his heart. Go on, see for yourself.a

Kilmer, Katee Sackhoff, Milo Ventimiglia — a throng of Hollywood film and TV actors lent their voices to the new "Spider-Man: Edge of Time" and "X-Men: Destiny" games. And now Activision — which published both titles — is giving us a look at the stars doing their work behind the scenes and in front of microphones.a

First up we've got video of Kilmer — famed for his roles in "Top Gun" and "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" — along with Sackhoff — a.k.a. Starbuck in the "Battlestar Galactica" remake — jumping behind the microphone for "Spider-Man: Edge of Time."a

Kilmer plays time-altering baddie Walker Sloan (seriously, does that hat not scream "eeeeeevil"?) and Sackhoff brings Black Cat to life. And you'll recognize actress Laura Vandervoort from the TV series "Smallville" and "V" giving voice to Mary Jane.a

Meanwhile, in this second video, Ventimiglia — who played Peter Petrelli in the hit TV show "Heroes" — talks about trying on mutant powers in "X-Men: Destiny." He's joined by Jamie Chung from the films "Sucker Punch" and "The Hangover Part II," and "Friday Night Lights" star Scott Porter. The three actors give voice to the three characters you can play in the game.a

Both "Spider-Man: Edge of Time" and "X-Men: Destiny" are available for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii and Nintendo DS.a

For more game news, check out:a

Nightwing and Robin join Batman in 'Arkham City' Campy 'Leisure Suit Larry' making a sexy HD comeback Relax! 'Mass Effect' multiplayer will (probably) be 'amazing' Zynga reveals 9 new games, new game network

Winda Benedetti writes about games for msnbc.com. You can follow her tweets about games and other things here on Twitter or join her in the stream here on Google+. And be sure to check out the In-Game Facebook page here.a

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Jaringan Telkomsel Berangsur Normal di Bali

Jaringan Telkomsel Berangsur Normal di Bali

Jakarta - Operator seluler Telkomsel masih terus melakukan perbaikan jaringan pasca gempa 6,8 skala richter yang mengguncang Bali pagi ini, Kamis (13/10/2011). Proses recovery-nya pun terbilang cepat.

"Sekarang success call rate sudah di atas 90%, back to normal. BTS yang down juga tinggal 1 sektor di daerah pemecutan, hanya 1/3 BTS," kata Aulia E Marinto, juru bicara Telkomsel, saat dihubungi detikINET.

Sebelumnya diberitakan, jaringan Telkomsel di Bali sempat mengalami kendala. Mulai dari lonjakan trafik yang menyebabkan akses tersendat selama 10 menit usai gempa, serta infrastruktur yang rusak.

Aulia menjelaskan, jaringan terganggu karena transmisi radio terkendala akibat gempa. Semula, dari 1.000 lebih BTS yang dioperasikannya di Bali, ada 13 BTS yang terkena imbas gempa.

Namun dalam waktu yang relatif singkat, permasalahan itu segera ditangani. Hasilnya, secara perlahan tapi pasti, BTS-BTS yang rusak segera diperbaiki. Dari 13 tinggal 8, kemudian berkurang 4 lagi, hingga akhirnya tinggal 1 saja yang masih down. Setidaknya demikian yang diklaim Aulia.

Jaringan BTS yang dimiliki Telkomsel melayani 4,6 juta pelanggan di Bali dan Nusa Tenggara. "Jadi kecil sekali jumlah pelanggan yang terganggu. Dan umumnya yang terganggu karena blocking akibat lonjakan trafik saja," pungkasnya beberapa saat yang lalu.




( rou / ash )

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GITEX ’11: Motorola ET1 video walkthrough

Making rugged and built-to-last devices is nothing new to Motorola. They did it with the Android-based Defy smartphone, and now have moved their expertise to the business market.

At GITEX 2011, Motorola unveiled ET1, the “world’s first” tablet for enterprise. The tablet is Android-based, with a layer of security added on top of it. Although not the sleekest looking device on the market, the ET1 is tough and can brush of the harsh of conditions such as rain, hot weather, and it’s gorilla glass insures scratch and dust free display.

On top of it, Motorola has added no less than five programmable keys, two of which are shoulder buttons, like a game controller. The buttons can be used as shortcuts to launch apps and other software stored in the tablet.

We chat with Huzaifa Sailawala, regional sales manager at Motorola, who takes us through the new tablet.

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Diguncang Gempa, XL Pantau 2 Juta Pelanggan di Bali

Diguncang Gempa, XL Pantau 2 Juta Pelanggan di Bali

Jakarta - Bencana gempa 6,8 skala richter di Bali turut membuat trafik telekomunikasi di wilayah itu melonjak drastis. Tak terkecuali trafik seluler dari XL Axiata yang melayani dua juta pelanggan di Pulau Dewata tersebut.

"XL turut prihatin atas terjadinya gempa bumi di Bali. Kami sangat bersyukur karena hingga saat ini masih dapat mengatasi dampak gempa terhadap jaringan, sehingga XL masih dapat melayani kebutuhan komunikasi pelanggan dengan baik," kata Febrianti Nadira, Head of Corporate Communication XL saat dihubungi detikINET, Kamis (13/10/2011).

Menurut Ira--demikian dia biasa disapa--jaringan XL selamat dari terjangan gempa. Tak ada kerusakan infrastruktur yang berarti. Meski demikian, kewaspadaan tetap ditingkatkan agar trafik telekomunikasi seperti voice call, SMS, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), dan internet bisa tetap lancar.

"Kami juga masih memonitor kondisi di lokasi dan bersiap untuk memberikan bantuan yang mungkin dibutuhkan masyarakat, terutama dari sisi kebutuhan terhadap akses komunikasi, yang dapat meningkat dalam kondisi seperti ini," papar Ira.

Layanan XL di Bali sendiri didukung oleh sekitar 1.100 BTS (2G/3G) yang diklaim mampu memenuhi kebutuhan sekitar dua juta pengguna, yang terdiri dari 1,8 juta pelanggan existing dan 200 ribu pendatang maupun wisatawan yang tengah roaming di Bali.



( rou / rns )

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Facebook app finally comes to iPad

Facebook app has been on every device from Nokia to iPhone to Windows Phone 7. But iPad has been long deprived on any dedicated official app for its platform. Facebook has been prepping up for a “Full Facebook” experience on the iPad for which they had to delay the release rather than just porting the iPhone version to iPad. This new iPad targeted app has full large screen photo galleries, slideshows, groups, lists, apps, games, navigation and search bar etc.

The app is fully capable of allowing you to use the new facebook video chat and even recording HD video directly via the app and sharing it. You can easily use the big iPad screen to play games with friends.

Facebook fully realizes the importance of apps for mobile devices as more than 45% of their traffic comes from smartphones and tablets. So, it is integral for them to make all facebook’s features compatible with these devices and not just the desktop PC. The iPad version of the app is shining example of that how they aim to bring the maximum core features of facebook to the touch interface.

Do note that an updated version of facebook app for iPhone is also available taking some of navigation bar etc. bringing some of iPad version changes and features to smaller counterpart. You can grab the app for free @ iTunes

About karar

Dad in the day, Gamer by night. Loves everything Geek. By profession an Engineer but my hobby has been Video gaming on PC since 1989.

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iPhone 4 trade-in prices start to drop

Gazelle.coma

Before the iPhone 4S was announced, Gazelle.com was offering $225 for a 16 GB iPhone 4 AT&T model in "flawless" condition; now the price is $200.a

By Suzanne Choney

Considering trading in your iPhone 4? You'll still do well, but prices for the phone have dropped since the new iPhone 4S was unveiled last week.a

NextWorth, which had been offering a guaranteed $250 for any iPhone 4 until the day before the new iPhone was introduced Oct. 4, now is offering $200 for a 16 GB AT&T iPhone 4 in "good" condition, and $215 for the 32 GB version.a

Gazelle, which gives a 30-day price lock-in once you agree to trade, had been offering $250 for a "flawless" AT&T iPhone 4 with 32 GB and $225 for a "flawless" AT&T 16 GB model, now is offering $222 and $200, respectively. If the phone is in "good" condition, it will bring $172 for the 32 GB version and $170 for the 16 GB model.a

Gazelle says that nine out of 10 iPhones they get are in "good" condition. A "flawless" phone, is one that has "no noticeable flaws, still in its package or looks like new," has "zero scratches" and has "no dust under the glass.")a

It's also worth noting that, for the first time, Target has teamed up with NextWorth to do iPhone trade-ins with a "price lock guarantee" in advance of the iPhone 4S's availability on Friday. (Target also will be selling the new phone).a

NextWortha

NextWorth's offer of $200 for an AT&T iPhone 4, 16 GB model in "good" condition.a

The offer is $200 for the AT&T iPhone 4 (either 16 GB or 32 GB); and $120 for the iPhone 3GS (32 GB); $110 for the 3GS (16 GB); and $101 for the 3GS (8 GB). (The other trade-in sites mentioned here will also buy your older-model iPhones.)a

Target/NextWorth's trade-in values are "based on used iPhones in good working order, rather than phones in excellent or flawless condition, so the vast majority of people will qualify" for the values listed here, Target says.a

"Customers can go to 1,470 Target retail locations nationwide to lock in a trade-in value for their old iPhone model and receive the quoted value when they pick up their new iPhone 4S."a

Another trade-in site, Instantsale.eBay.com, had been offering up to $307.54 for an AT&T iPhone 4 16GB several days before the iPhone 4S announcement. Now the offer is $260 for the phone in "like new" condition, described "as if never used. Fully functional with no scratches or marks. Must include original package and all accessories."a

BuyMyTronics has the same 16 GB phone priced at $191; the device would need to be in "excellent" condition, and traded with the wall charger, original box, cables and earbuds.a

A Verizon trade-in offer on a 16 GB ATT iPhone 4.a

Verizon Wireless is taking iPhone 4 trade-ins, also. You can use the money toward a new Verizon phone or get a Verizon gift card (but not cash). The carrier is offering $210 for the 16 GB model from AT&T, if the phone meets these requirements: It powers up, the display works and the display is not cracked.a

If you're thinking of trading in your Verizon iPhone 4 for the new model, be aware that it will fetch less than the AT&T version.a

The AT&T iPhone uses GSM technology, which is predominant worldwide, and best for re-selling the phones. Verizon uses CDMA technology, which is primarily used in the United States by Verizon and by Sprint. An unlocked AT&T iPhone could even be used in the U.S. on the T-Mobile network (now the only major carrier not offering the iPhone).a

So, it pays to check around. And sooner is probably better than later.a

In a recent interview, Gazelle's chief gadget officer, Anthony Scarsella, noted that once the new iPhone was announced, prices would "start to drop a little." With the iPhone 4S to be released Friday, they might drop even a little more.a

Related stories:a

iOS 5: Should you upgrade? The early iPhone 4S reviews are in iPhone 4S service plans: Dirty secrets, sweet deals iPhone 4 trade-in offers promoted, some at $250

Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.a

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Tumbang di 4 Benua, Hoax BlackBerry Menyebar

Tumbang di 4 Benua, Hoax BlackBerry Menyebar

Jakarta - Research In Motion (RIM) tengah mendapat cobaan besar. Setelah performa bisnisnya mendapat sorotan, gini giliran layanan BlackBerry mereka yang dirundung masalah teknis yang berakibat terganggunya layanan email dan BlackBerry Messenger di 4 benua.

Di atas semua krisis tersebut, halangan yang mendera BlackBerry diperparah dengan beredarnya informasi palsu (hoax) yang mengatasnamakan RIM yang bergerilya via BBM.

Dari pesan yang diterima detikINET, Kamis (13/10/2011), pengguna BlackBerry diminta untuk mem-broadcast pesan berantai ini ke seluruh kontak BBM-nya. Pasalnya, RIM abal-abal ini mengaku bahwa servernya tengah full.

Tak lupa, ia pun mengancam pengguna akan kehilangan seluruh kontaknya dan akun BBM-nya tak akan aktif lagi jika tidak ikut-ikutan mem-broadcast pesan tersebut

Tentu ini hanyalah hoax yang merupakan 'lagu lama'. Sebab modus serupa sebelumnya sudah sering kali beredar dengan nada pesan dan ancaman serupa.

Hanya saja saat ini pelaku menjalankan aksi usilnya dengan memanfaatkan momentum tumbangnya layanan BlackBerry di sejumlah negara.

Sehingga mungkin, hal itu diharapkan bisa membuat pengguna lebih terperdaya dan mengikuti ajakan-ajakan tidak jelasnya tersebut.

Berikut isi pesannya.

---

‎​This is the real broadcast from Blackberry© All rights reserved.
Broadcast this message to every single contact on your BBM© to reset your display picture, sorry for any inconvenience.
‎This message is to inform all of our users, that our servers have recently been really full, so we are asking for your help to fix this problem. We need our active users to re-send this message to everyone on your contact list in order to confirm our active users that use BlackBerry Messenger, if you do not send this message to all your BlackBerry Messenger contacts then your account will remain inactive with the consequence of losing all your contacts
Symbol will automatic update in your BB ,when you broadcast this message. Your blackberry will be updated within 24 hours it will have a new lay out and a new color for chat.
‎Dear Blackberry users, We are going to do a update for bbm from 11pm till 5am this to day. You if you don’t send this to all your contacts your update will be cancelled and you would not be alowed to chat with your contacts as you have the old version.

---

Sebelumnya, RIM secara resmi telah menyampaikan permohonan maaf atas tumbangnya layanan BlackBerry yang menimpa jutaan pengguna.

Disampaikan perusahaan asal Kanada ini, gangguan tersebut terjadi di Eropa hingga Amerika Latin dan disebabkan kegagalan di dalam infrastruktur perusahaan mereka.

"Transisi ke back-up switch tidak berfungsi baik seperti ketika pengujian. Ini menyebabkan backlog data dalam jumlah besar," jelas RIM seperti dilansir Cnet.

"Saat ini kami tengah berupaya keras merampungkan backlog dan memulihkan layanan secepatnya," tandas RIM.

Gangguan layanan email dan BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) terjadi sejak dua hari lalu. Korbannya adalah para pengguna di Eropa, Timur Tengah, Afrika, India, Brazil, Chile dan Argentina.

Pun demikian, operator penyedia layanan BlackBerry di Indonesia memastikan bahwa untuk pengguna di Tanah Air tak perlu khawatir lantaran layanan tersebut masih aman.



( ash / ash )

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HP Converged Storage Hadir dengan Teknologi Federasi Penyimpanan

HP Converged Storage Hadir dengan Teknologi Federasi Penyimpanan

Jakarta - Jajaran converged storage dan sistem penyimpanan baru diperkenalkan oleh Hewlett Packard (HP) dalam acara media briefing yang digelar di Hotel Kempinski, Jakarta, Rabu (12/10/2011) petang.

Adalah HP Peer Motion, HP P10000 3PAR Storage Systems dan teknologi Storafe Federation yang menambah daftar portofolio HP dalam hal coverged storage.

HP Peer Motion adalah piranti lunak yang memungkinkan para klien untuk memindahkan aplikasi di antara sistem disk dalam lingkungan komputasi virtual maupun komputasi awan. HP Peer Motion tersedia untuk HP LeftHand dan 3PAR Storage Systems.

Ia menghadirkan federasi penyimpanan peer-to-peer pertama di dunia yang merentangkan Storage Area Network (SAN) perangkat lunak ke sistem penyimpanan menengah sampai tertinggi.

Sedangkan mengenai teknologi storage federation, HP meluncurkannya dilatarbelakangi oleh kebutuhan akan penyimpanan tunggal untuk melakukan proses pengiriman dari aplikasi-aplikasi berbasis virtual dan awan.

Dengan federasi penyimpanan, ia dapat menghilangkan lapisan tambahan dari peralatan virtualisasi. Langkah ini tentu saja akan berdampak pada penghematan biaya, proses administrasi serta risiko layanan di dalam arsitektur data center.

"HP memiliki keunggulan dalam hal converged storage, di mana lebih efisien, fleksibel dan menjanjikan teknologi yang lebih sederhana,"ujar Justin Chiah, selaku Product Marketing Manager, HP Networking Asia Pacific Jakarta.

HP juga mengklaim converged storage yang dimiliki perusahaannya memiliki kelengkapan tools dibandingkan penyedia layanan sejenis.



( sha / ash )

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BlackBerry Outage Spreads To the Americas

Research In Motion's ongoing BlackBerry outage overseas began affecting smartphone users in the Americas on Wednesday, with many BlackBerry users -- from business executives and investors on Wall Street to lawmakers on Capitol Hill -- in a tizzy over their inability to communicate normally.

"BlackBerry subscribers in the Americas may be experiencing intermittent service delays this morning," RIM said in a statement Wednesday. "We are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible."

On Tuesday, RIM blamed a core switch failure for causing the ongoing outage plaguing BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa since Monday. The company also said another feature of the system -- which is designed to failover to a back-up switch -- did not function as previously tested.

With the spread of BlackBerry outages to the Americas, however, industry observers believe the underlying infrastructure problems must be even more serious than what RIM has admitted to date.

"A switch is a piece of hardware that can always fail," said IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo. "But it shouldn't take three days to replace a switch and have services up and running again, and we don't know why the backup didn't work."

Moreover, a switch failure overseas would not have an impact on other switches in North America. "So this [explanation] is quite odd," Jeronimo said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Damage Control

On the other hand, all handset vendors have experienced problems with their products and services at one time or another, Jeronimo said. Apple, for example, received a huge number of complaints due to a faulty iPhone antenna-design issue last year.

"Carriers will continue to consider RIM as an alternative to Apple and Google," Jeronimo said. But the BlackBerry maker needs to completely "explain what happened and communicate what RIM will do to ensure this will not happen again," Jeronimo said.

Still, Piper Jaffray analyst Andrew Murphy believes that RIM's current service issues may benefit Apple's iPhone sales somewhat going forward. "I see it giving Apple's new iMessage feature a new talking point," Murphy said in an e-mail Wednesday. But the "impacts [will be] pretty small [and] felt over time" rather than as "a big spike," he said.

Two carriers in the Middle East have already begun offering their BlackBerry customers compensation -- which the operators will doubtlessly attempt to recoup from RIM. "We may see operators in Europe asking for compensation but nothing has been announced yet," Jeronimo said. (continued...)

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Nightwing and Robin join Batman in 'Arkham City'

WBa

By Todd Kenreck

The Dark Knight returns in "Batman: Arkham City" next week, but even after you finish the game it won’t be over yet.a

Nightwing (a.k.a. Dick Grayson) will become a playable character with his own special moves, gadgets and challenges when the Nightwing Bundle Pack launches November 1.a

Nightwing, by the way, was the original Robin but decided to strike out on his own. And speaking of the boy wonder ... the Robin Bundle Pack will arrive November 22, allowing you to play as Jason Todd, the new Robin.a

Each set of downloadable content will cost $6.99 on the PlayStation Network and 560 Microsoft points on Xbox Live. "Batman: Arkham City" comes out Tuesday, October 18.a

For more Dark Knight news, check out these "Batman: Arkham City" videos:a

Why Batman's villains work so well "Batman: Arkham City" game developer interview

'Batman:Arkham City' and Gotham's villains are shaping up nicely. We take a look at what worked, and what didn't in our demo of the game about The Dark Knight. In-Game's Todd Kenreck reports.a

 a

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See what Google doodle can do today: Gumby!

By Athima Chansanchai

Before video games, CGI and green screen ramped up animation expectations for modern youth, there was clay animation king Gumby, which is the Google doodle du jour, celebrating what would have been the 90th birthday of his creator, Art Clokey. a

Greeting visitors to the Google home page today (or for some abroad, last night) is that fabulously flexible green thingy, asking —practically begging —  you to click on the balls of clay around him and after that big "G" block above the search box. And when you do, Gumby's cohorts come to life: Blockheads, Prickle, Goo, Gumby, and pony pal Pokey.a

While we appreciate all the work it takes to create a piece of clay animation, do you know how hard it is to take a screen capture of it in motion, especially when they bounce back so fast into balls of clay?a

Thanks, PC Magazine, for making a slideshow out of it.a

And thanks, YouTube, for providing videos of it in play, accompanied by the theme song to a show that spanned 34 years:a

Clokey, a Detroit native, died in January 2010 at the age of 88. But as is the trend with doodles, his life and work live on in these interpretative tributes. a

An obituary of Clokey gives a little background for those who might not be familiar with the evolution of his famous high pitched voice creation.a

Gumby grew out of a student project Clokey produced at the University of Southern California in the early 1950s called "Gumbasia."a

That led to his making shorts featuring Gumby and his horse friend Pokey for the "Howdy Doody Show" and several series through the years.a

He said he based Gumby's swooping head on the cowlick hairdo of his father, who died in a car accident when Clokey was a boy. And Clokey's wife suggested he give Gumby the body of a gingerbread man.a

Here's a video msnbc.com ran when Clokey died:a

Jan. 10: Animator Art Clokey, whose creation Gumby became a pop culture phenomenon through decades of toys, revivals and satires, dies at 88. KSBY's Monica Quintero reports. a

Over the years, Clokey's star, this legend, has made many cameos in popular culture. One of his most memorable iterations: Eddie Murphy on "Saturday Night Live." While not the most wholesome representation of the big and bendy fellow, it's certainly one of the funniest.a

Gumby is not a garbage mouth, ok?a

(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)a

Google keeps on upping the ante when it comes to its doodles. Some doozies we've covered in the past year include: the dancing Martha Graham-inspired piece, the animated interpretation of John Lennon's "Imagine," and the playable/recordable Les Paul guitar. a

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More stories:a

'Don't stop' Google doodles now, or ever, with Freddie Mercury Not just for fun, Google Doodles drive traffic, too Google doodle: Alexander Calder's moving mobile

Check out Technolog on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Athima Chansanchai, who is also trying to keep her head above water in the Google+ stream.a

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AMD launches 8 core FX series CPUs

Today AMD finally launched their long awaited FX series performance CPUs. The new FX series comes in three forms, the FX 4100 series which is a quad core processor, the FX-6100 which is their hexa core processor and the FX-8120 and FX-8150 CPUs which are their flagship octa core processors.

AMD pegs the FX-8150 to the Intel Core i7-2600K and i7-980X in terms of performance in multi-threaded applications and games. With all CPUs unlocked and backwards compatible with AM3+ motherboards, AMD suggests the system price to be very low compared to Intel solutions, which certainly looks to be the case.

Those who want to see what’s next in the pipelines may want to look at the image below and…wait I guess.

Look out for our review next week where we go in-depth with the FX-8150 and see how far we can overclock this behemoth.

About Taimoor Hafeez

From auditing to editing, I now test and analyze the latest gadgets and games instead of the latest financial statements. Both jobs are equally intense and rewarding. In my free time you'll find me raiding in WoW or engineering in TF2.

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Akankah BBM di Indonesia Ikut Tumbang?

Akankah BBM di Indonesia Ikut Tumbang?

Jakarta - Meskipun jaringan Research in Motion (RIM) tengah bermasalah di empat benua, namun sejauh ini koneksi BlackBerry di Indonesia masih aman. Walaupun demikian, bukan berarti Indonesia tak bisa terkena imbas gangguan juga.

"Kalau ditanya apakah mungkin terjadi di Indonesia, ya mungkin saja terjadi. Kalau server yang handle Asia kena, bukan cuma Indonesia saja, tapi negara lain di Asia juga kena," jelas Faisal Adiputra, praktisi ahli BlackBerry kepada detikINET, Rabu (12/10/2011).

Seperti diketahui, layanan BlackBerry tengah mengalami gangguan di banyak negara. Hal ini jelas menyebabkan kerugian bagi pelanggan atas macetnya saluran telekomunikasi berbasis data.

Disampaikan vendor prinsipal BlackBerry tersebut, gangguan menyebar mulai dari Eropa hingga Amerika Latin akibat kegagalan core switching failure di server utama RIM saat melakukan transisi back-up switch yang tidak berfungsi baik dan menyebabkan backlog data dalam jumlah besar.

Imbasnya, gangguan layanan email dan BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) terjadi sejak kemarin. Korbannya adalah para pengguna di Eropa, Timur Tengah, Afrika, India, Brazil, Chile dan Argentina.

"Sejauh ini Indonesia masih aman, karena beda server. RIM itu punya region server berbeda yang menghandle Asia, Eropa dan Amerika. Kalau ada masalah regional, maka yang terkena dampaknya regional saja," jelas Faisal.

"Sebenarnya tiap-tiap operator berbeda. Tapi fisik server mungkin sama. Di India misalnya, meskipun dia masuk middle east dan berdekatan dengan Asia ikut kena server clustering (data center) yang bermasalah. Itu pun bisa terjadi di Indonesia dan negara Asia lainnya," pungkas sang BlackBerry Support Certified Specialist ini.




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GITEX ’11: Etisalat flexes it’s 4G Muscles

Etisalat was showing their 4G network at their GITEX booth and we managed to convince them to run speedtest on their brand spanking new LTE network powered by Qualcomm. Needless to say, our jaws dropped when we saw the download and upload speeds. Watch the video and get in line.

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AMD Bulldozer Siap Taklukan Intel Core i7

AMD Bulldozer Siap Taklukan Intel Core i7

Jakarta - AMD FX-8150, atau yang biasa dikenal sebagai Bulldozer resmi diluncurkan. Prosesor ini tidak hanya berlari pada kecepatan tinggi, namun juga jumlah core terbanyak di kelasnya.

Ada dua varian AMD Bulldozer yang segera ada di pasaran, FX-8150 dan FX-8120 keduanya sama-sama mengincar para penggila komputer kelas atas sekaligus menjadi penantang sengit seri Intel Core i7.

AMD FX-8150, prosesor berkecepatan 3,6 GHz dan 8 inti ini dibanderol pada kisaran harga USD 283-287 atau sekitar Rp 2,5 juta.

Sedangkan versi yang lebih rendah yakni, AMD FX-8120 dijual mulai harga USD 237 (Rp 2,1 juta). Proseseor ini juga memiliki 8 core tapi berlari pada kecepatan lebih rendah yakni 3,1 GHz.

Namun bagi bagi yang merasa belum puas dengan kecepatan yang ditawarkan, konon prosesor ini mampu dipacu kembali hingga bermain di 8,4 Ghz. Tapi ini semua hanya bisa dilakukan dengan menggunakan sistem pendingin cairan khusus tentunya.



Seperti dilaporkan pcworld dan dikutip detikINET, Rabu (12/10/2011), kehadiran 2 prosesor anyar AMD itu langsung disambut cepat oleh ECS.

Produsen asal Taiwan itu berjanji akan menjadi vendor pertama yang merilis motherboard untuk AMD FX-8150 dan FX-8120.




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Huawei-Discovery Keluarkan Ponsel Petualang

Huawei-Discovery Keluarkan Ponsel Petualang

Jakarta - Huawei menggandeng Discovery Communications, perusahaan media non-fiksi, untuk mengembangkan ponsel petualang yang dinamai Huawei-Discovery Expedition. Sesuai namanya, perangkat ini siap memenuhi kebutuhan akan handset di aktivitas outdoor yang tahan banting.

"Ini pertama kalinya Huawei menciptakan ponsel bersama dengan Discovery. Kami sangat bersemangat dapat menyediakan perangkat yang mendukung komunikasi dan memenuhi kebutuhan gaya hidup aktif para penggemar alam," kata Mike Liu, President Director Huawei Device South Pacific.

Ponsel ekspedisi Huawei-Discovery merupakan bagian dari perluasan jajaran produk Discovery Expedition, yang merupakan merek lifestyle resmi dari Discovery Channel.

Fitur ponsel ini antara lain: anti air dan debu, tahan banting, serta dilengkapi dengan fitur GPS, senter, kompas, dan G-sensor, sehingga menjadikan ponsel ini diklaim kompatibel dengan perjalanan dan kegiatan di luar ruangan atau di alam bebas.

Akses ke media sosial tak lupa dibenamkan dalam ponsel petualang ini seperti Facebook dan Twitter, yang memungkinkan para penggunanya untuk berbagi pertualangan outdoor mereka dengan teman atau orang yang dicintai.

"Kemitraan global Discovery dan Huawei merupakan seri usaha strategis pertama untuk menciptakan kontak antara konsumen dengan merek-merek kami yang lainnya di seluruh dunia," kata Nicolas Bonard, Senior Vice President, Discovery Enterprises International, Discovery Networks International, dalam keterangannya, Rabu (12/10/2011).

Ponsel Huawei-Discovery Expedition direncanakan akan mendarat pada kuartal keempat tahun 2011 dan akan didistribusikan melalui berbagai operator dan distributor di seluruh dunia.




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Gilad Shalit Freed, Hostage Deal Trends on Twitter

As a five-year-old international hostage drama wound to a close today, it quickly became one of the fastest trending topics on Twitter. The hostage deal involves the long-awaited release of Gilad Shalit, a young Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas for the past five years, in exchange for Israel releasing more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.

News of Shalit's release and the controversial agreement spread quickly around the world, creating a stream of tweets. The hashtag #GiladShalit moved along computer screens almost as quickly today as #SteveJobs did last week, following the death of the Apple co-founder and former CEO. A few days before that, #iPhone5 topped Twitter, when Apple released a new phone that turned out to be the iPhone 4S, not an iPhone 5, as expected.

As of 5:30 pm Eastern time today, #GiladShalit tweets were appearing about every 10 seconds.

Tweets from Netanyahu

Shalit had been held by his captors since a June, 2006 raid at the border of the Gaza Strip. Sporadic 'proof of life' was sent to Israel, but he was not allowed any visits from the International Red Cross to check on his condition. A multi-year, international campaign has been waged to pressure his captors into releasing Shalit, who was kidnapped and held hostage, simply as a bargaining chip.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his official Twitter feed, told the world on Tuesday afternoon (evening, Israel time), "We have concluded arduous negotiations with #Hamas to release #Gilad #Shalit. He will be coming home in the next few days."

Other updates from IsraeliPM included, "Earlier today I have updated Aviva and Noam #Shalit about the upcoming developments," referring to the soldier's parents, and "especially thank the #Egyptian government and its security services for their role in mediation & concluding of the deal #Shalit.

Among tweets in response to the news were, "the heart is happy, the mind is worried," from Shiran01, who lives in Israel. The worry presumably refers to the serious concern shared by many that the thousand prisoners released will pose a dangerous threat to the safety of Israel.

Another tweet reads,"May #GiladShalit be returned safely to his family after 5 years in captivity. More than 1000 prisoners for 1...," from AmyinCapetown.

Indeed, there were and are many critics of the deal: "Don't let em do it, [one] thousand killers released for one single soldier?? no f--ing way," tweeted TheKingRoberts. (continued...)

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Belum Pulih, Gangguan BBM Menyebar di 4 Benua

Belum Pulih, Gangguan BBM Menyebar di 4 Benua

Jakarta - Tumbangnya layanan di BlackBerry, yakni e-mail, web dan BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), ternyata belum pulih. Malahan, gangguan tersebut dilaporkan menyebar di wilayah lain.

Kemarin, RIM mengatakan bahwa pihaknya telah memperbaiki masalah yang mereka alami, namun dalam kenyataan, dilaporkan jutaan pengguna BlackBerry masih mengeluhkan gangguan tersebut.

Perusahaan asal Kanada menyebutkan dalam pernyataannya bahwa isu ini dialami oleh konsumen mereka di 4 benua. Sebelumnya, pengguna di Eropa, Timur Tengah dan Afrika-lah yang mengalami kelumpuhan layanan BlackBerry, namun kini ia menyebar sampai di India, Brasil, Chili serta Argentina.

"Layanan pesan dan browsing mengalami gangguan dikarenakan kerusakan di infrastruktur RIM," ujar RIM seperti yang dikutip detikINET dari Reuters, Rabu (12/10/2011).

Tumbangnya layanan BlackBerry sudah beberapa kali terjadi. Layanan email dan pesan yang lumpuh sempat dialami pengguna di Kanada dan beberapa wilayah di Amerika pada bulan lalu. Kelumpuhan ini juga menghantam pengguna di Amerika Utara pada April 2007.

RIM hingga kini memiliki lebih dari 70 juta pelanggan di seluruh dunia namun ia dikabarkan telah kehilangan pengguna di Amerika Serikat dengan kehadiran iPhone serta piranti Android.

Akankah gangguan BlackBerry Messenger menyebar sampai Indonesia?




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The early iPhone 4S reviews are in!

Applea

By Rosa Golijan

The early iPhone 4S reviews are in — courtesy of those lucky enough to chosen by Apple for a sneak peek of the device — and we've taken the time to round 'em up for you. Here's what's being said about the newest Apple device — which will be hitting stores on Friday.a

The basic message sent by the early reviewers is that the iPhone 4S is better and faster than the iPhone 4 — as expected. The consensus appears to be that it is a great upgrade, but not an absolutely necessary one.a

There is something very special about the new iPhone though — something that the prior generation can't offer. And Jim Dalrymple at Loop in Sight introduces it by talking to it:a

Jim: I love you, Siria

Siri: Impossiblea

Jim: No really, I love youa

Siri: I hope you don’t say that to those other mobile phones, Jima

Jim: No way, I only love you Siria

Siri: You are the wind beneath my wingsa

Jim: That’s nice. I’m glad you know I love youa

Siri: All you need is love. And your iPhonea

Its name is Siri and it is the voice-recognition technology built into the iPhone 4S. Brian X. Chen at Wired describes this technology — which is presented to us in the form of an app — as being so significant that the "S" in iPhone 4S "may as well stand for Siri." In his own words:a

To give you an idea of how convenient Siri is, it takes about three seconds to create a reminder with a voice command, as opposed to the 10 seconds it takes me to manually type an event into a to-do list or calendar entry. Before, with the standard iPhone calendar, I would often forget to add an event because I was too busy to type it, and as a result I would forget I had something scheduled altogether. With Siri and Apple’s new Reminders to-do list app, it’s unlikely I’ll forget anything important again because the process is so effortless.a

It’s kind of like having the unpaid intern of my dreams at my beck and call, organizing my life for me. I think Siri on the iPhone is a life changer, and this is only the beginning.a

And not only is this new iPhone like the ideal personal assistant, but it rarely gets tired either. As Joshua Topolsky at This Is My Next explains, the device will keep running longer than any of its predecessors:a

As with the iPhone 4, the 4S is definitely no slouch in the battery life department. In fact, Apple claims that the new phone is capable of an extra hour of talk time while on 3G. What the company is less vocal about is the fact that the phone has lost an hour of Wi-Fi browsing time.a

In my real world testing of the device, those numbers seemed to balance each other out, and overall I found the battery performance of the phone to be impressive. Even after a heavy day of use (about 16 hours of making calls, browsing, downloading apps, syncing, listening to music, game playing, and more), I still had juice on the phone when I plugged it in before bed. The 4S is more than capable of going through a full business day without needing a charge, and if you’re a lighter user, you’ll rarely have to worry about it.a

It's not just the battery that's been powered-up though. Jason Snell at Macworld found that the iPhone 4S packs a performance punch:a

Like the iPad 2 before it, the iPhone 4S is powered by an Apple-designed A5 processor. This is a dual-core processor that’s one generation more advanced than the A4 processor that powered the iPhone 4 and the original iPad.a

Two processor cores don’t necessarily mean the iPhone 4S is twice as fast as the iPhone 4—that has a lot to do with how efficiently a device’s software can take advantage of spreading the workload across both cores. But the 4S’s upgraded processor definitely provides a large speed boost, akin to the upgrade from the original iPad to the iPad 2.a

The results of my general-performance tests showed the iPhone 4S to be between roughly twice as fast as the iPhone 4. Apple claims graphics performance on the iPhone 4S has been boosted even more by the graphics component of the A5, with speed gains of as much as 7x. That’s a best-case scenario, but my tests with the GLBench Pro graphics benchmarking app did show enhanced graphics performance. One 3D test sequence played at roughly five times the frame rate of the same scene on the iPhone 4; another was roughly double the frame rate.a

And let's not forget the camera inside this device. Danny Gorog at Outware, like most of the other reviewers, describes it as being good enough for you to forget about carrying a regular camera most of the time:a

The optics and sensor in the iPhone 4S have been given a substantial upgrade. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say the camera quality is now as good as many dedicated point and shoot camera. With the convenience of having it with you in your phone at all times.a

The snazzy and shiny bits aside, how's the actual phone aspect of Apple's newest baby? According to Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal? Not bad at all:a

Though the 4S isn't labeled as a 4G phone, and the Verizon and Sprint models can't use those carriers' 4G networks, the AT&T model, in my tests, achieved 4G speeds in areas where AT&T has deployed its 4G network.a

In numerous tests at three different locations in the Washington suburbs, I averaged download speeds of nearly 7 megabits per second—better than in prior tests on Sprint and T-Mobile 4G phones. By contrast, a colleague's tests of the Verizon version of the iPhone 4S yielded average download speeds of less than 1 mbps.a

All models of the iPhone 4S are "world phones," meaning even the Verizon and Sprint versions, which use a technology rare outside the U.S., can switch to the global standard cellphone technology and be used in most other countries.a

Apple claims to have improved voice-call reception in the iPhone 4S, allowing the phone to switch between two antennas to pick up the best signal. But my AT&T model dropped too many calls, just as earlier AT&T iPhones do. My colleague's Verizon iPhone 4S dropped none.a

Should you be getting an iPhone though? As I mentioned above, the basic consensus appears to be that — as great as it is — it's not for everyone. MG Siegler at TechCrunch  clarifies:a

If you already have an iPhone 4 and still have time left on your two-year contract, it will be a pricey decision to upgrade to an iPhone 4S — especially since you’ll get the iOS 5 features (again, minus Siri) as an upgrade for free. If either speed or the camera are of the utmost importance to you, you should upgrade. If not, go to an Apple Store and see for yourself just how cool Siri is and then decide.a

If you’ve had an iPhone 3GS and have been waiting a couple years for the next iPhone to come out, now’s the time to upgrade. If you’re worried just because this is not called the “iPhone 5,"  you’re being foolish.a

If you’ve never owned an iPhone before and the 4S will be your first one, you’ll love it. I suspect that millions of Verizon and Sprint customers in the U.S. are going to be in this bucket.a

But hang on a minute, says Stephen Fry at the Guardian. It's not just about whether a two-year contract is expiring on your current iPhone 4. He explains that you should probably take a look at iOS 5 — which becomes available on Wednesday — before rushing to a store:a

 iOS 5 will make your existing iPhone so like a new one that you might even forget the iPhone 4S …a

Related stories:a

Apple's iOS 5 available on Oct. 12, brings 200 new features Apple unveils the iPhone 4S Meet Siri, your personal iPhone assistant

Want more tech news, silly puns or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.a

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LG Perkenalkan Ponsel Android 4G

LG Perkenalkan Ponsel Android 4G

Jakarta - Display retina Apple segera mendapat saingan ketat pada musim liburan kali ini. Saingan itu datang dari LG yang baru saja memperkenalkan ponsel Android terbarunya dengan konektivitas 4G LTE dan display yang diklaimnya akan sangat mengagumkan.

'NOVA', demikian LG menyebut teknologi pada display di ponselnya tersebut, mendukung resolusi HD low-end 720p atau 1280×720 pixel. Berukuran 4,5 inch, layar LCD IPS ini memiliki aspek rasio 16:9 dan lebiih banyak pixel per inch dibandingkan retina display yang dibenamkan di iPhone 4 dan 4S.

Dengan teknologi ini, di atas ukurannya yang 4,5 inch, display LG akan menampung 329ppi. Sementara layar milik Apple, dengan ukuran 3,5 inch menampung 326ppi.

Sayangnya, konsumen yang tergiur ingin memilikinya, seperti dilansir Digital Trends dan dikutip detikINET, Rabu (12/10/2011), ponsel tersebut untuk saat ini hanya diluncurkan di Korea Selatan. LG tidak menyebutkan kemungkinan ponsel ini akan merambah negara lain.

"LG Optimus LTE adalah smartphone pertama di Korea yang menawarkan konten HD dengan sangat jelas dan bersih melalui jaringan 4G," kata Dr. Jong-seok Park, President dan CEO LG Electronics Mobile Communications.

Ditambahkannya, tujuan LG adalah menjadi pemimpin di ranah perangkat LTE dengan menawarkan produk terbaik di kelasnya, berdasarkan keterampilan dan paten LTE yang mereka miliki.



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Cray Plans Supercomputer Upgrade at Oak Ridge

Cray has inked a deal with the federal government to make a faster, better supercomputer for the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The $97 million contract empowers Cray to upgrade the Cray XT5 supercomputer, also known as Jaguar, to a Cray XK6 supercomputer that will go by the moniker of Titan.

Once Cray finishes its work, the Titan system will have a peak performance of between 10 petaflops and 20 petaflops of high-performance computing power, or HPC. A petaflop makes possible a quadrillion mathematical calculations per second. Cray will depend on technologies like petascale architecture and Nvidia Tesla graphic processors to drive Titan.

The Cray XK6 will also use high-performance software that leverages a scalable system interconnect and a blend of GPUs and general-purpose central processors in a single, tightly integrated supercomputer. The result: ORNL scientists and engineers will be able to apply the supercomputing resources to solving energy and environmental challenges.

"ORNL and Cray have been working together to optimize the Cray XK6 hardware and software architecture for several years. The result of this collaboration is a system specifically developed for scientific applications," said Jeff Nichols, associate laboratory director for Computing and Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge. "In addition to efficiency and speed, the Cray programming environment allows researchers to continue using Fortran, C, and C++ languages to program the new accelerators."

A New World Record?

Transforming Jaguar into Titan is the latest project in a long collaborative partnership between Cray and ORNL. The partnership has driven several significant supercomputing accomplishments.

In 2008, for example, Jaguar set a world record for computer speed with sustained performance of more than a petaflops on two scientific applications, and has since run five applications above that threshold. Cray and ORNL are working to continue this trend as the lab's system evolves from a Cray XT5 machine to the new Cray XK6 supercomputer.

"Signing this contract is a significant milestone for our company and our partnership with Oak Ridge because the new system will enable even further amazing scientific achievements," said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO of Cray. "When we announced the Cray XK6 a few months ago, we said it had an architecture capable of scaling to more than 50 petaflops, and Titan will be a major step toward achieving that goal."

Ready but Waiting

It will be some time before the supercomputing world welcomes Titan. The first phase of the contract will include replacing the Cray XT5 compute blades with Cray XK6 compute blades, which will feature the coming AMD Opteron processors code-named "Interlagos," Cray's Gemini interconnect, and a subset of Cray XK6 nodes equipped with Nvidia Tesla 20-series GPUs.

The first phase is expected to generate more than $60 million in product revenue and is targeted to be completed in 2011. The second phase of the contract -- equipping the system with Nvidia Tesla GPUs based on the next-generation architecture dubbed "Kepler" -- is expected to be completed in the second half of 2012. The contract includes additional upgrade options beyond those two phases that, if exercised, would increase the total value of the contract.
 

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Child porn post shuts down Reddit's 'jailbait' section

By Helen A.S. Popkina

As of Monday night, the controversial "r/jailbait" section of social news site Reddit officially shut down. Again. This time, maybe forever. a

As fans of the r/jailbait section bemoan the the loss of their outlet to exploit photos of underage girls in the latest epic misunderstanding of the First Amendment, the confirmation of Reddit employee Max Goodman obtained last night from the Daily Dot remains. "The section has been shut down."a

Good riddance to bad rubbish. You heard me.a

Recently discovered by CNN's Anderson Cooper, Reddit's r/jailbait archive of user-submitted photos is long notorious among Internet enthusiasts. Here is the wretched truth known to hundreds of thousands before Cooper, and millions after: The Internet is lousy with self-justifying  "ephebophiles" who crawl the Internet, grabbing publicly available photos of post-pubescent girls from unsecured Facebook profiles and the like.a

The photos may feature young ladies experimenting with sexy poses, as they often do, or just as likely, getting their soccer on, or hanging out at the beach. These purloined pics are then linked on r/jailbait or other ephebophiles'sections for sexual objectification. Well not on r/jailbait anymore, not right now anyway.a

"PC bulls*** excuses" and the prediction that Reddit will now remove all content Anderson Cooper finds offensive were two oft-repeated remarks on Reddit Tuesday. (If that's the case, say goodbye to your spinach macros, Redditors! Anderson Cooper hates spinach!)a

This latest shutdown of the r/jailbait section isn't directly the result of Cooper's vocal shaming, however. Cooper's report did bring added attention to Reddit and the jailbait section — more than 30,000 more visitors to the already-popular section, 4 million page views and more than 1,000 new subscribers to Reddit. What's more, it's not the first time r/jailbait went down. As Jezebel reported in August, the section went offline briefly not as a matter of taste, but because of a power struggle between moderators.a

The final straw involved a photo of a girl a Reddit user linked, claiming the girl was his ex-girlfriend — 14 years old at the time the picture was taken. She was clothed in the image,  as is the r/jailbait condition that skirts the child pornography laws. But the user did mention he had nude pictures of the girl as well. At least 70 users requested copiesa

After a few hours, the user "relented somewhat and posted another picture," which other users reported to the site administrator, Jezebel reports:a

According to Matthew Sharkey, a Reddit user who was monitoring the thread at the time, the picture was of a child's face with blond hair. The top and bottom of the image was censored with images of the Power Puff Girls, but Sharkey says that, based on unobscured parts of the image and comments made by TheContortionist, the girl in the picture was engaged in oral sex. (Sharkey notified the FBI about the thread soon after.)a

By Monday evening, r/jailbait was replaced by this message: "This subreddit has been shut down due to threatening the structural integrity of the greater reddit community."a

Reddit, which includes guidelines against ALL CAPS and grammar correction of other users, justified the existence of the r/jailbait section and other ephebophile subreddits in the past by describing itself as a bastion of "free speech."a

As Reddit is not part of the U.S. government, your right to "free speech" does not apply. Free speech is not absolute. You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater (the Onion just learned that) and you can’t say or do things likely to incite "imminent lawless action"  And that’s just to say that free speech is not an unlimited right.a

 More on point here, private companies have no burden to provide a venue for free speech.  And who the heck wants to provide or facilitate this stuff, ever, anywhere?a

Reddit is a business, and most successful businesses operate by conforming to the majority morals of the customers. That Reddit exists on the Internet — the "Wild West" nature of which some users continue to cling — doesn't make it above or beyond an expectation of taste.a

What's more, as Reddit is within the moneyed Conde Nast family, it certainly has the bank to keep its website reasonably non-exploitative.a

Remember Twitter's big porn bot infestation in 2009, when half your followers were butts in thongs? These days, one or two may pop up now and again, but they don't last long before they're dumped from the servers.a

Know how many kiddie porn rings Facebook has helped cops bust? Several. (I've asked for numbers in the past, but it's not the kind of ugly business the social network likes to share). Maybe Facebook can't block videos of Justin Bieber punching some girl for no reason, but good luck startng your own Jailbait Fan Page.a

Reddit is an awesome place — where pictures of Puerto Rican street sharks emerge and are quickly debunked. Reddit users have the mighty super power to pressure Stephen Colbert into marching on Washington D.C. Reddit users organize the largest Secret Santa ever. Following the Haiti earthquake, Reddit users donated more than $185,000 to Direct Relief International. Unfortunately, Reddit also has kiddie porn fan boys, but their First Amendment rights do not apply.a

Just like Facebook and Twitter, Reddit has the right to shut down users at its pleasure. It's not always fair when users get shut down, and at times it's important to raise a stink. When it's unjust, I'll be the first to make that stink. Ephebophile rights to exploit Facebook photos is hardly Arab Spring or #OccupyWallstreet. "First they came for the ephebophiles, and I said nothing," is noting Martin Niemöller ever said, because this is about the preferences — not the legal "rights" — of kiddie porn fan boys. Know how much sympathy I have for kiddie porn fan boys? None.a

In the many dark holes not infested by cats, the Internet remains a mostly-disgusting place where evicted r/jailbate dwellers will quickly find new homes. (That's why God invented 4chan!) But the "other kids are outside playing" justification got old around the time our parents stopped dictating our bedtimes.a

More on the annoying way we live now: a

Soldier comes out on YouTube again, to mom Honey badger sells out -- to pistachios! Mark Zuckerberg still kills, won't talk about it

Helen A.S. Popkin goes blah blah blah about the Internet. Tell her to get a real job on Twitter and/or Facebook. Also, Google+.a

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