Kyocera solar modules at actual 20+ year-old installations still performing with high-efficiency

Exemplary quality and proven long product life
30 November 2011 - Kyoto / Neuss − The Japanese technology company Kyocera, one of the leading manufacturers in the field of photovoltaics, is known for the outstanding quality of its solar modules. Two real-life installations in Sweden and Switzerland prove the exemplary product life of Kyocera modules, as both installations have been producing electricity for more than 20 years with only minimal degradation in performance.

Two aspects of major importance for any solar module are energy conversion efficiency and product life. Photovoltaics pioneer Kyocera is especially proud of two real-life examples of extraordinary product life that have maintained continuously high levels of efficiency. In Huvudsta, Sweden (near Stockholm) and in the Swiss canton of Vaud, solar power generating systems using Kyocera solar modules have been producing reliable solar power for more than 20 years each — demonstrating that the company’s solar modules possess exceptional durability and reliability.

Pioneering Swiss installation: 20 years on the sunny side

Since 1991, an integrated installation in the garden of a private home in Bassins, Switzerland has been producing 2,800 kilowatt hours per year of solar electricity. After 20 years of operation, the modules have produced more than 55,000 kilowatt hours of sustainable, clean energy — with a near-constant efficiency level. The pioneering solar installation was the first private facility in the region to be connected to the power grid. In this system 45 multicrystalline Kyocera modules with an output of 62.7 Wp each are installed — for a total of 2.82 kWp.

20 years is a long time in the fast-pace field of solar energy, which is constantly developing through innovation. Therefore, the efficiency of the modules that were manufactured with the technology of that time is particularly remarkable. To this day, as a pioneer in innovation and technology of solar modules, Kyocera has been able to improve the longevity and efficiency of its modules significantly. As a comparison of the developments over the years, the amount of power generated from the installation required an area of approximately 24m2 some 20 years ago, but can now be provided on just over half this area. Furthermore, the cost of a solar power generating system has been reduced to just a quarter of what it was 20 years ago.

Proven long-term solution: Kyocera modules in Sweden

Sweden's first grid-connected photovoltaic system was built in 1984 in Huvudsta, Stockholm. Since its installation, the façade-mounted system has been continuously and reliably providing the residents of an apartment building with environmentally-friendly electricity. The modules were tested by the system owner after an operating period of 23 years, and the results showed that the modules’ performance was still reliable — with no significant degradation in energy conversion efficiency. The system consists of 48 polycrystalline Kyocera modules with an output of 44 Wp each — for a total of 2.1 kWp. Therefore, the total annual energy output of approximately 1,600 kWh is generated — mainly during the up to 18 hours of sunlight per day in the Swedish summer. The electricity generated from solar energy is used entirely in the residential building.

Kyocera is a pioneer in the field of renewable energy. Since 1975, the Japanese technology company has been focusing on the research, development and promotion of solar energy. Kyocera provides solar power products with excellent quality owing to the company’s extensive R&D, innovative technology and strict quality control standards.

Okobe.co.uk is a Kyocera Business Partner Please Click Here for the latest range....

Antec announces P280 enclosure

New case exemplifies the union of quiet performance and ease-of-use

Berlin, Germany - 30th November 2011 - Antec is proud to announce the P280, the newest member of the award-winning Performance One Series.

The P280 reflects the sophisticated appearance and Quiet ComputingTM engineering of its Performance One predecessors, while offering a new set of features at an attractive price for users building with current- and next-gen hardware.

Continuing the legacy of Performance One enclosures, the P280 integrates quiet technologies such as sound-dampening steel / polycarbonate side panels, a triple-layer front door and hard drive trays with preinstalled vibration-reducing silicone grommets. Its understated aesthetics will appeal to gamers and enthusiasts who prefer a stylish, functional appearance.

Every feature in the P280, from the enlarged internal layout to the air filters & fan mounts, is included to accommodate high-end systems. Supporting up to XL-ATX sized motherboards and four-way GPU configurations, it offers a new level of expandability in the Performance One series.

Understanding the importance of convenience and ease-of-use, the P280 includes tool-less optical drive bays, 3.5" drive trays that are also compatible with 2.5" drives, 30 mm of cable routing space behind the motherboard tray and six total cable routing holes, four of which are grommet-lined. The front & PSU intake filters can be removed without taking off the side panel or tipping the case.

"Performance One has always had a special place in the hearts and minds of our customers. With convenience & ease-of-use coupled with an attractive price point, we expect P280 to introduce customers new and old to the next generation of Performance One," said Mafalda Cogliani Global Marketing Director at Antec.

WIN CHRISTMAS 2011! Last 30 Days!

http://www.facebook.com/okobecom

AMD Memory Brand Introduced for Entertainment, Performance

SUNNYVALE, Calif. - Nov. 28, 2011 - AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced North American retail availability of the first AMD Memory branded desktop system memory modules, debuting with partners Patriot Memory LLC and VisionTek Products, LLC. AMD Memory branded products will help take the guesswork out of DRAM selection, providing an easy and straightforward experience when looking for the ideal match for gaming or multimedia PC needs.

As part of AMD's development of personal computer platforms, the company has used the AMD OverDriveTM performance optimisation tool to test and optimise DRAM in conjunction with the company's APUs, CPUs, GPUs and chipset platforms. This unique insight is now helping AMD tune and optimise memory modules for other manufacturers.

"Patriot Memory will bring over two decades of experience and expertise into this ecosystem," said Paul Jones, CEO of Patriot Memory. "Our proven ability to deliver the best technology at the most competitive prices will help pave the way to success for this memory line."

In addition to leveraging AMD's experience in creating graphics, CPUs, APUs and motherboard chipsets, this new product line also enables retailers to round out AMD bundles with memory, helping to ensure an easy, confident upgrade experience that places a heavy emphasis on compatibility and stability. Customers can purchase a complete package designed to deliver top performance and maximum value.

"AMD has been our strategic technology partner for ten years and VisionTek has focused our efforts on bringing their PC upgrade products to the North American market," said Michael Innes, chief operating officer of VisionTek. "The AMD brand means cutting edge technology, as well as uncompromising quality and compatibility for PC users. AMD Memory will help expand the ability to optimise performance in personal computers of today and tomorrow." VisionTek will have availability of AMD licensed memory through its strategic North American distribution partner D&H. (www.dandh.com).

This initiative builds on AMD's history of helping to supply high-quality DDR3 modules to video card add-in-board manufacturers in an effort to help ensure availability.

"AMD has been supplying and validating memory for AMD RadeonTM graphics cards for several years," said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager, AMD GPU Division. "Based on this experience, adding system memory to our product line was a clear opportunity for us. This move provides our partners and end-users with a trusted brand synonymous with quality - we can help ensure performance and reliability with AMD Memory."

AMD Memory is available at three different levels - 2GB, 4GB and 8GB sizes - in a range of price points and speeds. The Entertainment category will feature 1333 MHz and 1600 MHz speed RAM, designed for quiet Home Theater PC applications. The Performance version supports speed up to 1600 MHz with low latency and comes in matched pairs. Finally, RadeonTM Edition DRAM will run at 1866 MHz, and is tuned, tested and certified for specific AMD platforms to enable maximum performance at competitive pricing.

AMD is collaborating with memory module makers to create AMD Memory branded products from components qualified to meet certain specifications. By testing and certifying the memory components, end-users can be assured of compatibility with AMD platforms. AMD Memory is also designed to deliver quality and reliability with compatible chipsets and processors from other manufacturers. AMD Memory is coming to major retailers including Amazon.com, Bestbuy.ca, Fry's, Memory Express, Micro Center, NCIX, Newegg, Tiger Direct, VIP Computers (UK) and others.

World Photo, London 2012 and Sony World Photography Awards return to London, April 2012

For a second year running, the hugely successful World Photo, London and Sony World Photography Awards exhibitions will be held at Somerset House in London in April – May 2012. Produced by the World Photography Organisation, these events were previously held in Cannes from 2007-2010 and in 2011 the festival and its awards programme moved to London. Billed as the global photographic event of the year, World Photo, London and the Sony World Photography Awards, celebrates the very best in photography from around the world, from the next generation of emerging photographers through to the established masters of the art.

The opening weekend of World Photo, London will be held at Somerset House from 27 - 30 April with selected festival events and the Sony World Photography Awards winners exhibitions, continuing through to 20 May 2012. The annual Sony World Photography Awards ceremony and gala dinner will take place on 26 April at the Hilton Hotel in London’s Park Lane. The Festival will include a wide-ranging programme of events, talks, seminars, workshops and exhibitions; honorary Judges for the 2012 Awards and other international industry experts will also be participating in the Festival events. These include esteemed writer and photo critic Susan Bright, chair of the Awards; James Reid, Photography Director of Wallpaper*; Michael Benson, Director, Prix Pictet and Claudia Hinterseer, MD and co-owner of NOOR, an international photo agency and foundation.

World Photo, London is open to everyone with a passion for photography - professionals, amateurs, students and, of course, the photo-loving public.

Belkin Hires George Platisa as New Chief Financial Officer

(Playa Vista, CA) –November 23, 2011 – Belkin today announced that it has hired George Platisa as its new chief financial officer. Platisa joins Belkin from Ascent Media Group, a media content management and distribution company, where he was CFO and executive vice president.

“We are pleased to have George’s considerable experience and successful track record on board at Belkin,” said President and CEO Chet Pipkin. “His varied career experiences in entertainment, Internet, and healthcare will help Belkin make the right decisions and execute our plans in the global consumer and enterprise markets we serve.”

Platisa brings tremendous experience with strategic financial planning, global operations, inventory management, and mergers and acquisitions. Previously, he served in executive roles at Price Waterhouse, Broadband Sports, Pacificare of California, and The Walt Disney Co.

Christmas Gifts from ONLY £5 at Okobe.co.uk!!!

Christmas Gifts from ONLY £5 at Okobe.co.uk!!!

http://www.okobe.co.uk/

Belkin Wins Best Endpoint Security System at Government Security News Magazine’s Annual Homeland Security Awards

(Playa Vista, CA) – November 21, 2011 – Belkin is pleased to announce its selection as the winner of the Best Endpoint Security System at the Government Security News (GSN) magazine’s Homeland Security Awards gala. The GSN Homeland Security Awards celebrate the ongoing public-private partnership between all branches of federal, state and local government in the United States and the private sector vendors of IT security and physical security products, solutions and technologies, whose combined efforts successfully defend and protect the nation's people, property and way of life.

The awards were handed out at a gala dinner and awards ceremony, where a large audience of federal, state, county, municipal officials, active and retired military officers and vendors of IT and physical security products celebrated the outstanding achievements of security vendors and government agencies. Belkin was selected as winner in the Vendors of IT Security Products and Solutions category for their Advanced Secure DVI-I Keyboard-Video-Mouse (KVM) Switch, which was released earlier this year. One of the only KVM switches on the market that meets NIAP’s new EAL 2+ certification the new solution suite is the first of its kind to utilize optical data diode technology to guarantee peripheral protection, furthering the government’s cyber security initiatives.

“We are incredibly excited and flattered to be chosen as the winner of the best endpoint security system at the GSN Homeland Security awards,” said Luis Artiz, director of product management at Belkin. “This award affirms our commitment to responding to unique customer needs with the development of products that not only exceed the necessary security and technology requirements of the defense and intelligence communities, but add meaningful productivity and usability features.”

Acer Supports Taiwan’s Tsing Hua University in defending the SC’11 championship for high performance computing

Taiwan’s National Tsing Hua University once again claimed first place in the student cluster competition at the annual SC International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC’11) in Seattle, using server hardware from Acer. The team produced outstanding results in a wealth of clustered computing tests and benchmarks designed to achieve optimal performance using x86-based computer hardware.

Evis Lin, associate vice president of Acer’s Enterprise Products business unit, gave credit to the team, “Our professional line of enterprise-class products strive to provide users with the latest technology in a package that fits their needs. Acer takes great pride in being a part of Tsing Hua University’s achievements, and looks forward to even more exciting developments from the school in the future.”

National Tsing Hua University has a long standing tradition in the field of parallel computing, and has been an active participant in the competition for the past five years of its existence. Following months of preparation, the team, led by Professor Yeh-Ching Chung and Professor Che-Rung Lee, worked with Acer, NVIDIA, and Taiwan’s National Center for High-performance Computing (NCHC) to practice and learn about performance optimization on the latest hardware systems. Their final configuration used Acer’s high-density Gemini systems with NVIDIA® Tesla™ C2070 GPUs to achieve over 1.8 TFLOPS across six systems and using a power budget of under 5.7kW.

Regarding the team’s performance, Professor Chung replied, “We are pleased to have recaptured the first place title again. Through the dedication of the team and assistance from our sponsors, especially Acer and NVIDIA, we have once again proven that Taiwan can truly perform in high-performance computing. Furthermore, we wish to express our gratitude toward NCHC’s efforts in educating high performance computing in Taiwan.”

NCHC’s director, Kuo-Ning Chiang, also expressed his gratification in the Taiwan team’s success in winning the SCC World Series championship.

“The success of the team on NVIDIA Tesla GPUs highlights the robust performance, energy-efficiency and applicability that GPUs bring to the HPC space,” said Sumit Gupta, manager of NVIDIA’S Tesla business unit. “Through their great efforts and the collaboration between Acer, NCHC and NVIDIA, the team was able to achieve some really fantastic performance numbers in this competition.”

Chip Shot: Intel Labs on Graph 500 Ranking

Intel Labs placed #6 on the Graph500 ranking, a semi-annual listing of the highest performance machines for emerging “big data” supercomputing applications. In computer science, “graphs” are a way to represent and explore the connections between things, such as all the stops in a subway system, all the links in a large computer network, or all the relationships between people on social networks like Facebook. Graph computing is also used to discover meaningful correlations between events for applications such as medical informatics and cyber security. Learn more about how Intel Labs is working on this area of computing.

Chip Shot: Intel Paves the Way in Green Power

Today, The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) named Intel a Green Power Partner of the Year in its 11th annual Green Power Leadership Awards. Intel, an EPA Green Power Partner and no stranger to EPA recognition, is among 19 organizations paving the way in clean energy leadership. To learn more, check out Intel’s Eco-Smart Technology.

Kingston Digital Launches its Fastest USB Flash Drive

Sunbury-on-Thames, UK -- November 17, 2011 -- Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced the Kingston DataTraveler® HyperX® 3.0. The DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 is designed for enthusiasts, gamers, early adopters and high end consumers; it features the fastest speeds and largest capacities that Kingston has to offer in a USB Flash drive. Faster speeds and higher capacities enable users to quickly store their digital files and keep it with them at all times, in HyperX style.

Its high-speed eight-channel architecture provides USB 3.0 data transfer rates of up to 225MB/s read and 135MB/s write. Users can save time associated with opening, editing and copying large files and applications between devices. The fast write speeds also allow users to work on large files or applications directly from the USB 3.0 drive without performance lag.

"Enthusiasts have long known HyperX as the memory of choice for overclockers and power users who need the most performance from system memory," said Krystian Jaroszynski, product marketing manager Flash, Kingston Technology. "The new DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 USB Flash drive continues this tradition. With the fastest speeds and largest capacity, this storage device is the perfect solution for users who require high performance whilst carrying their digital library."

Chip Shot: Thunderbolt™ Technology Wins Popular Science Best of What’s New 2011 Award

Intel’s Thunderbolt Technology has garnered a Best of What’s New Award in the area of Computing from Popular Science magazine. These awards are given to innovative technologies that are found in real products that have come to market. PopSci pointed to Thunderbolt technology being “…the first to combine the languages that handle data and display in one channel, making it faster and more versatile than any other connection.” Learn more about Thunderbolt Technology.

WD® Delivers New Line of Network Storage Servers for Small to Medium Businesses

IRVINE, Calif. - Nov. 15, 2011 - Western Digital® (NYSE: WDC), the world's leader in digital storage solutions, is introducing WD Sentinel™ DX4000 (photo), a complete network storage solution designed specifically to meet the demands of today's small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs). WD Sentinel DX4000 includes the Windows® Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials operating system software and the Intel® D525 Dual Core Atom CPU. The WD Sentinel DX4000 is centralized shared storage and automatic server-based backup and restore for up to 25 devices (PC and Mac®) in the network. It offers complete data protection with built-in hardware and software redundancy for all of the connected devices in the network. With capacities including 4 TB and 8 TB, WD Sentinel DX4000 lets small business owners expand small office server storage capacity as their business and storage demands grow. In addition, the WD Sentinel DX4000 small office storage server acts as the "on-premise cloud storage" for the SMB.

"The WD Sentinel small office storage server is the ideal storage, backup, and secure remote access solution for any SMB," said Thomas Gallivan, vice president of marketing for WD's SMB Solutions Group. "The ability to have centralized storage that is both on-premise and offers secure remote access provides a small business owner and employees the flexibility needed for today's mobile lifestyle. WD is providing small business owners with a hands-free solution that offers complete data protection and unparalleled peace-of-mind."

"The requirement for collaboration across multiple devices and locations necessitates the need for a centralized storage solution in today's SMB environment", said David Tuhy, General Manager, Intel Data Center and Connected Systems Group. "Intel is working closely with the industry and companies like Western Digital to provide the technology that is at the core of these storage solutions and provide SMBs a platform to manage, organize and secure their data to ensure business continuity."

"Built on Windows Storage Server, WD Sentinel gives small business customers the storage and file services capabilities of Windows Server, as well as a solution aimed specifically at the SMB segment," said Thomas Pfenning, general manager, Storage, at Microsoft. "We are pleased to see WD Sentinel serve our mutual customers."

Whether they're personal or professional, digital content and important files are invaluable and often irreplaceable if lost or compromised. WD Sentinel small office storage server provides several ways for businesses to protect their information without user intervention. WD Sentinel comes preconfigured with enterprise-class drives, RAID storage protection, built-in server based backup and recovery software, redundant networking ports and a redundant power option. In addition, WD Sentinel offers users the ability to connect to a "public cloud" storage provider, which offers small businesses an economical and integrated disaster recovery solution against earthquake, theft and fire or water damage.

Software included with WD Sentinel provides business owners and their employees the freedom and flexibility to remotely access files and share files with external employees, independent consultants and satellite offices anywhere in the world.

Apple Names Arthur D. Levinson Chairman of the Board

Robert A. Iger, President & Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company, Joins Apple’s Board
CUPERTINO, California—November 15, 2011—Apple® today named Arthur D. Levinson, Ph. D. as the Company’s non-executive Chairman of the Board. Levinson has been a co-lead director of Apple’s board since 2005, has served on all three board committees— audit and finance, nominating and corporate governance, and compensation—and will continue to serve on the audit committee. Apple also announced that Robert A. Iger, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company, will join Apple’s board and will serve on the audit committee.

“Art has made enormous contributions to Apple since he joined the board in 2000,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “He has been our longest serving co-lead director, and his insight and leadership are incredibly valuable to Apple, our employees and our shareholders.”

“Bob and I have gotten to know one another very well over the past few years and on behalf of the entire board, we think he is going to make an extraordinary addition to our already very strong board,” said Tim Cook. “His strategic vision for Disney is based on three fundamentals: generating the best creative content possible, fostering innovation and utilizing the latest technology, and expanding into new markets around the world which makes him a great fit for Apple.”

“I am honored to be named chairman of Apple’s board and welcome Bob to our team,” said Art Levinson. “Apple is always focused on out-innovating itself through the delivery of truly innovative products that simplify and improve our lives, and that is something I am very proud to be a part of.”

“Apple has achieved unprecedented success by consistently creating high quality, truly innovative products, and I am extremely pleased to join the board of such a wonderful company,” said Bob Iger. “Over the years, I have come to know and admire the management team, now ably led by Tim Cook, and I am confident they have the leadership and vision to ensure Apple’s continued momentum and success.”

Levinson is chairman of Genentech, Inc. and a member of the Roche Board of Directors. He joined Genentech as a research scientist in 1980, and served as Genentech’s Chief Executive Officer from 1995 to 2009. He is also a director of Amyris, NGM Biopharmaceuticals, Inc., and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Levinson currently serves on the Board of Scientific Consultants of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the Advisory Council for the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics. He has authored or co-authored more than 80 scientific articles and has been a named inventor on 11 United States patents. In 2008, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Levinson received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Washington and earned a doctorate in Biochemical Sciences from Princeton University.

Iger is the steward of the world’s largest media company and some of the most respected and beloved brands around the globe. He has built on Disney’s rich history of unforgettable storytelling, with the acquisition of Pixar (2006) and Marvel (2009), two of the entertainment industry’s greatest storytellers. Always one to embrace new technology, Iger has made Disney an industry leader at the forefront of offering its creative content across new and multiple platforms. He is a member of the board of directors for the National September 11 Memorial & Museum and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc. He became a board member of the US-China Business Council in June 2011. In June 2010, President Barack Obama appointed him to the President’s Export Council, which advises the president on how to promote US exports, jobs and growth. He is also a member of the Partnership for a New American Economy, a coalition of mayors and business leaders from across the United States that support comprehensive immigration reform. Iger is a graduate of Ithaca College.

KYOCERA MITA launches five new A4 monochrome MFPs for small workgroups

15 November 2011 - KYOCERA MITA Europe B.V. today announced the launch of five new A4 monochrome multifunctional devices. Two of them, the FS-1135MFP and FS-1035MFP/DP will replace the former BLI awarded FS-1128MFP as well as the FS-1028MFP and FS-1028MFP/DP with enhanced functionalities and superior printing speed of 35 pages per minute (ppm). The business entry models FS-1130MFP, FS-1030MFP/DP and FS-1030MFP come additionally with the same core functionalities and a print speed of 30 ppm. With their superior network integration and security features they are made to fit the needs of small workgroups from small offices to large businesses.

All five devices come with standard duplex printing, copy and colour scan functionality. The FS-1130MFP and FS-1135MFP are marketed as 4-in-1 devices with accessory fax function. All have a 50 sheet reversal document processor for high speed and easy usage, with the exception of the new basic model FS-1030MFP. At 6.9 sec, the time to first copy for the whole device group is extraordinarily fast.
New functionalities

In addition to the well known features of former KYOCERA A4 MFPs the new models offer a variety of new features that make document processes easier and more secure. For instance, the copy of double-sided ID cards on a single sheet of paper with a dedicated program key and they support optional authentication via IC cards for a convenient and secure way to manage the access rights for selected devices, which can be easily integrated to give accountability of all print jobs. In addition there is the private print function available for secure printing of confidential documents. It simply requires a pin code before the print job starts. “The new security features will give our customers peace of mind, by providing a safer transition from digital to paper” said Berthold Hurtz, Product Manager of KYOCERA MITA Europe B.V..

Minimized environmental impact

With these new A4 MFP models KYOCERA MITA provides the possibility to reduce power consumption to a very low level. The integrated sleep mode can be activated after one minute and reduces power consumption immediately to 7.8 – 10.6 W/h. ‘Automatic power off mode’ is now a feature available in all of the new devices, this function fulfils future requirements of EU directives and brings the devices down to a power consumption of only 0.5 W/h in the off-mode.
These models also support half speed print mode that brings the noise level down to 49 dB(A). To complete the comprehensive environmental approach the new A4 MFPs are of course based on the well established KYOCERA ECOSYS technology with its long life components to reduce waste and save money.
Low cost for high speed

The premium models FS-1035MFP/DP and FS-1135MFP print, copy and scan 35 pages per minutes. Thanks to ECOSYS technology and low toner cost the printing cost are exceptionally low in their printing class. The 30ppm models offer a lower purchasing price with an attractive cost per page.

Chip Shot: Purdue Names Supercomputer after Creator of 'Intel Inside'

Purdue Names Supercomputer After Creator of 'Intel Inside'

(Targeted News Service Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., Nov. 14 -- Purdue University issued the following news release: In two words and five musical notes, Dennis Carter helped make Intel microprocessors a familiar and trusted brand, not just among engineers but also among computer-buying consumers around the world. In turn, that helped spur the widespread adoption of personal computers and all that followed.

Now, at Purdue University, Intel processors are inside a new supercomputer named for Carter - the fastest supercomputer in any university-funded research computing center, according to rankings released this week.

 Carter earned his master's degree in electrical engineering from Purdue in 1974, and Purdue has a tradition of naming its new supercomputers after computing pioneers with ties to the university. Carter - the computer - is the fifth of what Purdue calls its "starting five of supercomputing," five supercomputers that have all ranked among the top machines worldwide.

Carter, who is now retired and living in the San Francisco Bay area, is credited with creating and implementing the internationally recognized "Intel Inside" campaign. The effort developed brand awareness of the microprocessor as the key ingredient in a personal computer. It also put Intel's logo on the outside of the vast majority of the world's PCs and made its five-note jingle one of the most recognizable tunes on television, says Peter Sealey, now founder and chief executive officer of the Sausalito Group, a California firm specializing in marketing strategy.

"They had an incredibly powerful audio signature, which not many brands have," Sealey says.

"Intel just did a wonderful job. They took an otherwise commodity product and gave the consumer a recognized brand and a clear reason to buy," adds Sealey, former head of marketing for Coca-Cola and the person behind that company's memorable "Always Coca-Cola" campaign.

Intel's success was not limited to the U.S. market. From 1991, when Intel launched the campaign, to 1995, the number of European PC buyers aware of the "Intel Inside" logo grew from 24 percent to 95 percent, notes Stuart Whitwell, joint managing director of London-based Intangible Business, a global brand strategy, valuation and management firm.

Whitwell, who's written a case study of "Intel Inside," calls the campaign's results "stunning." He rates it at the head of his top five list of notable ingredient branding, with GORE-TEX, Dolby, Woolmark and other inside-products products that made big names for themselves outside - and do big business as a result.

As the market changed with the dawn of the PC era, Carter, who also was an instructor of electrical engineering technology while at Purdue, saw the need for Intel to begin talking to a broad audience beyond the design engineers who had been its traditional focus. He developed an innovative cooperative advertising program in which Intel shared the cost with computer manufacturers to promote its microprocessors as the "computer inside the computer." He also worked with Intel President Andy Grove to create the iconic Pentium brand name.

Economist Hugo Salgado, a professor at Universidad de Concepcion, Chile, and University of California, Santa Barbara, says Intel's branding and advertising not only contributed to the company's dominant position in the computer processor market and allowed it to obtain a price premium for its products, but also contributed to expanding consumer demand for personal computers in general. Salgado made those findings in research he did on the impact from Intel branding efforts for his doctoral dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley.

It was this impact on the personal computer industry that led to the recognition by Purdue, says Gerry McCartney, chief information officer, vice president for information technology at Purdue and the Olga Oesterle England Professor of Information Technology.

"Dennis Carter is one of the pioneers of personal computing, and Purdue is very pleased to have this opportunity to recognize him," McCartney says. "He saw what others did not see, and he not only brought benefit to Intel, but to the entire industry." The Carter supercomputer will be used at Purdue to study nanotechnology, cancer detection, climate modeling, long-range weather forecasting, plus additional research areas. The machine includes more than 10,000 processing cores on not-yet-released Intel Xeon E5-family processors, thousands of times more power than the average personal computer.

Carter, like the other four Purdue supercomputers, was built through an innovative faculty cooperative in which researchers pool portions of their research funding to purchase the machines. This Community Cluster Program was recognized in 2010 with an international Campus Technology Innovators Award and has become a model used by other universities. The supercomputers are built and operated by Information Technology at Purdue (ITaP), the university's central information technology organization, and ITaP's research computing unit, the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing.

Christmas Gifts SALE now at Okobe.co.uk

Christmas Gifts SALE now at Okobe.co.uk

http://www.okobe.co.uk

Intel Refreshes Ultimate Enthusiast Processor Lineup with Six-Core Offerings

Second-Generation Intel® Core™ i7 Processor Family ‘Goes Extreme’ on the Eve of the 40th Anniversary of the Intel 4004 CPU

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS
Intel announces two new six-core, 12-thread desktop processors targeted at PC power users and enthusiasts: the Intel® Core™ i7-3960X and the Intel Core i7-3930K.
These best-in-class enthusiast products are the first six-core client processors in the second-generation Intel Core processor family, and the first-ever Intel client processors supporting quad-channel memory.
More software titles are being optimized for multiple cores and more people are working with advanced applications, especially in content creation, 3-D rendering and gaming.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 14, 2011 – Intel Corporation today advanced its highest-end six-core processor family with the introduction of two new processors: the Intel® Core™ i7-3960X processor Extreme Edition and the Intel Core i7-3930K processor. These are the first six-core client processors in the second-generation “Sandy Bridge” Intel Core processor family. With over 2 billion transistors, Intel’s latest client processors offer the processing power equivalent of approximately 365,000 Intel 4004 processors**. The 40th anniversary of the Intel microprocessor is being celebrated this month.

Users and developers of the most advanced applications — especially in content creation, 3-D rendering and gaming — will see benefits from the additional cores, large CPU caches and new quad-channel memory support. With more people posting rich media online and playing immersive games, software developers are welcoming the performance and features offered by these new processors. Game developers such as id Software* are hungry for more CPU cores.

“To render our uniquely textured worlds, RAGE uses a very compute-intensive real-time process to transcode texture data from highly compressed form on disk to a compression format the GPU can use directly for rendering,” said John Carmack, technical director, id Software. “With two more available cores, a six-core system can transcode over 50 percent more texture data per second during gameplay than a four-core system, bringing new surfaces to full resolution quicker.”

These processors also support the new Intel® Advanced Vector Extension (AVX) instructions which benefit 3-D rendering and physics.

“MAXON Cinema 4D and Cinebench are designed to take advantage of all available processor threads” said Harald Schneider, CTO, MAXON* Computer. “Our new, optimized render engine intelligently divides render tasks across the threads for a more evenly distributed workload, giving us maximum throughput and performance. In addition, our upcoming service update will include Bullet-based dynamics optimized with the new Intel AVX instructions for faster physics simulations. This means faster previews and final rendering, and the ability to create even more complex scenes with more objects, more effects and higher resolutions.”

The Intel Core i7-3960X and the Intel Core i7-3930K are fully unlocked so overclockers and enthusiasts who want to modify performance settings can do so with simple utilities***. Based on Intel’s industry-leading 32nm manufacturing process, the new CPUs run at base speeds of 3.3 and 3.2 GHz with 15MB and 12MB of L3 cache respectively. The Intel® X79 Express chipset that supports this new LGA 2011 socket platform delivers the must-have capabilities and performance for enthusiasts such as 6Gb/s Serial ATA (SATA*) ports and additional PCIe* 2.0 lanes, leading to new levels of performance and expandability for high-end desktop platforms.

“We are excited to deliver the ultimate desktop platform to enthusiast PC users,” said Zane Ball, general manager for Intel’s Desktop Client Platforms Group. “With uncompromised performance, quad channel memory, amazing Turbo headroom and more robust PCI Express capabilities, this platform is sure to create a lot of excitement for our customers and the industry.”

In addition to the new processors, Intel is launching a liquid-cooled CPU thermal solution. Co-developed with Asetek*, this solution will provide robust system cooling while requiring zero maintenance. This solution has been optimized to work not only on the LGA2011 socket, but also the LGA1366 and 115x sockets.

Intel and MasterCard Join Forces to Enhance the Consumer Payment Experience for Online Shopping

Collaboration to Provide More Options for a Safer and Simpler Check-Out Process for Online Merchants and Consumers.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. and PURCHASE, NY – Nov. 14, 2011 – Intel Corporation and MasterCard Incorporated announced today a multi-year strategic collaboration to further enhance the security and consumer payment experience for online shopping.

The collaboration will combine MasterCard's expertise in payment processing and commerce with Intel's strengths in silicon innovation and chip-based security. It is designed to provide more options for a safer and simpler checkout process for online merchants and consumers using Ultrabook™ devices and future generations of Intel-based PCs.

The two companies are working together to optimize a variety of emerging payments technologies, including MasterCard's PayPass® and Intel® Identity Protection Technology (IPT). Intel® Identity Protection Technology can enable consumers to use strong two-factor authentication and hardware-based display protection. This provides increased online security against malware. Additionally, when used with an Intel® Identity Protection Technology-enabled reader, consumers will be able to pay for online purchases with a simple tap of their PayPass-enabled card, tag, or smart phone on an Ultrabook device.

"MasterCard is constantly working to improve the shopping experience for consumers and merchants," said Ed McLaughlin, chief emerging payments officer, MasterCard. "The collaboration with Intel will deliver enhanced security and faster checkout – with the convenience of a simple click or tap."

Consumers continue to shift their shopping to the Internet. Online sales reached $176.2 billion last year in the United States alone and are expected to grow at double-digit percentage rates annually for the next 5 years, according to Forrester Research.

"Our goal is to enable users of Ultrabook devices and future generations of Intel-based PCs to enjoy the convenience of e-commerce while making online payments safer from malware and hackers with the advanced security capabilities of Intel Identity Protection Technology," said George Thangadurai, general manager of PC Client Services Division, Intel Corporation. "Online commerce is a key focus area for Intel, and through this partnership with MasterCard, we intend to deliver an innovative, personalized and safer e-commerce experience to consumers."

Acer Presents the Allegro Smartphone

Slim, stylish and in tune with the latest trends, the Acer Allegro is inspired by how people communicate and live in the most modern settings. With its unique user interface, complete with Live Tiles, Windows Phone puts people front and center, making it easier to connect and share with friends, family and colleagues so important moments are never missed. With the most recent version of Windows Phone, code-named Mango, Live Tiles are more interactive, enabling users to get real-time information without having to open them, by pinning them to the Start screen.

On the market in EMEA from November, and available in Midnight Blue and Pearl White, the Allegro is chic-looking and features ergonomically designed curves that fit just right in the palm of your hand. The comfort enhances your hold on net surfing, making calls, gaming and everything else. The generously-sized 3.6" WVGA display is nice and bright, so it's crystal clear on the go.

Daily smartphone use involves a myriad of apps running simultaneously, plus gaming and multimedia enjoyment. So, the Allegro packs a powerful 1 GHz processor and speedy 14.4 Mbps HSDPA downloading for ultra-smooth use. A 5 MP camera captures it all in high-definition stills and 720p video, and a whopping 8 GB of storage keeps lots on hand for sharing with friends.

The Allegro delivers a fast, beautiful web experience with Internet Explorer© 9, and quickly searches the web and surfaces hyper-local results with Bing™ Local Scout.

Instant access to Marketplace is handy for trying, buying and searching for apps and games on the go. Marketplace features the hottest Xbox Live® titles and add-ons for games, providing an avenue for socializing with gaming friends and foes, anytime, anywhere, all from your Windows Phone. An Xbox Live avatar and profile are integrated into Windows Phone's Games Hub to help keep track of scores and achievements.

Handling documents while mobile is easy with the Allegro because integrated Office® Mobile enables smart viewing, editing, sharing and syncing. The Allegro also excels at organization with a calendar that syncs information from the phone, email and Facebook, and notes important business and social events.

Student Entrepreneurs Win Intel Award for Outstanding Innovation

Intel Foundation Bestows $100,000 for Entrepreneurial Research

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS:
Team Forward from China won the 2011 Intel Global Challenge at UC Berkeley, receiving a $50,000 award from the Intel Foundation.
Forward invented a photo-editing platform that simplifies every aspect of image processing and design for Chinese consumers.
Other top-placing teams were Maxygen-mobile DNA of Russia, which developed an inexpensive and portable DNA test solution, and NanoDiagX of Egypt, which developed a cheaper and more effective test for detecting viruses, such as Hepatitis C.

BERKELEY, Calif., Nov. 11, 2011 – Forward, a team of student entrepreneurs from China, has won the 7th annual Intel Global Challenge at UC Berkeley (formerly the Intel+UC Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge), for creating Gaitu, a one-stop image processing platform that matches Chinese consumers with designers who add special effects, provide image-sharing services and turn edited photos into art or merchandise.

The Intel Global Challenge at UC Berkeley is a global business plan competition that encourages student entrepreneurs and rewards innovative ideas that have the potential to have a positive impact on society. The Intel Foundation will award a total of $100,000 in cash prizes, $50,000 of which went to Forward.

Second place and $20,000 was awarded to Maxygen-mobile DNA of Russia for inventing a low-cost, portable DNA test solution that can be used at the point of care to quickly identify thousands of infectious diseases, genetic predispositions and hereditary conditions. The $10,000 third-place prize went to NanoDiagX of Egypt, which used gold nanoparticles to develop a virus test that can detect Hepatitis C in less than an hour, and at one-tenth the cost of current commercial tests.

"Intel has a strong commitment to fostering student innovation around the globe," said Shelly Esque, president of the Intel Foundation and vice president in Intel's Legal and Corporate Affairs group. "Through our education programs, we've seen firsthand how empowering entrepreneurs positively impacts individuals, communities and economies. The Intel Global Challenge at UC Berkeley helps students develop lifelong innovation skills to identify problems and develop solutions they will use throughout their careers."

The competition, held at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, drew 28 teams from more than 20 countries. Founded in 2005, the Intel Global Challenge at UC Berkeley is a joint project of Intel and the UC Berkeley Lester Center for Entrepreneurship. The project is designed to motivate young entrepreneurs to develop innovative technologies that solve real world challenges, build viable business models and move that technology out of university labs and into the market.

This year, the finalist teams presented business plans that reflect groundbreaking work in such fields as healthcare, technology, energy conservation and disaster management. These plans included ultraviolet radiation detection, a coconut-based packaging alternative, and an advanced fire protection and detection system. Representatives of more than 12 leading venture capital firms from the San Francisco Bay Area served as judges and provided valuable feedback to the teams.

In addition, three special awards, worth $5,000 each, were presented to Intel Global Challenge teams earlier this week. The Social Innovation Award went to NextDrop of Berkeley, Calif., for its water management solution that helps people in emerging markets better predict water availability in communities. aQuainnova of Thailand won the Emerging Impact Award for the team's Genovex business tool, which can provide early detection of viral diseases in shrimp. The Young Innovator Award was given to the entrepreneurs from team BUCKY'o'Zun of Denmark for their inexpensive chemical compound that when added to sun lotions, anti-aging creams, paints, among other products, provides 99.99 percent protection against all forms of UV radiation.

Director of the Max-Planck-Institute in Munich receives 2011 Kyoto Prize

10 November 2011 - Kyoto/Neuss – Astrophysicist Dr. Rashid Alievich Sunyaev, scientist Dr. John Werner Cahn and Kabuki actor Tamasaburo Bando V today received the Kyoto Prize. Together with the Nobel Prize, the award is one of the world's highest honours in science and culture. Every year the Inamori Foundation, established by Kyocera founder Dr. Kazuo Inamori, honours laureates in three categories for their lifetime achievements. The honour comes with 50 million Yen (approximately €470,000*) in prize money for each category.

Kyoto Prize 2011 laureates: scientist Dr. John Werner Cahn, Astrophysicist Dr. Rashid Alievich Sunyaev and Kabuki actor Tamasaburo Bando V

In a festive ceremony held today at the Kyoto International Conference Center in the old Japanese imperial capital, the three laureates in the categories of “Advanced Technology,” “Basic Sciences,” and “Arts and Philosophy” received a diploma, the Kyoto Prize medal and prize money. The presentation ceremony took place in the presence of members of the imperial family and over a thousand guests from business, political and cultural circles from around the world.

2011 laureates

The German-Russian astrophysicist and director of the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics, Dr. Rashid Alievich Sunyaev, was honoured in the category of Basic Sciences. The Foundation honoured Sunyaev for his significant contributions to observational cosmology and high energy astronomy, in particular for his theory of fluctuations in cosmic microwave background radiation.

The laureate in the category of Advanced Technology is the scientist Dr. John Werner Cahn. The Inamori Foundation awarded the 83-year-old Cologne-born U.S. citizen for his outstanding contributions to research in the fields of material science and material industrial applications — not least in the field of alloy material technology, for developing the theory of spinodal decomposition.

Tamasaburo Bando V, from Japan, received the Kyoto Prize in the Arts and Philosophy category for his life's work as a Kabuki actor. Kabuki is a classical Japanese theatre art that combines dance, pantomime and singing. Tamasaburo Bando V was honoured by the Inamori Foundation for his outstanding representation of female Kabuki roles and for connecting various Kabuki genres in his performances, as well as for his achievements in the field of international performing arts.
* At October 2011 exchange rate.

Enjoy all your photos with new digital photo frame Wi-Fi by Sony

7” (18cm) S-Frame WA700 and W700 with intuitive touch panel

Features:

Connect wirelessly to your home network
Get photos from PC, email, or Facebook
Intuitive 7” (18cm) LCD touch panel
Get online weather forecasts
Enjoy Internet radio (WA700 only)
View HD video clips (WA700 only)
Energy-saving on/off timer

Now it’s easy to keep your digital photo frame updated with fresh new pictures. The new WA700 and W700 are the first S-Frame models from Sony that connect to your home Wi-Fi network. Get pictures straight from your PC, email or your friends’ Facebook uploads – with no wires or fiddling with memory cards.

Both 7” frames make a wonderful gift idea, allowing friends and relatives to share and enjoy the latest photos.

S-Frame automatically displays pictures attached in web-based emails anywhere in the world. It’s a great way for parents or grandparents to see their families growing up. In addition, both S-Frame Wi-Fi Series models can display recent photo and album uploads from your friends’ Facebook.

Why not liberate all those thousands of memories stuck on your hard drive? S-Frame can wirelessly access photos stored on your PC, keeping things fresh with an ever-changing display that doesn’t keep repeating the same photos you’ve seen before.

Both smartly-styled frames feature a friendly new touch panel that makes it easy to browse through your photo collection, pick slideshow options and set photo updates from your PC, email or social networks.

A generous 1 GB of on-board memory offers plenty of space for up to 4,000 photos (NB: stored at 0.78 megapixel resolution). Photos, music and HD video clips (NB: music and video with WA700 only) can also be played from a connected USB thumb drive.

Both digital photo frames can display current weather and forecasts provided by the AccuWeather online weather service.

S-Frame WA700 offers all the features of the W700, plus several more exciting enhancements. The vTuner Internet Radio service lets you listen to a huge choice of radio stations as you view photos. You can also view Full HD (AVCHD or MPEG4) movie clips shot with your camcorder or digital camera. The in-built speaker lets you enjoy your choice of MP3 music files to accompany photo slideshows.


An energy-saving on/off timer on both models can schedule the frame to switch automatically to standby when it’s not needed – for example at night or while you’re out during the day.

The new S-Frame W700 and WA700 Wi-Fi Series digital photo frames by Sony are available from January 2012.

Synology® Launches RackStation RS812 and RS212

Reliable yet economical network attached storage solutions for workgroups and offices

Milton Keynes, United Kingdom - November 10, 2011- Synology® Inc. today launched RackStation RS812 and RS212, four-bay scalable and two-bay compact rackmount NAS servers, providing workgroups and offices with reliable data sharing and backup solutions, along with versatile business applications.

"The RS812 and the RS212 both come with dual LAN failover and hot-swappable HDD support to guard against LAN or disk failure, providing reliable solutions at an economical price point," said Wayne An, product manager of Synology Inc. "Both models are certified by VMware® vSphereTM, Citrix® XenServerTM and Microsoft® Hyper-VTM to work as storage solutions for virtualization servers," added Ann.

When paired with a Synology RX410 expansion unit, the RS812 can grow capacity to up to 8 hard drives on-the-fly. The RS812 is also powerful to manage demanding business applications. It reads at 109.7 MB/sec and writes at 50.6 MB/sec under RAID 5 configuration. The scalability and performance can't be beat in this price range.

Featuring a shallow form factor, the RS212 is 12 inches in depth, fitting well to 2-post and wall mount rack cabinets and ideal for space-constrained environments, such as school dorms and small offices. It comes with replaceable motherboard and I/O ports posited on the front panel to streamline server management process. The RS212 can operate in a stringent thermal environment of 45 degree Celsius at the highest, offering utmost reliability under rigorous conditions. Its fan spinning can adjust intelligently according to system temperature, which contributes to its low noise level measured as 28dB(A).

Powered by a 1.6 GHz processer, the RS812 and the RS212 are equipped with 512 MB and 256 MB RAM respectively, two USB ports and one eSATA port. Both the RS812 and RS212 are energy efficient, consuming 37 watts and 25.3 watts respectively in operation.

The RS812 and the RS212 both run DiskStation Manager 3.2 (DSM 3.2), the operating system of every Synology NAS Server. DSM makes complicated things simple and hard things possible by providing versatile features on a snappy, intuitive, and multitasking web-based user interface. Synology has received a plethora of recognitions worldwide, among which include "Excellence Award of 2011" for storage from PC PRO, U.K.

Chip Shot: Intel, Toyota Drive Research on Next-Gen IVI Systems

Intel and Toyota today announced the companies are working together to define next-generation in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems that will enable new usage models for mobile device connectivity in the car. Through this collaboration, the companies will focus research on developing user interaction methodologies including touch, gesture and voice technologies as well as information management for the driver. Intel will also work to optimize these features and services using the performance of the Intel® Atom™ processor family.

Intel, Toyota Drive Joint Research on Next-Generation In-Vehicle Infotainment Systems

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 9, 2011 – Intel Corporation and Toyota Motor Corporation today announced that the companies are working together to define next-generation in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems that will enable new usage models for mobile device connectivity in the car.

According to Mobile Future, the connected car is the third-fastest growing technological device, following smartphones and tablets. With the car becoming an extension of today’s digital lifestyle, Intel and Toyota are working together to adapt features that drivers and passengers use in the latest consumer electronic devices to an automotive environment.

“Intel has been conducting research related to the connected car for years, and with the support of Toyota will extend that research to advanced services that will benefit the driver and passengers in many ways,” said Staci Palmer, general manager of Intel’s Automotive Solutions Division. “Through this joint effort, we hope to improve the driving experience by enabling a seamless connection between mobile devices and the vehicle so when brought together they naturally adapt and work in harmony.”

As technology converges with the car, silicon solutions serving the infotainment and telematics market are expected to rise from $5.6 billion in 2010 to $8.7 billion in 2018.1 Intel and Toyota aim to integrate advanced technologies in the vehicle in a more intuitive manner that reduces driver distraction. To accomplish this, the companies will focus research on developing a user interaction methodology including touch, gesture and voice technologies as well as information management for the driver. Intel will also work to optimize these features and services using the performance of the Intel® Atom™ processor family.

“Toyota aims to lead the future mobile world through integration of vehicle, home and information communication technologies as announced in the ‘Toyota Global Vision’ earlier this year,” said Kenichi Murata, project general manager, Electronics Development Div. 1, Toyota Motor Corporation. “Toyota, along with Intel, will use information technologies to drive innovations into the vehicle to make the vision a reality.”

The companies will also explore emerging connectivity technologies and effective ways to integrate vehicles with the home to provide a seamless connection across all areas of people’s lives.

Belkin Liveaction Camera Accessories and App Instantly Capture and Share Content

(Playa Vista, CA) – November 9, 2011 – Belkin provides consumers with the capability to instantly capture and share life’s most spontaneous moments with the newly announced LiveAction Camera accessories for the iPhone and iPod touch. Experience a better way to snap photos and record video with products including the LiveAction Camera Grip and LiveAction Camera Remote. Immediately share this digital content with the new LiveAction App. “With upgraded cameras, new phones like the iPhone 4S take great pictures and are beginning to replace traditional cameras because they provide instant gratification—the ability to shoot and share via social media instantly,” said Jamie Elgie, senior director of Belkin’s mobility division. “Our new LiveAction Camera App and products enable that spontaneity, but also provide an enhanced camera experience that feels more like that of a traditional point-and-shoot camera. It’s the best of both worlds.”

The free LiveAction App features an intuitive on-screen interface to upload high-quality photos and videos directly onto Facebook or into an email without having to open another program. The app also allows you to capture still photos while simultaneously recording video of the same content so you don’t miss a single moment. Separate photo and video buttons make it easy to switch modes right on screen. In addition to working in conjunction with Belkin’s LiveAction Camera products, the LiveAction App can also be used alone as the primary camera app for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Licensing Program for ‘Full HD 3D Glasses Initiative’ Kicks into High Gear

Panasonic Corporation, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, Sony Corporation and X6D Limited (XPAND 3D) today announced that the licensing program of “Full HD 3D Glasses Initiative”, an industry-wide initiative to standardize 3D active shutter glasses for consumers, has recently begun.

Infrared (IR) and Bluetooth® enabled radio frequency (RF) system 3D active glasses technologies are licensed within the licensing program. All information including licensing fees and process requirements to become a licensee, are available on the Initiative’s official website and the application can be submitted on the same web as follows;

License contact

Full HD 3D Glasses Technology License Licensor　

In early August, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony and XPAND 3D announced their intent to collaborate on the standardization of RF and IR system protocols between consumer 3D active shutter glasses and 3D displays such as televisions, personal computer monitors and projectors, as well as 3D theaters utilizing XPAND 3D active shutter glasses. Twelve companies, of which are Changhong Electric Co., Ltd.; FUNAI Electric Co., Ltd.; Hisense Electric Co., Ltd.; Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd.; Mitsubishi Electric Corporation; Royal Philips Electronics; Seiko Epson Corporation; Sharp Corporation; SIM2 Multimedia S.p.A.; TCL Corporation; Toshiba Corporation and ViewSonic Corporation have expressed their support for the activities of the Initiative.

With the successful launch of the Full HD 3D Glasses Initiative licensing program, a test center has been slated to open later this month, which will verify the compliance of any products manufactured under the new Full HD 3D Glasses Initiative license program—within the Initiative’s specifications.

Panasonic Unveils The Toughpad FZ-A1: First In A Family Of Professional-Grade Android™-Powered Tablets

10" tablet delivers the ruggedness, security, communication and work accessories required by mobile business and government users. 7" durable tablet planned in the second half 2012.

Bracknell, UK: 8 November 2011 - Panasonic Computer Products Europe, the continent's leader in rugged mobile computing, today unveiled the Toughpad FZ-A1, the first in its Toughpad® family of professional-grade AndroidTM-powered tablets.

The 10-inch Toughpad FZ-A1 is ideal for highly mobile outdoor workers in challenging conditions like aviation, construction, field service and public safety. The range will be supported by an eco-system that includes a wide range of work accessories, such as vehicle mounting and ergonomic hands-free holsters. Panasonic and its partners can also provide professional services such as project management, imaging and kitting.

Panasonic will add a 7" tablet to the Toughpad range in the second half of 2012.

"Consumers have enjoyed tablet computing for a number of years now with almost no uptake in the workplace due to fundamental design limitations. Now users in business and industry can also benefit from the ease of use and portability of tablet computing. Toughpad takes all the Toughbook experience of rugged computing we have gained since 1996 and focuses it into tablets designed for the workplace." said Hiroaki Sakamoto, Managing Director, Panasonic Computer Products Europe.

What makes Toughpad different?

Panasonic Toughpads have been designed from day one as a range of professional working devices. They are very different to consumer tablets.

Ruggedness and durability

The new Toughpad family is designed to meet the same durability standards as Panasonic's Toughbook laptop product line. The Toughpad FZ-A1 has a MIL-STD-810G rating for 120cm drops as well as an IP65 ingress protection rating for resistance to dust and water. The Toughpad FZ-A1 is also rated for use in extreme temperatures. This allows it to be used reliably in almost any situation.

Enterprise security

The CPU in the Toughpad FZ-A1 incorporates a dedicated, tamper-proof, security processor, which frees up the multi-purpose CPU core for other tasks. The security CPU core handles software and data encryption, enhanced VPN, authentication, trusted boot and device management. This enhanced level of device security means the System on a Chip family of Toughpads will be compliant with FIPS 140-2 level 2.

Connectivity

The Toughpad FZ-A1 offers as standard Bluetooth® v2.1 + EDR, 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, GPS and optional 3G mobile broadband offering up to 21Mb/s download speeds.

Display technology

The Toughpad FZ-A1 has a high brightness, 10.1" XGA, capacitive multi-touch, daylight-viewable screen with an anti-glare coating. Mobile workers, in markets like supply chain logistics, utilities and the military, can easily see critical data and operate the device even in daylight.

Data capture

The Toughpad FZ-A1 includes an active digitizer that records pressure, direction and speed along with the signature, so the signing of a document has greater legal authority. The digitiser pen is also battery-free reducing device maintenance and TCO.

All day working with a replaceable Battery

The Toughpad FZ-A1 offers 10 hour all day working. The battery is replaceable ensuring mid-life battery upgrades (Panasonic recommends the battery is changed by the IT support team).

Eco-system of accessories and peripherals

Because Toughpads come from the world leader in rugged mobile computing, they have an instant head start with working accessories from our eco-system of partners. This includes:
Ergonomic holsters and bags for one-handed, all day use.
Rugged power systems.
Multi-rack chargers, so many Toughpads can be simultaneously charged between shifts.
Vehicle mounting solutions.
Desktop cradles.

Intel Chip Shot: Intel® Cluster Studio XE Now Available

® Cluster Studio XE tool suite to support the relentless pursuit of compute capacity of HPC cluster systems. The first software development suite of its kind, Intel Cluster Studio XE unites industry leading cluster and analysis tools to efficiently scale application performance on today’s and tomorrow’s systems. New capabilities include MPI (Message Passing Interface)-enabled thread profiling and correctness checking; and an MPI library that scales beyond 90,000 processes and is up to 6.5 times the performance of alternative MPI libraries in latency tests.

For the First Time, IBM Brings Mainframe and Windows Together

IBM today announced that technology allowing IBM zEnterprise System users to integrate Microsoft Windows applications into the mainframe environment -- an industry first -- will become available on Dec. 16.

The new capability allows clients with multi-tier applications -- for example, Windows applications connected to mainframe data -- to be integrated and consolidated on the same system. This first-ever bringing together of the mainframe and distributed computing worlds is designed to ease the cost and complexity of large corporate data centers and improve management of workloads spanning mainframe and distributed environments.

"The new heterogeneous virtual IT infrastructure will give us greater flexibility and scalability. On our existing servers, the various applications operate independently on diverse platforms, based upon the one-server-one application model. The combination of IBM System z with Intel servers in an ensemble configuration turns out to be the best solution for modernization of our IT infrastructure," said Huub Meertens, head of the Support Engineering Section at EUROCONTROL, the European air traffic management organization in the Netherlands. "Given our complex IT infrastructure with high safety and security requirements, reliability, scalability and management at a competitive price are very important. It is for these reasons that EUROCONTROL has opted for the IBM zEnterprise with zBX environment."

By bringing Windows and the mainframe together, IBM is helping clients to innovate more freely in multiple environments across z/OS, Linux, AIX and now Windows.

Specifically, the new technology provides centralized management, which offers a variety of money-saving benefits, such as faster and automated access to computing resources, reduced administration and lower training costs.

The new capability of consolidating and centralizing management of Windows applications on x86-based IBM System x servers will be available for either of the zEnterprise systems -- the z196 or z114.

Through a hybrid computing approach, that IBM has pioneered with the introduction of the zEnterprise System in July 2010, select IBM System x blades and System x applications can be installed in a zEnterprise. No changes are required for the application, and integration and management of blades and applications are handled by the zEnterprise Unified Resource Manager, via a single console. The benefit is that the application servers can be physically and logically close to the data running on the mainframe.

The hybrid capability already had been available for managing IBM Power-based workloads with operating system support for AIX and System x-based workloads with Linux as well as a business analytics solution and a multi-functional appliance for System z (IBM Websphere DataPower XI50 for zEnterprise). With these capabilities, the zEnterprise System is accelerating smarter computing for companies and governments through an innovative "system of systems" approach that allows disparate workloads spread across multiple systems to be managed as a single environment.

Today's announcement advances zEnterprise System's ability to address a vital issue for corporate data centers -- the jumble of disparate technologies added over time to run specific applications. These systems typically operate in individual silos, requiring separate staff and software tools to manage, with the additional complexity of interacting and communicating with each other in real time. This long-standing client challenge is aggravated by dramatic increases in cost and management complexity amid a rising tide of sophisticated, data-intensive workloads in an increasingly interconnected world.

Clients are demanding more efficient, easier-to-manage infrastructures so they can invest their limited resources to advance their strategic IT initiatives, such as cloud computing and business analytics.

The announcement also represents another example of the mainframe's continued vitality in a highly competitive and dynamic server marketplace. The mainframe remains a source of great value for banks, insurance companies, governments, major retailers and other IBM clients who benefit from its high levels of security and reliability. Backed by $1.5 billion in research and development and years of direct client input, IBM's zEnterprise demonstrates the company's ongoing mission to innovate and address key challenges.

IBM has continued to see mainframe momentum since shipping its new System zEnterprise 196 last July, with new clients and system upgrades worldwide. Since July 2010, IBM has added more than 80 new mainframe clients worldwide, with more than 30 percent of these in growth markets.

Yi Lian Zhong Information Technology (YLZ), a leading provider of information services in China, recently announced its selection of System z to build a cloud computing platform that will improve the life of more than 300 million citizens in China via an online portal for a variety of social services.

"The IBM DB2 for z/OS is a secure and highly available repository for the bank's data. High-performance specialty processors have significantly improved query response times as compared to our previous solution. The new zEnterprise hybrid technology is highly scalable and flexible which means that our users are now able to access the information they need more quickly," added Ales Levstek, chief information officer of NLB (Nova Ljubljanska Bank), a large bank in Slovenia.

IBM's System z support for Windows means that clients can:
Gain more choice in choosing the best platform for a particular application from ERP to business analytics to transaction processing.
Allow front-end Windows applications to integrate with applications or data on the mainframe
Consolidate more workloads onto the mainframe as part of their efforts to maximize technology investments. The financial impact of consolidation onto System z can be substantial, with savings of up to 70 percent in total cost of ownership compared to distributed platforms.

With today's announcement, clients can now run z/OS and Linux on System z along with IBM AIX, x86 Linux and Microsoft Windows on the zEnterprise System. These options now offer a more integrated multi-platform system that combines the best of IBM's server technology.

New Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 Booster Edition

Internet Security, Simple Backup & PC Tune-up in one user friendly package

London, 3rd November 2011, Leading UK publisher PX Software, and Kaspersky, one of the fastest growing IT security companies worldwide have announced Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 Booster Edition.

Kaspersky Lab was the first to develop many technological standards in the antivirus industry, including full-scale solutions for Linux, Unix and NetWare, a new-generation heuristic analyzer designed to detect newly emerging viruses, effective protection against polymorphic and macro viruses, continuously updated antivirus databases and a technique for detecting viruses in archived files. Kaspersky Lab now operates in more than 100 countries and is one of the market leaders in the development of antivirus protection.

Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 Booster Edition includes Kaspersky Internet Security (3 User), Rebit 5 Essentials (3 User) and Tuneup Utilities 2011 (3 User). Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 is a comprehensive computer security suite that provides users with unique, hybrid protection from all types of computer threats. Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 delivers premium protection from viruses, Trojans, spam, hackers and more. Whether you're banking, shopping or social networking online, you can have complete confidence that your account details are secure, you won't stumble onto dangerous websites and you'll only receive safe messages from your friends.

Rebit 5 Essentials backup software is the safe, simple and smart way to protect your digital content.

Every song you download each picture you transfer or video you capture is immediately backed up with Continuous Data Protection (CDP) technology. Rebit is the only backup and complete system recovery solution that starts working the minute it is installed, keeping PCs continuously protected from crashes, viruses or accidental file deletions. At the heart of Rebit's product line is the exclusive SmartSaveTM Personalization Technology which delivers complete backup and recovery while providing additional storage space for personal files including music, movies, pod casts and other data.

TuneUp Utilities helps you get the most out of your PC. This highly successful tuning suite doesn't just optimise Windows; it also provides peak performance for games and programs. With more than 30 intuitive tools, users can be sure of increased performance and top speed, greater system reliability, optimal maintenance, recovered disk space and a fresh looking Windows interface With this wide range of TuneUp Utilities functions, the user is assured of complete, safe control over their PC and tweaking a technically complex system is easy.

"We are committed to providing the best protection for our three million users worldwide. This new partnership with TuneUp and Rebit is great because it means we can provide this top level protection, back up and tune up to customers across the board, no matter what their requirements or circumstances." Stated Alex Busk, Head of Retail, UK & Ireland.

"Rebit is very pleased to be able to partner with Kaspersky. The combination of Rebit's full system backup and restore functionality with Kaspersky and TuneUp will provide customers with a unique and powerful level of security, performance, and data protection for their PCs." commented Paul Guerin, CEO, Rebit USA

"Over the past 2 years, PX Software have partnered with Kaspersky to include TuneUp Utilities in their retail packaging, and with both TuneUp and Rebit going into retail for 2012, we believe consumers will have the best security, data protection and PC optimisation available in one box, offering unbelievable value for money," stated Robert Hall, Sales Director, PX Software.

Intel Chip Shot: Open Data Center Alliance: Members Will Triple Cloud Deployments in the Next Two Years

At an event today in New York, the Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) announced the results of a survey showing that members of the Alliance plan to triple cloud deployments in the next two years – an adoption rate that is five times faster than recent forecasts from IDC. The Alliance also announced that HP and CA Technologies have joined the organization which now boasts more than 300 members, and provided new details on collaborations with the Cloud Security Alliance (CA) and Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). Intel serves as the technical advisor to the ODCA.

Kyocera aims for 85% recycling rate of solar module materials

New Environmental Agreement passed by PV CYCLE
03 November 2011 - Kyoto / Neuss − The Japanese technology company Kyocera, one of the leading manufacturers in the field of photovoltaics (PV), has signed on as a full member to the PV CYCLE’s new Environmental Agreement. The third Environmental Agreement strengthens the Europe-wide system for the take-back and recycling of PV modules with more stringent self-regulations. The goal of the agreement is to achieve a recycling rate of 85% of materials contained in modules by 2020.

With the signing of the new Environmental Agreement, Kyocera gives a clear sign of its ongoing commitment to sustainability. "The responsible use of natural resources is a concept firmly rooted in the corporate philosophy of Kyocera," stated Kyocera’s European President Shigeru Koyama. "By means of our solar modules, we are making a significant contribution to the promotion and use of renewable energies. For us, it goes without saying that we take responsibility, even beyond the product’s life cycle, in matters regarding the sustainable recycling and disposal of materials."

PV CYCLE’s objective is to create a voluntary industry-wide take-back and recycling programme for end-of-life PV modules. Currently, the non-profit association represents more than 90% of the European PV market. The financing of the sustainable system is to be borne by the PV manufacturers. By 2020, the association plans to further increase the number of module return stations, which at present number more than 170, into a dense network of collection points throughout Europe. The new PV CYCLE Environmental Agreement has now been submitted to the EU Commission with a request for assistance.

Recycling makes PV modules twice as sustainable

By recycling modules at the end of their product life, the solar power industry ensures the sustainability of photovoltaics up through the entire value chain and beyond the actual product life of the modules. In addition to the prevention of waste, by recovering material resources, the amount of energy required to provide raw materials is also reduced — thus sustainably reducing costs and environmental impact. The recycling of silicon solar cells that can be processed into new wafers is particularly important. Also, the aluminium and glass components, as well as the semiconductor materials, can be efficiently recycled to conserve energy.


Okobe.co.uk is an official Kyocera Business Partner to view the current range of Kyocera products please click here...

Buffalo brings ‘CloudStation’ to the UK

London UK, 2 November 2011 - Buffalo Technology, a global leader in the design, development and manufacturing of storage and wireless networking solutions, is today announcing the launch of its first cloud based personal storage solution.

Available in 2TB and 4TB capacities, the CloudStation, powered by Pogoplug, is an out of the box, 2 Bay plug and play device, enabling users to store, access and share multimedia content such as photos, videos and music. Providing users have an Internet connection via a web browser, mobile device or social media outlet, users can share content with anyone, anywhere.

The CloudStation, which is DLNA certified and Time Machine compatible, marks Buffalo's entry into the cloud storage market and provides the ability to set up an affordable personal cloud in less than 60 seconds.

The CloudStation, which has no service fees, can display PDF, Excel, Word and PowerPoint documents without any additional software and allows users to give friends space of their own to store and access files. The device uses a 26-digit personal identifier code along with encryption for cloud access so content remains safe and secure.

Paul Hudson, Sales Director for Northern Europe at Buffalo Technology comments: "The way we store, access and share data is rapidly moving beyond traditional channels. Buffalo's CloudStation delivers on the promise of data mobility and allows your content to be securely stored and shared with anyone, anywhere."

ViewSonic launches affordable 2D/3D polarised 23”monitor

London, 2nd November 2011 - ViewSonic adds to its 3D portfolio a new 23" 3D monitor that delivers amazing functionality at a terrific price.

This 23-inch 3D-Ready LED monitor features an ultra-fast 2ms video response time, making it perfect for enjoying a crystal clear 3D gaming and video experience. With a 20,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, users can expect great colour accuracy and picture detail, making for unsurpassed 3D image quality.

Delivering an immersive multimedia entertainment experience, the V3D231 offers integrated SRS Premium Sound® audio speakers, in addition to the included polarized 3D glasses. Add VGA, DVI-D and HDMI 1.4a inputs and consumers can enjoy vast connectivity options, including directly connecting to content on their Blu-ray® 3D player or PS3 gaming console. To ensure all users have access to 3D content, ViewSonic's V3D231 monitor also includes a TriDef 3D software suite. With this software, users can easily convert and view their 2D PC images in life-like 3D, in addition to playing over 500 PC-based video games in amazing 3D quality.

"The V3D231 with its Frame Patterned Retarder technology opens up 3D to everyone" says James Coulson, European Marketing Manager, "Ultra light glasses and extensive 3D support across multiple input sources all at a great price point, will make this monitor appear on many people's Christmas wish lists."

SAPPHIRE announces new HD 6970 with Dual Fan

New HD 6970 has SAPPHIRE exclusive cooler and Dual BIOS for tuning

SAPPHIRE Technology has just announced a new model in its successful HD 6900 series of graphics cards - the HD 6970 2GB with a new super efficient Dual fan cooler and Dual BIOS giving users the choice of fast, quiet operation or performance tuning.

The new SAPPHIRE HD 6970 has the same internal architecture as the standard model, with 1536 stream processors and 96 texture processing units, and clock speeds are 880MHz for the core and 1375Mhz (5.5Gb/sec effective) for the 2GB of GDDR5 memory. This new design has two 90mm fans with thin impellers that can move the same amount of air at 10% lower rotation speeds than conventional fans, keeping noise low, and their special dust repelling bearings contribute to high reliability.

With the Dual BIOs set to the standard position, the Dual fans keep this model quiet and up to 25% cooler than the standard model even under load conditions. With the BIOS switched to the performance setting, the core voltage of the GPU is raised to 1.2V, the fan speed is set to a high performance profile and the powertune adjustment for overclocking is raised to 50% allowing the user to maximise performance of the card by increasing clock speeds either with AMD Overdrive or with SAPPHIRE TriXX up to a ceiling of 1500MHz core, 2000MHz memory.

SAPPHIRE TriXX is a dedicated overclocking tool which allows users to adjust and save settings of core clocks, memory clocks, core voltage and fan speeds to optimize performance whilst continuously monitoring temperature. It is available free for anyone to download from the SAPPHIRE website, www.sapphiretech.com - just follow the TriXX buttons!

Eyefinity and APP acceleration

The SAPPHIRE HD 6970 has the versatile output configuration of two DVI, one HDMI and two mini DisplayPort connectors, and can support a VGA monitor with the dongle supplied. Using the DVI or HDMI outputs together with the two DisplayPorts enables this card to support multiple monitors in Eyefinity (SLS) mode.

The third generation UVD (Unified Video Decoder) in the SAPPHIRE HD 6970 supports MVC (Multi-view Video Coding) for the smooth decoding of Blu-Ray 3D with reduced CPU load as well as other file formats. Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio are supported, and HDMI capability has also been upgraded to HDMI 1.4a. This provides deep colour, enhanced high resolution output for Digital Theatre applications and 3D stereoscopic support as well as 7.1 high bit-rate audio.

The multiple stream processors of the HD 6900 series can be used to accelerate other applications such as video transcoding. The latest generation of web browsers can be GPU accelerated, and this is also supported for enhanced productivity in Microsoft Office 2010.