Technology is improving by the day and there are so many new developments that businesses have to keep up with to provide a perfect environment for their new-age tech savvy employees. Despite the fact that technology cannot replace human intelligence, it certainly plays a major role in assisting employees perform their tasks better.

SAP – Creation of Personalized Reports

Excel was and is still considered to be a powerful tool. Experts in Excel were in huge demand with people needing solutions. Now the latest development in software, SAP allows the creation of personalized reports, Many offices no longer consider Excel as the only tool. Excel proves to be insufficient for the amount of analysis and metrics that is needed for many. Not only that, the cost of getting MS Office itself is prohibitive.

SaaS Technology

Not too long ago, businesses used to look at local software developers to help them infuse the technology and dynamics their companies needed. The dependence of worry when these software developers forget to incorporate essential updates are a thing of the past now. Things are becoming more high-tech and we don’t have to deal with such issues. Employees also have the satisfaction of working with the latest SaaS technology that allows a high level of customization and systems that meet all their business needs can be developed effortlessly. (more…)

“Somewhere something incredible is waiting to be known.” ~ Dr. Carl Sagan ~

Man built many things with the help of science, but there has always been something that has been out of reach for man – creation of life. This has always been the domain of the “creator of the universe” and man could not transcend this.

Latest reports reveal that this is about to change and scientists have come closer to being able to put life into non-living things – once a humanly unthinkable task.

Scientists have taken several steps towards realizing one of the most magical moments for mankind. This crucial step involves the creation of a synthetic chromosome from scratch that will help create artificial life forms. This incredible human intellect accomplished the feat of making DNA fragments using lab chemicals and then assembling them in a cell. This genome contains all that an organism needs to live and reproduce. The organism in the study is called Mycoplasma genitalium, which is the tiniest bacteria ever found, and consists of 582,970 fundamental building blocks of DNA, making it longer than any previous genetic material ever created through chemicals. Not only that, unlike viruses made by humans, synthetic bacterium had the capacity to make copies of itself through cell division.

Initially, scientists started with building long strands of DNA. Each one was a quarter copy of the whole M genitalium genome. These strands were inserted into yeast cells, which stitched the strands together and made clones of the whole genome. Then this synthetic chromosome was inserted into a cell, in order for it to reproduce and create a new life form. (more…)

Answers to the most complicated computing tasks are found in the clouds. Not the clouds in the sky that shower rain but clouds that deliver a super computing power on the internet.

Cloud computing is the development and use of computer technology using the internet. The word “cloud” has been used as a metaphor for the internet. This enables users to completely rely on the internet for satisfying all their computing needs. They will be able to access services that are technology-enabled on the internet or you could say “in the clouds.” Users do not need any sort of expertise or control over the technology or the support structure for that technology. With cloud computing, information can be stored permanently on the internet in huge servers and cached on desktops, table computers, notebooks, monitors, handhelds etc. on a temporary basis.

The frenzy around cloud computing is at its peak, with high-speed internet connections, powerful but cheaper disk drives, chips and huge data centers with hundreds of computers to serve millions of users. Customers will be able to rent this infrastructure and pay for the usage only. Cloud computing power is being tapped into by almost every major company as it delivers sophisticated data analysis in the quickest way possible.

Cloud computing is being looked at as extremely powerful because of its ability to perform tens of trillions of computations every second and this is huge when you compare it to the most powerful desktop PC, which can process about 3 billion computations in a second. This power can now be accessed through the web for analyzing financial portfolio risks, for playing computer games, for delivering personalized medical information etc. With cloud computing, large groups of servers that use low-cost consumer PC technology are networked through special connections that spread data processing chores across them. (more…)

The few minutes that it takes for the computer to boot up are called the “black hole” of the digital age. During that time, there is nothing to do but wait and wait before one can log on. Have users become impatient or are the computers slow?

What do people do when waiting for the computer to boot up? While some people stare at the screen, others walk up and down or grab a hot cuppa. If it is time for brushing, then people do that too!

With all the complaints there have been of computer boot up time, the computer industry is forced to look into it and try and give back those precious seconds lost. Several of the major PC makers in the world are soon introducing “quick-start” computers. A few months back, we have mentioned that Hewlett-Packard is onto something in this arena in one of our articles titled, “Computers With Instant Start.” You can read that for more information and to understand how it works.

According to a senior executive of a company that makes quick-boot program from PC makers, it is ridiculous to expect people to wait patiently for a couple of minutes, in this day and age when people want instant-on. (more…)

If you went to this music show and shot a video of your favorite rock star, and wish to share it with the world, you would obviously head over to YouTube. Why are people not considering the several alternatives?

When we think of video on the internet, the first thing that comes to mind is the Mogul of video, YouTube. No doubt YouTube’s popularity is unparalleled. There is certainly nothing wrong with YouTube and they have the distinction of spearheading the video sharing revolution. However, it is not necessarily the only site that can be used for posting videos on the Web.

Even if you decide to check out different video sharing sites, where would you go? Different people have different needs; while some have memories to store, others may wish to make a quick buck.

Here is a list of some video sharing sites which allow sharing of the videos and much more.

Tubemogul.com: This is a service that is provided by an online distribution and video analytics company. It helps marketers measure the impact their online marketing campaigns have. It allows uploading of video to all the main video sharing websites at one go. Users are also provided stats of when, where and how often their videos are watched. The most beautiful feature is the ability to track viewer demographics and geographics. With 100 MB being the upload limit, the major sites that are supported by this service are YouTube, MySpace video, AOL video, Google video, Yahoo video , Revver and Metacafe. (more…)

If you have been on the web for any amount of time, you would have heard of Zong, a division of Echovox, which is the leader in Mobile Media Solutions in Europe and provides services to many of the world’s largest media groups.

Zong is the only web service that enables creating and launching of mobile services in about ten countries. It is the first open mobile platform provider that allows companies, developers, web enterprises and social networks to launch mobile services for revenue generation.
With Zong, mobile services and applications can be launched to more than 500 million subscribers worldwide in just a few minutes.

To get a better idea of what Zong’s all about, let’s take a look at how it works.

Once the Zong services are created and a person becomes the developer, all users will be able to access their services from their mobiles. When the user sends a message with the keyword pertaining to the developer, the message is routed through the user’s mobile operator, which whom Zong has contractual obligation. That mobile operator, in turn, sends the request to Zong, and Zong manages this request using the service provider’s application and sends a response back to the user.

How does the developer benefit? When users use the service, they will be billed based on how the billing is set up. They can be billed monthly on their monthly mobile bill or users can also set up an account with Zong, and pay for the services by direct debit into the Zong account. The mobile operator used by the user takes a small fee and Zong takes a small transaction fee, and the rest of the amount is given to the developer in the form of revenue. (more…)

Adobe Media Player (AMP 1.0) launched by Adobe, allows streaming of video and downloading from their partners. It is the latest player to enter the online video space, which offers great software that not only rivals Windows Media Player, but also provides a wide variety of video content, including music videos. Adobe announced this move about a year ago.

Adobe has gone into partnership with major content publishers and broadcasters, such as MyToons, Comedy Central, Blip.tv, MTV, Universal Music Group, Style.com, PBS, CBS and a few others, to provide video material. With so many top media companies and networks in its groove, Adobe aims at providing wholesome entertainment in the form of reality TV shows, sports, educational videos, classic feature films amongst others.

CBS is providing its CSI shows and lots of archived videos. MTV is showing “The Hills.” The others also have some good stuff for viewing. Adobe said that since it has just started, more content will be coming soon from the other broadcasters.

Just as it is with the other Adobe products, installation of the Adobe Media Player is easy, especially if one is used to running an AIR application.

With the AMP, all the entertainment is available offline too, which means the videos can either be streamed from the partner’s website or downloaded, depending on what the producer of the content allows. The content producer has total control over that and there are easy to understand icons, letting you know what you can do with the content you are watching. (more…)

Today we see hundreds of people earning a living, working on the computer, from the “sweatshop” of the digital era – Home. Is working from home any easier? Researchers investigate to find out what goes on behind closed doors.

Home office workers armed with computers and latest gadgets, and robotically wired to the hilt, are working under severe pressure and stress created by the internet economy, that is looking for information constantly, in the form of comments and news.

What is it these people do? They blog and they do it till they drop. They get paid per piece and they are of course happy doing it. Most bloggers profess a love for what they do and of the excitement the internet provides with its nonstop action.

Through blogging, they have the means of setting up a global outlet, reaching millions of people without a huge investment.

In spite of all the benefits and passion for the internet and blogging, some people are starting to wonder if something has gone wrong. The last few months have seen the sudden death of two of these internet aficionados.

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger, who blogs on technology related information, died of a heart attack at age 60. Another technology blogger, Marc Orchant died at 50, due to a massive coronary, in December. The third person, Om Malik who is 41 survived a heart attack in December. (more…)

Whenever a company wishes to run a new application or run a new operating system, they end up buying a new server to go with it, although they are aware that servers usually run at 20-30% their actual capacity.

They ensure that each application has a dedicated server. The reason they do this is because there are times when all the resources of a server are required to run an application; and they avoid using multiple operating systems or applications on one server, keeping this need in mind.

People realize that this system of maintaining servers is inefficient due to the need for huge data centers and also because of the heavy power consumption.

There seems to be an answer to this problem in “virtualization.” This hot new technology is seeing exponential growth throughout the world. Factually speaking, this technology is not new and has been used for mainframes for a long time now, thanks to IBM. This is the reason why in mainframes, the utilization of capacity is almost 90% when compared to just 20 to 30% in other servers. (more…)

The Chinese manufacturer Lenovo will be manufacturing IBM xServers now that IBM has licensed the xServer technology to the company. Lenovo will be making its own Intel-based servers, but there is much speculation by resellers over the move.

IBM Moving Away from Hardware?

One of the most commonly voiced questions regards the future of IBM manufacturing. In 2005 IBM licensed out laptop and PC technology while still creating their own line as well. Now, in 2008, IBM is once again licensing out hardware development prompting many to wonder if IBM is moving away from hardware all together. Manufacturing is an expensive business, and IBM might find that development and concepts are more profitable than actually creating the end products.

But for now, IBM is keeping speculators guessing by continuing to manufacture their own xServers. Lenovo will be making one and two processor servers for the upper echelon of small business clients. IBM, on the other hand will focus their manufacturing interests on sets of servers that range from the most basic to the zSeries mainframes. (more…)