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вівторок, 19 жовтня 2010 р.
Newsweek colors Dell, IBM, HP the greenest
Out today, Newsweek's rankings looked at the most environmentally friendly companies in the U.S. alone and throughout the world. The goal of the study was to zero in on three factors: environmental impact, policies, and reputation.
Among the 500 public companies tracked in the U.S., Dell came out on top. The PC maker was lauded by Newsweek for its environmental policies, such as free product recycling and a ban on the export of e-waste to developing countries. The company has also been able to drive in customers and sales by designing computers that consume 25 percent less energy than those made a couple of years ago. Dell estimates that it's helped customers save more than $5 billion in energy costs since 2006 through the energy management features on its OptiPlex business computers.
"Dell's focus on environmental stewardship and sustainability helps us to be a more responsible partner to our customers," CEO Michael Dell said in a statement. "The efficiencies we can all achieve through the use of greener products, solutions, services and programs should be an integral part of every corporate culture."
The top 10 in the U.S. also included such tech players as HP, IBM, Intel, Sprint Nextel, Adobe Systems, Applied Materials, and Yahoo. Certain companies were applauded for devising unique ways to cool their data centers, a process that typically demands a huge amount of energy. Yahoo, for example, has been able to build greener data centers, including one in New York that consumes 40 percent less energy and 94 percent less water than conventional data centers.
One company that generally seems to be on the forefront of greener tech is Google. The company has been behind several environmentally friendly initiatives, from an investment in a power backbone for a wind farm to its lawn-mowing goats. But the search giant ranked only 36th on Newsweek's U.S. list, scoring lower than one might expect on its environmental impact and policies.
Looking beyond the U.S. to the entire world, IBM took the top spot among the 100 greenest global companies, followed by HP in second place.
Big Blue has actually been ahead of the curve in looking to cut its use of electricity and water. Between 1990 and 2000, the company was able to reduce its energy consumption by 5.1 billion kilowatt hours, enough to power a medium-sized town, according to Newsweek. IBM has also embarked on a number of green projects, including its Sustainability Management System, which looks to help customers operate their commercial buildings in a greener way.
For many companies, including HP, the effort to create products that cost less to make and use is also saving energy and reducing waste as a result. HP's current IT systems use 66 percent less energy than the ones it designed in 2005.
"A lot of the innovation in this space is coming out of business pressure," Michael Mendenhall, HP's chief marketing officer, said in a statement.
To devise a "green score" for each company, Newsweek worked with some key environmental organizations. The score was based on three factors:
• Environmental impact, which included greenhouse-gas emissions, water use, and solid-waste disposal.
• Green policies, an analysis of a company's environmental policies and initiatives.
• Reputation, which was based on a survey of academics, environmental officers, and CEOs.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20019873-54.html?tag=mncol;title
MacBook Air: Quibbles with an exquisite design
(Credit: Brooke Crothers)
The MacBook Air was announced in January of 2008. I've been using one day in and day out since February of that year. Amid rumors of an imminent update, I can't help but wonder whether Apple will address a few outstanding, albeit small, issues with an otherwise stellar design.
I've already stated, pretty much ad nauseam, that I like the Air. A lot. I've never used one design so consistently for so long. That, alone, is testimony to its eminent usability and close-to-perfect design. And I've used a lot of laptops over the years.
Now, with fresh speculation about the new design and even possible photos, I thought it might be a good opportunity to offer a wish list of minor fixes.
Heat: This is a given in any ultrathin design. And, let's be clear, neither Hewlett-Packard, nor Dell, nor anyone else has solved the problem. That said, there are technologies out there that can mitigate heat issues. And Apple, especially, with all of its design prowess, should be able to engineer a cooler ultrathin laptop. I have experienced times (admittedly pretty rare) where the Air is simply unusable because it gets too hot, slowing the system to a crawl.
Battery life: Again, a challenge for any ultraportable because the design, by definition, leaves little room for a big battery. Apple offered probably the best possible battery life for a sub-one-inch thick design when the MacBook Air was designed a few years ago (using a thin-and-wide battery enclosure). I get anywhere from 1.5 hours to four hours, depending on what I'm doing. But it's usually closer to a couple of hours than four hours. Apple opted to go with relatively high-performance, low-power processors. In other words, for the second-generation Air, Apple didn't use Intel's ULV (ultra-low voltage) but went with Intel's LV processors. Does this affect battery life? Yeah, that and Nvidia's graphics-centric chipset. The point: It's now about three years later, Apple can improve on both battery life and performance, as evidenced in the newer MacBook Pros.
Price: This is probably the biggest gripe I hear from others. Yes, it's an elite MacBook. I understand that. But most people don't. They marvel at the design but not the price. The next Air doesn't have to go as low as $699, but Apple could at least make the design more accessible to average MacBook consumers. Many see it simply as an expensive MacBook without an optical drive. A contradiction not easy to reconcile.
Google offers instant-search interface standard
With Google Instant, the close link between the company's browser and search service is getting even closer--but Google wants to ensure that the Chrome-Google pairing isn't the only one possible on the Net.
If a proposal from the search giant catches on, browser users might, for example, be able to see Yahoo search results in Firefox--or more likely, Microsoft Bing search results instantly in Internet Explorer. The proposal, if accepted, holds the potential to help both Google and its rivals--at least if they can match the new Google Instant interface.
Google Instant shows search results as a person types, refreshing the window contents as the search terms are added or modified, and Google is building it into Chrome's omnibox. That's a significant expansion over existing browser abilities to suggest completed search terms using a drop-down list.
Google now is proposing an interface to let others link people's search box use with instant-search results.
"We're adding instant search integration to Google Chrome, allowing the search provider to communicate suggestions to the user agent [browser]. If there is interest, we'd like to make sure that we do this in such a way that any search provider or user agent can implement it," Google programmer Tony Gentilcore said last week on a mailing list for WHATWG, the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group that has worked for years to advance Web technologies.
The interface would share information from the browser that the search engine needs before it can send instant-search results to the browser. Under the proposed interface, the information sent--to the default search engine only--would include potential search terms that have been typed in, the user's cursor location within them, and whether the user has changed search terms, hit the enter key, or selected an item with an arrow key.
The move shouldn't come as a huge surprise. On the defensive front, such an interface makes life harder for critics concerned that Google is benefiting from its search dominance in a way that its browser competitors can't. And on the offensive front, it could make it easier for Google to extend instant search results to other browsers.
(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)
It's not clear whether others will be interested, however.
Two days after raising the matter at WHATWG, Gentilcore mentioned the proposal on a mailing list for WebKit, the open-source browser engine used in Chrome, Apple's Safari, and many mobile browsers. He suggested a WebKit-wide interface that would faciltate the feature, but didn't drum up much enthusiasm.
"I do have an objection," Apple programmer Darin Adler said in his response. The feature is the kind of thing that is best suited for higher-level browser work based on WebKit, not the underlying engine itself, he said. "WebKit has an architecture that allows this to be done without WebKit code changes. I suggest we put this feature in browsers, not the engine."
Perhaps Microsoft would be more interested. Not only does it have a search engine it's trying to promote, but Its IE9 beta makes much more aggressive use of the combined search and address bar, displaying some search results as people type.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20019864-264.html?tag=mncol;title
AMD's new 'Llano' chip targets sleek designs
At the AMD Technical Forum & Exhibition in Taipei, Taiwan, the chip supplier held the first public demonstration of its future AMD Fusion Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) codenamed "Llano." Due in the first half of next year, the system-on-a-chip (single piece of silicon) is targeted at ultrathin and mainstream laptops, among other designs.
Llano will use 32-nanometer technology, feature up to four CPU processor cores, and integrate AMD's 5000 series graphics technology.
The demo involved three "workloads" running simultaneously on Microsoft Windows 7: calculating the value of Pi to 32 million decimal places; running a complex physics simulation using DirectX 11; and decoding HD video from a Blu-ray disc, AMD said. "Microsoft's n-Body DirectCompute application is shown achieving around 30 GFLOPS, according to a statement. GFLOPS, or gigaflops, means billions of floating point operations per second.
AMD is in the unique position of being a supplier of both central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) and therefore can combine both technologies to create what it calls APUs.
By comparison, Intel's newest Atom processors integrate a CPU and low-end GPU onto one piece of silicon, while the upcoming Sandy Bridge processor--due in systems early next year--has a higher-performance graphics function integrated onto the CPU.
Don't hold your breath for 7-inch iPad
(Credit: Kent German/CNET)
Steve Jobs thinks you're fat. Or at least your fingers are.
Jobs dialed in to Apple's earnings call this afternoon and took on, among other topics, the usability of a 7-inch touch-screen tablet. Though many of Apple's competitors are introducing or plan to introduce tablets in that size, it's not ideal for a touch-screen device, he told investors.
"It's meaningless unless your tablet also includes sandpaper, so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one quarter of their present size," he said.
Normal-size human fingers are too big to be able to accurately hit icons on a screen that size, he claimed.
"Apple has done extensive user testing and we really understand this stuff," he said. "There are clear limits on how close you can place things on a touchscreen, which is why we think 10 inch is the minimum screen size to create great tablet apps."
But it's not just our pesky fingers that are the problem. He also trashed the screen size and resolution of 7-inchers
"One naturally thinks that a 7-inch screen would offer 70 percent of the benefits of a 10-inch screen...this is far from the truth. Seven-inch screens are 45 percent as large as an iPad," Jobs said. "This size isn't sufficient for making great tablet apps."
No tablet can compete with a smartphone. And given that all tablet users will already have a smartphone in their pocket, giving up screen area to fit in a pocket is a bad trade-off," he said.
Jobs is obviously doing some marketing countermeasures ahead of the holidays when several new tablet models may become available that compete with the iPad.
But he was also sending this message to those reporting rumors that a 7-inch iPad is on its way: it's not happening.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20019982-260.html?tag=mncol
понеділок, 18 жовтня 2010 р.
Ray Ozzie stepping down from Microsoft
In a surprise move, Microsoft announced today that Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie is leaving the company.
The move, which raises questions about the company's future technology direction, was announced in an e-mail to employees from CEO Steve Ballmer. Ozzie is leaving after an unspecified transition period, expected to be several months.
"With our progress in services and the cloud now full speed ahead in all aspects of our business, Ray and I are announcing today Ray's intention to step down from his role as chief software architect," Ballmer said in the memo, which was posted to Microsoft's Web site. "He will remain with the company as he transitions the teams and ongoing strategic projects within his organization--bringing the great innovations and great innovators he's assembled into the groups driving our business. Following the natural transition time with his teams but before he retires from Microsoft, Ray will be focusing his efforts in the broader area of entertainment where Microsoft has many ongoing investments."
Ozzie's departure is just the latest in a string of high-level exits from Microsoft. Business Division President Stephen Elop left Microsoft last month to become CEO of Nokia, while Entertainment and Devices unit president Robbie Bach announced in the spring his plans to leave. (Bach has not left Microsoft's employ as yet, but is expected to leave later this fall.)
Ozzie joined Microsoft when the company bought Ozzie's Groove Networks back in April 2005. Initially, he was one of three chief technical officers and was named to his current role in 2006, at the same time the company announced Bill Gates plan to retire.
Microsoft said it has no plans to fill the chief software architect role.
Ozzie was already a computing industry legend by the time he joined Microsoft, having worked on several early PC programs before creating Lotus Notes. Ozzie ventured out on his own after IBM acquired Lotus, creating Groove, a collaborative document creation engine.
"Ray contributed significantly to the early success of Windows," Ballmer noted in his memo to Microsoft employees. "Since being at Microsoft, both through inspiration and impact he's been instrumental in our transition toward a software world now centered on services."
Microsoft's acquisition of Groove was widely seen as the cost of bringing in Ozzie.
During his time at Microsoft, Ozzie is best known for his Internet Services Disruption memo five years ago, which outlined the need for all of the company's businesses to move to the cloud. Since then, Microsoft has launched plans for Windows Live, Windows Azure, and Office Web Apps, among other cloud efforts.
However, Ozzie's tenure has also been marked by clashes with various product teams over both resources and technical direction.
As Ballmer noted, one of Ozzie's final projects will focus on the company's entertainment strategy. Microsoft has been trying to flesh out its notion of a "personal cloud," which is in many ways the consumer parallel to the business cloud strategy that the company has laid out.
One of Ozzie's pet projects at Microsoft was Live Mesh, a technology incubation that aimed to offer people the ability to have their content automatically synchronized with the Web and their other devices. Parts of Live Mesh are now part of Windows Live, although more work is needed to fulfill the broader vision, including securing broader rights from Hollywood to allow users to take purchased content, such as movies and TV shows, to whichever device they are on.
Microsoft declined to make Ozzie available for an interview, nor did it have any comment on his plans once he leaves the company. Ballmer left the door open to continuing further work with Ozzie.
"He's always been a 'maker' and a partner, and we look forward to our continuing collaboration as his future unfolds," he said.
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