Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Filed under: Laptops

Right, so Voodoo’s succulent Envy 133 looks a lot better in high-res images than in some highly compressed, artifact-laden YouTube clip, but that’s what your imagination is there for. For those still waiting for their freshly shipped machine to hit the doorstep, hop on past the break for an unboxing sure to make you even more impatient. Or just restrain yourself and experience it first-hand in a few days. Totally your call.

[Thanks, Bernt]

Continue reading Voodoo Envy 133 unboxed on video, lookin’ good

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Those AMD breakup rumors are back with a bullet this morning thanks to some chatty sources speaking to TG Daily. Though this one can hardly be called rumor since it was AMD’s own freshman CEO, Dirk Meyer (pictured), who said that AMD was “just months away” from spinning off its manufacturing and fabrication business into a separate entity. TGD’s sources claim that an announcement is indeed planned for next month in fruition of its Asset Light and Asset Smart strategies. With it, we’ll see Meyer take over the development of chip technologies while someone else (possibly Hector Ruiz, who recently shed his CEO role but stayed on as the board′s chair) taking responsibilities of manufacturing. Let’s just hope that they can get past this distraction in short order — a strong, focused AMD is good for the industry and that’s good for us consumers.

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Original post by Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

While it may not all be his doing, newly-minted AMD CEO Dirk Meyer seems to be at the center of more than a bit of confusion in his first few days on the job. First, he detailed AMD’s plans to take on Intel’s Atom processor this fall, which was apparently news to AMD’s Chief Marketing Officer, and now AMD is denying a report that AMD is set to spin off its manufacturing operations into a separate company, which arose out of an interview Meyer gave to the Austin American-Statesman. In it, Meyer reportedly said that AMD was “just months away” from spinning off its fabrication business, which would let it concentrate on designing, marketing and selling chips, and allow it to compete more effectively against its two big rivals: Intel and NVIDIA. As eWEEK reports, however, an AMD spokesperson now says that Meyer was referring simply to “how the company manufactures its wafers,” which could possibly be a reference to the company’s planned shift to a 45-nanometer manufacturing process. That’s quite a difference, and we′re guessing we′ll be hearing yet more “clarification” on the matter before all is said and done.

Read - Austin American-Statesman, “New AMD chief sees clear path to recovery”
Read - eWEEK, “AMD Denies Fab Sell-Off”

[Thanks, Chris]

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Original post by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Laptops

Freshfaced AMD CEO Dirk Meyer hyped the firm’s upcoming Atom-challenging processor the other day, calling it “Bobcat,” and promising a November reveal. We′d think he′d be the guy to know, but now we′re hearing seemingly conflicting words from AMD’s Chief Marketing Officer, Nigel Dessau. Dessau says AMD is “watching… rather than playing” to see what becomes of the netbook segment. As Ars Technica points out, Dirk Meyer was only promising to announce a chip in November, not release one, so perhaps both of these statements are in step with each other, or maybe they’re just thinking of different processor applications altogether, but for a company that’s lacked a clear focus and a true Intel killer for the past couple of years, this sort of potential doublethink isn’t helping anything.

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Original post by Paul Miller

Filed under: Laptops

Freshfaced AMD CEO Dirk Meyer hyped the firm’s upcoming Atom-challenging processor the other day, calling it “Bobcat,” and promising a November reveal. We’d think he’d be the guy to know, but now we’re hearing seemingly conflicting words from AMD’s Chief Marketing Officer, Nigel Dessau. Dessau says AMD is “watching… rather than playing″ to see what becomes of the netbook segment. As Ars Technica points out, Dirk Meyer was only promising to announce a chip in November, not release one, so perhaps both of these statements are in step with each other, or maybe they’re just thinking of different processor applications altogether, but for a company that’s lacked a clear focus and a true Intel killer for the past couple of years, this sort of potential doublethink isn′t helping anything.

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Original post by Paul Miller

XO Communications is one of the largest Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) in the country. XO provides voice, data and IP services to businesses and other telecommunications companies in 75 metropolitan markets across the United States. XO Communications offers businesses advanced IP and networking solutions to maximize performance and simplify management of their networks. They also offer SIP services, hosted IP-PBX functionality (the XO One iPBX 50 powered by Avaya IP Office), VoIP origination/termination, SIP trunking, and more.

One of their flagship products, the XO IP VPN is a network-based Wide Area Network (WAN) solution delivered over the XO nationwide IP network. It’s a solution aptly suited to businesses with multiple sites. The IP VPN is an advanced network allowing for faster application deployment, lower network operating costs, robust Class of Service (CoS) capabilities, and more access options than traditional WAN services.

Further, the data is segregated from other customers and the public internet. Importantly, XO offers competitive Service Level Agreements (SLAs) on packet loss and jitter.XO provides secure communications for multi-site networks, delivered over the XO private, MPLS-enabled IP backbone.

I find it interesting that XO uses IP MPLS services rather than Ethernet VPLS services. IP MPLS uses multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) over a public or private Internet connection. The advantage is that it an support any-to-any connectivity with CoS/QoS. MPLS’s class of service (CoS) tagging and prioritization of network traffic, makes it easy to specify which applications should have priority. Packet classification makes an MPLS network especially important to customers that need to ensure the performance of low-latency applications such as VoIP. Additionally, MPLS carriers can offer tiered prices for each CoS tier. The disadvantage of MPLS is that it’s a costly transition and complex operation.

Ethernet VPLS services on the other hand use virtual private LAN service (VPLS) over a carrier Ethernet network to provide a WAN that is configured like a LAN. The advantage is that it’s simple, supports any-to-any connectivity with CoS/QoS and has lower total cost of ownership (TCO) than MPLS. But if XO built out their IP MPLS infrastructure already, it probably doesn’t make sense to switch to Ethernet VPLS.

In any event, XO utilizes a nationwide OC-192 Tier 1 network along with a sizable fiber optic network, including an 18,000 route-mile inter-city network and more than 9,000 route-miles within 40 major metropolitan markets. XO claims they carry more than 15 billion minutes of VoIP traffic across its network each year.

The XO MPLS IP VPN service is a network-based Wide Area Network (WAN) solution delivered over the XO nationwide IP network. The IP VPN offers multi-site businesses more bandwidth for the dollar, faster application deployment, lower network operating costs, robust Class of Service.

Finally, XO has an IP VPN channel on TMCnet worth checking out with some good resources on IP VPNs. It includes a link for signing up for an IP VPN newsletter, news on various IP VPN industry happenings, IP VPN whitepapers, webcasts, and customer profiles. Go check it out.

Tags: CLEC, CoS, Ethernet, ip, IP MPLS, IP VPN, MPLS, QoS, TCO, VoIP, VPLS, XO, xo communications

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Original post by nafiz

According to eFluxMedia, Comcast is “working on rehabilitating its name and implementing reasonable management techniques through a new partnership with VoIP service provider Vonage.” Vonage and Comcast said they will work on ensuring adequate management techniques to avoid network congestion to ensure high quality VoIP services.

I should point out that Comcast tarnished their own reputation when they intentionally degraded P2P traffic, particularly Bittorrent, a heavy bandwidth application. According to a 36 page thread on the Vonage Forums that dates back to 2006, Comcast was accused of degrading Vonage’s voice over IP quality intentionally. Comcat has denied these charges, but many Comcast users that have Vonage have had issues.

Whether conspiracy or not, now Vonage and Comcast stated they will have a “direct line of communications” between their network operations centers to resolve customer issues. Umm, so they couldn’t talk to each other easily before, so now they need a special ‘bat phone’ direct hotline?

According to the Free Press, Marvin Ammori, general counsel of Free Press and author of the complaint, issued the following statement:

“We are baffled as to why it was necessary for Vonage to strike a network management agreement with Comcast to guarantee that their services are not degraded or blocked. Such anti-competitive, anti-consumer practices are already against the law. And beyond that, Comcast has been on the record as saying that they do nothing to deter their customers’ use of VoIP.

“This announcement calls into question the company’s honesty about its treatment of competing services. Was Comcast degrading Vonage’s VoIP service before this announcement? And are they continuing to degrade other services that compete with their products? That these questions remain unanswered by today’s announcement is cause for great concern. This collaboration should do nothing to deter the FCC from investigating and stopping Comcast’s blocking other Internet services.”

The partnership with Vonage is supposedly part of Comcast’s commitment to move to a protocol-agnostic network management approach by the end of 2008. Comcast has announced collaboration with Pando Networks for a “P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” (BRR) and participation in the P4P Working Group organized by the Distributed Computing Industry Association.

It all sounds well &amp good, but we′ll see if Comcast lives up to their word to play fair and not mess with IP packets. I for one am not holding my breath.

Tags: bat phone, Bittorrent, Comcast, P2P, VoIP, Vonage

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Original post by nafiz

Image of the famous Times Square Naked Cowboy.

An interesting new IDC Insight report reveals that although residential VoIP services have been available in Australia for the past four years, the uptake in naked DSL has been slow compared with Europe and the U.S.

The Insight report titled Residential VoIP: Let’s Get Naked, attributes the slower uptake to several factors including lack of, and high cost of broadband, poor quality of service (QoS), number portability and high complexity. However, over the past 6-12 months, IDC notes there has been an upswing in consumers moving to residential VoIP services due to many of these inhibitors being overcome.

The biggest factor is the regulatory rules regarding Naked DSL, which enables service providers to offer VoIP over DSL copper lines without the unwanted bundled PSTN telephone line. “A key driver to this is the bundled sell of broadband and VoIP together and more recently, the offering of Naked DSL services, which is a business model that has been enabled via regulation more than technical capabilities,” said David Cannon, Program Manager, Telecommunications at IDC.

Last time I tried to get naked DSL in 2005, my local carrier in Connecticut didn’t allow it. I’d be interested to see if things have changed. I might have been willing to put up with some issues with Vonage (mostly due to Charter my cable ISP) if I could have switched away from Charter to naked DSL. Today, I’m back to AT&T DSL with AT&T’s unlimited voice plan. Yeah, yeah, I know, a VoIP blogger not using VoIP at home? When I was single - Vonage. Married - AT&T PSTN. Answer your question? No? Well go read my ‘Men are from VoIP and Women are from PSTN’ article.

Other highlights from the Insight include:

• Throughout 2007, the Australia residential VoIP market enjoyed strong growth. At the end of CY07, there were an estimated 285,000 residential VoIP subscribers with an estimated value of A$40.67 million.
• IDC believes that the network based VoIP service will become the dominant residential VoIP service offering in Australia over the course of the next 24 months.
• Incumbent SPs in various countries across Europe and the United States have been offering Naked DSL services for the last two years in order to stymie their competitors’ rollout of their own DSLAM infrastructure.
• Many consumers are now more reliant on their mobile phone than they are on their landline phone. A point of frustration for this type of consumer has been that in order to have a broadband connection, you still need to have an active PSTN line. This meant paying two access services fees when wanting only one service.
• Scalability and flexibility are synonymous with VoIP. The functionality that VoIP delivers, even at its early stages of maturity, supersedes that of the PSTN. This means that VoIP is ultimately a better product that also enables fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) and unified communications (UC).

Tags: dsl, naked cowboy, naked dsl, phone, pstn, service, service provider, voip

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Original post by nafiz

The premise behind Amuso, that is publicly launching this week, is to give people a place that they can create their own game shows and let them lose with their vivid imaginations to produce whatever games might snag people’s attention.

Original post by Simon Perry

Blogged about the intriguing Netflix/Roku deal back on May 20, but now an interesting piece on VentureBeat makes it even more (and more!) interesting.

The new Roku box (doesn’t look like much, does it?) lets you stream any of Netflix’s 10,000+ “Watch Now” movies (movies that can be watched immediately over the internet for free with your subscription) to your TV set instantly. However, a new wrinkle may make the device even more attractive — with a simple software download, other services beyond Netflix will soon be able to use it, according to Forbes.

This changes the device from a nice little purchase (it’s only $99), into a potential Trojan horse for digital content in your living room. Of course, it entirely depends on what other services reach agreements to use the device. Roku would only say that other “big name” providers could bring their services to the device with a simple update.

At the same time, Netflix plans to release another box featuring its “Watch Now” service in conjunction with LG later this year. There’s also an intriguing rumor that the service could come to Microsoft’s Xbox 360. 

Tags: Forbes, LG, Microsoft, Netflix, Roku, VentureBeat, Xbox 360

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Original post by nafiz

TheyWorkForYou, the Web site that takes what is said in the UK Parliament and makes it accessible to the citizens of the Web, has added a new feature, synchronising the video broadcast with the MP’s speech.
Jolly good it is too.

Original post by Simon Perry

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Original post by Mike Slocombe

We’re getting more and more Russian spam. A hideous amount of it. For example, we had 10 of them getting through the gmail filter in less than an hour today.
We say spam, because we assume it’s spam as we didn’t ask for it to be sent to us, but mostly because we can’t read Cyrillic, […]

Original post by Simon Perry

Branding opportunities ahoy as Orange unveil their eco-charging tent.

Original post by Mike Slocombe

Survey of instant messaging applications highlights security risks.

Original post by Mike Slocombe