Apple
Incorporated
is
preparing
to
roll
out
a
larger,
12.9-inch
version
of
its
iPad
for
2015,
with
production
set
to
begin
in
the
first
quarter
of
next
year.
The
report
comes
as
Apple
struggles
with
declining
sales
of
its
10-inch
and
7.9-inch
tablets,
which
are
faltering
as
people
replace
iPads
less
frequently
than
expected
and
larger
smartphones
made
by
Samsung
Electronics.
Apple
is
expected
to
introduce
larger
versions
of
its
4-inch
iPhone
next
month,
although
the
company
has
not
publicized
plans
for
its
most
important
device.
===================================
Supermicro MicroClaud Solution
Up to 24 Modular UP Server
Nodes in 3U
These advantages have helped Supermicro
establish itself as a true leader in server
technology. The full range of Supermicro
products stand above the competition on
their own merits by delivering
industry-leading performance at extremely
competitive prices. With the most extensive
product line in the industry to meet the
widest range of customer needs, it is easy
to understand why Supermicro has become a
world leader in server design and
manufacturing.
===================================
Total Solution Event -
Amsterdam 2013
IBM Total
Solution Event is the place to be, if you want
to stay informed about the latest technologies
that continue to bring innovation and set the
right business context. This event will
be held on Tuesday, March 12 through Thursday,
March 14,2013 in Amsterdam.
Parallel tracks and breakout sessions presented
by the International Technical Support
Organization and WW experts.
This 3-days education event is free to IBM
clients residing in Belgium, Luxembourg, and the
Netherlands.
===================================
BlackBerry® Z10 @ Rogers
===================================
Google will start
charging small businesses for Google Apps
Google has announced a significant decision
that will see it cease allowing users to
sign up to its Google Apps service free of
charge.
Clay Bavor, director of product management
for Google Apps, explains that the move is
being made in order to focus the quality of
the user experience on the needs of paying,
business users, with fuller support.
However, those that have already signed up
for the service for free will still be able
to use it as before.
“When we launched the premium business
version we kept our free, basic version as
well,” Bavor explains. “Both businesses and
individuals signed up for this version, but
time has shown that in practice, the
experience isn’t quite right for either
group. Businesses quickly outgrow the basic
version and want things like 24/7 customer
support and larger inboxes. Similarly,
consumers often have to wait to get new
features while we make them business-ready.
”
Google is now encouraging users to sign up
to Gmail, storage service Google Drive and
its other consumer-facing products, instead
of Google Apps. Those that do want to use
Google Apps can get the premium version,
which remains $50 per user, per year.
Google says that the end of the free version
will allow it to focus on providing
business-grade service, including 24/7 phone
support for issues, a 25GB inbox and its
99.9 percent uptime guarantee.
===================================
Logitech Bluetooth®
Illuminated Keyboard K810
Introducing: Logitech Bluetooth
Illuminated Keyboard K810 for Windows®,
Android® and iOS®—a stylish, backlit
keyboard with one touch easy-switching
between your PC, tablet, and smartphone
Switching made simple: Logitech
Easy-Switch™ allows you to quickly change
between typing on your PC to typing on your
tablet or smartphone with the touch of a
button.
Better typing—day or night: Keys are
sharp, bright and always easy to read thanks
to auto-adjusting illumination which dims or
brightens depending on the amount of light
in the room.
===================================
Fastest supercomputer in
Canada
===================================
Make your phone your wallet
Rogers bringing
mobile payments to Canadians
When it comes
to mobile banking, Canadians are the fastest
adopters of mobile apps. Did you know that more
than 2.5 million people in Canada are using
mobile banking applications for daily banking?
That’s 38% of smart-phone users with data plans.
Rogers announced an agreement with CIBC to
launch Canada’s first mobile payment solution,
allowing Canadians to pay with their CIBC credit
card at the checkout counter using their Rogers
“Near Field Communications” (NFC)-enabled smartphones. This means that later this year,
Rogers customers will be able to use this
payment capability at merchants across Canada
where contactless credit card payments are
accepted.
This announcement is the first time a bank and a
wireless carrier have joined forces to offer a
commercially available mobile payments solution
to Canadians that leverages the SIM card inside
an NFC-enabled Rogers’ smartphone. This new
payment solution aligns to guidelines announced by the Canadian Bankers Association
for mobile payments in Canada
===================================
Supermicro®
3U SuperServer® Leveraging 24TB Fusion ioMemory
Achieves Over 10GB/s Throughput
This dual Intel® Xeon®
processor E5-2600 based platform features up to
ten 2.4TB Fusion ioDrive2 Duo
(F01-001-2T41-CS-0001) ioMemory products with up
to 3GB/s and 935K IOPs leaving an additional
PCI-E 2.0 x4 (in x8) slot available for a
high-bandwidth network expansion card such as
Supermicro’s 10GbE or FDR/QDR InfiniBand add-on
cards.
“Supermicro designs
solutions such as 11x PCI-E slot SuperServer for
maximum performance, efficiency and
expandability and open platforms create
groundbreaking opportunities like this
collaboration with Fusion-io,” said Wally Liaw,
Vice President of Sales, International at
Supermicro. “This new ultra high performance
24TB storage solution is the foundation for new
products in our pipeline and we are looking
forward to incorporate upcoming Fusion-io
technologies into select HPC servers for even
greater storage density at higher IOPs for the
most demanding, cutting edge applications.”
===================================
Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet LTE Edition
Samsung has
released the LTE edition of its Galaxy Note 10.1
tablet, but only in korea.
With Galaxy
Note 10.1, Samsung gets a fresh start in tablets
===================================
Dell and Smart Grid
A smart grid is an
electrical grid that uses information and communications
technology to gather and act on information, such as
information about the behaviors of suppliers and consumers,
in an automated fashion to improve the efficiency,
reliability, economics, and sustainability of the production
and distribution of electricity
Dell’s Smart Grid Data
Management Solution combines the high performance computing,
networking and storage components needed to handle the
massive flow of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) data
generated by transmission and distribution (T&D) systems.
When analyzed back at the utility’s operations centre, PMU
data can alert grid operators to a current or imminent
outage – enabling proactive or more speedy response to
maintenance challenges. Ultimately, this analysis works to
improve the health and reliability of power networks, which
are coming under increasing pressure from the integration of
distributed, renewable energy resources. The new offering is
a joint initiative: the OSIsoft PI System provides a
scalable platform for the analysis of high speed PMU
measurements that stream from the grid in hundreds per
second; and Dell provides the infrastructure needed to
support the analytics application.
===================================
IBM
and Power7+processor
 IBM
Boosts Security, Cloud and Analytics Capabilities With New
Power Systems, Storage and Mainframe Technologies
•Power Systems family
infused with new POWER 7+ processor for greater security and
fast business analytics, capacity on demand, and
significantly improved performance.
The announcement is
part of IBM’s continued focus on Smarter Computing systems
aimed at solving the varied and intensifying challenges
organizations are facing, from security vulnerabilities to
managing ballooning data volumes that are expanding through
social and mobile technologies.
IBM customer Toyota
Australia is one example of a company with complex data
management needs. Running a sophisticated just-in-time
manufacturing, logistics and parts operation at its Altona
plant in Melbourne, Toyota Australia uses a series of IBM
Power servers running SAP software on AIX to manage and
analyze data about vehicle parts availability, shipping
estimates, inventory levels and sales planning. The
manufacturing process is entirely reliant on this
infrastructure in order for production operations to run as
efficiently as possible so that not only can its dealerships
receive car deliveries on time to meet consumer demand but
it can meet export market demand.
According to Toyota
Australia CIO James Scott, "One of our company's top
concerns is data management delays. This has the potential
to negatively impact our production line, costing us tens of
thousands of dollars in lost productivity, and the profits
of our 250 dealerships across the country. Having a fast,
reliable technology infrastructure is critical to the
success of our business and IBM gives us the tools we need
to support the organization most effectively."
===================================
Hurricane Sandy
Effects IT Technology
 BANGALORE: Despite
loss of multiple work days and shut-downs across Wall Street
financial institutions, revenue for Indian information
technology and business process outsourcing companies is
unlikely to be impacted in any significant manner on account
of Hurricane Sandy, analysts said.
"It's not going to have any recurring impact, so investors
in IT sector can be assured," says Sandeep Muthangi, vice
president at Mumbai-based brokerage IIFL. He said that
though a number of queries have come from investors on a
possible impact on Indian companies due to the hurricane, he
doesn't see any siginificant fallout.
Most IT-BPO companies as well as their clients in banking
and financial services sector have shut offices in New York
and New Jersey this week where the storm has caused heavy
rains and flooding.
(Read More: The Economic
Times )
============================================================================
IT and The SMB:
Coping with Consumerization
SMB
space, adopts app style and design
Steve Heck CIO of Microsoft Canada
Steve Heck Said "There will be an increase in the number of
small companies that can play in the SMB space, SMBs can
bring a product to market and compete with the bigger guys
based on the merits of a good idea and not based on who has
a deeper bank account."
" The days of buying a CD and coming home
and loading, the program are gone. The SMB space is adopting
a consumer feel, even though people are using it for
business" said Heck.
He Said "It is going to open up a lot of
opportunities for the SMB space. SMB companies will enjoy
the ability to get an enterprise grade experience that they
have't in the past, in ways that are affordable."
Article Publisher: IT in Canada Oct
2012 Volume3 Number 5
(Read More:
www.itincanada.ca)
***
FYI (for your
information)
SMB stands for Server
Message Block which is a network application that enables
the sharing of resources, like a file server or printers.
SMB does not provide network connections. It relies on
network services to carry its traffic, which usually follow
the TCP/IP networking model.
SMB has evolved into other networking systems, which are
called “dialects” of SMB. SMB was created in the early
eighties. It was originally meant to run over a NetBIOS
network. The early development of the PC was a collaboration
between Inter, IBM and Microsoft. The DOS operating system
of the PC was the responsibility of Microsoft and they soon
took over responsibility of developing SMB, which was the
networking strand of the DOS operating system. NetBIOS
networks give a name to each computer or device on the
network, called a host name. TCP/IP networks use a numeric
addressing system for networks. As TCP/IP networks are now
much more common than NetBIOS systems, SMB usually runs on
NetBIOS over TCP/IP.
(Read more:
www.ehow.com)
======================================================================
Computer Bots
"Bot" is derived from the word
"robot" and is an automated process that interacts with
other network services. Bots often automate tasks and
provide information or services that would otherwise be
conducted by a human being. A typical use of bots is to
gather information (such as web crawlers), or interact
automatically with instant messaging (IM), Internet Relay
Chat (IRC), or other web interfaces. They may also be used
to interact dynamically with websites. Bots can be used for
either good or malicious intent. A malicious bot is
self-propagating malware designed to infect a host and
connect back to a central server or servers that act as a
command and control (C&C) center for an entire network of
compromised devices, or "botnet." With a botnet, attackers
can launch broad-based, "remote-control," flood-type attacks
against their target(s). In addition to the worm-like
ability to self-propagate, bots can include the ability to
log keystrokes, gather passwords, capture and analyze
packets, gather financial information, launch DoS attacks,
relay spam, and open back doors on the infected host. Bots
have all the advantages of worms, but are generally much
more versatile in their infection vector, and are often
modified within hours of publication of a new exploit. They
have been known to exploit back doors opened by worms and
viruses, which allows them to access networks that have good
perimeter control. Bots rarely announce their presence with
high scan rates, which damage network infrastructure;
instead they infect networks in a way that escapes immediate
notice.
Virus
A computer virus is a small
malware that propagates by inserting a copy of itself into
and becoming part of another program that spreads from one
computer to another and leaving infections as it travels and
attached to an executable file, which means the virus may
exist on a system but will not be active or able to spread
until a user runs or opens the malicious host file or
program. When the host code is executed, the viral code is
executed as well. Normally, the host program keeps
functioning after it is infected by the virus. However, some
viruses overwrite other programs with copies of themselves,
which destroys the host program altogether. Viruses spread
when the software or document they are attached to is
transferred from one computer to another using the network,
a disk, file sharing, or infected e-mail attachments.
Worms
Computer worms are similar to
viruses in that they replicate functional copies of
themselves and can cause the same type of damage. In
contrast to viruses, which require the spreading of an
infected host file, worms are standalone software and do not
require a host program or human help to propagate. To
spread, worms either exploit a vulnerability on the target
system or use some kind of social engineering to trick users
into executing them. A worm enters a computer through a
vulnerability in the system and takes advantage of
file-transport or information-transport features on the
system, allowing it to travel unaided.
Trojan
A Trojan is another type of
malware named after the wooden horse the Greeks used to
infiltrate Troy. It is a harmful piece of software that
looks legitimate. Users are typically tricked into loading
and executing it on their systems. After it is activated, it
can achieve any number of attacks on the host, from
irritating the user (popping up windows or changing
desktops) to damaging the host (deleting files, stealing
data, or activating and spreading other malware, such as
viruses). Trojans are also known to create back doors to
give malicious users access to the system.
Unlike viruses and worms, Trojans do not reproduce by
infecting other files nor do they self-replicate. Trojans
must spread through user interaction such as opening an
e-mail attachment or downloading and running a file from the
Internet.
(Read More: www.cisco.com)
| 
Hi-Tech
