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Virtualisation Creates New Business Hype

Posted on 12. Jan, 2011 by Louisa.

Through 2010 virtualisation and cloud hosting was the talk of industries across the UK.

With the economy becoming a little more solid, businesses in 2011 through 2012 will be looking more and more at new initiatives for money saving, with higher spending budgets for operating systems, servers, hardware, and software.

Virtualisation is creating a buzz. It’s a flexible way for businesses to work; it’s greener so healthier for the environment than physical servers; reduces operating costs therefore can save energy, provided the entire server is shutdown (not just a percentage of it); improves risk of downtime so improves chances of rapid disaster recovery; and even saves space – but is it just a new ‘trend’?

Upgrading systems to a virtualisation infrastructure really isn’t just hype in our book, and many others’. It brings businesses large and small, on-demand services with direct access to the companies software and communications whilst remaining secure.

Allowing companies to expand with minimum expenditure is why the amount of business changing their infrastructure to a virtual one is set to rise over the next couple of years.

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Samsung Galaxy Tab Price War Wages On

Posted on 15. Dec, 2010 by Paul.

You’ve got to love a price war. Some shops are happy to make a loss on fairly high ticket items in order to entice consumes into shops, to benefit from ongoing sales of accessories and games, and often just to get their names in the papers and try to win back some of the consumer love that they’ve been missing out on in recent months. The latter seems to be the case in the latest round of what has become one of the greatest bits of price warring that the consumer electronics market has seen.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab was always seen as being the main threat to the market dominance held by Apple’s iPad but the thing that put just about everybody off was the price. It’s true that the Galaxy Tab offers some features that the iPad doesn’t but the initial GBP600+ price tag was massive to say the least and made it more expensive even than the most expensive iPad offering.

However, straight out of the traps, retailers were seemingly aware of this and dropped the price to a more reasonable GBP529. It was then dropped to just under the GBP500 mark with Dixons being the first to offer it at 460 and Amazon quickly following suit. Amazon had taken it a little further with a reduction to the current level of 449 but flailing HMV have managed to steal a march on their opponents by offering the tablet PC at GBP429.

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Angry Birds Christmas And TRON: Legacy Apps

Posted on 29. Nov, 2010 by Paul.

The app marketplace has really come alive with hot games of late. The incredible success of Angry Birds, which is now being readied for a console release, has shown other developers that the mobile phone app is a viable framework on which to build a game and developers are listening and taking note, finally creating some great quality games for the various mobile operating systems.

Angry Birds itself continues to revel in its success and the news that a Christmas version will be released on December 11th. We’re fairly sure that mobile gamers will lap it up like they have everything else to do with the insanely addictive game.

TRON: Legacy Lifecycle is aiming to benefit from the renewed popularity in the TRON film and fans of the original game will remember the LightCycle battles that you could partake in. Now you can take on others with your own lightbeam and force them to crash to gain points.

If your thing is reading rather than playing then Virgin are releasing a new iPad magazine that might interest you (then again, of course, it might not). The magazine is called Project and will feature news on just about every topic including entertainment, fashion, and business.

The Pleasure Engine Turbo for Blackberry allows you to enjoy 15 different settings of vibration rather than the chaste selection of just one. You can use it to massage parts you can’t reach, albeit quite small parts. Enough said.

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T3 Awards Results Are In – Apple Wins A Hatful

Posted on 12. Oct, 2010 by Paul.

The T3 awards are an annual list of awards that are voted for by the tech loving, gadget savvy reader of T3 magazine. This year there has been around three quarters of a million votes placed on a variety of categories that includes the new app of the year.

Apple, as has become traditional, features heavily and even picked up the Gadget of the Year award with the iPad tablet PC. However, despite victories for the iPad, the iPhone, and the Apple app martetplace as well as the Apple Mac they didn’t pick up the Gadget Brand of the Year which instead went to HTC.

The iPad won the Innovation of the Year Award as well as the overall Gadget of the Year. The iPhone 4 won the Commuter of the Year Award and the Apple MacBook Pro won the Computer of the Year Award. Apple Store was Retailer of the Year giving the brand five top awards.

HTC also performed well picking up the Phone of the Year award with the HTC Desire. Somewhat surprisingly they also took the Gadget Brand of the Year ahead of many people’s favourite Apple.

App of the Year went to Google Maps Navigation while Camera of the Year was awarded to the Panasonic Lumix GF1 and Camcorder of the Year was won by Sanyo Xacti CS1. The T3 Design Award was given to the Samsung UE55C9000 which is a 3D TV with web apps a plenty but the TV of the Year honour was given to Panasonic for its Viera TX-P50VT20B which is a 3D plasma TV.

T3 Magazine

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Microsoft Announce New Windows Phones

Posted on 11. Oct, 2010 by Paul.

Microsoft releases its new Windows Phone 7 operating system at the end of this month and they have today announced the phones that will be packing it, the companies that will be offering them, and which phones will be available where in the world. Unusually, the UK and Europe will enjoy the earliest release along with the Asian market while the US will just have to sit back and wait roughly a couple of weeks before they can get their hands on the latest smartphones.

According to T3 Magazine, the HTC 7 Surround is one of the more uniquely featured phones from the range. Not only does it offer quality picture clarity and image resolution as well as a kick stand that points to the phone’s primary use as a media viewer but it also features a slide out Dolby Mobile speaker unit to further enhance the quality when watching movie clips, TV, and other streaming media on your mobile phone. It would prove an extremely expensive one but it could even be used as a digital photo frame if you were that way inclined.

The Operating System itself offers Xbox Live access, which is a whole new feature for the smartphone market, and one that Microsoft hopes will bring gamers on board as their new smartphone buying best friends. It also has the Zune music player and Microsoft Office. The problem is that while we will be getting a number of HTC Phone 7 mobiles it looks fairly unlikely we’ll be getting this one.

T3 Magazine

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Now You Can Demand 3D Movies From Virgin And Get Them

Posted on 28. Sep, 2010 by Paul.

Possibly in some kind of bid to take some of the shine off the Sky 3D TV channel launch, Virgin has jsut released its own 3D offering as Virgin viewers can now buy 3D movies on demand. The two viewing models differ quite significantly and there are obvious benefits and drawbacks to both.

Virgin On Demand 3D will be exactly that, and will essentially enable viewers to rent a 3D film for 24 hours. The service will only be avaialble to those with the HD set top box that is capable of receiving 3D transmission but nevertheless it won’t strictly be necessary to pay for any special package in order to watch the films. However, with a single film costing

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Aston Martin Is Cooler Than The iPhone… Again

Posted on 28. Sep, 2010 by Matt.

The CoolBrands council is an organisation that compiles a Cool 500 in the UK which lists the 500 coolest and most influential brands to be found in the country. The list typically contains everything from cars to champagne and smartphones to designers.

Aston Martin, despite being nearly 100 years old, is a regular feature at or very near the top and having won it three years in a row previously was only ousted by the iPhone 3GS in last year’s list. The Warwickshire based car manufacturer will be pleased to be back at the top again making it four years from five that they’ve been crowned the coolest brand in the country.

Apple shouldn’t be too disappointed in the overall results though, as they feature 3 times in the top 20. The iPhone comes 2nd beating the Blackberry which is in fourth place, and the iPod comes in 3rd making it the highest featured bit of non-smartphone tech in there. The Apple brand itself also features at 13th which tops off a decent performance – although you can iamgine Steve Jobs smarting a little at being beaten to the most coveted spot.

Ferrari are at number 9 and Mini is down in number 16 while Harley Davidson is in 6th spot. Bang & Olufsen, every tech lover’s dream brand, takes the final position in the top 5.

Which do you think is cooler – Aston Martin or the iPhone?

Maybe you’ve got both, in which case, we hail you.

The Drum Magazine

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