We would like to congratulate the engineering team, specifically Gareth Chapman, for their professional manner and a job well done!

The two firms plan to become the first computermakers to take low-cost “netbook” computers to the next level, with the computers which will run Google’s Chrome operating system, accessing all their applications through Google’s web browser and storing data online, rather than on a hard drive. The computers will go on sale in the United States, where they will be priced from $349 (NZ$447), and six European countries on June 15.

But Samsung New Zealand marketing director Rachael Cotton-Bronte said Samsung had no plans to sell them here yet, citing “market receptiveness” and market feedback.

Google “Chromebooks” are expected to appeal most in markets where internet providers offer generous or unmetered broadband traffic caps, but Ms Cotton-Bronte would not say if the price of New Zealand’s broadband was a factor in its thinking.

Samsung’s laptop, called the Series 5, has an Intel 1.66GHz dual core processor and will come with just 16 gigabytes of solid-state storage and a 12.1-inch screen. Battery life is quoted at 8.5 hours and Google has promised the computers will boot up in only eight seconds. Acer’s product has similar specifications with a slightly smaller screen.

Acer New Zealand retail head Cameron Anderson said it might launch a model here, but “probably not for a little while”.

“We will wait and see how it goes overseas. In New Zealand, there is still a little bit of sensitivity about data going in the `cloud’.”

Chromebook users will need to access online applications, such as the Google Apps suite, to do tasks such as wordprocessing. Security and software updates will also be managed in the “cloud”, with no need for users to manually update software or install or run their own anti-virus software.

Google says the computers will become faster rather than slow down. They will also be shareable and instantly replaceable. Consumers will be able to access their applications and data by password from any Chromebook.

While Google is promoting fast boot-times as one of Chromebook’s biggest selling points, the boot performance of Windows-based computers is starting to dramatically improve from the darkest days of Windows Vista, when critics joked it was often possible to walk the dog in the time a computer took to boot-up.

Driving the improvement is a switch from 25-year-old Bios software that acts as the starter motor for PCs to its much speedier replacement, UEFI, and the move from hard disc to solid-state storage.

Courtesy of The Dominion Post

The cheaper end of the US$3 billion (NZ$3.7 billion) videoconferencing equipment market is already suffering from inroads that Skype and other video applications are making in the market, historically controlled by stand-alone conferencing devices in offices.

The pressure on dedicated videoconferencing devices, excluding top-end telepresence rooms, will only increase, said Gartner analyst Jeffrey Mann.

Dominic Dodd, analyst at Frost and Sullivan, agreed.

“Some of the more narrowly focused companies will likely struggle,” Dodd said.

Analysts said companies like Polycom and Logitech were first in line to be hit if Microsoft succeeds in turning Skype more toward enterprises, while companies like Cisco and Hewlett-Packard, which have wider offerings and focus more on the fast-growing high-end of the market, would be little affected.

“I think we’re well positioned here, but if you haven’t got good, big competitors and good start-ups, you’re in the wrong market,” Cisco Chief Executive John Chambers told analysts after the company reported quarterly earnings this week.

The market for high-end offerings, such as telepresence rooms costing about US$300,000 (NZ$ 377,203) each, will grow 19 percent annually through 2015, according to research firm Ovum.

BOOSTING USAGE

Many smaller companies in the industry said Microsoft’s massive bet on Skype would boost take-up of videoconferencing and create new opportunities for them.

“Skype takes the scariness out of videoconferencing,” said Ashish Gupta, marketing chief at venture-backed Vidyo, whose software platform is used by HP and Google among others.

“It makes videoconferencing really obvious and part of everybody’s life. As people use videoconferencing at home they are going to ask for it in the enterprises,” Gupta said.

Polycom Vice President Sue Hayden said Skype was a consumer offering that should not affect the enterprise market.

“We don’t see the Skype consumer play disrupting the enterprise performance,” she said, adding the acquisition would not have an impact on Polycom’s business with Microsoft.

“We have a number of contractual arrangements with Microsoft that are fully in place, fully intact. This does not change that at all,” Hayden said.

Analysts at William Blair & Co – which estimates Polycom derives some 5 percent of its revenue from Microsoft – said the deal would not affect Polycom in the near future but there were longer term risks.

“It could cap Polycom’s growth potential within the Microsoft ecosystem, especially as Skype scales up to serve the enterprise market (though this will not happen overnight) and hardware devices are viewed as less important,” analysts said.

- Courtesy of Reuters

Today’s chip surfaces are packed with the tiniest electronic switches the laws of physics allow, but Intel Corp. says it is blowing past those limits with a breakthrough, three-dimensional transistor design it revealed this week.

Analysts call it one of the most significant developments in silicon transistor design since the integrated circuit was invented in the 1950s.

It opens the way for faster smartphones, lighter laptops and a new generation of supercomputers – and possibly for powerful new products engineers have yet to dream up.

Minuscule fins jutting from the surface of the typically flat transistors improve performance without adding size, just as skyscrapers make the most of a small square of land.

“When I looked at it, I did a big, ‘Wow,’” said Dan Hutcheson, a long time semiconductor industry watcher and CEO of VLSI Research Inc.

“What we’ve seen for decades now have been evolutionary changes to the technology. This is definitely a revolutionary change.”

Intel CEO Paul Otellini said that “amazing, world-shaping devices” will be created using the new technology.

Computers are already doing things that were almost unimaginable when Intel co-founder Gordon Moore made his famous prediction in 1965 that computers should double in power every two years.

The axiom, known as Moore’s Law, has held true ever since as computers have gotten cheaper, smaller and more powerful.

Engineers believe Intel’s new transistors will keep the axiom going for years to come. Chips with the 3-D transistors will be in full production this year and appear in computers in 2012.

When Moore’s Law was first coined, the most advanced computers were large, mainframe-type machines that took up entire rooms and were best suited for narrow tasks done one at a time.

Today we have smartphones that let us carry around the Internet in our pocket, supercomputers that have beaten Jeopardy! and chess champions, and even experimental cars that drive themselves.

 Technologists entertain visions of even deeper integration of artificial intelligence into our lives as computer technology advances, such as robots performing surgery.

Transistors, tiny on/off switches that regulate electric current, are the workhorses of modern electronics.

 They’re to computers what synapses are to the human nervous system. They have become faster over the years thanks to new materials and manufacturing techniques, but Intel’s latest advance is a redesign of the transistor itself.

A chip can have a billion transistors, all laid out side by side in a single layer, as if they were the streets of a city. Chips have had no “depth” – until now.

On Intel’s chips, the fins will jut up from that streetscape, sort of like bridges or overpasses.

The fins give the transistor three “gates” to control the flow of electric current, instead of just one. That helps prevent current from escaping.

There’s a limit to how much current a chip can take, and the new design allows more of that power to be spent on computing rather than being wasted.

Intel has been talking about 3-D, or “tri-gate,” transistors for nearly a decade, and other companies are experimenting with similar technology.

Wednesday’s announcement is noteworthy because Intel has figured out how to manufacture the transistors cheaply in mass quantities.

Other semiconductor companies argue that there’s still life to be squeezed from the current design of transistors, but Intel’s approach still allows it to advance at least a generation ahead of rivals such as IBM Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Intel’s approach carries some risks because the technology is untested on the mass market.

But Doug Freedman, an analyst with Gleacher & Co., said Intel’s approach might actually reduce chip defects if the multiple gates make the transistors more reliable.

“Intel takes big gambles when it knows what it’s doing,” Freedman said.

The reduced power consumption also addresses a key need for Intel, which is the dominant maker of chips for personal computers but has been weak in the growing markets for chips used in smartphones and tablet computers.

Intel’s current chips use too much power for it to be competitive in those markets, and the 3-D chips could help it become more of a player.

Transistors are microscopic, but their performance is felt with every click of a mouse, tap on a smartphone or download from a website. The faster they twitch, the faster a computer “thinks” – and sucks up power.

They need to get smaller without leaking too much power, a worrisome issue as the materials reach the atomic scale and get worse at blocking current from escaping.

Intel’s advance does not add a complete third dimension to chip-making – that is, the company can’t add an entire second layer of transistors to a chip, or start stacking layers into a cube.

That remains a distant but hotly pursued goal of the industry, as cubic chips could be much faster that flat ones while consuming less power.

And the technological advance Intel has achieved won’t guarantee success, as Intel has learned in repeated attempts at cracking the mobile market.

The performance expectations and power requirements for phones and tablet computers are not as high as those for PCs.

Other chip makers such as Qualcomm Inc. and Texas Instruments Inc. have entrenched partnerships with cellphone makers that Hutcheson, the industry watcher with VLSI Research, said will be tough to overcome.

“When it comes to the mobile market, they have their work cut out for them,” he said. But “this gives you the transistors to build the next great system.”

- Courtesy of AP

The difference between a website with practically no sales and visits, and a flourishing website that generates significant traffic and profit ultimately lies in promotion and marketing. In fact, many websites even get away with slow, unattractive, and unimpressive content simply due to their online visibility. Of course, they won’t be performing as well as they could.

A study by Oneupweb shows that as many as 88% of websites are not optimized for marketing and promotion! If a company gets, say, 50 visitors a day to an intelligently developed website – they should expect some of these 50 visitors to make a purchase or request whatever the site may offer. Now, if a company starts to get hundreds or thousands of visitors to their website every day, even a poorly developed website lacking many of the above points will probably outperform the website with 50 visitors a day. Traffic, generated by online marketing and promotion is the most important aspect of a successful and profitable web presence.

If you build it, will they come?

With billions of websites on the internet, and new pages being added at an estimated rate of 7.3 million every day, how will one more website make a difference?

There are many factors that largely affect the performance and results of a website:

• Website appearance and general image
• Website load time – the time it takes users to see what they are looking for
• Navigational Structure of the web site
• Web site content and it’s presentation
• Conversion Allowance – The ability to allow people to find what you offer and obtain it
• Cross browser/platform compatibility – ensuring every visitor has the same experience

But, even the most beautifully, strategically, and intelligently designed web site will not make a bit of difference if no one knows about it and no one can find it.

Obtaining a professional and profitable Web Presence

With 7.3 million new pages appearing online every day, it’s obvious a lot of people are creating content for the web. Everyone from middle-school students to college professors are creating and uploading websites, and the quality of web content varies as largely as it’s authors. To make matters worse, a website seemingly perfectly developed to an untrained eye commonly contains one or many elements which will inevitably lead to the failure of any significant success.

Once a company realizes the potential a strategic online presence can make, the next step is planning how to go about it. Completely ensuring a professionally developed website and internet presence is extremely difficult for the average business owner, as determining which factors are most important to the projects success and therefore hiring the right company is often practically impossible.

Website Development, online marketing and internet promotion techniques have been steadily and rapidly evolving since the boom of the internet. Rapid changes in technology and increasing technical requirements make staying on top of website development increasingly more difficult. Furthermore, search engine marketing and online promotion of websites changes so frequently that they may never be taught in a course room to any affect.

Mark Pincus has amassed a $US1 billion fortune selling bits and bytes that have no intrinsic value to an army of virtual farmers and city planners.

Every month, 275 million people sign on to one of Pincus’ addictive games, paying real money to buy virtual seeds and crops in Farmville, construct fake buildings in CityVille or expand their criminal empire in Mafia Wars.

Pioneers of the “virtual goods” market, Pincus’ company Zynga – just three years old – earned $850 million in revenue last year and is now valued between $US7 billion and $US9 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.

It’s not a new phenomenon – for years people have been spending real money to buy their own virtual islands and toys in the online world Second Life and others have spent thousands on rare items in online games like World of Warcraft. Last year, a virtual space station in Entropia Universe sold for $US330,000.

But with Zynga, virtual goods have hit the mainstream, with everyone from stay-at-home mums to university students shelling out big for intangible items. The immense success of his virtual empire has seen Pincus join the Forbes Billionaires List this year with a net worth of $US1 billion.

‘WHO WOULD PAY FOR NON-EXISTENT THINGS?’

If you can’t understand why anyone would pay real money for fake goods, you’re not alone. Even Gigi Wang, chair emeritus of MIT/Stanford Venture Lab (VLAB) – which connects high-tech entrepreneurs with investors, technologists and venture capitalists – initially dismissed the idea.

“When I heard about virtual goods several years ago, I just thought it was stupid – who would pay for non-existent things?,” Wang told Fairfax Media’s Digital Directions conference last week.

But then Wang discovered that Farmville players were spending $US100 million a year on virtual tractors, seeds and animals. She cited research estimating that in the US alone the virtual goods market overall will reach $US2.1 billion this year.

It’s an enviable business model, as the marginal cost of producing an additional virtual tractor or sword costs the virtual goods companies virtually nothing, allowing for huge margins.

It’s become such a lucrative market that some buy virtual real estate as investments, while others hire armies of people working in sweatshop conditions to farm for virtual gold, which can then be traded for real money.

Facebook is further fuelling the growth of virtual goods with its currency called “Facebook Credits”, which can be bought using credit cards and are spent within Facebook apps.

The legal issues thrown up by virtual goods have been far from intangible. Last year four virtual property owners sued Second Life developer Linden Lab for giving them the false impression that they actually owned their online holdings.

In 2009, Taser International sued Linden Lab for allowing players to sell virtual tasers. But the case was dismissed after changes were made to remove Taser’s trademarks.

HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PLAYERS

The AppData.com website reveals that city-building simulation CityVille and Farmville – available through Facebook or mobile apps – have 93 million and just under 50 million monthly users, respectively, making them the top two apps worldwide.

A spin off of Farmville set in the US old west rather than on a farm, FrontierVille, has just under 19 million users and Mafia Wars has a little less than 13 million.

A Sydneysider, who wished to be known only as Kim, 49, said she used to spend hours every day on Farmville and Cityville but recently was forced to cut down. She has so far avoided spending real money on the game but has invested countless hours of her time.

“At the moment I’ve had to cut down because I ended up actually getting myself tendonitis in my arm,” she said in a phone interview.

SIGN OF A DOTCOM BUBBLE?

Some have suggested that Zynga’s huge multi-billion-dollar valuation is evidence of a new dotcom bubble that is almost certain to burst. Adding further fuel to this view is skyrocketing valuations of Facebook and Twitter, which are pegged at $US65 billion and $US10 billion ,respectively.

But Sydney-based Niki Scevak, an entrepreneur who created real-estate site Homethinking.com, has been following industry developments for some time and is convinced this is not the case.

The last dotcom boom and bust just over a decade ago saw very young companies going public early, with little revenues to show for their huge valuations. This time around, finance is coming from private means and the valuations are justified by giant revenue streams.

“Facebook and Zynga generate large amounts of cash, while growing at huge growth rates at scale,” said Scevak, who is also the driving force behind Sydney tech entrepreneur mentorship program Startmate.

“There isn’t a lot of cash being burnt (Groupon, Facebook and Zynga aren’t even using [investors'] money to fund normal operations, it’s for existing shareholders to sell out or for acquiring other companies), companies are staying private longer than they did and traditional internet firms are trading a bargain prices. If you want a bubble then take a look at Australian housing!”

Courtesy of  Sydney Morning Herald

We are pleased to welcome Tony Hannon as support to the Executive  Team of TBD  Holdings. Tony will assist TBD Holdings with growth and  gearing;  ensuring foundational compliance for future growth – welcome  Tony!

A big thank you to all those that participated. Your contributions will allow us to ensure our high standards are met. And