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January 19 Seagate: Laptop HDDs to Sell Better than Desktop Ones by 2011Storage specialist Seagate Technologies published a second-quarter revenue of $3.4 billion, with a net income of $403 million. Laptop sales had a tremendous impact over the final sales figures as they have continued to grow for some years now.
The quiet battle between the notebook and the desktop PC segments is about to end with the mobile segment taking over. It is the logical result of progress, as more and more people want to have access to their data wherever they might roam.
More powerful portable PCs can easily compete with their desktop counterparts, but at the same time they can be easily carried into a laptop bag, a purse or, more recently, directly into a pocket. These are the main reasons that should slow down and even stop desktop PC sales and make their mobile rivals bloom.
The hard drive industry expects a further increase in the near future, and Seagate estimates that laptop hard disk drives shipments have increased about 20 percent from 2000 to 2007, from 25 million to almost 100 million last year. Seagate managed to push 50 more million hard disk drives on the market in three months alone.
"During the quarter, Seagate achieved record shipments and experienced some capacity constraints, underscoring the phenomenal growth of digital content in both the consumer and commercial markets," said Bill Watkins, Seagate's CEO. " The storage industry remains one of the world’s most important and exciting industries. We are confident Seagate’s vision, technology, and operational excellence will drive us to continued strong financial and operating performance in the March quarter and double-digit year-over-year growth."
Seagate estimates that notebooks and mobile devices will be the future, and will treat them accordingly. The company tipped the market that it is already working on a 500GB notebook drive that will arrive in the second quarter of 2008, while some other "consistent" surprises, such as the 750GB and 1TB drives, are slated to arrive in the late-2010 – early-2011 interval. January 18 AMD Wants Another $3.2 Billion Chip Plant In New YorkAdvanced Micro Devices' chairman and CEO Hector Ruiz plans a trip to Albany, New York in the next month, to discuss the details about another new chip plant. The announcement was made during an Albany-Colonie Regional Chamber of Commerce luncheon, by Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, who also claimed that Hector Ruiz is interested in visiting the Luther Forest Technology Campus in Malta. "Hector called," Bruno said. World's number two x86 CPU manufacturer munches on the idea of building a $3.2 billion chip plant. The initiative was announced back in 2006, when the company considered Malta as a possible location for the new fab. The final deadline for the company to commit to the project without forfeiting $1.2 billion in state incentives is July 2009. The official response from Advanced Micro Devices was that nothing has changed since the company announced that it would build the plant here. However, the business community is waiting for a sign to show them that AMD will build the chip plant on their territory. According to Bruno, Ruiz will return the next month to have another round of talks. "Ruiz wants to come to Albany some time in the next month," said Joseph Bruno. Advanced Micro Devices spokesman Travis Bullard confirmed that Bruno and Ruiz met and talked about the fab, but he refused to disclose further details of the conversation. However, Bruno admitted: "He [Ruiz] wants to come up here and get together in Albany. He wants to visit Luther Forest." This might not be the right time for AMD to build another fab, given its precarious financial situation at the moment. Yesterday, the company published a report containing its last quarter revenue. The chip manufacturer registered a quarterly revenue of $1.770 billion, a net loss of $1.722 billion and an operating loss of $1.678 billion. Still, if the company decides to build the fab in Malta, that would translate into about 2,000 new jobs. January 16 Google Applications Offered by Wireless Service ProviderThe company founded by wireless pioneer Craig McCaw yesterday announced that it would probably start offering its customers applications from the Google array, such as e-mail and calendar, as of the second quarter of this year.
The Google services offered by Clearwire will include every implementation a user might find when accessing them with a desktop system, for example Gmail will also have the Google Talk instant message service.
The move is pretty interesting as it comes hot on the heels of Sprint Nextel, the no. 3 U.S. mobile provider, announcing in late November that it was ending the collaboration with Clearwire while letting all their customers know that they would still be able to roam each other company’s networks. The one thing the two have in common is that they both use an emerging wireless network technology known as WiMax.
The "roaming" mentioned might have not been enough, so McCow’s firm yesterday announced that it would be following in the footsteps of Sprint and signed an agreement with Google. The news upped the price for Clearwire’s shares by 25 cents, 1.8 percent, having it stable at 14.24 dollars in the morning Nasdaq trade.
After failing to strike a deal with Verizon, one of the biggest wireless carriers on the North American continent, Google said that it would be pushing into the ranks of the smaller ones in order to gather them all under its flag and work its way up from there. Yesterday’s announcement is the best example of that happening, despite the fact that it doesn’t follow the Mountain View based company’s plan to the letter.
Seeing it in motion just makes me wonder just how longer the big wireless carrier companies will be able to hold a stand against the assault that will be sure to follow when their clients see that smaller firms offer something they don't . Not long, I’m guessing. January 13 George of the Jungle Swings onto PS2, Wii and DS This SpringNow that Christmas and New Year's Eve have come and gone, developers and publishers are focusing on their next holiday lineup and Atari is one of the first to reveal it. Easter will see the renowned publisher delivering three exciting titles for Sony's PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's Wii and DS, one of which is George of the Jungle. The adventure game is to be released this Easter for the upper mentioned platforms.
The King of Swing is Back! – take a vine and ride with George the undisputed King of the Jungle. George lives in and protects the jungle of Mbebwe, a wild playground packed with quirky creatures, vicious villains and wacky wilderness adventures. His jungle family includes his best buddy, an Ape named Ape, friends Ursula and Magnolia, his faithful dog Shep (actually an elephant) and Tookie Tookie Bird, says the official description.
All you could expect from an Atari title such as George Of The Jungle is of course missteps, mayhem and monkey business. Actually the lines below express those very same features, in greater detail. Have a look:
Key Features
- Swing, Run, Jump, Climb and Charge your way through exciting adventures as George of the Jungle!
- Based on the classic Jay Ward Series and the highly anticipated new animated series airing on Nickelodeon UK.
- Join George on his hilarious quest through the jungle – dangerous to some, a playground to George to interact and explore.
- Interact with the whole gang – Ursula, Magnolia, Dr. Scott, The Witch Doctor, Shep and of course Georges’s Best Buddy ‘Ape’.
- Battle hostile monkey tribes, ferocious crocodiles, tiki warriors, and many other entertaining enemy encounters.
Atari has two more titles up its sleeve for release during the Easter holidays. We're talking about two DS exclusives. Those are "Crayola Treasure Adventures" and "Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys!" We'll be disclosing some information on both titles shortly.
Remember, George of the Jungle is set for release this Spring, around Easter to be precise, for Sony's PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's Wii and DS. The DS port of George of the Jungle should feature a bunch of extras and a different control system (probably some mini-games too) so stay posted for updates from Atari on the handheld version. January 11 CES 2008: From Touch to Gestures – UI InteractionBack in May 2007, Microsoft introduced a new product category, making Surface commercially available. The Redmond company managed to keep the Windows operating system at the core of surface computing, by including a Windows Vista powered machine into Microsoft Surface. At the 2008 International Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas, Chairman Bill Gates emphasized once again technology's tendency to shift toward a development trajectory that would literally put products "in touch" with users. Surface is an illustrative example of how the Redmond company comes to satisfy the need for a more hands-on interaction.
Gates focused on the power of interaction that natural user interfaces deliver, blurring the lines associated with the traditional interaction models, provided by the mouse and the keyboard. "Just in the last two years we've started to see the emergence of other modes of interaction. Touch on the Windows PC, touch on the iPhone, the Surface device that we're talking about. We started to see speech, - the Tellme capability - built into the phone, the Ford Sync, where you get to talk and interact with your media or your phone capabilities", Gates stated.
At the bottom of this article, the embedded video features a presentation from Mark Bolger, Director of Marketing, Microsoft Surface Computing. The demonstration replicates what Bill Gates has done on stage during his last keynote address at CES 2008, on January 6, 2007. Microsoft Surface is currently planned to become available in restaurants, hotels, public entertainment venues etc., in the spring of 2008, and only in the US. The Redmond company has indeed shipped the table top computer in early 2007, but building and customizing Microsoft Surface applications to tailor specific customers proved quite a task. And one that pushed Surface into this year.
"The reaction to those natural interface implementations has been very dramatic. People are very interested in a simpler way of navigating the information. So the pen, with ink, touch, visual recognition, all of these come together with the other elements to create very new experiences. Gestures so that you can get things done, sitting in front of the TV set. So we're just at the beginning of this, and this is something the software industry will build into the platform, so individual developers don't have to go off and do that complicated work. Even areas where we haven't thought about software empowerment, like the retail experience: walking in and picking a product you want to customize, or home automation is finally, I think, simple enough that we can bring it forward with natural user interface", Gates added.
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