Oracle Debuts its VM Virtualization Software Amid New Competition
You'd think there was a virtualization conference this week. But as it just so happens, three companies are vying for status in this growing market: market leader VMware, the perennial up-and-comer Microsoft, and a newcomer with a familiar ring to it: Oracle.
"The virtualization market is exciting right now, and we're glad to be a part of it," an Oracle representative told BetaNews at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. There, Oracle unveiled Oracle VM, a virtualization program promoted as three times as efficient against compositing products.
Yahoo Strengthens Global Mobile Presence
Yahoo solidified its stake in the mobile services space across both Asia and Latin America on Tuesday, with the company announcing deals and new services for consumers in both regions.
In Asia, the company struck deals with nine carriers to provide Yahoo-branded services to customers, as well as debuting a version of its Yahoo Go offering in Traditional Chinese to users in Taiwan.
Former FCC Chair Supports Satellite Radio Merger
XM and Sirius trotted out former FCC chairman Reed Hundt to drum up support for the proposed merger of the two services. Hundt served as chair from 1993 to 1997, and played a large part in formulating the licensing agreement and getting it approved. Hundt called the merger "pro-competitive" and said that the market had changed since the ground rules for the licenses had been laid down. Most notably, he said that apart, the companies were unable to mount serious competition to terrestrial radio as was initially feared.
The reasoning for the initial two licenses was that the business model was not clear at the time. "It was never the case that these service rules were intended to be written [in] concrete or, like the Constitution of the United States, changed only through an elaborate process," he said. Instead, Hundt said that the rules were intended to get the industry off to a good start, and make it competitive to traditional radio, which it so far has not successfully done.
VMware Server 2 Beta Now Open
VMware has launched a public beta of Server 2, the latest version of the California company's software that allows physical servers to be partitioned into multiple virtual machines. Using a web-based management system, this version of the software supports over 30 guest operating systems, including Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 beta, Vista, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and Ubuntu 7.10. 64-bit guest operating systems on 64-bit compatible processors are also supported.
VMware Server 2 supports up to 8GB of RAM per virtual machine and up to 2 virtual SMP processors, has enhanced support for virtualized USB 2.0 devices, and supports VMI communication between virtualized operating systems and the virtualization layer. The beta of VMware Server 2 can be downloaded on the company's site.
Next Windows for Supercomputers Enters Beta
Demonstrating it can indeed rename a product with something that sounds pleasing and not so euphemistic, Microsoft took the wraps off its replacement for Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 this morning. It will be called Windows HPC Server 2008, and today, the company taped it out for the second half of next year.
In its announcement, the company invoked the phrase "Top 500" as though Windows had any claim to it. This morning's performance rankings from the University of Mannheim were less than stellar, with Compute Cluster Server only taking six slots. So Microsoft this morning emphasized not only the change of name, but a change of tune, gently positing the theory that perhaps the Top 500 test doesn't gauge real-world performance.
DivX to be Added to PlayStation 3
DivX said Tuesday that its codecs will be added to Sony's PlayStation 3, allowing the device to play back videos in the format. The company said it is currently working to certify the console to play DivX, although gave no time frame as to when the PS3 will be certified. Currently about 100 million certified devices have already been shipped to the market, and the PS3 is expected to "significantly expand that number."
A separate software update enabling DivX playback capabilities will be released in the "near future," the company said. Additionally, developers will be able to use the technologies within their games thanks to the addition of DivX to version 2 of the PS3 SDK. That was released by Sony on November 2.
Microsoft Announces DAISY for Word
Microsoft has made another affirmation of its commitment to providing the visually impaired with useful software, announcing this morning it is developing a plug-in for Microsoft Word that translates documents into DAISY XML, a standard for digital talking books.
DAISY works by creating a digital audio file which narrates the document's content that maps to text. Refreshable Braille displays comprised of digitally-activated pins are also made to correspond with DAISY files, so the reader can know how words are spelled, or to promote quicker content scanning.
AMD, IBM Lose Ground to Intel in Latest Top 500 List
The news last year at this time from the University of Mannheim was the surge of supercomputers with relatively simple 2.4 GHz AMD Opteron processors, among the school's list of the world's Top 500 Supercomputers. So if big shifts qualify as news, then AMD has to face the music this time around with the release this week of the November list: Its fastest supercomputer on the list no longer rates #2, but #6; and instead of 113 AMD-based systems on the full list, there are now just 79.
Meanwhile, the mighty BlueGene/L from Lawrence Livermore Labs not only retains its champion status but surges into the stratosphere. Since last year, it's only gotten bigger, adding to its Power-based processing bulk by more than 39%, to 212,992 simultaneous cores. The payoff was swift and immediate: BlueGene/L turned in an Rmax rating of 478,200 gigaflops per second - a 30.3% speed gain over last year and the year before, and nearly halfway to the cherished teraflop goal post.
New Zune Hardware, Software Starts Shipping
Microsoft debuted its redesigned Zunes on Tuesday, hoping to make inroads into a market that it has so far little affected.
Overall, Zune players account for around three percent of the entire portable music device market. Up until now, the company only sold hard drive-based devices, which have long since fallen out of favor with consumers.
$199 Linux PC a Success at Wal-Mart
A $199 Linux-based PC from Everex has proven to be quite a success at Wal-Mart, with the computer selling out online and at most store locations. Reviews have also been overwhelming positive, with one buyer calling it "a wonderful first computer for anyone."
The Everex machine runs a variant of Ubuntu Linux called gOS, which is designed to be simple and directs users to Google services and applications. OpenOffice.org 2.0 is also included for working with documents. On a hardware level, the $199 PC features a 1.5 GHz processor from Via, 512MB of RAM, 80GB hard drive and a combination CD writer and DVD drive, making the purchase price quite a deal.
Jango Steps Up to Compete with Pandora
Personalized free radio service Jango launched its public beta on Monday. Using a single artist as a "seed," the site generates a list of similar artists, which the user can be tailored to his or her preferences and create "stations" to share with others...Sound familiar?
If Jango does show a difference from the Music Genome Project's Pandora, it's in the social networking aspect, though it may be slightly less developed than it is on Last.fm. Users create their stations and profile, meeting like-minded friends in the aptly-named "Like Minds" category. Users can see who is listening to their stations live, and communicate with them via "thank you" notes.
IBM Buys Cognos Outright, Acquires Strong SOA Position
IBM announced today the $5 billion dollar cash acquisition of Canadian business intelligence and performance management company Cognos, giving IBM a reputable product line, 4000-person staff, and impressive portfolio of contracts in one fell swoop.
Cognos is an Ottawa company that develops software and systems to help businesses manage information and resources. It has had contracts with such varied groups as Bank of America, Boeing, Mercedes-AMG, Toshiba America, The Office of Budgeting and Planning of Washington DC, and The Royal Army of the Netherlands.
Europe to Consider Splitting Telecom, Internet Access Divisions of Telcos
The European Commission will consider tomorrow a plan to fundamentally restructure the way a European telecommunications company manages and offers services to its customers. A new and broad-reaching centralized regulatory framework may mandate that companies separate their Internet data and telephone voice communications services into distinct divisions, in the name of maintaining fair competition with providers who can't offer bundled services.
"I have come to the conclusion that the instrument of functional separation should be added to the remedies tool box of national telecom regulators, to be available for the stubborn cases where other remedies have been tried, but have failed to deliver the desired regulatory outcome," stated EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media Viviane Reding, in a speech last October 11. There, Comm.
Yahoo Debuts Open-Source Distributed Computing
Yahoo is launching an open-source project that it hopes will advance the science of distributed computing, which will also leverage its work in Hadoop. The project is an open-source distributed computing effort of the Apache Software Foundation, of which the Sunnyvale, Calif. search company has lead development on. Yahoo said it also plans to allow use of its 4,000 processor supercomputer for work on the project.
The first customer of the project will be Carnegie Mellon University, which will do various types of diagnostics on the system including performance evaluations, information retrieval tests, and testing its use for large-scale computer projects. Yahoo plans to open up the supercomputer for use by other groups in the future, it said. The company says the offering of its supercomputer for such users is important as many academic researchers do not have the hardware or software necessary for Internet-scale systems software research.
Open Handset Alliance Releases Android SDK
The Open Handset Alliance released its software development kit on Monday, giving developers an early look at the user interface behind the so-called "GPhone."
"Android" is built on the Linux 2.6 kernel, and is built to take advantage of the mobile internet. The OHA also said it wanted to make development for it easy by providing components that are extendable, replaceable, and reusable.
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