Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Elite Vertu Boucheron 150

The company Vertu, despite the economic crisis that continues to produce elite expensive phones. A new model of Vertu Boucheron 150 created for the Paris jewelry house Boucheron its 150 anniversary. From the technical characteristics of known support for third-generation networks.



The body of the phone is made of wood and trimmed with gold, the keyboard used in the manufacture of sapphire crystals. The kit includes the case of walnut wood, created by a Swiss company Reuge.



the price Vertu Boucheron 150 of more than $ 30000.

OpenCL faster computers with the help of GPU

The specifications of the programming environment (API) OpenCL (Open Computing Language) were published today. It is an open standard that allows use free to use any kind of chips for all sorts of calculations.

Hitherto reserved to the processing of graphics, massively parallel architecture of a graphics card is much more suited to some calculations than a central processor (CPU). The encoding of a video or a simulated meteorological phenomenon are calculated for example a much more effective in conjunction with dozens of processors flow of a graphics card that series with a few hearts CPU.

GPGPU technology, which is to delegate to the graphics card some calculations usually borne by the central processor, have emerged from among AMD and Nvidia have respectively launched CUDA and ATI stream. OpenCL is in turn able to benefit from any kind of chips, as chip signal processing (DSP), and not just graphics cards. It has the advantage of being a standard multi-platform open to all developers can access without payment of royalties, while competing technologies CUDA and ATI Stream require a specific development applications.

A collaboration of some thirty players in the computer, including AMD, Intel and Nvidia, developing OpenCL was initiated by Apple before being assigned to Khronos Group, the consortium maintains for years already OpenGL, cousin of dedicated graphics OpenCL. It will be an integral part of Snow Leopard, the next major version of Mac OS X, which has accelerated its development, which took only 6 months. Nvidia followed by the announcement and has already announced that its graphics cards CUDA take as provided natively support OpenCL. AMD has meanwhile made no announcement, but ATI Stream technology is based on OpenCL, ATI Radeon will probably be compatible.

Microsoft finally, who had already ousted OpenGL to its own technology Direct3D, always alone with DirectX should nevertheless expanded in its next version of support compute shaders, which fulfill the same objective as the GPGPU.

Sony Announces Initiatives to Improve Profitability in its Electronics Businesses

Sony has embarked on a series of measures to strengthen its corporate structure and bolster profitability across the Sony Group, including a significant workforce reduction.

These initiatives are in response to the sudden and rapid changes in the global economic environment.

Particularly within its electronics business, where Sony has been most affected by the acute downturn in the economic climate, the company has already undertaken certain short-term measures, including adjusting production, lowering inventory levels, and reducing operational expenses. Going forward, Sony intends to adjust product pricing to mitigate the impact of the appreciation of the yen, curtail or delay part of its investment plans, and downsize or withdraw from unprofitable or non-core businesses. Furthermore, Sony plans to realign domestic and overseas manufacturing sites, reallocate its workforce and reduce headcount.

Through these measures, Sony will aim to establish a corporate structure capable of delivering estimated total annual cost savings of more than 100 billion yen by the end of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2010.

Specifically, within the semiconductor business, Sony intends to cut investment expenditures this fiscal year by outsourcing a portion of its planned increase in manufacturing of CMOS image sensors for use in mobile phones to third parties.

In addition, following the rapid demand slowdown in television markets, Sony has decided to postpone recently considered plans to invest in production expansion at the Nitra plant in Slovakia, which is one of Sony's sites assembling LCD televisions for the European market.

Based on such measures, Sony is planning to reduce investment in the electronics business by approximately 30% in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2010, compared to its mid-term plan.

By the end of the current fiscal year, Sony plans to cease production at two overseas manufacturing sites, including Sony Dax Technology Center in France, which manufactures tape and other recording media. By further advancing initiatives including rationalizing its manufacturing operations, shifting and aggregating manufacturing to low-cost areas, and utilizing OEM and ODM partners, Sony plans to reduce the total number of manufacturing sites by approximately 10%, from the current total of 57, by March 31, 2010.

Through measures including the realignment of its manufacturing sites, a review of its development and design structure, and the streamlining of its sales and administrative functions, Sony will implement a company-wide (including Headquarters) rationalization. Sony intends to reallocate and optimize its workforce through programs including work reassignments and outplacements.

As a result of these measures, by March 31, 2010, Sony plans to reduce headcount in the electronics business worldwide by approximately 8,000, out of approximately 160,000 as of September 30, 2008. At the same time, Sony plans to reduce headcount in its seasonal and temporary workforces.

Sony plans to outline the anticipated impact of these measures, including anticipated expenses related to their implementation, in Sony's updated forecast of financial results for the current fiscal year to be included in its third quarter earnings announcement, scheduled for January 2009.

Video clerks power new movie recommendation engine

Even as technology threatens the survival of video rental stores, serial entrepreneur Stuart Skorman thinks there's still a place for the movie-matchmaking advice of veteran video store clerks.

To prove his point, Skorman hired more than 20 former video store clerks to pour their collective wisdom into a new Internet search engine, called ClerkDogs, that's being unleashed Tuesday.

Skorman is betting this combination of human intelligence and data crunching will emerge as a more engaging and intuitive alternative to the highly automated movie-recommendation system that has helped fuel the success of online DVD rental leader Netflix Inc.

Netflix spits out recommendations for its 8.7 million subscribers by drawing upon a database of 2 billion ratings that its customers have entered during the past decade. By knowing whether you liked one movie, Netflix suggests others you might enjoy by mining the past preferences and renting patterns of subscribers who watched the same movies.

ClerkDogs also dives into a vast data pool in order to suggest movies, but augments its findings in key ways.

After it asks visitors to enter the name of a movie they liked, ClerkDogs' engine generates a list of suggestions based on a computer-driven analysis of video clerks' insights and written reviews. And for a more personal touch, it lets its users tweak recommendations based on their moods at the time of a request. ClerkDogs users can slide a scale indicating whether they are looking for movies with a little more romance, suspense, humor and other elements contained in the movie they initially selected.

The revisions help ClerkDogs get even closer to a visitor's interests, pulling from the information provided by the video store clerks.

Skorman, a former video store owner, likens the system to having a conversation with a movie buff — something that's not possible on Netflix's recommendation engine because it relies on a strict one- to five-star rating system and doesn't adjust for a renter's changing emotions.

"The reasons people choose certain movies are such a complex thing," Skorman said. "Netflix has done a wonderful job with its system, but it has gone as far as it can go."

Netflix's recommendation engine accounts for about 60 percent of the service's rental requests, a sign that it's doing a pretty good job divining what customers like, Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey said.

Even so, in hopes of making its recommendation engine even more effective, Netflix has been offering a $1 million prize to anyone who can develop a software program that improves upon its matching system by at least 10 percent. After more than two years, the leading entrant in Netflix's contest is within 0.44 percentage points of hitting the target.

"That final stretch is going to be like going up the final 300 yards of Mount Everest," Swasey said.

This isn't the first time that Skorman, 60, has tried to build a better mousetrap for movie lovers.

In the 1980s, he took over a video store in Vermont and expanded it into a successful chain that he sold to Blockbuster Inc. for $3 million during the early 1990s.

A few years later, he moved to the San Francisco area and started Reel.com, an online service specializing in selling movies on videotape and, of course, recommending movies. Hollywood Video bought Reel for $100 million in 1998, generating a $17 million windfall for Skorman.

As much as he liked the money, Skorman had at least one regret. If Reel.com hadn't been sold to a traditional video store chain, he thinks he might have been able to realize his vision of logging DVD rental requests on the Web and then delivering the discs to customers through the U.S. Postal Service.

Netflix embraced the DVD-by-mail concept in 1999, creating the foundation for a company with a market value of $1.5 billion.

While Netflix was revolutionizing the home entertainment industry, Skorman was losing most of the money he made from the Reel.com sale on an Internet education site, Hungry Minds.com, and a holistic drug store, Elephant Pharmacy, that he opened in Berkeley, Calif.

Now Skorman is counting on ClerkDogs to supplement his retirement fund. The San Francisco-based startup hopes to make money by selling advertising and leasing its recommendation system to merchants that rent and sell movies. Services that distribute video through Internet connections and cable boxes are also possible ClerkDogs customers.

"We have been meeting with just about everyone involved in the movie business," Skorman said. "Just about the only one not talking to us is Netflix."

Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 Gets "Private Browsing"

Mozilla has released a public preview of the Firefox 3.1 Beta 2, which includes new features as well as improvements to performance, web compatibility, and speed.

This Beta version, which is intended for developer testing and community feedback, is now available for download.

New features and changes include availability in 54 languages, as well as a new "Private Browsing Mode" that allows you to browse without Firefox storing any traces of where you?ve been.

While you browse the web, your browser usually records a lot of data which will later be used to improve your browsing experience. For example, it records a history of all the web pages you have visited, so that later if you need help remembering a site you visited a while back, it can assist you in finding that site. But hose data can be used to trace your online activities. For example, if your coworker sits at your computer, she can view all of your browsing history, which may not be what you want.

One option would be to do your work, and then clear the data that Firefox has stored for you, such as history, cookies, cache, .... But the problem is that this action will also remove the parts of your online activities data which you don't want to hide, so the history that Firefox records can no longer be used to find a web site you had visited a month before. Private Browsing will help you here.

Private Browsing aims to help you make sure that your web browsing activities don't leave any trace on your own computer. Note that Private Browsing is not a tool to keep you anonymous from websites or your ISP, or for example protect you from all kinds of spyware applications which use sophisticated techniques to intercept your online traffic. Private Browsing is only about making sure that Firefox doesn't store any data which can be used to trace your online activities, no more, no less.

Private Browsing mode will be available from the Tools menu of the FireFox browser.

Other features of the Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 include support for web worker threads and that a new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine is now on by default for web content.

Mozilla has also made improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering and removed the new tab-switching & preview behavior based on feedback from Beta 1 users

Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 also offers support for new web technologies such as the

Blu-ray Sales reach Record Levels in Japan

Latest GfK Retail and Technology Japan figures have revealed that in the first week of November 2008, Blu-ray Disc Recorders have surpassed a 50% market share for DVD Recorders in unit terms.

Looking back to October 2007, Blu-ray Disc Recorders accounted for a market share of 10% and have since exhibited rapid growth.

The average sales price has begun to come down in 2008. In the first week of June 2008, the average sales price of Blu-ray Disc Recorders was between 110,000 ? 120,000 JPY. By the third week of October, it dropped to between 100,000 ? 110,000 JPY.

GfK Retail and Technology estimates that the price will continue to be reduced in the build-up to Christmas and the product may become 'one-to-watch' during the winter sales.

Blu-ray transition outpacing DVD recorders

In addition to this impressive growth, according to GfK?s retail audit survey, Blu-ray Disc Recorders are replacing DVD Recorders 1.5 times faster than DVD Recorders replaced VHS Recorders.

DVD recorders exceeded 10% market share in the fifth week of April 2002 and continued to grow steadily, eventually surpassing 50% after 82 weeks in the fourth week of November 2003. In comparison, Blu-ray Disc Recorders exceeded 10% market share in the fifth week of October 2007 and after 53 weeks, in the first week of November 2008, surpassed 50%.

One of the principal reasons for this quicker rate of change is the rise in sales of Flat Panel TVs, enabling viewers to experience digital high definition broadcasting, accroding to GfK. Blu-ray Recorders can record digital high definition broadcasting without any drop in quality, which has assisted the accelerated demand for this product, GfK added.

YouTube Attracts 100 Million U.S. Online Video Viewers in October 2008

comScore , a leader in measuring the digital world, today released October 2008 data from the comScore Video Metrix service, reporting that U.S. Internet users viewed 13.5 billion online videos during the month, representing an increase of 45 percent versus year ago.

Hulu Moves Up to #6 in Rankings

In October, Google Sites once again ranked as the top U.S. video property with nearly 5.4 billion videos viewed (representing a 40 percent share of all videos viewed), with YouTube.com accounting for more than 98 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 520 million videos (3.8 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 363 million (2.7 percent), and Viacom Digital with 305 million (2.3 percent). Hulu, a joint venture of NBC and Fox featuring full-length broadcast TV programs, ranked sixth with 235 million videos viewed (1.7 percent).

Google Sites Draws 100 Million Video Viewers in October

More than 147 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 92 videos per viewer in October. Google Sites attracted a record 100 million online video viewers, or more than two out of every three Internet users who watched video during the month. Fox Interactive ranked second with 60.8 million viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites (45.2 million) and Microsoft Sites (30.7 million).

Other notable findings from October 2008 include:

  • 77 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
  • The average online video viewer watched 274 minutes of video.
  • More than 80 percent of the 18-34 year olds watched online video,
    higher than any other age segment. The average 18-34 year old online
    video viewer watched 4.8 hours of video during the month, also ranking
    above all other age segments.
  • 99.5 million viewers watched 5.3 billion videos on YouTube.com (53.2
    videos per viewer).
  • 51.2 million viewers watched 520 million videos on MySpace.com (8.0
    videos per viewer).
  • The duration of the average online video was 3.0 minutes.
  • The duration of the average online video viewed at Hulu was 11.6
    minutes, higher than any other video property in the top ten.

Nokia N97 not compete iPhone 3G

The new flagship of the Finnish media company has made some furore in the mobile environment. Should I fear the brainchild of Steve Dzhobsa competition from the new machine? Popular edition of PC World is your opinion on this matter. To learn how persuasive arguments to judge you, dear reader.




  1. The new device is not vnyatnogo name. The absence of a name is not a problem for tehnarey, but ordinary people simply can not feel a really warm feelings to the device with the name «N97» or «N810», if his name is not C3PO and R2D2. The close and familiar type "iPhone", "Chocolate" or "RAZR" has always taken more than a set of numbers and letters.
  2. Features Nokia better, but not so much to choose his unit from Apple. Judge for yourself:
  • 5MP camera with flash
  • 3.5 "resistance touch screen with a resolution of 640x360 pixels
  • Slider with the QWERTY-keyboard
  • 32GB internal memory, with the possibility of expanding up to 48GB

3. The existence of Apple Apps Store. Undoubtedly, there are good applications for Symbian, but the possibility Apps Store with a system of rewards, advertising, a large community of developers and database of 10,000 available applications (minimum 1 / 10 are really good), spoken in favor of buying iPhone.

4. Brand Nokia, formerly clearly associated with smartphones, somewhat lost its popularity among consumers smart devices, while the Apple iPhone and devices from RIM Blackberry naraschivat its market share.

5. Symbian platform is not as fresh as the MAC OS X from Apple and not be compared to an estimated open platform from Google.

6. The interface is somewhat confusing and not as fast as hoped.

7. N97 slightly thicker and not as comfortable with the conversation as the iPhone.

8. iPhone devoted entire site, while the N97 - one of many in line phones Nokia.

9. By that time, as the unit of Nokia available in a broad sell (the middle of next year) and get off the new smartphone from Apple was not long in coming.

First commercial chip for mobile networks LTE from LG

The company LG Electronics today introduced the first chip for cellular phone, which works with networks of standard LTE (4G). According to the manufacturer, this formulation is a significant step towards the creation of the first commercial mobile phones fourth generation (4G). Dimensions of the new chip constitute 13h13 mm.

During the demonstration, provided the chip speed downloading up to 60 Mbps, a speed of sending data from the device up to 20 Mbps. It should be noted that most "fast" commercial mobile phone is currently using HSDPA technology has a speed of 7.2 Mbps. Representatives of LG argue that future mobile phones equipped with such chips will enable download 700 MB of video per minute.

The demonstration used LG mobile phones based on operating system Windows Mobile, reproduce high-quality video using the service VoD (Video on Demand - video on demand). Projections LG, the first LTE network will have to appear in the world by 2010. LTE technology is now experiencing the company Qualcomm Inc., Vodafone Group PLC, Verizon Wireless and KDDI Corp.