Showing 41 - 50 of 74
IT industry lays off staff, more to come
Life, James Hein, Published on 29/01/2014
» I am reading more and more articles about different IT organisations dropping staff. The latest is Intel, which estimates it will drop 5,400 workers in 2014 after last year, when they were hiring new staff. Acer is another company that will be scaling down this year, as well. I expect to see more bad news like this in the coming year.
Will IT firms tighten their belts in 2014?
Life, James Hein, Published on 08/01/2014
» It is just after New Year and things are quiet in the IT world as people reflect on the past and try to work out what is coming in the future. One of the stories that caught my eye was that Hewlett-Packard is planning to make 34,000 positions redundant by the middle of the year. The problem is that HP is not selling its products _ at least not in the volumes required to keep the positions active. They blame this on a contraction of the PC market, poor enterprise demand as companies tighten their belts, competitive pricing pressures and poor currency exchange rates. I suspect that HP will not be the only company to tighten its belt in 2014.
Myforecasts and how they fared in the end
Life, James Hein, Published on 25/12/2013
» It's that time of year again where we look back and review what the past 12 months brought us _ and check how well I did with my predictions from this time last year. While I forecast that the Galaxy S4 would do well against the iPhone, I didn't expect Apple to fall as far as it did this past year, compared to other firms, in terms of overall market position and sales. The 5S was indeed a catch-up for Apple and had no wow factors at all, causing some users to move away from the Apple line. The 5C was a sales failure and the iPad mini didn't do very well at all against the less expensive equivalents. As expected, Apple is still actively involved in litigation and trying to secure as many ridiculous patents for itself as possible instead of focusing on true innovation.
Drones target US shoppers
Life, James Hein, Published on 11/12/2013
» Duck, because that buzzing sound you hear might be the new delivery drones from Amazon. OK, here in Thailand they are unlikely to ever be seen, but in the US Amazon has plans to deliver packages up to 2.4kg within a 10km range of their distribution centres. Dubbed "Prime Air", this is still in the concept stage with all kinds of hurdles to pass before implementation. First off they need a reliable, cost-effective delivery drone. Another group is doing a similar thing in Haiti but in this case they are delivering medicine. This trial has had problems with mechanical failures due to humidity, dust and temperature. The next hurdle is the requirement for navigation ground stations, licenses to fly drones in a metro area, power line avoidance systems and crazy bird attacks. Yes, I did make that last one up. Given the current restrictions in all likelihood any realised solution will be deployed in a non-US country first.
Spies like us
Life, James Hein, Published on 20/11/2013
» Does anyone else find the current rhetoric around countries spying on each other hypocritical? Everyone does it, either officially or unofficially, and every country spies on its neighbours, enemies and even allies in the name of national interest. History shows us that neighbours _ and Thailand is well aware of this _ can turn on you at any time so you have to keep tabs on them. In the past the only way to do this was using human intelligence, reading letters and intercepting telegrams. These days emails are read, phones are tapped and servers are hacked in addition to using regular human intelligence. To pretend otherwise is just plain silly. For the moment the US National Security Agency just happens to have the biggest and fastest computers to do this with.
USA? It's the United Spam of America
Life, James Hein, Published on 30/10/2013
» Hands up if you know which country is the biggest spammer in the world? No, not China; they're fifth. The winner of this year's inglorious gold medal goes to the US which generates over 14% of the world's spam emails, nearly triple that of Belarus, which lies in second place. Besides advertising dodgy products, many carry malicious attachments designed to make your computer _ and sometimes personal life _ miserable. If you were wondering when the first spam was sent, this is attributed to Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, who were lawyers that back in 1994 sent immigration service offers to all the Usenet groups at the time. The biggest problem in the US is the large number of unprotected computers that get used as spambot hosts.
Yahoo update fails to bring much change
Life, James Hein, Published on 23/10/2013
» I'm not a fan of the latest update to Yahoo! Mail. I keep needing to refresh the inbox to make the emails appear, even after upgrading to the Yahoo-friendly version of Firefox. They have also done a Microsoft by rearranging everything so that regular users now have to retrain where they look for different options. Intrusive ads seem to have no problems displaying at any time. The update I have most eagerly been awaiting is support for sub-folders, so that I can organise my messages, but there's been nothing on that front as yet. The recent alterations have been more about the look and feel and allowing for themes rather than any substantive changes. At the time of writing this, a forum called "Tell us what you think about Yahoo! Mail" had received requests from over 31,000 users asking for tabs to be brought back (the reason many people decided to stick with Yahoo rather than migrate to Gmail). Other visitors to that forum had complaints about useability, some describing the latest update as a big step backwards.
Can you spot the difference in the latest iPhone?
Life, James Hein, Published on 02/10/2013
» Reports on the iPhone 5S keep coming in and they're quite mixed, with even a few Apple lovers seemingly jaded by the lack of obvious improvements. My favourite so far is a rather professional-looking clip of a man who's holding two phones, one in each hand, and he keeps getting confused as to which is the new model.
110-inch TV is proof size does matter
Life, James Hein, Published on 18/09/2013
» One of the best things about being involved in this industry is the continuous stream of new goodies I get to look at. The IFA gadget show was held recently in Berlin with the usual range of new devices on display. A Cliff's Notes-type synopsis follows.
Samsung unleashes 4K video recording
Life, James Hein, Published on 04/09/2013
» It seems like every time I fire up the computer there is another new smartphone or mobile device announcement. This week it is the Koreans and the Chinese. The Samsung Galaxy Note series has been very popular all over the world, but especially in Hong Kong. The latest version has a good-size screen and a battery that lasts long enough for most people. So what do you add to such a device? Samsung has decided that 4K video recording will be the way to go. The plan is that buyers will then rush out and buy a Samsung 4K TV to play the images on. By the time you read this Samsung will have announced more details, but one prediction is 24-bit audio support. The problem here is that the camera lens will still be a tiny thing so I doubt the resulting video will be anything close to a real 4K recorder in quality like those Canon has just released across their new range.