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AMD To Launch Lower Cost Ultrabook Competitor Platform
Can Wintel Win The Ultrabook Market?
40+ Super Secret OS X Lion Features and Shortcuts
Four Reasons Why The Web Hates The U.S. Anti-piracy Act
New Technical Article from 1394 Trade Association Shows How to Use Apple Target Disk Mode with FireWire
Monitors: Bigger Isn't Always Better
Power Mac G5: The Economical Alternative to a Mac Pro
Going Google-Free: The Best Alternatives to Google Services on the Web
Mozilla Slows Down Frequency Of Firefox 9 Upgrades
Ivy Bridge Quad To Debut In April 2012
Nova Scotia Students Welcome First Paperless Classroom
Ocoee Middle School Replaces Slates, Electronic Whiteboards, with Doceri on the iPad from SP Controls
AMD To Launch Lower Cost Ultrabook Competitor Platform
Digitimes' Monica Chen and Joseph Tsai report that as Intel gears up to launch its next-generation Ivy Bridge platform for Ultrabooks (and the MacBook Air) in April, hoping to lower the average Ultrabook price to US$799-999 with enhanced performance, AMD is getting set to launch in June its Trinity-based platform compete in the Ultrabook/MBA market. They say that AMD has codenamed its light-and-slim laptop catregory "Ultrathin," and is projecting an overall cost 10-20% lower than for computers built to Intel's Ultrabook spec., and to compete against Intel's Ivy Bridge CPU family in 2012 and the next generation Haswell in 2013. Chen and Tsai note that the new AMD platform is expected to attract vendors such as Hewlett-Packard (HP), Acer and Asustek Computer.
The Digitimes reporters say that 75 new ultrabooks based on Intel's platform are expected in 2012, plus another 20 units based on AMD's Ultrathin spec., although the latter are not anticipated to offer any significant innovations in terms of performance or function compared to Intel's Ivy Bridge-based ultrabooks. Just a cost advantage of US$100-200 lower than Intel's Ultrabooks.
For the full report visit here:
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120116PD219.html
Can Wintel Win The Ultrabook Market?
ZNet has posted a "head-to-head" feature moderated by Jason Hiner pitting two veteran commentators in a debate over whether Intel-powered Ultrabooks can beat Apple at the game it created four years ago with the MacBook Air.
PC advocate Ed Bott makes the case for the affirmative, while longtime Apple fan Robin Harris argues the contrary.
Bott acknowledges that Apple has been kicking ass in the high-end portable PC market over the last couple years and that MacBook Air has become deservedly popular for its exquisite engineering, but predicts that ultrabooks will be a big hit with PC buyers who like the MacBook Air form factor but prefer Windows to OS X.
Harris counters that Apple dominates over-$1,000 PC revenue with a 90% share, and that the same tired "cheaper, not better" strategy that lost PC vendors the profitable market segments in high-end PCs in an Ultrabook iteration amounts to another profitless bit of me-too-ism.
Ed and Robin will post their closing arguments today and Jason Hiner will declare a winner on Thursday. Readers can cast their vote and jump into the discussion in the comments forum.
You can check it out at:
http://zd.net/x0IKhL
40+ Super Secret OS X Lion Features and Shortcuts
AppStorm's Joshua Johnson has posted a really super-useful feature highlighting interesting functionality in OS X 10.7 Lion that is either completely hidden or just enough below the service that many users don't even know it exists.
Johnson says he's spent hours combing through Lion for secrets and put out a call on Twitter for others' favorites, bringing the findings together in a post profiling over forty such hidden Lion tricks and tips.
You don't want to miss this one.
You can check it out at:
http://bit.ly/Ae9cBm
Four Reasons Why The Web Hates The U.S. Anti-piracy Act
The Globe and Mail's Omar El Akkad notes that the World Wide Web is feeling a lot less wide today during a 12 hour span during which sites like Wikipedia, Reddit and the Internet Archive go dark and inaccessible to the tens of millions of users who visit every day.
El Akkad notes that the unprecedented blackout is part of one of the most sprawling digital protests undertaken to date, with many of the world's biggest tech companies banding together with civil liberties activists, librarians and myriad other groups to protest two pieces of proposed U.S. legislation targeted directly at the way the Web works: The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act.
El Akkad summarizes four central reasons why opponents so bitterly obkect to the proposed legislation:
1: Scope
2: Cross-Border Effect
3: Unintended Consequences
4: Reach
For full elucidation and discussion of these points, visit:
http://bit.ly/xLS4gX
New Technical Article from 1394 Trade Association Shows How to Use Apple Target Disk Mode with FireWire
The 1394 Trade Association has published a new technical article describing how to use FireWire in Apple target disk mode (TDM) applications.
Authored by Brian Karr, a 15-year engineering veteran with extensive audio experience, the article describes the various uses of TDM beyond copying files between machines including system backup and restore, disk troubleshooting and repair. Also, TDM will present any optical drives, to another Macintosh, which can be useful for MacBook Air owners or for Mac PCs that have older optical drives that do not support dual-layer DVDs, for example.
TDM also incorporates a timesaving feature for users who want to upgrade to a larger hard drive, or to migrate files and settings to a new Mac. Most, if not all, of the tools users will need for all of this are included in OS X, according to the article.
Entitled "Using Apple's Target Disk Mode with FireWire," the article can be found at this URL:
http://bit.ly/yGG58F
For more information, visit:
http://www.1394ta.org
Monitors: Bigger Isn't Always Better
Low End Mac's Dan Knight says that while bigger isn't always better - eg: the success of the iPhone and the MacBook Air - it often is, or not.
Dan profiles a concise history of the evolution of Apple computer display sizes, resolutions and aspect ratios, from the original Macintosh's 9" 3:2 ratio 512 x 342 pixel black & white display, to today's the 27" iMac with its 2560 x 1440 pixel widescreen display and an erstwhile Apple 30" 2560 x 1600 display (now discontinued).
Dan observes that a 16:9 aspect ratio has become the norm for the iMac and Apple's 27" displays, and except for the iPad with its 9.7" 1024 x 768 display, the 4:3 aspect ratio display is history at Apple, while the iPhone and iPod touch are the only remaining products with a 3:2 display. Widescreen has taken over. He notes that since his work style is to have different applications running on the right and left sides of the display, for him wide is good, making overlap less of a problem.
However, he's gone back to 4:3, having discovered when he switched from his old 1024 and 1050 pixel high displays to the new 1200 pixel high ones is that he absolutely loves the additional vertical space, and that he'll take an extra 150 pixels of height at the cost of 80 pixels of width any day, noting that as much as the world has embraced 16:9 displays for watching TV and recording video on modern video cameras, it's just not the ideal format for a lot of other kinds of work, concluding that while bigger can be better, but when it comes to computer displays, it has to be bigger in the right direction.
For the full commentary visit here:
http://bit.ly/AmwlOB
Power Mac G5: The Economical Alternative to a Mac Pro
Low End Mac's Sebastian M. Patting says:
...Even though I am pretty much stuck on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger (and happy with it), I closely watch recent developments in the Mac market. Being a fan of desktop computers, I'm especially interested in the Mac Pro. It does look great and has an incredible speed and graphics capability.
However, my interest in buying one erodes pretty fast every time I see the price tag. First off, those machines aren't exactly cheap, and second, I would also have to buy a lot of software again, because my older software won't work on the new machine anymore. Some of my programs date back to the era of Mac OS 9, and I rely on Classic Mode to execute them within Tiger. And then there is the question: Do I really need a new machine? If so, for what? Just because it's "new"? Or is there really a reason?
Reality is, I can still do everything I need or want on my Power Mac G5.... even six years after it's release.... and it's very economical.
For the full commentary visit here:
http://bit.ly/wsg0qT
Going Google-Free: The Best Alternatives to Google Services on the Web
Lifehacker's Whitson Gordon says:
Face it: Google runs your life. The search giant turned web ecosystem owns your email, calendar, and even your voicemails. Your most important data lives on Google's servers. What you may not realize is that, despite the quality of Google's products, someone else is doing it better - and placing all your eggs in Google's basket isn't necessarily the best thing.
Gordon takes a look at alternative services you can use in place of Google's webapps based on some digging and a lot of experimentation to find the best alternatives to Google's most popular services
You can check it out at:
http://lifehac.kr/xvNY3N
Mozilla Slows Down Frequency Of Firefox 9 Upgrades
A note on the Mozilla.org Firefox wiki says they're still tracking issues for a possible 9.0.2 release (more info at: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases/Firefox_9/RRRT), and that Firefox 10 beta 2 went out to the beta channel last Friday, but they're are doing a staggered/low rollout have turned off automatic updates again for a bit to look at data, and are probably going to do something similar for releases in the future as well
For more information, visit:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/2012-01-03
Ivy Bridge Quad To Debut In April 2012
Fudzilla's Fuad Abazovic says that Intel's Core I 3000, the worlds first 22nm processor, will start shipping in April for both desktop and notebook segments, noting that first to launch will be a quad-core that will find its way into many desktop and notebook computers, with the dual-core launch to follow roughly a month later.
For the full report visit here:
http://bit.ly/zkFS3I
Nova Scotia Students Welcome First Paperless Classroom
CTVNews.ca report that teachers at a Nova Scotia middle school hope their students can ditch pencils and books, but keep on learning, trading paper notepads for computerized netbooks.
Chester Area Middle School has been able to acquire just enough computers for their grade 8 and 9 students to partner up and get to work.
Two weeks into the experiment, a first in Nova Scotia and so far limited to English classes, students have embraced the opportunity to log on to send and receive assignments online, take quizzes and tests, and even file their homework, according to the report.
For the full report visit here:
http://bit.ly/xCDxIr
Ocoee Middle School Replaces Slates, Electronic Whiteboards, with Doceri on the iPad from SP Controls
At Ocoee Middle School in Central Florida, electronic whiteboards and slates are being replaced with Apple iPads and Doceri software from SP Controls. Teachers can move around the classroom while presenting lessons right from the iPad, and students no longer need to leave their seats to take their turns at the board.
Ocoee Middle School is Florida's state technology demonstration school, rebuilt from the ground up in 2000 to show what could be done to create a 21st century facility using only the states allotted funding under its Smart Schools Initiative. The school is recognized as an Apple Distinguished School and remains on the leading edge of technology that improves the learning environment. As a technology showcase school, Ocoee Middle hosts regular tours for visiting educators and administrators to see real-world examples of effective use of technology in the classrooms.
This month, educators attending the Florida Education Technology Conference will see Doceri as well as other technology innovations in use in Ocoee Middle School Classrooms. FETC will be held Jan. 23-26 at the Orange Convention Center in Orlando. Those attending FETC can sign up for a complimentary Ocoee Middle School showcase tour at registration by 5pm on Wednesday Jan. 25. Busses leave for Ocoee at 9 am on Thursday Jan. 26.
More information about the Ocoee Middle School Tour at FETC is at:
http://bit.ly/ydvTiV
Replacing Stand Alone Interactive Whiteboards With iPads and Doceri
The team teaching environment at Ocoee Middle allows teachers to share technology resources. Each classroom quad has access to 10 Macbooks, 22 iPod touches, 10 iPads and 32 PC computers. Anthony San Filippo is the instructional technology coach for all things Mac, and keeps on the lookout for new ways that teachers can incorporate the iPads into the classroom. After downloading a trial version of Doceri, San Filippo realized the iPad could now replace the electronic whiteboards and slates that had been in use, providing all the functionality and mobility with the added bonus of being able to see the projected image on the iPad screen for more intuitive access.
"Using Doceri on the iPad, you can see in your hand what the class sees on the screen," explains San Filippo. "Using the slates we had before, you had to look up at the board as you wrote. With Doceri I can see what I'm writing. This makes a tremendous difference for a teacher who has enough distractions in a middle school classroom."
Doceri Desktop software resides on the classroom computer Mac or PC and its accessed via WIFI from the Doceri Remote iPad app. From the iPad, teachers can access the Internet or any program resident on the classroom computer and open, manipulate and annotate over any static file including Powerpoint presentations, pictures, documents and Web pages. Doceris powerful lesson creation platform allows teachers to create hand drawn lessons in advance, or on the fly, saving and replaying them for all of their classes.
All 12 of Ocoees math teachers are actively using Doceri in their classrooms, as well as an additional 12 teachers in language arts, social studies and science classes.
"We're starting to roll Doceri out to the rest of the teaching staff this month," says San Filippo. "The staff sees how easy it is to use Doceri and how beneficial it can be to teach while standing right next to a student who becomes easily distracted."
San Filippo provides the information about a new technology option via the schools technology newsletter, and in the case of Doceri, meets one-on-one with those interested.
Doceri is so intuitive, he says, that it doesn't take long to get them started.
Most of those already using Doceri at Ocoee Middle School are accessing files on their classroom computers. Language arts, science and social studies teachers are using Doceri to annotate PowerPoint presentations and other files. Doceri is especially popular in the math department. Teachers can create their daily lessons and record and replay their strokes on the iPad, creating stop points to pause the flow of the lesson or back up through the steps of a math equation to show where an error has occurred.
Visit http://www.Doceri.com for more information including demonstration, how to and case study videos as well as a 30 day free trial of Doceri software.
For more information, visit:
http://www.doceri.com/
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