New Tech Stuff for 2008

Analysts Speculate IT Tech Trends for 2008 by: Anne Sych
What are the experts predicting for tech trends in 2008? At the recent Gartner Symposium/ITxpo held last October in Orlando, more than 6000 senior business and IT strategists from virtually all major industries gathered for the industry's largest conference to gain the latest advice on driving profits and performance with IT. Attendees rely on the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo for their annual planning and to gain insight into how their organizations can best use IT to address business challenges and improve operational efficiency. Reflecting Gartner's very latest research findings, the analysts projected the 10 technologies likely to play a 'strategic' role in 2008. Gartner defines a strategic technology as one "with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years." In addition Gartner also looks at "high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt." "Companies should factor these technologies into their strategic planning process by asking key questions and making deliberate decisions about them during the next two years," said David Cearley, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "Sometimes the decision will be to do nothing with a particular technology. In other cases it will be to continue investing in the technology at the current rate. In still other cases, the decision may be to test/pilot or more aggressively adopt/deploy the technology. The important thing is to ask the question and proactively plan." Here's a look at the top 10 tech trends, and what Gartner had to say about them: Green IT: The focus of Green IT that came to the forefront in 2007 will increase in 2008. As the impact on power grids, carbon emissions from increased use and other environmental impacts are under investigation, companies should be mindful of potential regulations that could limit the building of data centers, and should be prepared with backup plans for handling growing data demands. Unified Communications: At present only 20 percent of the installed base with PBX has migrated to IP telephony, with more doing some sort of trial testing. Gartner says that over the next three years the majority of corporations will migrate to Internet Protocol telephony, resulting in a major change in voice communications. Business Process Modeling: Top-level process services must be defined jointly by a set of roles (which include enterprise architects, senior developers, process architects and/or process analysts). A key to success will be an organization's ability to bring these roles together, whether they be process or service designated. Gartner also expects business process management software suites to better complement SOA applications development. Metadata Management: Over the next three years, companies working to integrate both customer data and product data will link these master data management efforts together in an overall enterprise information management (EIM) strategy. According to Gartner "This critical part of a company's information infrastructure will enable optimization, abstraction, and semantic reconciliation of metadata to support reuse, consistency, integrity and shareability." Metadata management, Gartner notes, also extends into SOA software development projects with service registries and application development repositories. Virtualization 2.0: Virtualization technologies can improve IT resource utilization, but with the addition of automation technologies-with service-level, policy-based active management-even greater improvements are possible. "Resource efficiency can improve dramatically, flexibility can become automatic based on requirements, and services can be managed holistically, ensuring high levels of resiliency," Gartner says. Mashup and Composite Apps: Over the next 3 years, Web mashups will be the way companies create composite enterprise applications, Gartner predicts. Mashup technologies will evolve significantly over the next five years, and application leaders must take this evolution into account when evaluating the impact of mashups and in formulating an enterprise mashup strategy. Web Platform and Web-Oriented Architecture: Software-as-a-Service, in which applications are available on-demand over the Web, is becoming a sensible option for many companies. Emerging Web platforms, Gartner says, will provide service-based access to information, applications, and business processes through Web-based "cloud computing" environments. Companies must also look beyond SaaS to examine how Web platforms will impact their business in 3-5 years. Computing Fabric: According to Gartner researchers, "A computing fabric is the evolution of server design beyond the interim stage, blade servers, that exists today. The next step in this progression is the introduction of technology to allow several blades to be merged operationally over the fabric, operating as a larger single system image that is the sum of the components from those blades. The fabric-based server of the future will treat memory, processors, and I/O cards as components in a pool, combining and recombining them into particular arrangements to suit the owner's needs." The researcher added, "For example a large server can be created by combining 32 processors and a number of memory modules from the pool, operating together over the fabric to appear to an operating system as a single fixed server." Real World Web: The term "real world Web" is informal, referring to places where information from the Web is applied to the particular location, activity or context in the real world. Gartner states, "It is intended to augment the reality that a user faces, not to replace it as in virtual worlds. It is used in real-time based on the real world situation, not prepared in advance for consumption at specific times or researched after the events have occurred." It gives the example of a navigation unit that adjusts the information it delivers as a car or boat moves around. Gartner sees real world Web application improving many business processes and creating new revenue streams. Social Software: The Web 2.0 market will go through a lot of changes between now and 2010, Gartner says, and will experience considerable flux with continued product innovation and new entrants, resulting in considerable vendor consolidation. However, the research firm does see social networking being adopted by many enterprises to augment traditional collaboration. According to Gartner, "These 10 opportunities should be considered in conjunction with many proven, fully-matured technologies, as we as others that did not make this list, but can provide value for many companies," said Carl Claunch, vice president at Gartner. "For example, real-time enterprises providing advanced devices for a mobile workforce will consider next-generation smartphones to be a key technology, in addition to the value that this list might offer."
About The Author
Written by: Anne Sych, Marketing Manager for Novo Solutions, Inc. Novo Solutions, Inc. is an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) in Virginia Beach, Virginia specializing in Customer Support Software. Free trial versions of the Novo Help Desk Software, Knowledge Base Software and suite of web-based Customer Support Solutions are available. Contact: sales@novosolutions.com for more information. http://www.novosolutions.com/

Wii Workout for Kids?

Nintendo Wii + Wii Sports - Good for fitness in children? by: Karen Bennett
The Nintendo Wii it seems, puts pay to the concerns in recent years over the inactivity in children due to their interest in video games consoles. The Wii console really sets itself apart from the rest with its revolutionary motion sensitive controller, which actually requires movement in order to play the games. The Nintendo Wii comes with the game Wii Sports, which includes tennis, baseball, bowling, golf and boxing. In tennis you will be swinging the remote as if it were a tennis racket and flicking it up to toss the ball into the air with a quick swing to serve. The other Wii Sports games work in a similar way simulating controller movements for like movements onscreen. Boxing however is the only Wii Sports game that uses the nunchuk attachment and is the most physically exhausting game of them all. In order to hit your opponent in the head or body, you will have to aim high or low with your swings. There are three different activities with each game. In training mode, you will participate in random challenges, after which you will be assigned a fitness age, based on your performance. Sound familiar? The Nintendo DS game, Brain Training comes to mind...a physical version perhaps? The important thing here is that gamers are becoming more physically active without even realising it - you could say it has a 'kill two birds with one stone' effect, combining video game play with physical activity. Given this 'physical' nature of the Wii, I wouldn't be suprised if parents rushed out to buy the Nintendo Wii just to get their kids off the sofa! Another great thing about the Nintendo Wii is that it appeals not only to children and teens but to adults too, so its something the whole family can enjoy. Could the Nintendo Wii revolutionize the way we play video games in the future? It will be interesting to see what Nintendo's competitors come up with next - this could be a tough one to beat!
About The Author
Karen Bennett For more information on the Nintendo Wii and to find cheapest prices, visit my website http://www.compareconsoleprices.co.uk

Wii Workout

Nintendo Wii Brings The Gym To You With Wii Fit by: Karen Bennett
Nintendo has announced a new fitness game Wii Fit which is a full on exercise product set to give you more of a workout than Wii Sports, while still retaining all the fun of gaming. Wii Fit will help to keep you physically fit via a dedicated peripheral, a wireless balance board which comes with the game. There are over 40 different activities, including hula hooping, ski jumping and heading soccer balls. The hula hooping consists of, as you’d expect, gyrating your hips with a virtual hoop onscreen and then as the game progresses, characters will throw more hoops for you to catch and rotate as many times as you can until the time runs out. The skiing game gives you two chances to make the longest jump you can whilst keeping your balance when landing. Players can increase speed by leaning forward, the more you lean the faster you’ll go, and upon reaching the jump, you stand up straight ensuring your weight is evenly balanced for a good landing. For the football game, you will need to balance on the board moving from side to side whilst balls are fired at you to hit back on to the field and avoiding other objects that are thrown at you at the same time. Training falls into 4 categories: Aerobics, muscle conditioning, yoga and balance games. Players can assign their height to a profile to measure body mass index and Wii fitness age as well as monitor progress and record performance statistics. The calorie busting fun could appeal to couch potato kids as well a non gamers, perhaps using the Nintendo Wii as a slimming tool which would be a move into the lifestyle category rather than gaming, covering the market from another angle. Nintendo hasn't given a release date yet for Wii Fit, although its thought to hit the highstreet in early 2008.
About The Author
Karen Bennett For more news and information on the Nintendo Wii Console and to find the cheapest prices, visit my website http://www.compareconsoleprices.co.uk/nintendo_wii.html

iPhone Tips

iPhone Tips and Tricks: How to Get the Most Out Of Your iPhone Experience by: CJ Prato
All of us folks who are lucky enough to already have an iPhone know how much fun they can be just to play around with. Playing with my iPhone a lot myself, I have discovered some cool tips and tricks that you may find useful. 1. If you tap once at the very top of the screen when you are on the internet, it will take you back to the top of the window rather than having to scroll all the way back up. A nice time saving feature. 2. If you set the font to the smallest size, you can read more in the internet window. An advantage of this is that when you want to click a link, you can pinch (expand) that area and the link will come up very large, making it much easier to click. 3. Rather than posting the full address of internet sites in bookmarks, you can post the equivalent RSS address instead into Apple's RSS reader and save that as your bookmark. This way you can quickly see if there's anything interesting on your favorite site rather than downloading the whole homepage. 4. If you are writing something and the iPhone flags a word as misspelled that you know is not misspelled, cancel the correction 3 times and the word will be put into the dictionary. If you write a lot, this feature is quite useful! 5. The magnifying glass is a nice iPhone tool when you are typing an email or any other text. If you tap once and hold, a magnifying glass will pop up showing you a zoomed in view of your words and cursor. You can now easily place the cursor wherever you want. This makes editing your writing very easy. 6. You can move icons around, but not on the home screen. You have to go to the ipod section. Go to iPod > More > Edit. Now you can drag your icons all around. This can also be done in the phone section. 7. To reset your iphone, hold down the right button and the "home" front button for about 6 seconds. To power it back on, push the top button. This is different than a regular shutdown, which can be done easily by holding the sleep/wake button for 6 seconds. 8. If you get a lot of spam e-mail or other unwanted e-mail, pay attention to this time saving feature. Add a link to Yahoo mail in Safari bookmarks. From there you can check 'delete all' to remove all unwanted e-mails. This is much easier than deleting hundreds of spam e-mails one at a time. I hope you found these iphone tips helpful. If you have an iPhone and have been wondering how best to fill it up with music and movies, check out Top iPhone Downloads for the latest reviews of iPhone download sites.
About The Author
CJ Prato I hope you found this information useful. If you are wondering how to best fill up your iPhone with the latest music and movies, check out http://www.topiphonedownloads.com for the latest iPhone download reviews. This article may be reprinted or used as part of a news letter as long as it stays intact, including the author's signature.

Re: MySpace.com

Advanced Uses For Myspace by: David Riewe
MySpace members can generate a website quickly through templates. These templates enable users to create a generic website in very little time. For those who are just interested in making new friends or keeping in touch with old friends, this may be all the member needs. However, those who want to offer more on their website or those who simply want to create a more detailed website may require some more advanced knowledge to achieve the desired effects. Adding Background Music in MySpace The majority of websites on the Internet do not have background music. This may lead many novice MySpace members to believe adding music to the background is a difficult process but it really isn’t. In fact MySpace makes it incredibly simple for members to add music to their profiles. The steps to add music to a MySpace profile are as follows: * Log into your MySpace account * While logged in visit this web address: http://music.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=music * Listen to the music available and select a suitable song for your profile * Click on the link that says “Add” below the song title * The music is then automatically added to your profile It is important to note that users can only add one song at a time to their profile. Clicking the “Add” link on a second song will result in the original song being replaced on the profile by the new song. Songs can be removed from a profile at any time by going to the “Edit profile” section of your account and entering the “Profile songs” subcategory. Here you have the option to remove your chosen song. Adding Videos to MySpace Adding videos to MySpace is also not as difficult as it seems. Even those with no HTML skills can add videos produced by other members or even their own videos to their MySpace profile. The steps to add a video to your MySpace profile are as follows: * Log into your MySpace Account * From your MySpace homepage, click on the “Add/Change Videos” link * You are then taken to another webpage where you can either search through a database of previously uploaded videos or upload your own video * To search the database, click on the search videos button and browse through the available videos * After watching a video you can add the video to your profile in a couple of ways. First you can click on the “Add to my profile” button or you can copy the source code provided and paste this code into the desired location on your profile. Alternately you can add your own videos to your MySpace profile by first uploading them to MySpace and then adding them to your profile. When uploading a video care should be taken to ensure the video does not violate the terms of service. Creating Interactive Features on MySpace Creating interactive features on MySpace is a bit more involved. Members can create features which allow visitor interaction but these features require more extensive HTML knowledge. The best way to acquire the information necessary to design these types of features is to research the subject of HTML code in books or on the Internet. However, if you find a feature on another MySpace website you would like to include in your own profile you can contact the member and ask them how to add this feature.
About The Author
David Riewe is the webmaster of http://www.daves-inforama.com and http://www.daves-inforama.com/myspace.

Nintendo Wii

The Nintendo Wii is NOT the Game Cube by: Kit Allen
As Nintendo chief Miyamoto says about the Wii… ‘The hardware is basically a GC. We’ve upgraded our development tools to new versions but, you can still use GC programs as they are. With that in mind, I thought we could remake GC titles for the Wii and modify them to work with the Wii remote so that they’re more fun to play.’ This statement been making its speedy journey around the web, with the predictable result. ‘i tuld u tha Wee sux0rs!’ ‘Thus proving the Wii is infact.. a repackaged gamecube’ ‘mailto:Rofl’ The argument need to be split in half to avoid confusion. Lumping the two arguments together ends in a negative situation, where neither of the debating parties can influence the opposition. Firstly, The Wii is GameCube 1.5? Miyamoto, in his cute little ‘Wish we had an international auxillary language to stop english speaking ‘l33t’ gamers from mocking our consumers’ way, was accurate with his statement. The hardware is similar to the GameCube. WAIT! Don’t go running away just yet, for here is a word equation that will float your boat. The Nintendo Wii hardware is similar to the Gamecube, as A gaming PC is similar to a Windows 95 word processing computer. What! Says you, but my ‘uber el33tzo0r’ Gaming PC has 4 GB of Ram! It has 6.7 Gigahertz of processing power! THINK. Instead of thinking about the technological specifics of ‘hardware capabilities’, when the above statement is made, one is referring to the style in which hardware and software are created. The Architecture of the device. Going out on another tangent, Nintendo would not be stupid enough to make the GameCube mistake again. The GC was not a high point for flailing Nintendo. Why now, riding on the success of the Nintendo DS, an innovative handheld device that has taken the world by storm, would Nintendo choose to release an updated version of a failure? Wii Vs Xbox360 Vs Playstation3 To be blatantly honest, the next-gen console battle will be fought between the Xbox360, and the Playstation3. Unfortunately for Sony and Microsoft, they have launched products capable of the same types of activities, with the same types of controls and the same types of games. It’s a marketing battle to see who will triumph. But for those looking for new, innovative [ie: Not BluRay] technology with an element of fun and a totally unique experience will choose the Wii. There is nothing else on the market to compete with it. So who would buy the Wii? Just little kids right? Nintendo has many different demographics to target. From the very young, to the very old. The DS has opened the eyes of previously video game free generations, and inspired those just entering the market, as well as gameboy fans looking for a quality handheld. Half-core gamers want something fresh. they want to play with their friends and have fun. They don’t want to shell out big bucks for a gaming system, but would be happy to pay a much lower price for entertainment. You can not compare consoles on specifications alone. You must use implementation examples to compare things. On paper, the Playstation 3 is the strongest console. Better than the Wii, better than the Xbox360. But does it have quality games? Will there be many games? Will Sony finally be able to create a game that creates a third of the hype that Halo does? Until all consoles have been released internationally, it is futile to argue over which console is ’superior’ and which will succeed. The Nintendo Wii is not a Game Cube. As the old saying goes, it’s like comparing apples and oranges. Both are in the same general class, yet there are fundamental differences that make comparing them pointless.
About The Author
Kit Allen, the chief contributor to Nintendo Blog, http://nintendocommunity.com/ wrote this article to inform the world about the Nintendo Wii.

About Broadband VOIP Phone Services

Advantages and Disadvantages of Broadband Phone Service by: Jon Arnold
Broadband phones, also known as “VOIP” are catching on faster than ever. And no wonder, since the monthly cost of broadband phone service, including long distance, is probably cheaper than what you pay to your phone company for just a dial tone. Yes of course you need a highspeed Internet connection that you connect your broadband phone to, but a majority of homes have that anyway, so this is just another service that takes a minimal amount of that speed away, and only uses it when you are having an active conversation on that phone. Yes, broadband phone service is extremely popular. In fact, about a year ago the number of new phone activations in the US that were broadband phones or VOIP phones surpassed the number of new traditional phone services for the first time in history! Yes, there are advantages, as well as some neat features offered by some (not all) of the broadband vendors. But there are also some disadvantages, so let’s take a brief look at both angles. The Advantages As stated earlier, broadband phone service is significantly cheaper than traditional phone service. Most broadband phone services include “unlimited” long distance calling in the continental US, as well as locally. With traditional phones, you either pay a huge premium for the unlimited feature, or even with a discount long distance plan, you are still paying about 2.5 to 3 cents per minute (or more) for long distance calls. There are many vendors and companies offering residential broadband phone service, it seems like everyone wants to get in on this. But from what I have observed, the most expensive place to get it is from your cable company! Yes, your cable company, the same one who provides you with cable TV and maybe also cable Internet service, will typically offer you broadband phone service for almost TWICE what you can get it for elsewhere. It pays to be a knowledgeable shopper! Yes, almost everyone has heard of Vonage, and this service can be purchased at places like Best Buy, Circuit City, even Walmart. But again, you are paying about 20% more than you need to, if you realized what else is available out there. For long distance, some broadband phone plans include Canada for the unlimited calling area, and some also include Puerto Rico. Some like Packet8 have separate plans to allow you to call Europe and/or Asia. Be aware of where you want to call and verify if that is included in the carrier’s plan. A word regarding the “unlimited” part – it’s not really unlimited, at least not according to the definition of unlimited that I read in my Funk & Wagnall. Most carriers allow about 3000 to 4000 minutes per month, then they may call you and ask you about such excessive usage, maybe thinking you are a business (higher rate) or using some kind of auto-dialer (a strict no-no). The Disadvantages Remember that with broadband phone service, you make and receive you calls via your highspeed Internet connection. You need to have a GOOD connection, not on the fringe areas of DSL. And if all you can get is satellite Internet, then hang it up, because VOIP on satellite is not going to be pretty at all. Since you are using your Internet connection, it should be stated that if your Internet connection goes down, so does your broadband phone. That’s right, so if you need phone service and your Internet connection is not reliable, you may want to think twice about VOIP phone service. Do you run part of your business from your home? If so, is fax any part of that? Today, from virtually any carrier on the planet, fax is not reliably supported, sending or receiving, via a broadband phone connection. If fax is important to you, you will want to have a phone line from the phone company dedicated to your fax machine, or subscribe to one of the online fax services. Broadband phone service can save you a bundle, but you need to understand your usage requirements and needs before selecting which carrier is best. It is more, MUCH more than different carriers just having different pricing. You need to look at the whole package to ensure you are getting what you think you are paying for.
About The Author
Jon Arnold is a computer engineer and long-term world traveler who maintains many websites to pass along his knowledge and findings. You can read more about VOIP and a comparison of popular VOIP offerings at his web site at http://www.broadbandphoneinsideinfo.com.