Gigabyte T1132N Convertible Notebook with Multimedia Dock

Gigabyte’s T1132N, a convertible notebook that becomes a tablet and even a desktop-style work machine

Samsung Series 7 Gamer Hands-on: Watch Out, Alienware

Serious gamers, take note: Samsung is throwing down the gauntlet with the Series 7 Gamer. We got a first look today at CES at the 17-inch system, a top of the line desktop replacement that looks to blow away Alienware’s benchmark scores– and maybe even its battery life, too.

Razer Blade Hands-On: Lightest-Ever 17-inch Gaming Laptop Has Touchscreen TouchPad

Razer’s long-awaited entry into the notebook space is finally here in the flesh, and it was worth the wait.  the company, which is best known for gaming accessories like mice and keyboards, showed off the Razer

wireless display for android

LAS VEGAS — Soon you may be able to play a game on your tablet while wirelessly streaming a movie from the same device to your home theater system. Today at CES, Texas Instruments showcased its OMAP 4400 series CPU’s support for wireless display technology and ability to display different content on the tablet than on the screen to which it’s streaming.

For years, Windows notebook users have been able to send video wirelessly to TVs via technologies like Intel’s WiDi and WHDI. However, Android users have been left out in the cold. That could be changing very soon as TI showed today that its current generation of TI OMAP 4400 series, which are already in millions of devices, are capable of streaming content via the wireless display protocol.
n one demonstration, a TI representative showed us a TI reference tablet with an OMAP 4400 series processor that was capable of playing Angry Birds on its own screen while sending a full HD movie to a TV via wireless. Though end users cannot do this today, TI told us that existing tablets and phones with OMAP could perform this function with the right software and the right receiver on the other end.

If you’re streaming HD video, TI told us, you actually won’t eat up too many system resources, because video is offloaded onto OMAP’ 4400 series’ secondary, low-power media cores. The primary CPU cores are free to focus all their might on your other app, whether it’s your email client or a game of Riptide. So you can play your game while you also watching TV on the big screen, definitely a boon for those with short attention span

Iconia tab

LAS VEGAS — Priced between the Kindle Fire and iPad 2, the Acer Iconia Tab attempts to tempt tablet shoppers with Tegra 2 power at an affordable price. It goes on sale January 15th for $329 for 8GB and just $349 for 16GB. We just spent a few minutes with this 10-incher at CES 2012, and it’s a slate that’s stripped down in some ways but has a unique ring interface.

Check out our video of the A200 below, along with our hands-on impressions and photos.

In order to keep the price low, Acer decided to nix the camera on the back, which the Iconia Tab A500 had. Since most folks probably don’t want to use their tablets as camcorders, this feature likely won’t be missed. However, Acer did keep the full-size USB port, which you can use to plug in a mouse, keyboard or even wireless game controller should you decide to hook the A200 up to a TV to play games like Shadowgun.
he most unique thing about the Iconia Tab A200 is the ring interface, activated by pressing a circle at the bottom of the screen. You’ll see a circular UI pop up with shortcuts for the browser (complete with thumbnails of your favorite sites fanned out), for taking a screenshot, Settings and Gallery. You can also control the volume from this menu. Acer says you should also be able to customize the ring UI.

Although the A200 will launch with Honeycomb, Acer told us to expect an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich in February. No, the Iconia Tab A200 isn’t as sexy as the quad core-packing, full HD A700, but it looks like a solid bread-and-butter Android tablet that makes the right trade-offs for its price. Stay tuned for a full review.

DB technologies

Emerging database technologies

"Main memory databases are faster than disk-optimized databases, as the internal optimization algorithms are simpler and execute fewer CPU instructions. Accessing data in memory provides faster and more predictable performance than disk. In applications, where response time is critical, such as telecommunications network equipment that operates emergency systems, main memory databases are often used" - Sanjay Mehta CEO of MAIA Intelligence

Of late, the industry has seen the emergence of business intelligence and data warehousing as a major factor influencing business decisions. Businesses have gone past the ‘applications’ phase to a phase where useful, accurate and timely information from application data is being used to make better business decisions.

Databases have also begun to align with this shift in customers’ needs. They continue to be the heart of transaction processing; but there is a definite shift in focus towards providing databases that support superior performance as far as reporting, analytics and data mining are concerned. The trend towards the use of databases for mining useful, accurate information has led to the creation of a new category of databases. 

“Sybase IQ uses a patented columnar architecture that provides superior performance in querying and reporting. It works with any transactional database at the back end and with any reporting software on the front,” said Sudesh Prabhu, Director - Presales and Services, Sybase India.

Moreover, the adoption of specialty servers is growing and customers are moving away from increasingly constrained row-based databases for analytics and data warehousing. There is greater demand for advanced analytics to uncover business opportunities and risk, thereby driving demand for forecasting, predictive modeling and data mining. The market is also seeing the integration of all data types into BI, wherein traditional plus streaming data, non-relational/ unstructured data, (XML data, geospatial data and media) is taking place.

Some of the other latest databases that are being deployed by Indian organizations are Oracle 11g (includes high availability solution), SQL Server 2008 (also includes high availability solution), and DB2/UDB V9.0.

Meanwhile, many of the latest database technologies not only help in solving exotic data warehouse or other intensive number-crunching problems but also real-world data management problems.

Sophisticated analytics to outsmart the competition is emerging as a must-have business practice in many industries. Vast amounts of current and historical data must be run against intricate analytical models to accurately predict future outcomes.

However, these analytics systems are where the data explosion has had the most impact. Implementing more efficient analytics software, therefore, can solve not only the data explosion and its byproduct (rampant energy use) but also dramatically increase the speed, scalability, and flexibility of business intelligence.

Next generation Database

Next-generation database technologies

There is a need for a third-generation of database technologies, as we are forced to embrace a world of large-memory models, clustered servers, and highly compressed column-wise storage. 

Although database management systems (DBMS) technology has matured, there remains potential for innovation in integrating structured and unstructured data, virtualizing access to data, and simplifying data management through greater automation and intelligence.

 

DBMS technology and middleware will also evolve to support the information fabric by virtualizing access to heterogeneous data. These trends will offer an evolutionary path to a future world of information management in which all forms of information will be easier to access, integrate, and control, and this will all come at a lower cost, due to increased automation. 

Many organizations will move to upgrade or expand existing legacy networks and infrastructure; hence the database market will see lots of activity and increased competition in an already mature space.

According to IDC reports, most data warehouses will be stored in a columnar fashion and not in rows, reporting and data collection problems will be solved with databases that have no formal schema at all, horizontal scalability through clustering will be achieved by large-scale database servers; and most OLTP databases will either reside entirely in memory or be augmented by an in-memory database.

These new systems will encourage companies to forget disk-based partitioning schemes, buffer management, indexing strategies and embrace a world of large-memory models, many processors with many cores, clustered servers and highly compressed column wise storage. 

Springboard Research reports suggest that databases are critical for data intensive environments like banking, financial services and insurance telecom, retail and PSU. Sanchit Vir Gogia, Associate Research Manager - Software, Springboard Research said that India as a market for DBMS is at an inflection point. While large enterprises are clearly dedicating a portion of their IT budget to better manage data, SMBs are also waking up to these benefits. Interestingly, investment in DBMS by SMBs is largely driven through the pent-up demand for enterprise applications like ERP, CRM, etc.