Niea Milwaukee 2009 Again

Challenge to Microsoft Skype deal

Posted by TerranceV | Technology | Posted on February 22nd, 2012

Cisco has said it will challenge Microsoft's $8.5bn (£5.4bn) takeover of Skype at the EU's top court.

The networking giant said conditions needed to be set to ensure Microsoft would not block other video services.

In October, the European Union had ruled the deal would not impede competition.

But Cisco has called on the European Commission to introduce open standards similar to those used for mobile phones.

"Cisco does not oppose the merger, but believes the European Commission should have placed conditions that would ensure greater standards-based interoperability," Cisco's video conferencing head Martin De Beer wrote in a blog post.

European Commission spokesman Antoine Colombani said: "We will defend our decision in court."

Skype has over 650 million users worldwide.

Its takeover by Microsoft, announced in May last year, is the software giant's single biggest acquisition.

Cisco offers its own video conferencing service called WebEx. Open standards for video services would potentially allow calls to be made between WebEx and Skype, as well as other services like Google Video.

Without such a standard, Mr De Beer said Microsoft could control "the future of video communications".

"Making a video-to-video call should be as easy as dialling a phone number,'' he argued.

"Today, however, you can't make seamless video calls from one platform to another, much to the frustration of consumers and business users alike."

App Makes Readers’ Thoughts an Open Book

Posted by TerranceV | Technology | Posted on February 15th, 2012

Even the shyest airplane passengers are hard-pressed to remain mum when a seatmate pulls out a book with a familiar cover. Now, thanks to the popularity of e-books, these once visible book covers are shrouded in the nondescript cases of Kindles, Nooks and iPads.

The new iPad app, Subtext, is a great way for consumers of e-books to talk online with other readers. WSJ’s Katherine Boehret says the app is a clever idea but would work better if it were broadened to include the Nook and the Kindle.

This week, I tried Subtext, a free iPad app designed to enable and encourage conversations based on e-books—not necessarily with fellow plane passengers, but among readers within digital books themselves. A revamped version of Subtext, originally released in October, is available in Apple‘s App Store Tuesday.

Subtext

On the Subtext iPad app, a reader’s profile page, with her shelf of books.

Like Amazon’s Kindle already does, Subtext gives anyone who reads an e-book the ability to make notes, highlight passages and to keep private or share those notes or highlights with other users. But this app goes much further: It also lets readers post questions, polls, quizzes or even Web links that are noted in the margins of the book. Other users respond to these posts and start mini book discussions that can continue indefinitely. Subtext content can be kept private, made visible to all users or made visible only to a user’s friends. Along with comments from fellow readers, Subtext users can see comments marked in blue that are made by a book’s author or other experts.

Unfortunately, Subtext smacks of immaturity when compared with other reading apps like Amazon’s Kindle app and Barnes & Noble‘s Nook app. While those work on several devices and operating systems, Subtext works only on Apple’s iPad. It only runs with books from Google Books or those in Adobe‘s ePub format, and the process for getting the latter—emailing the book to oneself or downloading the file from a website to the iPad—is clumsy and not intuitive. Co-founder Rachel Thomas said Subtext is actively developing for other platforms.

Katherine Boehret looks at Subtext, a free iPad app designed to enable and encourage conversations among readers within digital books themselves.

Another issue is that Subtext is only as good as its users’ involvement. The more people comment and create discussions, the more interesting it will be for others. For this to happen, the app has to lure readers away from the devices and apps they’re already comfortable with, like the Kindle or Nook, or the Kindle, Nook and Apple iBooks apps on the iPad.

I got an early look at the new version of Subtext and found it more self-explanatory than its predecessor. I signed in using my Google account, though users can sign in using a Facebook account or explore the app as a guest. By signing into my Google Account, my shelves were populated with the Google e-books I already purchased. Previews of books give users a sense of what the app does.

Subtext

A Discussions section neatly organizes all social interactions about books in one place.

Users can tap on any book cover to see all content and social information related to that book. Likewise, tapping on any user profile image lets you visit that person’s shelf. A Featured Shelves section suggests different categories of books like Critics Picks 2011 and 2011′s Most Social Books.

As I used Subtext for the first time, small hint windows floated onto the iPad screen at certain points to demonstrate how things worked. One encouraged me to tap and hold my finger on the screen at a favorite book passage to see options for adding notes to that passage. I tried this a few times, including while reading a line in Tina Fey’s “Bossypants” about working moms with kids. I highlighted this passage and posed a question to all Subtext users: How many kids does Tina Fey have? Someone, who I later found out was Subtext’s co-founder Andrew Goldman, answered about an hour later, saying Ms. Fey has two daughters—a 6-year-old and a 6-month-old.

The Discussions section of the app neatly organizes all social interactions in one place, so people don’t have to skip back through books to see the continued conversations surrounding a question.

I like the way Subtext subtly notifies readers that notes exist: by showing a tiny thumbnail image of the user who posted the note in the margin of a book. Tapping on that image opens the note. I commented on some existing discussions by tapping the Reply button.

I created a note for one book passage using a related Web link, and the steps for doing this were clear and understandable. I kept this visible only to myself; other times, I made notes about passages and shared them only with my friends who I could invite to use Subtext via Facebook or email.

But what’s to stop someone from posting something inaccurate or abusive? Users can flag any note as inappropriate or as a spoiler, and the note is reviewed by the company. Users can vote on others’ comments, and over time, comments with more votes will be more broadly distributed.

As of now, authors and experts have enhanced just 18 books in Subtext, though users have left thousands of notes across books. The few books enhanced by authors or experts were fun to read. Steven Levy remarked on a line in his book, “In the Plex,” that described his travels from San Francisco to Tokyo, Beijing, Bangalore and Tel Aviv: “Newsweek paid for my trip, shelling out over $10,000 for my expenses. Kind of ironic because a couple of years later, Newsweek itself sold for $1.”

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page 8

Oracle buying Taleo for $1.9 billion, cloud war brews

Posted by TerranceV | Technology | Posted on February 11th, 2012

<span class="articleLocation”>(Reuters) – Oracle Corp agreed to buy Taleo Corp, a maker of Web-based software for recruiting employees, for about $1.9 billion, as technology giants battle for the top spot in the fast-growing cloud computing market.

It is the latest big investment in cloud computing by Oracle, the world’s No. 2 maker of business management software, and a quick response to larger rival SAP AG’s pending plan to buy SuccessFactors Inc for $3.4 billion.

Oracle’s offer price for Taleo is 6.5 times trailing 12-month sales, a bit more than half the 12 times multiple that SAP will pay for SuccessFactors, according to Evercore Partners.

While Oracle lags SAP in selling traditional software that customers install on their computer systems, its billionaire CEO Larry Ellison has been aggressive in adding cloud-based software offerings over the past few years.

Last month, Oracle paid $1.5 billion to purchase established cloud player RightNow Technologies, whose software helps companies provide customer service.

Oracle and SAP are both trying to catch up with cloud leader Salesforce.com Inc, which was started over a decade ago by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff.

Oracle’s Ellison was an early investor in Saleforce, but Benioff ousted him from the board when he felt Oracle got too aggressive in competing with the firm.

FUTURE IS CLOUD

Cloud computing refers to providing software, storage, computing power and other services to customers from remote data centers over the Web. Demand for cloud-based software is rising rapidly because the approach allows companies to start using new programs faster and at lower costs than traditional products that are installed at a customer’s own data center.

Revenue from cloud-based enterprise software is expected to be $17.32 billion in 2013, 5.7 percent of total enterprise software revenue, up from $5.31 billion in 2009, according to data from Gartner.

The online recruitment software market, an important category within the software-as-service industry itself, may grow more than 15 percent this year, according to independent market research firm Bersin & Associates.

Last year, Oracle launched Web-based versions of several of its new line of business management software programs known as Fusion Apps, which analysts say are still in the early stages of winning market acceptance.

Despite the acquisitions, it is early days for Oracle and SAP when it comes to cloud computing, as many corporate technology buyers remain skeptical that their home-brewed cloud products will hold up against products from Salesforce.com.

“SAP and Oracle are still perceived as the old guard on premise and they are not ‘with it’ in cloud,” Nomura Securities analyst Rick Sherlund said.

“They want to own this space. They want to reinvent themselves for the cloud … They are buying a position in the cloud through consolidation.”

Some analysts also questioned the rationale of the target companies in selling out since the transition to cloud-based enterprise applications is still not far along.

“We wonder if these vendors were motivated by a belief that either their core market segments were too highly penetrated and that the cost of expanding was simply too high,” BMO Capital Markets analyst Karl Keirstead said.

Large enterprises increasingly looking to acquire their more mature “edge” applications from vendors such as SAP and Oracle may also be a reason for the target companies to sell themselves, he said.

PLUGGING HOLES

Analysts said that the Fusion Apps cloud products introduced last year already provide a fairly broad array of business management programs, which means that Oracle is under less pressure to do acquisitions to build out its portfolio than SAP, which has fewer Web-based offerings.

Taleo fills one of the few obvious gaps in Oracle’s line-up, said Morgan Keegan analyst Michael Nemeroff.

“They did not have a recruitment package. They always needed to develop or buy it, and now they have done it,” he said.

The RightNow buy filled another hole in Oracle’s portfolio.

Nemeroff said that Oracle may still be looking to purchase a company that provides Web-based payroll software, such as Ultimate Software Group Inc.

Officials with Oracle declined comment.

SAP spokesman Jim Dever said his company would discuss its strategy for expanding its cloud offerings in several weeks, after the close of the SuccessFactors deal.

“SAP is coming off the biggest year in its 40-year history. We are in an excellent strategic position to keep winning in the market, including the cloud,” he said.

The Taleo deal value of $46 a share offers an 18 percent premium to Taleo’s Wednesday close of $38.94.

Taleo shares surged 17 percent to $45.62 in afternoon trading, while Oracle gained 0.2 percent to $28.79.

Other makers of cloud-based software also rose on the news, with Kenexa Corp climbing over 2 percent to $28.71. Cornerstone OnDemand Inc 0.8 percent to $17.93 and Ultimate Software Group 0.7 percent to $66.45. All had traded much higher earlier in the session, when the Nasdaq Composite Index flirted with its highest levels in over a decade.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston and Sayantani Ghosh in Bangalore; Editing by Derek Caney and Gerald E. McCormick)

Kinect could make its way to laptops

Posted by TerranceV | Technology | Posted on February 4th, 2012

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Copyright 2011 Wired.com.

Automakers Give Disregarded Diesels A Second Look

Posted by TerranceV | Technology | Posted on February 2nd, 2012

Story By: by Sonari Glinton

U.S. automakers largely abandoned diesel after engines manufactured during the 1970s oil crisis gained a reputation for being dirty and unreliable. European carmakers kept at the technology, and more than half of new cars sold there are diesel-powered. Those engines are now around 20 percent more fuel-efficient than gasoline.

Source: European Automobile Manufacturers Association; R.L. Polk & Co.

Credit: Sara Carothers, Alyson Hurt/NPR

Most trucks use diesel already. In passenger cars, the difference in technology between diesel and gasoline is essentially cost: Diesel engines cost more to engineer and build, and right now, the cost of diesel fuel in the U.S. is higher. Their exhaust also contains more soot.

Woolridge says diesel has several advantages to gas-powered cars, too. They go from zero to 30 mph faster, they tend to last longer and there’s the fuel-efficiency advantage.

A ‘Bad Taste In Their Mouth’ For Diesel

If diesel has all these good qualities, why are there so few diesel passenger vehicles in the U.S.? The answer is history. After the oil crisis in the 1970s, car companies looked to diesel to help solve the fuel economy problem.

John O’Dell with Edmunds.com says diesel got such a bad reputation in part because General Motors took an internal combustion gasoline engine and heavily modified it to make a diesel out of it very quickly, with limited success.

“It was an absolute disaster of an engine: It broke, it smelled bad, it was noisy, it was unreliable,” he says. “And it left most Americans with an incredibly bad taste in their mouth … [for] diesel.”

The U.S. essentially gave up on diesel cars. European carmakers, however, keep making them better. In Europe, diesel is one of the primary ways of getting more miles to the gallon — up to 20 percent more.

A lot has changed since GM first launched its diesel engine. The kind of diesel fuel sold for passenger cars in the U.S. is now cleaner, and diesel could be a way for carmakers to get higher fuel economy. The Obama administration has proposed aggressive new fuel standards and gives incentives for hybrid and electrics — but not diesel.

Incentives For Alternative Fuels

Volkswagen is one manufacturer that’s bet a lot on diesel. David Geanacopoulos, general counsel with Volkswagen Group of America, says the new fuel standards shouldn’t favor one technology over another.

“Let the customers and the marketplace and future technical and scientific developments determine which are the winners,” he says. “In a technology-neutral approach, the regulations can maximize innovation and improve our chances of achieving efficiency throughout the product range.”

Meanwhile, Gina McCarthy with the Environmental Protection Agency says diesel engines don’t get the same incentives because they’re already in the marketplace.

“They are available [now] and the infrastructure’s there to support them,” McCarthy says. “We want to give the customers an ability to get these other advanced vehicles as well and get them into the market sooner, and that’s the reason for the incentives.”

Even without government incentives, it will soon be more common to see more diesel cars on the road. The biggest car company in the world, General Motors, is making a diesel version of its best-selling car, the Chevy Cruze. This time, the executives say, they’ll get it right.

Japan’s defense industry hit by its first cyber attack

Posted by TerranceV | Technology | Posted on October 20th, 2011

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s biggest defense contractor, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, said on Monday hackers had gained access to its computers, with one newspaper saying its submarine, missile and nuclear power plant component factories had been the target.

The company said in a statement that some information could have been stolen in the first known cyber attack on Japan’s defense industry.

“We’ve found out that some system information such as IP addresses have been leaked and that’s creepy enough,” said a Mitsubishi Heavy spokesman.

“We can’t rule out small possibilities of further information leakage but so far crucial data about our products or technologies have been kept safe,” he said, adding the company first noticed the cyberattack on August 11.

A Japanese defense white paper released last month urged vigilance against cyber attacks after a spate of high-profile online assaults this year that included Lockheed Martin and other U.S. defense contractors.

There were suggestions at the time that those attacks had originated in China.

The Yomiuri newspaper said about 80 virus-infected computers were found at the company’s Tokyo headquarters as well as manufacturing and research and development sites, including Kobe Shipyard & Machinery Works, Nagasaki Shipyard & Machinery Works and Nagoya Guidance & Propulsion System Works.

Kobe Shipyard currently builds submarines and makes components to build nuclear power stations, while the Nagasaki Shipyard makes escort ships. The Nagoya plant makes guided missiles and rocket engines, the paper said citing unnamed sources.

At least eight different kinds of computer virus including Trojan horse, which steals key information from infected computer hardware, were found at Mitsubishi Heavy’s main office or production sites, the Yomiuri said.

It is the country’s biggest defense contractor, winning 215 deals worth 260 billion yen ($3.4 billion) from Japan’s Ministry of Defense in the year to last March, or nearly a quarter of the ministry’s spending that year.

Weapons included surface-to-air Patriot missiles and AIM-7 Sparrow air-to-air missiles.

Mitsubishi Heavy has also been working closely with Boeing, making wings for its 787 Dreamliner jets.

“It’s probably just the first that hacking attacks in Japan have been detected. It’s consistent with what we’ve seen already with big American defense companies,” Andrew Davies, a cyber-warfare analyst with the government backed defense think-tank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told Reuters.

“The Japanese make large conventional submarines that are among the world’s most sophisticated … (they) have very nicely integrated solutions with their own mechanical, electronic and control systems, so it a pretty attractive hacking proposition, to get the design of a Japanese submarine,” he added. ($1 = 76.875 Japanese Yen)

(Additional by Rob Taylor in Canberra, Editing by Jonathan Thatcher)

HTC, Verizon bet on purple with Rhyme phone

Posted by TerranceV | Technology | Posted on September 25th, 2011

NEW YORK (Reuters) – HTC Corp is hoping to attract fashion-conscious customers by adding color and accessories to its smartphones as it tries to expand into a new market segment amid slowing growth.

HTC said on Tuesday that its latest phone, the Rhyme, will sport three shades of purple and will come with three accessories, all for $199, when it launches on September 29 at U.S. market leading network Verizon Wireless.

“This phone is particularly important because we’re trying to attract a new type of consumer we don’t typically do business with,” Jason Mackenzie, HTC’s head of global sales told Reuters, adding that HTC phones have not previously been known for their looks, “HTC is known as being technology led.”

While HTC was one of the first phone makers to support Verizon’s fastest wireless data network, one drawback to the Rhyme is its lack of support for that network. But sticking with Verizon’s older network reduced the price, so that HTC could include the accessories for $199.

It also helped to keep the phone slim-looking, Mackenzie said at the device launch event, which was held in a New York shopping district, steps away from a major store of HTC’s bigger rival Apple Inc.

The Rhyme will come with three accessories: a docking station where the phone is laid to charge; a purple tangle-free headset; and a purple attachment called the charm, which can be clipped on a handbag and flashes to warn of an incoming call.

While the U.S. market is only getting the “plum” version of the phone, Taiwan-based HTC is selling two other colors overseas, a light gray version and an aqua-green model.

HTC has made a lot of progress developing its brand in recent years, but analysts say it needs new markets to sustain its growth as it faces intensifying competition from bigger rivals Apple, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd around the world.

Rhyme, which is based on Google Inc’s Android software, will be available globally weeks after the U.S. launch, HTC said.

NPD analyst Ross Rubin said Rhyme could potentially expand HTC’s reach among women, but he declined to speculate as to whether the new color scheme would appeal to them.

“It’s an interesting direction for HTC, which has built a lot of its reputation on attacking the high-end, addressing the fastest network available,” he said.

“This is a nice counterbalance to the Droid, which has had an uber-masculine campaign attached to it,” Rubin said referring to Verizon’s marketing of its Droid line-up of Android phones with ads featuring robots.

The Rhyme will also go on sale in Target Corp’s stores. Verizon Wireless is a venture of Verizon Communications Inc and Vodafone Group Plc.

(Reporting by Sinead Carew; editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

RIM will struggle to restore credibility: analyst

Posted by TerranceV | Technology | Posted on September 23rd, 2011

<span class="articleLocation”>(Reuters) – BlackBerry maker Research In Motion must launch innovative devices on schedule and offer credible earnings forecasts to win back the trust of investors made wary by its missteps, an analyst said on Tuesday.

In a note to clients, RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky cut his price target on RIM shares to $29 from $35 and slashed his estimate for earnings per share for the current fiscal year by 11 percent, and for the next fiscal year by almost 19 percent.

RIM shares lost more than 4 percent to close at $22.73 on the Nasdaq on Tuesday.

Abramsky said RIM remains a potential buyout target due to its proprietary messaging services, global subscriber base and strong patent portfolio. He valued a takeout at $30 a share and named Microsoft, Cisco, IBM and Nokia as possible buyers.

An activist investor, Jaguar Financial, is talking to some of RIM’s major shareholders about plans to empower RIM’s board to look at options including spinning off patents or selling the entire company.

Abramsky’s share-price target is still well above RIM’s current share price, but the change moves RBC below the $31 average forecast of analysts. Analysts’ forecasts for the share price range from a low of $18 to a high of $75.

In February, RIM shares changed hands for as much as $70, but the stock has slumped after a series of profit warnings, coupled with the botched launch of its PlayBook tablet computer, a competitor to Apple’s iPad.

RBC’s earnings per share estimates for RIM of $4.95 for fiscal 2012 and $5 for 2013 are about 10 cents a share higher than the average analyst estimate.

RIM said last week it now expects to reach only the low end of its previous forecast for earnings per share in fiscal 2012, which ends in March next year. The company had forecast earnings of $5.25 to $6 a share.

Urging RIM’s board to take a more active role in overseeing management decisions as the company brings in new products, Abramsky said RIM’s products and software have not been competitive for years.

The company once dominated the smartphone industry with business-friendly devices, but it has struggled as Apple’s iPhone and later Google’s Android software have gained market share, particularly in the United States.

Abramsky said the BlackBerry maker has lost credibility with investors by retracting and missing its own forecasts.

RIM reported dismal second-quarter earnings last Thursday, sending its shares sharply lower. It shipped far fewer BlackBerry smartphones and PlayBook tablets in the quarter than either the company or analysts had forecast.

In a detailed earnings filing published on Monday, RIM said U.S. sales in the quarter were halved from a year earlier to $1.1 billion, while sales outside the United States, Canada and Britain rose 38 percent to $2.3 billion.

RIM’s global sales excluding the United States, Canada and Britain rose between 88 and 128 percent on an annual basis in each of the previous four quarters.

Abramsky said RIM still has a chance to turn its fortunes around based on a sizable subscriber base of 70 million, support from carriers as an alternative to Apple and Android, global growth, and a strong patent portfolio.

RIM has launched a string of refreshed phones on its existing software and plans to launch another batch early next year using the QNX software found in the PlayBook.

It is expected to debut long-awaited PlayBook features including an Android app player as well as email, calendar and other functions long associated with the BlackBerry at a developers’ conference in October.

Moving to the powerful QNX platform gives RIM a chance to make its software competitive, but discarding its existing operating system forces developers that build applications for it to change the way they operate.

“Four years after iPhone launched, RIM still hasn’t launched competitive smartphone innovations or addressed its ‘app gap’,” Abramsky wrote.

Abramsky said RIM had “lost the app battle and developer interest in BlackBerry has significantly diminished” making its successful emulation of Android all the more vital.

RBC said that although RIM trades at only four times its fiscal 2011 earnings, it does not expect that valuation to improve until RIM addresses its credibility gap.

(Reporting by Alastair Sharp in Toronto; editing by Peter Galloway and Janet Guttsman)

Higher fibre

Posted by TerranceV | Technology | Posted on September 19th, 2011

Jute, a vegetable fibre that can be spun into sackcloth, used to be the 'golden fibre' of Bangladesh.

It brought much-needed foreign income to the impoverished nation.

But it lost its lustre in the 1980s after synthetic materials like polythene and plastics were introduced.

Now the natural fibre has made a spectacular comeback.

Exports of jute and jute products from Bangladesh this fiscal year crossed a record billion dollars as demand for the natural fibre is steadily increasing.

With growing environmental awareness, jute, which is bio-degradable, has become the preferred alternative to polluting synthetic bags.

Jute is considered to be the second most important natural fibre after cotton in terms of cultivation and usage. It is mainly grown in eastern India, Bangladesh, China and Burma.

Until recently the fibre was used mostly as a packaging material. With a diversification of jute products, the demand for jute has increased.

"By processing the fibre mechanically and by treating it chemically, now jute can be used to make bags, carpets, textiles and even as insulation material," says Mohammad Asaduzzaman, a scientist at the Bangladesh Jute Research Institute in Dhaka.

When synthetics like polythene bags came into widespread use, the demand for jute declined and many jute mills in countries like Bangladesh were shut down.

Thousands lost their jobs and farmers shifted from jute to more profitable rice cultivation.

Today, as demand increases, more farmers are returning to this traditional crop.

It is estimated that nearly five million farmers are involved in jute plant cultivation in Bangladesh. It plays a key supportive role to the rural economy of Bangladesh.

Once the jute plants are harvested they are bundled together and immersed in running water and allowed to rot.

Then the fibres are stripped from the plant. The stripped fibre is dried and later sent to mills for processing.

Golam Moazzam, a research fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue, in Dhaka says: "It is important to note that policy support also contributed to its widespread use of jute both locally and internationally.

"For example, the Bangladeshi government has made it compulsory to use jute bags for packaging of food grains."

Jute is also versatile, strong and long-lasting and scientists say they are discovering more uses for it in different sectors.

For example, Geotextiles, a diversified jute product, is used for soil-erosion control and also used in laying roads to give more durability. The natural fibre is also used to make pulp and paper.

Bangladeshi scientists are now working on an ambitious project to blend jute fabric with cotton to produce denim fabric.

They say if the jute plant is harvested earlier than the usual period of 120 days, then it gives a softer fabric.

"If this special quality of fibre is chemically modified and bleached then it becomes softer. If we can blend it with cotton then we can manufacture denim fabric and diversified textile products," says Mr Asaduzzaman

If this process can be commercialised, he says, it will bring down the demand for cotton, which is also becoming dearer day by day.

The price of fabric can be reduced by a half, bringing benefits to the country's garment sector.

However, there are bottlenecks.

Special machines are required to blend this fibre with cotton and they are yet to be produced commercially. Scientists hope spinning factories will be able to install these machines in the near future.

"Unfortunately, there is not much research going on in terms promoting diversified jute products," says Mr Moazzam.

"Countries like Bangladesh and India, who are the major jute exporting countries, should conduct collaborative research to find out diversification of jute products."

Mobile firm on rural net crusade

Posted by TerranceV | Technology | Posted on September 2nd, 2011

Mobile operator Three is giving away 3G broadband to rural areas struggling to get fixed line services.

But Jeremy Green, analyst with research firm Ovum takes a more sceptical view.

"It is not as if Three is concerned about lack of access. It wants to show off how good its network is and lobby for more spectrum," he said.

The mobile firm has made no secret of its desire to get its hands on lower-frequency spectrum, which can cover much larger areas and offers better indoor coverage than the high-frequency spectrum it currently owns.

Three's chief executive Dave Dyson argues that with enough spectrum, such as the 800Mhz band that is being auctioned next year, the firm can go a long way towards solving the UK's notspots.

Networks using lower frequency spectrum tend to fare better in rural areas as their signals propagate better, especially in hilly areas.

"We've built the UK's most extensive 3G network using high-frequency spectrum, if we gain access to low-frequency spectrum like 800Mhz we will be able to significantly improve both indoor and outdoor rural coverage for the UK's smartphone and mobile broadband users.

"Low-frequency spectrum on a network as big as ours is a real notspot-killer," he said.

But experts argue that current mobile technology cannot compete with fast fixed line connections such as fibre optics which offer speeds of up to 100Mbps.

By contrast, the system being offered for free by Three will deliver an average speed of just 2Mbps (megabits per second).

Three admits that, at busy times, the speed could be even slower.

Rural areas have recently received a government cash boost to help them build super-fast broadband networks.

Originally Published On: www.bbc.co.uk – Original Article Here