By Kevin Fitchard Jan. 23, 2012

Intel’s wireless ambitions go beyond smartphones and tablets. It’s set its sights on the guts of the mobile network as well. 

By embracing a new network design concept called Cloud-RAN, Intel believes it can reshape wireless networks from highly-specialized architectures into more generic computing platforms that run over its off-the-shelf silicon. And in the world’s largest operator, China Mobile, Intel sees the opportunity to make that vision happen. China Mobile has a massive network of 700,000 GSM and 220,000 3G base stations built into towers throughout China’s vast landscape. The base station is easily the most expensive element of the wireless network, and as China Mobile looks to the next wave of wireless technology, LTE, it doesn’t want to repeat that enormous infrastructure investment by installing pricey hardware at the bottom of every tower. Instead, it’s looking for Intel’s help to move all of that network intelligence into the cloud, leaving only the radios and antennas at the cell site. The Cloud-Radio Access Network (Cloud-RAN) isn’t the public cloud of Amazon Web Services. Rather it’s a private cloud run by each operator in local data centers, but the principle is the same. China Mobile could centralize an enormous number of now-distributed computing resources. That would not only save capital and operating costs, but it would also allow it to webscale the network’s biggest number-crunching requirement – converting the analog fuzz scooped out of the airwaves into digital ones and zeros the network can understand.

Read more here –>gigaom.com

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By Paul Lamkin January 18, 2012

We thought that we had seen all that the tech world had to offer by way of Nvidia Tegra 3 devices over in Vegas at CES, but it looks as if we were wrong. 

Just days after the last roll of the expo's dice, a new Tegra 3 touting tab; the brilliantly named Fujitsu Stylistic Tablet M532, has turned up in Germany. Well, on a German website at least. The M532 is said to be rocking the latest generation Tegra chip alongside a 10.1-inch, 1280 x 800, display, along with 16GB of onboard storage, an 8-megapixel camera on the back and a 3-megapixel one up front. At the moment it is running Android Honeycomb 3.2 but, just like another Tegra 3 tab recently unleashed from ZTE, the M532 will most likely be packing 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich when it launches. Just when that will be isn't clear yet, but a price tag of €499 is mentioned. We've heard that Fujitsu is looking to make a big impression at MWC this year, so we guess we'll get more details then. Who knows, it may even take the Fujitsu Tegra 3 Ice Cream Sandwich quad-core phone out of its plastic cage so we can have a proper play too.

Read more here –>pocket-lint.com

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Intel won’t be the only chip maker pushing the Ultrabook form factor this year.
By Kristin Bent, January 18, 2012

Rival chip vendor AMD is gearing up to launch its own version of a super-thin, light-weight notebook form factor — fittingly called the Ultrathin — sometime around mid-year, which will be powered by the company’s next-gen line of A-series "Trinity" accelerated processing units (APUs). 

The new processors are said by AMD to deliver the same performance as its current A-series line used in standard notebooks, while using only half the power and drawing 17 watts of power. In addition to power efficiency, the new Ultrathin line is expected to deliver a feature perhaps even more attractive: a low price point. According to a report from DigiTimes, AMD’s Trinity-based Ultrathins will be offered at a price point approximately $100 to $200 less than upcoming Intel Ivy Bridge-based Ultrabooks. DigiTimes suggested that the modest Ultrathin price point will be possible because AMD’s new Trinity-based platform delivers little in terms of boosted performance or function. Exact price points for the Ultrathin platform have not been confirmed, but Andy Lutzky, an AMD spokesperson, cited affordability as a critical factor behind the company’s overall strategy for the platform. "The price point is definitely a goal," Lutzky told CRN. "Anything in the $599, $699, $799 range is the goal."

Read more here –>crn.com

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Is it a new Alienware gaming console? No, but it will fit right in nicely with your PlayStation 3 and Xbxo 360, but packing superior hardware.
by Kevin Parrish January 18, 2012

On Tuesday, Dell updated its blog with news of a new Alienware desktop gaming PC that fits within a console-like chassis. Called the Alienware X51, the compact rig is a direct response to community demands for a more efficient gaming system with a smaller, more versatile form factor. 

That said, the Alienware team came up with an impressive-looking rig measuring 13.5-inches tall in the front, 12.54-inches tall in the back, 12.52-inches deep and 3.74-inches wide. Standing up it looks like a super-slim PC, dwarfed by its bigger Alienware desktop brothers — laying flat, it could be mistaken for a next-generation gaming console sporting a sleek matte black finish, dark chrome accents and three customizable lighting zones, but better hardware. "The X51 is Alienware’s smallest gaming desktop ever produced, and yet is powerful enough to give gamers the freedom to do it all – play modern games, immerse themselves in PC hobbies and tasks for work or school, or even create an entertainment hub by integrating it into a home theater setup for watching Blu-ray movies with 7.1 surround sound," the blog reads. Under the hood, the Alienware X51 features Intel's 2nd-generation Core i-Series CPUs, Nvidia GeForce GT or GTX GPUs with GDDR5 memory, 802.11n connectivity, HDMI 1.4 output, and USB 3.0. But don't let the small form factor fool you: this rig isn't a closed system, but rather is fully upgradeable, allowing owners to quickly perform their own hard-drive, graphics, and memory upgrades quickly and easily.

Read more here –>tomshardware.com

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Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak still loves his iPhone, but says in some ways, Android has leapt ahead. Wow.
By Dan Lyons Jan 14, 2012

Apple CEO Steve Jobs hated the Android smartphone operating system so much that he vowed he would spend his last dying breath and every penny Apple had in the bank trying to destroy it. 

Android, created by Google, entered the market after Apple but soon gained greater market share. A lot of Apple fans dismiss Android as a ripoff of Apple’s ideas, and a crappy one at that. But oddly enough, Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Jobs in 1976, says he’s a big fan of Android phones. Woz says he still thinks Apple’s iPhone is the best overall smartphone, but he says there are ways in which Android has leapt ahead of Apple. “My primary phone is the iPhone,” Woz says. “I love the beauty of it. But I wish it did all the things my Android does, I really do.” Woz says voice commands work better on Android. Android’s built-in navigation system, where the phone acts like a GPS system, is another advantage, he says. Android phones aren’t as simple to use as the iPhone, but they’re not that much more complicated, and “if you’re willing to do the work to understand it a little bit, well I hate to say it, but there’s more available in some ways,” Woz says. There’s a theory that Android could do to iOS (Apple’s mobile operating system) what Microsoft Windows did to the Macintosh in the 1990s. Microsoft triumphed because it licensed its software to many different hardware makers and ultimately had much greater market share than Apple, which would only sell its operating system on its own hardware.

Read more here –>thedailybeast.com
Also read this –> Does Steve Wozniak really prefer Android to the iPhone?

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By Nathan Olivarez-Giles January 16, 2012

Skype can be used to make voice and video calls over the Web using PCs, a number of TVs and Blu-Ray players, Facebook and via smartphone apps found on BlackBerrys, Androids, iPhones and iPads.

Yet, despite Microsoft buying Skype at a price of $8.5-billion in October, you still can't make a Skype call on a Windows Phone handset. However, that will change soon, Skype and Microsoft said in a YouTube video produced at the Consumer Electronics Show last week. If you're feeling a bit skeptical, you're likely not alone. Skype has been promising a Windows Phone app since April of last year. But a higher level of integration between Skype and its new owner Microsoft is inevitable, if not late. Rick Osterloh, Skype's vice president of product, said in the company's CES video that the online calling service is working on apps for not only Windows Phone, but also for Microsoft's Xbox gaming console and the in-development Windows 8 operating system. Osterloh also said that Skype is on an upswing of growth with the service recently passing 200 million monthly users who use more than 1 billion minutes a day. Also on the way is group-calling with up to 10 people on a single call, he said.

Read more here –>latimesblogs.latimes.com

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by Rob Kerr January 16, 2012

The latest edition of the massively anticipated Consumer Electronic Show witnessed chip-maker AMD demonstrating its forthcoming offering Lightning Bolt 

- the company's answer to Intel's USB killing technology Thunderbolt. AMD opted to make the demonstration behind closed doors only, therefore not revealing too much information to its rivals about what the company is really up to. According to reports, the new Lighting Bolt technology will come as a one-stop-solution for display, USB 3.0 as well as power connectivity – where all these three aspects will be handled by one single cable, once the technology hits the market. The Thunderbolt technology rolled out by Intel happens to be the first ever multi-use-interface, capable of delivering up to 10Gbps data transfer speed, per channel. This technology was first used by Apple, in their MacBook line up. How fast or how slow AMD's Lightning Bolt will be in comparison to Thunderbolt (and USB 3.0), is yet to be known.

Read more here –>itproportal.com

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