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I always like to hear about people improving their use of technology – especially when that means engaging kids in exciting activities that help them learn. There are some schools that are doing that well – but it’s difficult partially because technology changes so quickly and teachers often do not have the luxury of time to keep up on these changes. So I was delighted to read about a project at Thompson Reuters that got folks in industry working directly with kids…

When a group of Attracta Abulu’s co-workers at Thomson Reuters in Eagan decided to offer computer-coding classes for about 50 middle-school-age children of their colleagues, she jumped at the chance for Obi.

“I knew it was something he would really enjoy,” she said.

By developing those classes, Thomson Reuters programmers joined an informal worldwide initiative of programmers who are working to teach students the language of computers.

“We have to take some of the mystery out of technology so students can understand they can learn to control it,” said Rick King, Thomson Reuters’ chief operating officer for technology. “We want to stimulate more people to think about technology careers.”

Rebecca Schatz, who advocates for more computing education with the website CodeSavvy.org, said there is a “groundswell” of similar programmers worldwide working to pass along skills to the next generation. A group recently launched CoderDojo Twin Cities, a free workshop where students can learn to code, build websites and develop games from mentors who work around the metro area.

“Since it isn’t happening in our schools, it’s rippling up from everywhere else,” Schatz said. “It’s high time for it. It is amazing that it’s 2013 and we are not teaching our kids to code.”

It’s great to see industry and community partners stepping up to fill the gap in education – almost like a call back to mentorship or apprenticeship. I think it’s another sign of the change in the industry of education. Last summer I wrote about another impact of technology on education – specifically the ability to learn online from schools (k12 to top universities) with or without getting credit. I think we’re at a crossroads in education and how we teach will change a lot in the next decade with schools partnering with businesses and offering more personalized solutions to individual students.

 

Suda51 is well-known by gamers for creating games featuring tons of gore and not-so-subtle sexual innuendo. Games such as Shadows of the Damned and Lollipop Chainsaw revel in this type of grindhouse-style excess.

Suda’s newest game, Killer is Dead, is due out this August and looks as if it might even top Lollipop Chainsaw‘s bawdy innuendo.

Deep Silver and Grasshopper Manufacture today released a new trailer for the game featuring the various women that players will encounter during the game, dubbed “Mondo Girls.” Players will take on the role of Mondo Zappa, a James Bond-type executioner that hunts down criminals in a noir-styled world. As such, there will be plenty of seduction and skin, or at least enough to let gamers know they are playing a Suda 51 game.

Ed note: This op-ed by First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden was first published on Fortune.com. You can see the original article here.

Two years ago, we launched Joining Forces, a nationwide campaign to rally all Americans to support our veterans and military families. We did this for two simple reasons: because we were both awed by the courage and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform who risk their lives every day to protect our values and keep us safe. We were also awed by their families, the spouses and children who serve right along with them, enduring deployment after deployment with grace and resolve.

As we traveled the country visiting bases and military communities, everywhere we went, we heard from veterans who had years of training and experience in the military — leading dozens, even hundreds of their peers; operating some of the most advanced technology; and solving complex problems under the most extreme conditions imaginable. But when they returned home, they struggled to find decent jobs. We met military spouses who'd spent decades moving from base to base every couple of years and struggled to maintain their careers. As the months passed, we saw that the unemployment rate for our most recent veterans remained far too high above the national average.

These men and women are some of the highest-skilled, best-trained, hardest-working people in this country. They are medics and engineers, drivers and welders, computer technicians and machinists. They are eager to work and determined to keep on serving this country. All they need is a chance.

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Most people think standard operating procedures are a strait jacket that limits their flexibility. Yet in our increasingly complex world of work, with so many possible decisions and steps, clever use of standards can liberate. They can actually make it easier to tailor customer experiences at low cost.

Consider how standards are helping the Cleveland Clinic, rated one of the top hospitals in the United States. As Chief Marketing Officer Paul Matsen told me, “We use enterprise-wide standards. There is one marketing communications team, and we work across all our institutes, such as heart and vascular, or cancer. Having a single enterprise brand and image creates organizational challenges because it seems as though it constricts autonomy. But it actually creates freedom within a structure. For example, we are building a development platform for the iPad, and defining how it will interact with our electronic medical record system. When we resolve that for this first application, then our people will be able to create content for other applications using the same standard platform. Once you set up the standards and platforms, you can do more, and you can do it well.”

The Cleveland Clinic cleverly uses standards to deliver operational consistency, reliability, and low cost. Yet at the same time they use these standards as a springboard for creating unique solutions for each customer based on a deep understanding of their needs. (I call this understanding and tailoring “customer intimacy”). The result is a powerful combination that fulfills two customer value propositions at the same time.

Another example at Cleveland Clinic is in search engine marketing. Paul Matsen: “We’ve seen that when patients are diagnosed with a disease, they’re increasingly going to the web to research care, diagnosis, treatments and doctors. We’ve reshaped our marketing mix to reflect this new patient behavior. We spend half our media dollars to reach consumers searching for health information, and we have built reliable and useful experiences for those who come to our site. We partnered with institute leaders to build a few patient pathways, and we’ve expanded to over 100. It’s a very efficient model for patient access. Building on our standard approach, we were able to scale and replicate easily.”

Twenty years ago my friends Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema asserted in their HBR article “Customer Intimacy and other Value Disciplines” that leading companies succeed by excelling at one of three “value disciplines” — operational excellence, customer intimacy or product leadership — while meeting industry standards in the other two. They predicted that future winners would need to master two of these value disciplines. And the smart use of standards, as at the Cleveland Clinic, is part of the answer.

I see more and more companies mastering “operating models” — that is, their culture, business processes, management systems, and computer platforms — that use standard work to drive operational excellence and also provide a platform for tailoring customer solutions. For example, in a previous post, I described how Tesco made major strides in its supply chain management in the 1990s by applying standard process disciplines. It then added customer insights it gained from its Clubcard loyalty program and online shopping data to those more capable supply chain processes to tailor customer offerings in local stores and online.

The traditional view that complying with standards is part of a rigid “command and control” management system should be replaced with a new model: clever application of standard work allows you to have both efficiency and the flexibility to offer unique solutions to each customer. In my next post I’ll delve more deeply into different kinds of standards, from checklists for safety to the standard work that forms the basis for continuous improvement.

The Finnish enterprise content management platform M-Files, which places an unusual amount on emphasis on metadata, has closed a €6 million ($7.85 million) Series A round that was led by DFJ Esprit and also took in cash from the Finnish government.

M-Files does away with traditional folder structures, relying entirely on metadata to help people find documents (think iPhone rather than Windows), and it works across cloud, on-premise and hybrid installations. The service has been around for a good 8 years and has picked up some very serious customers indeed, ranging from AstraZeneca and Pandora to Northrop Grumman and the UN Environment Program.

“Everyone says that metadata is important, but quite often it’s something users have to add when they are storing documents,” CEO Miika Mäkitalo told me on Tuesday.

“Our M-Files system is a metadata architecture, which gives excellent benefits for end users… You can [organize] documents by customer name, project, proposal date and so on, and if you choose to find a document you will always find the latest version – they might be different paths but they all lead to the same document.”

As for the fresh cash infusion, this will be used to push M-Files further into the U.S. in particular, Mäkitalo said: “We want to continue growing aggressively. We want our channel sales function to skyrocket in the coming years.” He added that, although the U.S. and Finland account for most of M-Files’s existing customers (of which there are thousands), there are many elsewhere in Europe and in Asia, too.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• What Enterprise Software Vendors Could Learn from the Consumer Space
• The evolution of consumer-media cloud storage
• Infrastructure Q1: Cloud and big data woo enterprises

Apple had better hope that its investments in iOS Maps yield some major improvements if it hopes to push its much-maligned mapping application into more automobiles. Unnamed sources tell 9to5Mac that Apple “plans to move aggressively into the in-car integration space later this year” and “is working with car makers to deeply embed iOS’s Maps and Siri services into cars.” Essentially, Apple wants to give drivers the ability to plug their iPhones into their cars and have them deliver turn-by-turn directions through a combination of Siri and iOS Maps, thus giving users a safer hands-free navigation option. All of which sounds good until you remember that Apple’s mapping application still has major issues, and it has even been blamed for stranding tourists in the Australian outback after they followed a set of faulty iOS Maps directions.

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins seems to be among the most transparent executives in tech in terms of showing his hand regarding future product plans, which may be partly because he doesn’t have much to lose at this point. In an interview yesterday, he downplayed tablet computing in what looks to be an indicator that BlackBerry will drop the PlayBook, its own lame duck tablet and the first of its devices to sport a QNX-based operating system.

Heins should’ve stuck to specifics, however, as he went way overboard and came off as though he was losing touch with reality in the interview as quoted by Bloomberg, with broad sweeping statements like “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore,” and “[t]ablets themselves are not a good business model.”

Tablets may not be a good business model for BlackBerry, which took huge writedowns on BlackBerry PlayBook inventory, were forced to run massive fire sales with price cuts of up to $400 to clear out inventory, and even finally discontinued the entry-level 16GB version entirely. By any real measure, the PlayBook was and is a failed product. But to say tablets won’t last five years, or that they aren’t a good business model requires that you completely ignore Apple’s tremendous success with the iPad, including the 19.5 million iPads it sold last quarter, an all-time record that came in well above analyst estimates.

Heins has recently made remarks that indicate BlackBerry may be experimenting with alternate device form factors, possibly taking a cue from hybrid gadgets like the Asus PadFone which combine a smartphone and tablet or mini-notebook style device in one. Once again, Heins said that he would need a BlackBerry tablet to be a unique device in an increasingly crowded market.

BlackBerry may have blown it on the PlayBook, but trash-talking tablets in general is worse than sticking your head in the sand: it makes the company look hopelessly out of touch. There’s definitely a lesson to be learned in the fact that Apple is the only company that’s really been able to succeed with a tablet device, but that lesson isn’t that the tablet market is a write-off entirely.

Emerging markets bear John-Paul Smith first made his call to underweight emerging equities at the end of 2010. In a note released late on Monday he points out that such a position would have paid off handsomely — since end-2010 emerging equities have underperformed MSCI’s World index by 27.5 percent and U.S. MSCI by 37.6 percent.

 

Smith, who is head of emerging equity strategy at Deutsche Bank, sees no reason to change his call. Reckoning that the cyclical heyday of emerging markets is past, he is advising clients to hold on to developed and U.S. equities at the expense of emerging markets. The reason? China, pivotal for the rest of the EM world for commodities, trade.

Smith writes:

We are maintaining our existing underweight recommendations for GEM versus DM/US and current country weightings within GEM because the ongoing structural deterioration in the sustainable growth rate of the Chinese economy will continue to be the dominant narrative for the GEM equity asset class, in our view. Since the start of the year it has been increasingly evident at the micro level that the massive increase in total corporate financing has not as yet fed through into anything resembling a commensurate pickup in final demand.

Recent data from China would appear to bear that out. Economic growth and industrial data have both disappointed while Fitch has downgraded the country’s local currency rating, warning of risks to the economy from so-called shadow banking. And corporate results have not been reassuring — over 70 percent of companies, whether Hong Kong- or mainland-listed, undershot earnings forecasts for 2012,  according to Thomson Reuters Starmine data.

Smith again:

From a more bottom-up perspective, the ongoing deterioration in the underlying return on invested capital has now reached a point which threatens the viability of the entire economy.

So how China plays out will determine performance of the rest of the asset class. If China slows down gradually, emerging equities would underperform, led by commodity producers Russia and Brazil, while commodity importers such as India and  Turkey would gain. A more dramatic outcome in China would swiftly hit the most expensive markets such as Thailand and Malaysia, and also affect countries with current account deficits.

Within emerging markets, Smith is shunning Brazil, Russia, China and Korea but he has tactical overweights in Poland, Taiwan, Mexico, Turkey and is neutral/overweight in India — trades that would broadly benefit from a Chinese slowdown.

Samsung added S Translator and an Optical Reader in the latest version of TouchWiz on the Galaxy S 4. S Translator is essentially a lesser version of Google Translate, and it allows you to get language translations via text or by the spoken word. It translates Brazilian Portuguese, English (UK), English (US), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish. If you’re in another country, you could literally have a conversation with someone even if they don’t speak the same language as you. S Translate also has predefined phrases for you to use and allows you to favorite some translations that you might use more often for quick access.

The optical reader also serves as a translator by scanning written text on documents. It can also scan QR codes as well as create a new contact based on information from a business card.

Hit the break for a better understanding on how both of these features work and how they may help you in real life situations. Don’t forget to check out our other Galaxy S 4 guides, which cover everything from the latest TouchWiz additions to the camera application.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Come comment on this article: How to use S Translator and the Optical Reader on the Samsung Galaxy S 4

The iPhone, yes the original one, is about to be considered obsolete. I know, it already is from a practical standpoint – but Apple is about to make it official.

Internal documentation reveals that the iPhone will be classified as “vintage” or “obsolete” by June 11th. This will affect the Asia-Pacific, Canada, Europe, Japan, Latin America, and the United States.

Here’s what the internal document says (obtained by 9to5Mac):

For vintage products in the U.S., service parts are only available to repair older Apple products purchased in the state of California, as required by statute. Owners of these products may obtain service and parts from Apple service providers of Apple retail stores within the state of California. Apple does not provide service parts nor service documentation for obsolete products. Obsolete products (obsolete and vintage in the U.S.) cannot be facilitated as Mail-In Repairs to AppleCare Repair Centers.

In the U.S., you won’t be able to walk in to Apple Stores and have your original iPhone serviced. But you can call directly to AppleCare and Authorized Service Providers, as it has “vintage” status.

It’s not just the iPhone that’s being given this status. Various iMacs and MacBooks are also being laid to rest, so to say.

Of course, this will rarely affect anyone in a practical way. The original iPhone, with its EDGE 2G and 128 MB of RAM is not really in the circulation anymore. It’s been discontinued for years, and you would have to look pretty hard to find a conclave of original iPhone users – considering the low price and availability of something like the iPhone 4.

But it is significant, nostalgic even. We’re now living in a world where the original iPhone, heralded as such an innovation back in 2007, is now considered obsolete. Officially.

 

Ladies and gents— Twitter is officially on the way to Google Glass. Using an official Twitter for Glass app, an excited gentleman took a photo of some nice scenery and uploaded the photo using the Twitter app. While the gentleman had immediately deleted his tweet, a screenshot of the tweet was already saved by some enterprising folks and as you can see above, it clearly labels some interesting information. The most noteworthy thing to note is the “Twitter for Glass” label— which clearly marks the (unofficial) arrival of the app’s testing for Glass.

Naturally Twitter has stayed mum on this minor snafu and won’t give up any details, but now that we know that something is being worked on behind the scenes, it probably won’t be long before we see more of what Twitter for Glass is and its potential for the cool device.

 

source: TechCrunch

Come comment on this article: Twitter for Google Glass gets outed, shows it’s very much real and on the way

Sears Holdings recently launched Fulfilled By Sears, a turnkey fulfillment service for third party merchants, that include products and services for online, in-store, mobile and fulfillment logistics.

“Our goal is to help our clients unify their business across all channels so that however their customers may shop – they have a single cohesive, seamless and delightful experience,” Bill Kiss, Vice President, Chief Digital Marketing Officer, Sears and Kmart Formats, tells WebProNews. “The solutions provided by Sears are designed to be flexible, allowing merchants of any size, shape or form to leverage Sears’ expertise, scale and technologies. Merchants can choose which solutions they need and implementation of the solutions are quick, easy and cost efficient.”

Fulfilled by Sears is competitive with other fulfillment solutions available in the market.

“It offers merchants with an enterprise-level fulfillment solution as a viable option for their business at an affordable price that is transaction based,” Kiss explains.

“Fulfilled by Sears offers a very simple and transparent pricing model without hidden fees,” he says. “For example, we do not have a separate, oversized rate card nor do we have multiple fee structures based on product types. Rather we have one simple rate card based on weight and dimension of the item regardless of the product type.”

“In addition, Fulfilled By Sears merchants can market and sell to ‘SHOP YOUR WAY REWARDS’ Members who buy and spend more, and who recently exceeded 60 percent of Sears transactions and sales,” Kiss says.

Sears promises merchants the instant ability to handle dramatic increases in order volume.

“Sellers can take advantage of Sears’ status as one of the country’s largest online mass merchants, with a sophisticated network of warehouses, technology, distribution centers and online order fulfillment processes,” Kiss says. “The process that handles Fulfilled by Sears orders uses the same fulfillment centers, technology, and workforce that are used for Sears.com orders – so sellers can feel comfortable knowing that spikes in volume are common and our fulfillment services and processes are designed with that in mind.”

They also claim to be able to reduce operating expenses for businesses (always a welcome feature).

“Fulfilled By Sears is a game-changer for sellers of any size seeking a way to grow income and sales without increasing overhead costs like storage, shipping and personnel,” Kiss says. “With Fulfilled by Sears you can cut out the high cost of storing and managing your own inventory and take advantage of Sears’ scale and expertise to grow your business, while avoiding increasing expenses. Plus, Fulfilled By Sears seller fee structure issimple, transparent and easy to understand.”

Merchants aren’t the only ones who will reap the benefits of Fulfilled By Sears, according to the company. Merchants’ customers will also feel some.

“Fulfillment and customer service is backed by Sears – a trusted brand with the distribution system in place to get customers their products quickly and safely,” Kiss says. “Sears Marketplace is an innovative community that allows sellers to sell products on Sears.com. Sellers work with Sears to provide our SHOP YOUR WAY REWARDS Members and customers with millions of additional items and endless aisles of unique products.”

Fulfilled by Sears from Gisteo.com on Vimeo.

Fulfilled By Sears comes in a pay-as-you-go model. It doesn’t charge order handling fees for items sold on sears.com, and without long-term commitments, sellers are free to leave whenever they want.

As of the time of this writing, they’re running a special promotion, where sellers can get zero pick/pack fees for items sold on sears.com and fulfilled by sears, as well as zero storage fees for the month of May, and a 50% rebate on inbound shipping costs if they sign up and ship Sears their inventory by the end of May.

Merchants using Fulfilled By Sears can earn a ” SHOP YOUR WAY Guarantee” badge.

Quantum Energy Partners has made a majority investment in Carmel Bay Exploration Ltd., the firm announced. Terms were not disclosed. Carmel Bay is a Calgary-based upstream exploration and development company focused on acquiring and developing assets in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. The Company was founded in late 2011.

PRESS RELEASE
Quantum Energy Partners (“Quantum”), a leading energy private equity firm, is pleased to announce a majority investment in Carmel Bay Exploration Ltd. (“Carmel Bay” or the “Company”) with Canadian E&P veteran Patrick Manuel (“Patrick” or “Manuel”).

Carmel Bay is a Calgary-based upstream exploration and development company focused on acquiring and developing assets in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. The Company was founded in late 2011 and has concentrated its efforts to date in the Montney resource play where it has technical expertise. It will also leverage off of its prior experience across other select WCSB plays to opportunistically acquire and exploit other core assets. Quantum, members of the management team and the Company’s board of directors have collectively made initial investments and/or future capital commitments in excess of $225 million to the Company.

The Carmel Bay team is led by Manuel as President and Chief Executive Officer. Manuel and his senior management team have had a consistent track record of creating value at several prior E&P companies. Most recently, Manuel was President and CEO of Monterey Exploration, a highly successful Montney focused operator. Prior to Monterey Exploration, Manuel was part of the senior management teams at Crispin Energy and Rio Alto Exploration, both of which resulted in successful exits to Canadian public entities.

Carmel Bay board members include industry leaders Murray Nunns (CEO, Penn West Petroleum Ltd.), John Brussa (senior partner, Burnet, Duckworth & Palmer, LLP), Brett Herman (CEO, TORC Oil and Gas LTD), and Don Copeland (oilfield service entrepreneur) as well as Managing Directors Garry Tanner and Dheeraj Verma from Quantum who collectively bring decades of energy investment experience to support Carmel Bay management.

Manuel remarked on the closing, “We spent significant time evaluating our financial options for growth capital and came to the conclusion that in the current volatile market, private equity capital, and more specifically Quantum, offered substantial and dependable capital which would allow us to take advantage of evolving market opportunities and grow our business relatively quickly with significant flexibility. We anticipate that with the Company’s slate of current projects, significant deal flow, and our new capital partner, Carmel Bay is positioned extremely well to build a meaningful and successful E&P company.”

“We are excited to be in partnership with such an accomplished and focused upstream operating team. The Company has already assembled a significant initial acreage position in the Montney and is aggressively pursuing a variety of other opportunities which we believe over time will deliver superior returns to our investors,” said Garry Tanner, Managing Director of Quantum Energy Partners. “We were also impressed with the high caliber board members Patrick had pulled together, all of which have continued on with the Company post our capital infusion, and believe their involvement will be extremely value-added in guiding the growth and success of Carmel Bay.”

About Carmel Bay Exploration, Ltd. Based in Calgary Alberta, Carmel Bay is led by a team of seasoned industry professionals, many with over 20 years in upstream engineering, geology, operations, marketing, and business development with a track record of success working in the WCSB.

About Quantum Energy Partners Founded in 1998, Quantum Energy Partners is a leading provider of private equity capital to the global energy industry, having managed together with its affiliates, more than $6.5 billion in equity commitments since inception.

The post Quantum Energy Partners Buys Carmel Bay Exploration appeared first on peHUB.

The rovers on Mars this month were under a command moratorium as Mars passed behind the sun, an event known as solar conjunction. Now that the solar conjunction has ended, researchers have found something amiss with Mars rover Opportunity.

Mission controllers this week found Opportunity in a standby mode. NASA has stated that it appears the rover “sensed something amiss” during a camera check on April 22 and entered standby. Team members have prepared commands for Opportunity to bring it back to full operative status.

“Our current suspicion is that Opportunity rebooted its flight software, possibly while the cameras on the mast were imaging the sun,” said John Callas, Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We found the rover in a standby state called automode, in which it maintains power balance and communication schedules, but waits for instructions from the ground. We crafted our solar conjunction plan to be resilient to this kind of rover reset, if it were to occur.”

Opportunity was one of two rovers that landed on Mars in 2004 as part of the Mars Exploration Rover Project. The other rover, Spirit, became stuck in soft soil in 2009, and ceased communications in 2010.

The newest rover on Mars, Curiosity, is reported to be fully operational following the solar conjunction. Researchers are planning on sending it commands starting tomorrow.

(Image courtesy ASA/JPL-Caltech)

 

Verizon is looking to bring its customers an enhanced cloud storage solution by introducing its Verizon Cloud app. Also known as a revamped and improved version of its VCast Media Manager, the Verizon Cloud app allows users to choose specific files (think text/MMS messages, images & videos or music, etc.) to be backed-up and synced automatically on Verizon’s unique server. For some added flexibility, Verizon will even allow users of its app to access the files through a traditional PC computer or any other supported smartphone as well.  Sweet.

As of now, there are some flexible options for select Verizon customers now. Customers with supported devices have the option of starting out with 500MB of storage for free, though there is the option of moving up to 25GB for $2.99/month, 75GB for $5.99/month and 125GB for $9.99/month. Of course not all Android owners will have the luxury of using the service as of this time as the following devices are supported at this time: Motorola DROID X, DROID X2, DROID 2 Global, HTC Thunderbolt, Incredible, Incredible 2, Samsung DROID Charge, Fascinate, Motorola DROID XYBOARD 8.2″ and 10.1″, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Tab 2 10.1 and Galaxy Note 10.1.

Verizon confirms that additional devices will see support for the cloud storage solution at a later date.

source: Verizon Wireless

Come comment on this article: Verizon introduces its Cloud service for customers, includes 500MB for free to start

Samsung just announced that they are going into production on their 4 gigabit (Gb) low power data rate 3 (LPDDR3) mobile DRAM. It’s produced at a 20 nanometer (nm) class data node. What does this mean? More speed and less power consumption, not to mention they are a little thinner. As to speed, the 4Gb LPDDR3 can transmit data up to 2,133Mbps as compared to 800Mbps on LPDDR2. You can basically transmit three full HD videos (total of 17GB) in one second over this new chip. You can also expect a savings of about 20% in power consumption.

“By providing the most efficient next-generation mobile memory with a very large data capacity, we are now enabling OEMs to introduce even more innovative designs in the marketplace,” said Young-Hyun Jun, executive vice president, memory sales & marketing, Samsung Electronics. “Our 20nm-class four gigabit mobile DRAM provides another example of our ability to deliver well-differentiated, high-performance, high-density memory to customers in a timely manner.”

Full presser after the break.

Samsung Now Producing Four Gigabit LPDDR3 Mobile DRAM, Using 20nm-class* Process Technology

SEOUL, South Korea–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced the industry’s first production of ultra-high-speed four gigabit (Gb) low power double data rate 3 (LPDDR3) mobile DRAM, which is being produced at a 20 nanometer (nm) class* process node.

“Our 20nm-class four gigabit mobile DRAM provides another example of our ability to deliver well-differentiated, high-performance, high-density memory to customers in a timely manner.”
The new 4Gb LPDDR3 mobile DRAM enables performance levels comparable to the standard DRAM utilized in personal computers, making it an attractive solution for demanding multimedia-intensive features on next-generation mobile devices such as high-performance smartphones and tablets.

“By providing the most efficient next-generation mobile memory with a very large data capacity, we are now enabling OEMs to introduce even more innovative designs in the marketplace,” said Young-Hyun Jun, executive vice president, memory sales & marketing, Samsung Electronics. “Our 20nm-class four gigabit mobile DRAM provides another example of our ability to deliver well-differentiated, high-performance, high-density memory to customers in a timely manner.”

The 4Gb LPDDR3 can transmit data at up to 2,133 megabits per second (Mbps) per pin, which is more than double the performance of the preceding memory standard mobile DRAM (LPDDR2) with a data transmission speed of 800Mbps. This makes it possible to transmit three full HD videos, collectively 17 Gigabytes (GBs) in length, in one second over the new Samsung chip embedded in a mobile device.

Samsung’s 20nm-class LPDDR3 mobile DRAM enables seamless display of full HD video on smartphones with five inch-or-larger screens. In comparison to a 30nm-class LPDDR3 DRAM, the new device generates more than a 30 percent improvement in performance and 20 percent savings in power consumption.

While mobile gadgets continue to scale down in height, battery packs have been increasing in size. By adopting Samsung’s 4Gb LPDDR3 mobile DRAM, OEMs can have a 2GB package that includes four of Samsung’s new chips in a single package that meets the memory package height of 0.8 millimeters (mm).

Representing a major growth factor in the DRAM market, Samsung plans to increase production of its advanced 20nm-class mobile DRAM later this year, solidifying its competitiveness as a memory industry leader.

According to market research firm, Gartner, the DRAM market is forecast to grow by 13 percent year-over-year to reach $29.6 billion (US) in 2013, with mobile DRAM to exceed $10 billion in sales, for 35 percent of the total DRAM market.

Come comment on this article: Samsung’s 20nm 4Gb LPDDR3 Mobile DRAM now in production

George Jung, the famed drug smugger, whose life story took the big screen form of Blow (starring Johnny Depp as Jung) has been tapped to write the biography of McAfee antivirus founder John McAfee.

Impact Future Media, which secured TV and movie rights to McAfee’s life late last year, while McAfee was in hiding from Belize authorities, is behind the project. The title is No Domain.

“We are honored to be working with George Jung on this once in a lifetime project,” said François Garcia, CEO and Co-founder of Impact Future Media. “Most people know George for being an outlaw, but behind that sits a man who is also one hell of a writer. He is the perfect person to spin this yarn about the enigmatic John McAfee.”

“I feel like I have known George Jung for a very long time. The words he has put down on paper are the very words I would write if my talent for writing was anywhere near as rarified and beautiful as his,” said McAfee. “I am overwhelmed by his efforts, and am most grateful to him.”

Impact Future Media shares an old quote about Jung from Depp: “To Otisville Federal Correctional Institute, he is merely Inmate #19225-004. To me, he is not a number, he’s not a convict, and he’s not a criminal. He’s a great man whose wisdom and knowledge, unfortunately, was greatly overshadowed by the choices and mistakes he made all those years ago when he hadn’t even had time to brush himself off from the conditioning wrought upon him by his parents.”

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Jung is due to be released from prison in November of next year.

Its Official … impfm.com/boston-george-…

— GEORGE JUNG (@THEGEORGEJUNG) April 29, 2013

SGI announced that iVEC and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) have selected SGI to provide the massive data management infrastructure at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre. The centre is part of the Australian Government Super Science Initiative to support the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) radio astronomy facility.

The ASKAP and MWA projects are expected to generate eight petabytes of data each year, all of which will be stored at the Pawsey center. When data is added from other research areas, the storage estimates are raised to ten petabytes annually. To manage this massive amount of data CSIRO selected an SGI InfiniteStorage and SGI UV 2000 based solution to address the scale and cost-efficiency requirements for a project of this magnitude. The solution comprises disk storage systems and licences to support up to 100 petabytes of online storage that is virtualized across multiple performance tiers by SGI DMF software, with data ingest and workflow managed by SGI LiveArc. The primary six petabytes of storage is integrated with 40 petabytes of data tape libraries and provides expansion capabilities to support a seamless 100-petabyte hierarchical storage management (HSM) online environment.

“iVEC is committed to ensuring Australia maintains its place as a world leader in research and scientific computing, and the Pawsey Centre is a critical pillar in this strategy,” says Neil Stringfellow, iVEC’s executive director. “SGI’s storage and data analysis infrastructure is a vital component of the Pawsey infrastructure. In particular the SGI UV 2000 visualisation system with its very large shared memory capability will enable our researchers to manipulate their data in a completely new way, leading to the potential for new insight and ambitious analysis.”

The SGI UV 2000 based data-analysis engines and visualisation systems are expected to come online shortly after the Pawsey Centre is in production later this fall.

“For decades, SGI has been solving Big Data challenges for researchers across science and industry in an effort to find answers to the world’s toughest challenges,” said Jorge Titinger, president and CEO, SGI. “We are very pleased to support the data management needs of the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre. They are conducting impressive research, and with our InfiniteStorage and UV 2000 technology, will be able to reach results and interactions more quickly. We look forward to continuing this partnership and seeing the Pawsey Centre’s revolutionary solutions to challenges in science.”

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Source: Youtube.com/DRIVE