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Industry News

Digital Signage's Role in the Boston Marathon Crisis

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Digital Signage's Role in the Boston Marathon Crisis

We tend to think of digital signage mostly as advertising or wayfinding—until there’s an emergency or crisis. Clear Channel Outdoor in Boston shows us (via their Facebook page) how digital signage can transform into a vital public safety communication system when necessary.*

The tragedy of this year’s marathon, the inconceivable act of blowing up athletes at the finish line of a contest of personal endurance, stunned the American city of Boston.

The bombers, while on the run, decided to rob a grocery store to finance their run and to hijack a car for transit. One MIT campus police officer was shot to death in his cruiser, and another police officer wounded in a shootout.

With killers on the loose and in their midst, Bostonians, still reeling from shock, managed to cooperate with one another, assist proper authorities, and improve upon an anxious and confusing situation. And they did this with technology…with smart devices, internet, and social media. And they did this because local technology stakeholders, like Clear Channel and its digital signage network, contributed to the urgency of the civic cause. Read more...

IDC: EMEA PC Shipments Fall in Q1 2013

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IDC: EMEA PC Shipments Fall in Q1 2013

Consumer preference shifts to mobile devices and constrained commercial spending lead to further contraction in the EMEA PC market, IDC reports-- Q1 2013 shipments drop by -20.2% Y-o-Y to 21.8 million units.

Portable PC shipments total 13.6m units (with a -20.6% Y-o-Y decline) and desktops drop by -19.6% to 8.3m.

Such results cement earlier IDC and Gartner reports on the currently dismal outlook for the global PC market-- which the analysts attribute at least partly to Windows 8 making PCs "a less attractive alternative to dedicated tablets and other competitive devices."


IDC says "while the PC market continues to suffer from a shift to other devices, the current market expansion to a larger product portfolio and higher number of devices per person continues to support an increase in overall spending on total client devices, which grew by 15% in 2012 and will remain at double-digit in Q1 2013."

Read more...

IDC and Gartner agree on Steepest PC Decline Yet

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IDC and Gartner agree on Steepest PC Decline Yet

The PC market keeps looking worse-- according to IDC global Q1 2013 PC shipments drop by -13.9% Y-o-Y to 76.3 million units, the worst quarter since IDC started tracking shipments in 1994. 

The shipment decline is (obviously!) much worse than the -7.7% Y-o-Y decline previously forecast by IDC. EMEA declines are also worse than than analyst anticipated, reaching the "strong" double-digits within both consumer and commercial markets. 


"At this point it seems clear that the Windows 8 launch not only failed to provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market," IDC remarks. "The costs associated with touch have made PCs a less attractive alternative to dedicated tablets and other competitive devices. Microsoft will have to make some very tough decisions moving forward if it wants to help reinvigorate the PC market."

In other words, Windows 8 effectively turned the PC market into something akin to a Zeppelin crashing towards the earth in slow motion while consumers stick to tablets and smartphones...  Read more...

Who really are these MSPs...?

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Who really are these MSPs...?

by Jack Mandard, founder and CEO, compuBase

Ever since IT existed and required distribution networks to sell products, it engendered acronyms, to such an extent that there are now web sites dedicated to deciphering what these acronyms actually mean.

The wealth of a language is often related to its depth of precision and this naturally depends on the environment in which the language is used. For example, English uses more naval terms than any other language, the insular nature of the country’s inhabitants having placed navigation at the very heart of their language. This alone has generated over 1700 words...

In certain IT professions one could quite naturally hear " I’m an ISP(2) and I’d like to find a VAD(3) to aggregate a group of ISVs(4), so that I can offer my VARs(5) solutions to help them become MSPs(6)." This wouldn’t strike anyone as unusual, but it could very easily lead to misunderstandings about what is actually meant. The whole thing can become even more complicated when the acronyms themselves are translated, leading to grotesque misunderstandings such as “I’m looking to recruit FAIs(7)”… “Ah, that’s a shame I only know ISPs”. Read more...

First Hybrid Memory Cube Spec Complete

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First Hybrid Memory Cube Spec Complete

The Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium (HMCC) finishes the first specification for its titular memory technology-- HMC Specification 1.0, allowing OEMs to make 2 or 4GB DRAM employing a stacked, power-efficient architecture.

The result of a 17-month long collective effort led by Micron, Samsung and Hynix, the technology stacks multiple memory dies on top of a DRAM controller. In turn DRAM connects to the controller via silicon Vertical Interconnect Access (VIA), a technology passing a vertical electrical wire through a silicon wafer.

The structure reduces the tasks the memory chip performs, providing an interface 15x faster than standard DDR3 DRAM while reducing power requirements by -70% according to the HMCC.

In total the specification provides for chips with up to 160GBps of aggregate bi-directional bandwidth-- slightly faster than the current 11GBps of aggregate bandwidth of DDR3 or 18-20GBps of DDR4.

Read more...

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