Thomas Gordon, Author at VR World

Business, Entertainment, Software Programs

Adult Mag Website Flounders in Free Porn

Penthouse magazine, an early competitor to Playboy magazine, saw better times before it went digital. FriendFinder publishes the magazine on its network of adult content websites. The social networking and ?adult? website company filed Chapter 11 in a US Bankruptcy Court. The company owes in excess of $550 million according to court filings. This isn?t the first time Penthouse has hit the skids, In 2004, almost 40 years after the sex-oriented magazine was founded, it was acquired by Marc Bell and Daniel Staton from its creator, Bob Guccione via a Chapter 11 proceeding. In contrast, Playboy with its is still available in print magazine and continues

Business, Graphics, Hardware, Software Programs

Vivante Has a New GPU up Their Sleeve

Before the start of IDF-SF 2013, Vivante invited BSN to discuss their about to be announced new GPU. Vivante may not be as widely recognized as the big name GPU manufacturers, but the company creates graphics IP which end up integrated in numerous SoC’s (System-on-a-Chip) for many end-user products. Their real claim to fame is they have one of the fastest small-form factor GPUs on the market as BSN showed last January. The Vivante GPU IP is used by the likes of Freescale, Google?s Chromecast, Huawei, Marvell, and Samsung are just a few of their fifty licensees. Vivante mobile GPU IP speeds up the graphical

Business, Cloud Computing, Enterprise

SugarCRM secures $40 million in Funding from Goldman Sachs

On Wednesday, SugarCRM, a maker of sales tracking software, announced they had raised $40 million in private equity funding from Goldman Sachs? Private Capital Investing (PCI) group. Obviously, Goldman Sachs sees some advantage to owning a piece of SugarCRM. To assist developers and users understand the advantages of working with their company, SugarCRM has an extensive number of case studies on their website. Sugar 7, the latest version of SugarCRM’s customer relations management software, will be available in October. The new funding brings SugarCRM?s total capital raised to $119.5 million since its founding in 2004. Their funding is divided between $100.5M in equity and $19M

Business, Enterprise

SugarCRM Pulls IBM Seats Out From Under Oracle

SugarCRM, a customer relations management software company, has apparently taken advantage of weakness in one of the big names in the computer industry – Oracle. As Oracle falters, SugarCRM is making points with the big boys. Rumor has it that IBM is planning to replace Oracle?s Siebel CRM with a license for tens of thousands of seats from SugarCRM. This comes as Oracle announced Siebel Loyalty Management 8.2.2 this week, noting that "organizations increasingly look to adopt loyalty programs that stand-out from the competition and attract and retain customers." Ironic, isn?t it? IBM was major sponsor of SugarCon 2012 The rumor seems credible after seeing

Entertainment

Reflections on the Day After Christmas: Behind the Scenes at the North Pole

This isn’t an article about technology – it’s all about heart. Many ordinary people work all year just to make Christmas memorable for many who have so little to be thankful for. In our town, it all started when two people emptied their bank accounts to make kids squeal in delight at Christmas. The idea and generosity of those two people grew over the years as more and more people joined to help. Now, secret Santas bring happiness to unsuspecting recipients, fulfilling wishes of children whose families can’t quite make it alone. Santa and his army of civilian elves deliver a Christmas to remember made

Business, Enterprise, Software Programs

Oracle and Salesforce Part Ways – A Publicity Stunt?

The clouds seem to be raining down on Salesforce. The company was uninvited to Oracle OpenWorld 2011. Oracle dumped CEO Marc Benioff from their podium, then Benioff spoke at a competing forum of his own. Quarrels have killed many a romance and in this case, generated a lot of attention for both parties. The cloud is hanging heavy over the heads of Salesforce and Oracle. The battle is illustrated in the fightin’ words exchanged between Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and his Salesforce counterpart, Benioff. Ellison threw down the gauntlet with his now familiar comparison of Salesforce’s cloud services as a "roach motel" an elusive allusion

Entertainment, Hardware

LSI Peddles Us Around At IDF

Everybody knows LSI Corporation as an electronics company based in Milpitas, California, that designs ASICs, host bus adapters, RAID adapters, storage systems, and computer networking products. LSI stands for Large Scale Integration. They were also a very generous sponsor at the front door of IDF – San Francisco this week. LSI provided rickshaw service (Pedicabs) to everyone who attended IDF. tHE LSI Riksha: Not the Serial Attached SCSI one, but rather a single HP one (HP as in Human Power, not Hewlett Packard or a certain animal kind 😉 Pedicab drivers tend to be extremely knowledgeable about San Francisco, and can offer lots of useful hints and

Business

How Intel Pays Off Journalists

Often, we see some unsatisfied readers comment that press is paid off one way or another, rooting for one party or the other. You’re perfectly safe here – but think twice about the others. Pre-paid American Express card as provided by Intel At the IDF 2011 press room, we heard several international journalists complaining about the amount of money they received on the cards as in "not enough". Naturally, we got interested to hear what’s all about and learned that if you’re member of the Intel’s press pack, you don’t just get a room at the Marriott Downtown and a flight over, but also a

Business

Silicon Valley Keeps an Eye on Ireland

Companies situated in Silicon Valley on the west coast of the US are also prevalent on the west coast of Europe, in Ireland, land of the shamrock. However, that good luck charm may be wearing thin. From the potato famine of the mid 1800?s to the banking crisis of today, Ireland?s economy has been uncertain. However, taxes are often the deciding factor for a company selecting a business location. Ireland?s corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent is inviting, compared to the 35 percent rate in the US. Many moons ago, HP and Intel were kissing the Blarney Stone. Lately, Seagate, Zynga, Facebook, and

Business, Enterprise, Software Programs

Oracle?s Open World 2010 Announcements

Overall, keynote speakers at Oracle?s Open World 2010 emphasized their satisfaction with Sun. Mark Hurd, one of several keynotes speakers, had little to say. Perhaps his new employer was afraid the drama surrounding Hurd might detract from the company?s spotlight. As you will recall, Hurd left HP accused of improper involvement with a female contractor and questionable expense reports. Nonetheless, he is now a president at Oracle, hired by Larry Ellison, CEO. Hurd briefly introduced Oracle?s newest Exadata Database Machine, the X2-8, then left the stage. Other keynotes included John Fowler, VP of systems who said Oracle and Sun are collaborating to build systems

Hardware

Huawei at CES: nice booth but nobody understands last three feet

Huawei is a major Chinese telecommunications company founded in 1988 by Ren Zhengfei, a former officer in the People’s Liberation Army. The official story is that it began as a third-party reseller of other groups’ telecoms devices, before selling its own technology to the Chinese domestic market. In 2008, Huawei ranked Number 1 in the world among all the company and individual applicants for the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), according to the latest statistics released from the World Intellectual Property Organization. Huawei had the highest number of patent filings, with a total of 1737 applications in 2008. Fast forward to this week at CES 2010.

Business, Hardware

Intel Atom(ic) future revealed: 14 32nm SOC chips

Intel is stepping outside their comfort zone of only using the Intel Architecture (IA) and adding customer developed IP [Intellectual Property] to enhance functionality. Intel signed an MOU [memo of understanding] with TSMC in March to develop customer driven IP integrated with Intel’s Architecture. Sumit Rikhi, VP and General Manager of Technology and Manufacturing Group, discussed the process of building specialty 32nm processors. Intel’s new-to-them building block approach has the ability to choose optimum points to add transistors, rather than the traditional approach of having discreet points on a curve. Rikhi said that there are now co-optimization decision from the chip definition through manufacturing. The

Business

Verizon and AT&T pitch smart phones for profit

Verizon, largest wireless carrier in the USA, delivered Q2’09 results Monday that were slightly better than expectations, but the company added fewer net wireless customers than some analysts expected. The iPhone affected AT&T?s profit and loss statement, as well as Verizon?s bottom line. Will the Palm Pre raise the bar? Dennis Strigl, Verizon’s COO, admitted that the Apple iPhone, sold exclusively in the U.S. by AT&T, had affected their sales. He said that they saw customers moving over to AT&T for the new iPhone 3GS in the last part of June. Apple’s new iPhone went on sale in the middle of June, just two weeks

Apple, Business, Companies

Palm says "take that Apple"

On Friday, Palm released webOS 1.1 as a free update to all existing Palm Pre owners. This is the third major enhancement since launching on June 6. Palm?s older Treo owners are looking on in shock because they were lucky to see two updates in three years. Over at the Palm blog John Traynor, VP Business Products, added the ‘take that Apple’ with: "Oh, and one more thing: Palm webOS 1.1 re-enables Palm media sync. That?s right – you once again can have seamless access to your music, photos and videos from the current version of iTunes (8.2.1)." Among the Pre’s latest enhancements are UI [user

Business

Qualcomm fined $208 million by Korean Anti-trust regulator

Qualcomm Inc. was fined a record $208 million by SouthKorea?s antitrust regulator for "unfair" business practices inselling their chips to mobile phone manufacturers Samsung Electronics and LG.Electronics. Following a three-year investigation, the Korea Fair TradeCommission (KFTC) ordered Qualcomm, a San Diego, California based company, tostop charging higher royalties to customers who buy CDMA (Code DivisionMultiple Access) chips from rivals and to cease offering rebates to handsetmakers who purchase products mainly from Qualcomm. Qualcomm owns the code-division multiple access wirelesstechnology that is the most widely used mobile technology in the world. CDMAallows phone companies to cram more calls and information across limited radiospectrum than GSM (global

Business

Amazon buys shoe e-tailer Zappos for almost a billion USD

Amazon announced that it has purchased e-commerce apparel company Zappos for 10 million Amazon shares. $880 million per NASDAQ’s closing price on Wednesday. Zappos employees also will get $40 million in cash and restricted stock. The final results will be closer to $920 million and Zappos management will remain in place. Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO said in his email announcement that they had signed what?s known as a "definitive agreement", in which all of the existing shareholders and investors of Zappos (there are over 100) will be exchanging their Zappos stock for Amazon stock. Once the exchange is done, Amazon will become the only shareholder of Zappos stock.

Audio/Video, Entertainment

Solar Eclipse live on Internet

The longest solar eclipse of the century is just hours away. At sunrise of the Eastern hemisphere on the July 22, 2009, a total eclipse of the Sun was visible from within a narrow corridor that traverses half of Earth. The times of totality in the following areas were: 01.15 GMT- Western China 01.40 GMT- Eastern China 01.55 GMT- Ryukyu Islands, Japan If you want to see the Eclipse all over again, there are several sites around the world that hosted live webcasts and have replays of the event: Grupo Saros (China – Wuhan) Eclipse City (China – Shanghai) Live! Eclipse 2009 (Japan) SEMS-Sun Earth Moon Systems

Business

Sprint contracts day-to-day network operation to Ericsson

Sprint, the number three mobile carrier in the USA made a huge announcement which finally put an end to the rumors of them selling out. Instead, Sprint is outsourcing their network operations to Ericsson. Sprint retains full ownership and control of its network assets, and solely owns network strategy and investment decisions. In the US, this is a first for a major mobile phone carrier. In the rest of the world, it is a rather common business operation practice. Sprint said that this will allow them to focus on delivering a superior customer experience, innovative services, and popular new devices. Ericsson will provide day-to-day network

Business, Enterprise, Software Programs

Google announces Chrome OS, but when will we see non-Beta OS?

Everybody seems to be talking about Google’s blog announcement of Chrome OS [GCOS]. Okay, their announcement said that next year they should have an operating system designed for netbooks and web browsing. Here are the key points in that announcement: GCOS is open source and will run on both x86 and ARM platforms. Netbooks are already planned to be shipped with GCOS next year. GCOS consists of the Chrome browser and a new windowing system built on top of the Linux kernel. All application development will be done for the web using your favorite web technologies. Any apps developed for GCOS will automatically work on

Business, Software Programs, Technology Security

Goldman Sachs code stolen ? a key to manipulating stocks

On July 3rd, Sergey Aleynikov, a Russian immigrant living in New Jersey was arrested and charged with stealing top secret computer code. He was charged with stealing and sending secret computer code overseas which his former firm uses to automatically trade stocks and commodities. The rumors are swirling because Aleynikov was a $400,000 a year employee at Goldman Sachs who lead development of a distributed real-time co-located high-frequency trading (HFT) platform. The main objective of the platform was a very low latency (microseconds) event-driven market data processing, strategy, and order submission engine. The platform was obtaining multicast market data from NASDAQ, NYSE, CME and running