Archive for September 16, 2008

For the last time, thats not a typo!! Hear = here, honest!

Posted: September 16, 2008 in Technology
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We’ve heard a few announcements from big companies for the past couple of days and it seems that Creative wants to get into the action as well.  They’ve been sending out invites for an event and it seems like they’re releasing a new x-fi product. A lot of people are actually have high hopes and are expecting at least a new PMP from Creative. I think they really need to come out firing on all cylinders for this event because most of Creative’s recent product releases have been lackluster to say the least. I mean, this used to be a company that made products that rival  Apple’s iPods, Apple has sold millions since then but still Creative’s product features were superior, at least back then. Their main line of products in my opinion is a dying technology (mp3s, sound cards) because they can already be replaced by other device or are already integrated of course they still perform better  in general but still would that be enough reason for people to buy them?

Update: It seems this is one if not the one product that they plan to unveil today an X-Fi soundcard for notebooks that lets you listen to music anywhere in your house via wireless receivers, hence the tagline “I am heard everywhere” great another X-mod…… (product page)

 

I really hope they plan on announcing a whole lot more than this, please tell me they’re not that delusional to hold an event for just one product.

Philippines anti prawn act of 2008

Posted: September 16, 2008 in Politics
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Recent reports have uncovered a senate bill that Senator Manny Villar has filed last July 24, 2008, its called Senate Bill No. 2464: The Anti-Porn Act of ‘08.  AN ACT PROHIBITING AND PENALIZING THE PRODUCTION, PRINTING, PUBLICATION, IMPORTATION, SALE, DISTRIBUTION AND EXHIBITION OF OBSCENE AND PORNOGRAPHIC MATERIALS AND THE EXHIBITION OF LIVE SEXUAL ACTS, AMENDING FOR THE PURPOSE ARTICLE 201 OF THE REVISED PENAL CODE, AS AMENDED.

If you wanna read the whole thing you can download the file here.

Senator Villar said “It is the duty of the State to give special value to the dignity of every human person and to promote and safeguard its integrity and the moral, spiritual and social well-being of its citizenry, especially the youth in general and women in particular, from the pernicious effects of obscenity and pornography.”

How much of HP’s spotlight did IBM steal?

Posted: September 16, 2008 in Technology
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Its a big day for HP today because its their securities analysts meeting today, however the main concern of the tech community is HP’s unveiling of their strategic reasons to acquire Electronic Data Systems (wikipedia).

Last Thursday IBM made a couple of announcements as well to steal HP’s thunder.

I.B.M. has lobbed a preemptive strike of sorts against rival Hewlett-Packard. Late Thursday, it announced four fresh services contracts just ahead of a Monday meeting in Silicon Valley where H.P. is expected to explain the strategy and structure for its new acquisition, Electronic Data Systems.

The flurry of announcements marks the start of a protracted marketing and technology battle between the technology industry’s largest companies.

One of the deals secured by I.B.M. took place in the Philippines with PSBank, the second largest savings bank in the country. I.B.M. was eager to point out that the bank shifted from an Oracle database running on H.P.’s hardware to performing its online transaction processing on an I.B.M. mainframe.

The other deals included a seven-year outsourcing agreement with the PTT Chemical Public Company of Thailand, a new data center for Saigon Commercial Bank in Vietnam and a technology agreement with Skynet in Lithuania around Internet protocol television, or IPTV.

I.B.M. was not terribly subtle about celebrating the international flair of its services and technology expertise. But it’s not really subtlety that the company is after when it comes to H.P. and the services battlefield.

“HP will claim next week that they have some great new capabilities,” said David Parker, the vice president of strategy for I.B.M. Global Services. “I will be surprised if they are able to be very specific about that. It is still yesterday’s business model.”

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HP has already sited some reasons for the huge acquisition

At its securities analyst meeting today, HP will unveil a strategic plan to establish a powerful position in the evolving enterprise market.

With the acquisition of EDS, HP has the industry’s most comprehensive portfolio of IT solutions to help customers manage and transform their technology environments. The company also will announce plans to restructure the EDS business group to streamline costs, invest in growth and drive shareholder value.

Enterprises are facing an explosion of digital content, aging infrastructure and constrained resources. Consequently, chief information officers must rethink their technology environments and choose to manage it themselves, outsource it or receive services through the cloud. With EDS, HP is a leading globally scaled service provider that combines innovation, a stronger product portfolio and expanded service delivery capabilities.
“HP now has the broadest technology capabilities in the market to meet customer needs today and in the future,” said Mark Hurd, HP chairman and chief executive officer. “HP has a strong track record of making acquisitions and integrating them to capture leading market positions. We will deliver on the promise of HP and EDS for our customers and shareholders.”

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However we are already seeing some negative effects like this announcement of HP’s massive cut down of jobs

US technology giant Hewlett-Packard has said that it will cut 24,600 jobs worldwide over the next three years as part of its integration with computer services firm Electronic Data Systems.

The company employs 4,000 in Ireland in locations in Leixlip, Dublin, Galway and Belfast. A spokesperson for the company here said HP Ireland has no knowledge of how many, if any jobs will go in Ireland as a result of the global rationalisation. No numbers had been set for any country, she added.

World leading computer maker HP bought Texas-based business services outsourcing titan EDS in August as part of a $13.9 billion deal that aimed to create a global powerhouse in computer services to compete against IBM.

The workforce reduction aims to ‘streamline the combined company’s services businesses,’ and once complete is expected to ‘result in annual cost savings of approximately $1.8 billion,’ HP said in a statement.

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Yahoo goes purple, or goes back to purple.. or wears purple

Posted: September 16, 2008 in Technology
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On the topic of weird, confusing but maybe effective marketing Yahoo! just launched its start wearing purple campaign. Apparently Yahoo associates Purple (#7B0099) to innovation and thats why their homepage logo is mostly red (huh?). Anyway check out the website at startwearingpurple.com

P.S. I think purple.com is a better site. :)

Bill and Jerry part 2

Posted: September 16, 2008 in Technology
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Hey part two is out, its longer, slightly funnier and better in my opinion. Theres a high res version available at the windows site.

Now a lot of people are getting irritated or just plain confused by these ads, and I can see why… they’re not actively trying to sell anything. You just see a windows logo at the end and thats it, 4 minutes worth of airtime and you spend all of 5 seconds to show your product. Although that may seem stupid to some, and at the risk of sounding like a Microsoft fanboy (if there are still some left), I think its brilliant. It showcases Microsoft’s power, they’ve got 300 million to spend on these ads and they can waste airtime if they wanted to. But not selling a product in an ad isnt a total waste, Microsoft is in a unique position right now. How many times have you seen a company get ripped on by attack ads from a competitor for more than to years (Apple ads) without doing anything? I remember seeing coke and pepsi commercials attacking each other when I was a kid and thinking wow the free speech is great, those ads were funny, entertaining and creative. But now after years of staying silent people are thinking that its ok to make fun of Microsoft because they dont fight back. Well now they are and instead of coming up with similar ads to Apple, which would seem totally lame since they’re just copying and are a few years behind, they’ve chosen a more subtle approach. Now they’re easing us in, using the first few ads to introduce the characters Bill and Jerry as your friends and not just some people who are ‘out of touch’ and are trying to sell you their product. And another cool thing about these ads are the ‘easter eggs’ that only the tech enthusiasts will either get or just speculate about. For instance it can be argued that the old lady in the ad is Steve Jobs, being with the family for 12 years (Steve Jobs became CEO in ’96) and does everything around the house, gardening, laundry, fixing cars etc; which is pretty much what Steve does in Apple or at least is perceived to do approving apps, designs, answering e-mails (:)). Plus the old lady can be seen as a way of making fun of Steve Jobs health, which is often a concern for Apple investors. And then the food that they’re eating during dinner where Bill asks, “didnt we have this yesterday?” Can be directed to Apple’s products, with Apple touting itself as an innovative company, it really hasn’t come out with anything ground breaking other than the iPhone 3G (which of course has had several fixes since it came out, app store is still killer though). Thats why Jerry said theres some cheese in it, describing the way Apple tries to improve products by not really changing anything important (iPods this year only got that shake to shuffle feature and a design improvement). And sometimes Bill and Jerry are actually funny, I liked how Bill was reading to the kid and he said “its ok theres a firewall.” And I think that thats the beauty of these ads, you dont get them the first time but it encourages you, if you’re interested enough, to take a look and pick apart every scene. Like I’m still interested in what the conquistador shoes represent since they made an appearance on both ads. At the very least, even if there are some negative publicity its still publicity, people are talking about Microsoft again, people are waiting for the next part, people are taking another look at Vista after ignoring it for so long because of what they heard or actually experienced and most of all, people like me are blogging about it!