Loading ...The Rising Tide of Ink
by Bradley Hughes, Senior Analyst, IDC Canada
The world of printing has never been considered an exciting topic but in the past year we’ve seen a number of big advances in print technology. Vendors are increasingly placing bets on creating new disruptive technologies in order to shake up the old “inkjets for consumers, laser for business” order. As well, these technology advances all come about at the same time as the world of monochrome digital printing has hit its peak and the vendors all race to position themselves as the vendor to turn to for colour printing.
Thus far the biggest splash has been made by HP which introduced its Edgeline MFPs this summer. These devices use page-wide arrays of inkjet heads to produce colour prints at up to 50 pages per minute (ppm)at an apparently cheaper cost than a similar laser device. It’s too early to make comment about how these models have affected the market but the feedback thus far has been positive.
Of course, Xerox has had page-wide arrays for years due to its acquisition of Tektronix and their solid ink devices that currently run at 30 ppm for colour prints. Also in the mix is Ricoh’s GelSprinters which use a “viscous ink” and also run at 30 ppm.
The other big announcement this year for developments in ink printing was by a little known company from Australia known as Silverbrook Research. In March, Silverbrook showed off some prototypes (using what they call Memjet technology) that claimed to print at 60 ppm in full colour.
What this leads to is a possible showdown between ink and laser technologies in the battle for supremacy of the digital colour printing market. It will be interesting to see if the vendors involved in developing these new technologies can overcome the inherent bias that business purchasers have against ink devices. For example, IDC’s research has shown that over 70% of IT Managers in large & medium organizations believe that laser printing offers a cost per page that is much lower than ink. According to the claims of these vendors that may not be the case anymore. The trouble may be that while they’ve solved the problem in technology it will take much more effort to educate the end-user.
Of course, ink does have one good thing going for it: no airborne ultrafine particles.
(More on that next week)
Posted on August 31st, 2007 by Brad Hughes and filed under Research | No Comments »Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
Loading ...Honeypots and the Accidental Hacker
I was intending to post something on the book Virtual Honeypots: From Botnet Tracking to Intrusion Detection, by Google engineer Niels Provos and German grad student Thorsten Holz, but I was distracted by something shiny in the text.
(Is it just me, or does “honeypots” sound like some really cloying term of endearment? “Honeypots … I’m ho-ome …” But I digress.)
Specifically, it was a search string. Enter this into the search box of your favourite engine: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on August 29th, 2007 by Dave Webb and filed under Security | 362 Comments »Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
Loading ...iPhone unlocked – but is it a big deal?
By Joaquim P. Menezes -
Worldwide efforts to unlock the iPhone – untethering it from the AT&T Network – appear to have been motivated by two main factors - “fortune” and fame.
The latter was clearly the impulse at work in the case of George Hotz, the New Jersey teen who succeeded last week in completely unlocking the device, using what’s dubbed as a “hardware hack” (temporarily installing a piece of hardware into the device, during the process of unlocking it).
By Friday, the 17-year old confirmed to several publications that he had unlocked the iPhone, and was using it on T-Mobile network – the only other major US carrier, besides AT&T, with i-Phone-compatible technology.
Hotz has posted a blow-by-blow account of the unlocking process on his site.
In one of his many media interviews, he also said he does not want people using his technique to make money.
Well given that the “10 steps” to unlocking the iPhone tutorial Hotz has published on his site is rather complex – a great many iPhone users may be reluctant to try out his procedure.
Their reluctance is likely to be reinforced when they read Hotz’s rather ominous cautionary message at the start of the tutorial: “you may brick your iPhone using this tutorial – you are WARNED.”
Heck – that’s quite a risk to take when it could compromise a device on which you’ve just forked out at least $US499.
So what’s the other option? I guess using someone that will - for a small fee - do the job for you.
In fact the buzz is that with the iPhone unlocking strategy now in the public domain, a small but fairly lucrative industry will spring up offering at least a couple of services:
• Unlocking your iPhone for a reasonable fee
• Shipping unlocked iPhones – purchased in the U.S. – overseas
Certain legal matters may have to be sorted out before this happens (will talk about this in my next blog), but it’s likely that in the not-to-distant future we’ll see a lot of these “unlock your iphone for a fee” providers spring up - in the virtual and real world.
One of these providers - Belfast, Northern Ireleand-based Uniquephones is already doing a reasonably lucrative business providing “unlocking” services to owners of a broad range of wireless handsets –including Motorola, Sony, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Panasonic, LG etc.
Uniquephones has developed a software “unlock” for the iPhone, but says legal considerations are currently keeping it from offering this service to the public.
A six-minute video posted on the iphoneunlocking.com blog shows John McLaughlin, the founder of Uniquephones, unlocking the iPhone. The video hit the Web a couple of days ago.
Stay tuned for more on this…
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Loading ...Yahoo Pipefitting
Patrice-Guy Martin, editor of our French-language magazine Direction Informatique, alerted the rest of us to the beta mash-up engine Yahoo Pipes. Pipes is essential a design-your-own-newsfeed service, which allows you to pluck RSS, databases, search engines and the like, combine them, sort them, filter them, and customize a feed to your browser, which you can publish for others to use.
It. Is. Painfully. Easy. Once I’d convinced myself it really was that simple, I set up a pipe to scan four categories of Canada Newswire in about 90 seconds. I set up a job-scanning pipe feed for a friend in about 30 seconds.
Curious … Anybody out there mashed up a feed on Pipes? I’d like to see what you’re doing with it and examine the potential that I’ve only scratched the surface of.
Meanwhile, for entertainment value, here’s a video from DraftFCB showing how your average Second Life avatar would behave in the real world. Thanks to Paul Ferriss from Marketing Magazine for the link.
Posted on August 24th, 2007 by Dave Webb and filed under Web 2.0 | No Comments »Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
Loading ...Gourmet Coffee and Web video – a winning blend
By Joaquim P. Menezes -
The explosive potential of Web 2.0 tools to build brand and boost revenues was brought powerfully to my attention during a conversation I had with my colleague at IT World Canada, Jorge Umana.
Jorge and I take the same GO bus, and during our ride to the office he told me how social networking over the Web is working wonders for his family-run business.
Posted on August 20th, 2007 by Joaquim Menezes and filed under Computer Science, Web 2.0, messaging, social networking | 1 Comment »Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
Loading ...‘Smart’ project needs smarter implementation
By Joaquim P. Menezes -
Updated on August 15 at 3:46 -
I had to waste a good deal of energy – and time – trying to sign up for this “smart energy conversation” program.
A few days ago I received a letter from my hydro supplier - Milton Hydro – describing what, on the face of it, seems like a cutting-edge Web-based home energy management system.
Posted on August 14th, 2007 by Joaquim Menezes and filed under Computer Science | No Comments »Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
Loading ...Municipal Wi-Fi’s emergency response
We all watched dumbstruck the news footage of the collapse of a bridge spanning the Mississippi River in Minneapolis earlier this month. What we didn’t know was the developing story of how the municipality’s just-started Wi-Fi infrastructure played a role in the emergency response.
The network was only about a quarter finished at the time of the collapse. The CEO of network vendor USI Wireless, Joe Caldwell, called the city to offer help, but couldn’t get through over an overwhelmed cellular network. Caldwell opened up the network to free use, and sent crews out to install hot spots and wireless cameras in the areas around the bridge that weren’t already covered.
Craig Settles, municipal Wi-Fi expert and author of Fighting the Good Fight for Municipal Wireless, recounts that story and offers some of the keys to a municipal wireless strategy for emergency response in this week’s IT Business Out Loud podcast. He’s also interviewed Minneapolis CIO Lynn Willenbring about the lessons learned.
Posted on August 10th, 2007 by Dave Webb and filed under wireless | 1 Comment »Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
Loading ...Pop! Goes the Weasel
By Joaquim P. Menezes -
Remember those nasty little things called pop up ads?
Remember how they could ruin your online browsing experience (especially the serial pops), destroy your trend of thought as you tried to get some online research done, raise your blood pressure, and lead to other sundry hazards.
Then came the pop up blockers –now standard with most mainstream browsers – and beleaguered PC users got some respite. But if you thought you’ve see the last of the ol’ pops – think again! How does that Bryan Adams song go?: Wherever you go, whatever you do, I will be right here, waiting for you Guess what. The pop ups will be waiting for you any day now – on your mobile phone. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on August 9th, 2007 by Joaquim Menezes and filed under Computer Science, Software, cell, messaging, mobile, wireless | 1 Comment »Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
Loading ...Star Trek storage
I was never a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation — I watched the only Trek that mattered, the one with James T. Kirk, dammit — but I did find the concept of the Holodeck, a 3-D interactive simulation chamber, fascinating. Holograms themselves are fascinating — three-dimensional but insubstantial, only as heavy as light. Holography was invented by Nobel Prize-winning Hungarian scientist Dennis Gabor — no relation to Zsa Zsa, I trust — in 1947, but mass-production of cheap lasers has given the technology a push. In IT, its application to storage has been under development for several years.
Posted on August 3rd, 2007 by Dave Webb and filed under Research, Storage | No Comments »Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
Loading ...Talking the walk – make your cell do your bidding
By Joaquim P. Menezes 
In the 1965 - 70 sitcom, I dream of Jeannie, beautiful female genie (Barbara Eden) just blinks her lovely large eyes twice, and hey presto, wonders occur: a horribly messy room is instantly tidy, or Jeannie and her fiancé, astronaut Tony Nelson are transported to some exotic location, delectable dishes suddenly materialize on the dinner table….you get the picture.
Posted on August 1st, 2007 by Joaquim Menezes and filed under Computer Science, cell, messaging, mobile, wireless | 2 Comments »
