Apple iPhone, Apple iPhone review, Review Apple iPhone, Review iPhone, iPhone review

Apple iPhone, Apple iPhone review, Review Apple iPhone, Review iPhone, iPhone review

From the moment Apple announced its iPhone at Macworld 2007, the tech world hasn't stopped asking questions. Because Apple has kept many iPhone details under wraps until very recently, we've been forced to speculate. Until now. Is the iPhone pretty? Absolutely. Is it easy to use? Certainly. Does it live up to the stratospheric hype? Not so much. Don't get us wrong, the iPhone is a lovely device with a sleek interface, top-notch music and video features, and innovative design touches. The touch screen is easier to use than we expected, and the multimedia performs well.

But a host of missing features, a dependency on a sluggish EDGE network, and variable call quality--it is a phone after all--left us wanting more. For those reasons, the iPhone is noteworthy not for what it does, but how it does it. If you want an iPhone badly, you probably already have one. But if you're on the fence, we suggest waiting for the second-generation handset. Even with the new $399 price for the 8GB model (down from an original price of $599), it's still a lot to ask for a phone that lacks so many features and locks you into an iPhone-specific two-year contract with AT&T. We'll be more excited once we see a version with--at the very least--multimedia messaging and 3G.

Design On with the review: the iPhone boasts a brilliant display, trim profile, and clean lines (no external antenna of course), and its lack of buttons puts it in a design class that even the LG Prada and the HTC Touch can't match. You'll win envious looks on the street toting the iPhone, and we're sure that would be true even if the phone hadn't received as much media attention as it has. We knew that it measures 4.5 inches tall by 2.4 inches wide by 0.46 inch deep, but it still felt smaller than we expected when we finally held it. In comparison, it's about as tall and as wide as a Palm Treo 755p, but it manages to be thinner than even the trend-setting Motorola Razr. It fits comfortably in the hand and when held to the ear, and its 4.8 ounces give it a solid, if perhaps weighty, feel. We also like that the display is glass rather than plastic.

DisplayThe iPhone's display is the handset's design showpiece and is noteworthy for not only what it shows, but also how you use it. We'll start off with its design. At a generous 3.5 inches, the display takes full advantage of the phone's size, while its 480x320 pixel resolution (160 dots per inch) translates into brilliant colors, sharp graphics, and fluid movements.

MenusIn true Apple style, the iPhone's menu interface is attractive, intuitive, and easy to use. In the main menu, a series of colored icons call out the main functions. Icons for the phone menu, the mail folder, the Safari Web browser, and the iPod player sit at the bottom of the screen, while other features such as the camera, the calendar, and the settings are displayed above. It's easy to find all features, and we like that essential features aren't buried under random menus. Fluid animation takes you between different functions, and you can zip around rather quickly.

Much has been made of the iPhone's touch screen, and rightfully so. Though the Apple handset is not the first cell phone to rely solely on a touch screen, it is the first phone to get so much attention and come with so many expectations. Depending on what you're doing, the touch screen serves as your dialpad, your keyboard, your Safari browser, and your music and video player. Like many others, we were skeptical of how effectively the touch screen would handle all those functions.
Touch screenFortunately, we can report that on the whole, the touch screen and software interface are easier to use than expected. What's more, we didn't miss a stylus in the least. Despite a lack of tactile feedback on the keypad, we had no trouble tapping our fingers to activate functions and interact with the main menu. As with any touch screen, the display attracts its share of smudges, but they never distracted us from what we were viewing. The onscreen dialpad took little acclimation, and even the onscreen keyboard fared rather well. Tapping out messages was relatively quick, and we could tap the correct letter, even with big fingers. The integrated correction software helped minimize errors by suggesting words ahead of time. It was accurate for the most part.

The Apple iPhone features a virtual QWERTY keyboard.
Still, the interface and keyboard have a long way to go to achieve greatness. For starters, when typing an e-mail or text message the keyboard is displayed only when you hold the iPhone vertically. As a result, we could only type comfortably with one finger, which cut down on our typing speed. Using two hands is possible, but we found it pretty crowded to type with both thumbs while holding the iPhone at the same time. What's more, basic punctuation such as periods or commas lives in a secondary keyboard--annoying. If you're a frequent texter or an e-mail maven, we suggest a test-drive first.

We also found it somewhat tedious to scroll through long lists, such as the phone book or music playlists. Flicking your finger in an up or down motion will move you partway through a list, but you can't move directly to the bottom or top by swiping and holding your finger. On the other hand, the letters of the alphabet are displayed on the right side of the screen. By pressing a letter you can go directly to any songs or contacts beginning with that letter. But the lack of buttons requires a lot of tapping to move about the interface. For example, the Talk and End buttons are only displayed when the phone is in call mode. And since there are no dedicated Talk and End buttons, you must use a few taps to find these features. That also means you cannot just start dialing a number; you must open the dialpad first, which adds clicks to the process. The same goes for the music player: since there are no external buttons, you must call up the player interface to control your tunes. For some people, the switching back and forth may be a nonissue. But for mutlitaskers, it can grow wearisome.

Criticisms aside, the iPhone display is remarkable for its multitouch technology, which allows you to move your finger in a variety of ways to manipulate what's on the screen. When in a message, you can magnify the text by pressing and holding over a selected area. And as long as you don't lift your finger, you can move your "magnifying glass" around the text. You can zoom in by pinching your fingers apart; to zoom out you just do the opposite. In the Web browser, you can move around the Web page by sliding your finger, or you can zoom in by a double tap. And when looking at your message list, you can delete items by swiping your finger from left to right across the message. At that point, a Delete button will appear.

Thanks to the handset's accelerometer (a fancy word for motion sensor), the iPhone's display orientation will adjust automatically when you flip the iPhone on its side while using the music and video players and the Internet browser. Also, a proximity sensor turns off the display automatically when you lift the iPhone to your ear for a conversation. All three are very cool.

Exterior featuresThe iPhone's only hardware menu button is set directly below the display. It takes you instantly back to the home screen no matter what application you're using. The single button is nice to have, since it saves you a series of menu taps if you're buried in a secondary menu. On the top of the iPhone is a multifunction button for controlling calls and the phone's power. If a call comes in at an inopportune time, just press the button once to silence the ringer, or press it twice to send the call to voice mail. Otherwise, you can use this top control to put the phone asleep and wake it up again. You can turn the iPhone off by pressing and holding the button.

The Apple iPhone speakers are located at the bottom of the phone.
Located on the left spine are a volume rocker and a nifty ringer mute switch, something all cell phones should have and which is a popular feature of Palm Treos. On the bottom end, you'll find a pair of speakers and the jack for the syncing dock and the charger cord. Unfortunately, the headset jack on the top end is deeply recessed, which means you will need an adapter for any headphones with a chubby plug. Is this customer-friendly? No.

Unfortunately, the Phone does not have a battery that a user can replace. That means you have to send the iPhone to Apple to replace the battery after it's spent (Apple is estimating one battery will keep its full strength for 400 charges--probably about three years' worth of use). The cost of the replacement is $79 plus $6.95 shipping. No, you don't really need a removable battery in a cell phone, but like many things missing on the iPhone, it would be nice to have, especially for such an expensive phone. And just what are you supposed to without a cell phone during the replacement period? Contrary to earlier reports, the SIM card is removable via a small drawer on the top of the iPhone, but other AT&T SIM cards will not work in the iPhone. That's especially troubling, as it completely defeats the biggest advantage of using a GSM phone with a SIM card. Some people have multiple phones and like to change the SIM card between their different handsets. Also, you can't use the SIM card to import contact information from another handset.

Features
The iPhone's phone book is limited only by the phone's available memory. Each contact holds eight phone numbers; e-mail, Web site, and street addresses; a job title and department; a nickname; a birthday; and notes. You can't save callers to groups, but you can store your preferred friends to a favorites menu for easy access. You can assign contacts a photo for caller ID and assign them one of 25 polyphonic ringtones. We should note, however, that there's no voice dialing and you can't use MP3 files as ringtones. Other basic features include an alarm clock, a calculator, a world clock, a stopwatch, a timer and a notepad. There's a vibrate mode but it's a tad light.
The calendar offers day and month views, and you can use the calendar as an event reminder or a to-do list as well. The interface is clean and simple, though inputting new appointments involves a lot of tapping. There's no Week view, however. We were able to sync our Outlook contacts and calendar and our Yahoo! e-mail address book with no problems.

Bluetooth and wireless
The iPhone offers a full range of wireless functionality with support for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. The Wi-Fi compatibility is especially welcome, and a feature that's absent on far too many smart phones. When you're browsing the Web, the iPhone automatically searches for the nearest Internet hot spot. Bluetooth 2.0 is also on board, which delivers faster transmission and a longer range than Bluetooth 1.2. You can use Bluetooth for voice calls, but you don't get an A2dP stereo Bluetooth profile--another item that's not necessary but would be nice to have.

Though Apple CEO Steve Jobs has explained the iPhone's lack of 3G support by saying the chipsets take up too much room and drain too much battery, we'd like the option anyway. Yes, the Wi-Fi network is great when you can get it, but AT&T's EDGE network just doesn't cut it for all other surfing. EDGE Web browsing is so slow, it almost ruins the pretty Web interface. More on this in the Performance section.

Messaging and e-mail
For your messaging needs, the iPhone offers text messaging and e-mail. As on many smart phones, a text message thread is displayed as one long conversation--a useful arrangement that allows you to pick which messages you'd like to answer. If you use another function while messaging, you can return to pick up that message where you left off. We just don't understand, however, why Apple doesn't include multimedia messaging. Sure, you can use e-mail to send photos, but without multimedia messaging you can't send photos to other cell phones--pretty much the entire point of a camera phone.

The iPhone's e-mail menu includes integrated support for Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, and Mac accounts. You can set up the phone to receive messages from other IMAP4 and POP3 systems, but you'll need to sweet-talk your IT department into syncing with your corporate exchange server. It's rumored that Apple will update the iPhone to support ActiveSync but Apple hasn't confirmed that as of this writing. You can read--but not edit--PDF, JPEG, Word, and Excel documents. Worse: you can't cut and paste text when composing messages.

iPhone's iPodSandwiched between all the iPhone's features lives Apple's most amazing iPod yet. The display, interface, video quality, audio quality--all of it is meticulously refined and beautiful. Unfortunately, it's trapped within a device that will cost you more than $1,000 a year just to own. CNET recently reviewed a Rolls-Royce that had a top-notch umbrella hidden inside its passenger door. Buying the iPhone for its iPod feature is a lot like buying that Rolls-Royce for its umbrella. Regardless, the iPhone is an exciting glimpse into what Apple hopefully has planned for its sixth-generation iPod. Apple has redeemed itself following the Motorola Rokr E1 debacle.
The Apple iPhone's music player lets you view album art.

On paper, the iPhone's iPod doesn't offer any features not already on a fifth-generation iPod: podcasts, videos, music, and playlists are all here, and content management with iTunes is identical. The difference rests entirely in the iPhone's interface. We've used other MP3 players that use touch interfaces, such as the Archos 704, iRiver Clix and Cowon D2, but the iPhone's unique integration of multitouch technology and a graphic user interface put it in a category all its own.
From an iPod perspective, Apple's biggest triumph with the iPhone is the fact that it has returned album artwork back into the music experience in a way that goes beyond a token thumbnail graphic. Physically flipping through your music collection in the iPhone's Cover Flow mode really brings back the visceral feel of digging through a CD or record bin. It's a tough feeling to quantify,
but the real music lovers out there will appreciate how well the iPhone reconnects their digital music to a form that is both visually and physically more vivid. Even iTunes users who may already be jaded about using the Cover Flow mode on their personal computer will be surprised at how the experience is changed by using the iPhone's intuitive touch screen.

Truth be told, there is one feature that is new to the iPhone's iPod--the integrated speaker. While the iPhone's speaker sounds thin and is prone to distortion, it works in a pinch for sharing a song with a friend. Apple was also smart enough to manage its speaker volume independent of the headphone volume, so if you're listening to the speaker full-blast and then decide to plug in your headphones, you won't be deafened.

The bad news is that the iPhone's iPod leaves out the ability to manually manage the transfer of music and video content. Unlike any previous iPod, the iPhone does not allow an option for manually dragging and dropping content from an iTunes library directly to the iPhone device icon. Instead, the iPhone strictly uses defined library syncing options for collecting and syncing content from your iTunes library to the device. This should work out fine for most people, but for a device with limited memory the inability to manually manage content seems like a misstep. Our 8GB iPhone was already a quarter full after only a few hours of testing, giving us the impression that users will need to be vigilant at grooming their iPhone library. An external memory card slot is another one of those "nice to have" features.

The iPhone's music sound quality seems right in line with our experience using the 5G iPod. All the same EQ presets are available, only now they are found on the iPhone's main Settings tab. The included iPhone earbuds did a passable job for casual listening in a quiet environment. Unfortunately, the iPhone's recessed headphone jack prevented us from using many of the test headphones we're familiar with. We were just barely able to squeeze the plug of our Etymotic ER6i earphones into the jack to do the comparison.

Watching video on the iPhone is not quite as luxurious as a Creative Zen Vision: W or Archos 504, but its wide screen and bright contrast beat the fifth-generation iPod by a mile. As with previous iPods, video playback is automatically bookmarked so that playback resumes where you left off. And because the iPhone is a phone, it includes an airplane mode that will keep the music player activated while turning off the call transmitter.

The Apple iPhone's video player really takes advantage of its wide screen.
Safari browserThe Safari browser really sets the iPhone apart from the cell phone crowd. Rather than trudging through stripped-down WAP pages with limited text and graphics, the browser displays Web pages in their true form. It's a completely and surprisingly satisfying experience to see real Web pages on a screen of this size. Our only regret is that the browser does not support Flash or Java. To pan around a page, just swipe your finger across the display, and the page moves accordingly. Tap your finger on a link to open a new page and double-tap your finger to zoom in and zoom back out. You can use the arrows on the bottom of the display to move back and forth, while a multifunction button at the bottom of the display lets you open new pages and flick among them.

The Apple iPhone comes with the Safari Web browser.
Google search is the iPhone's default search tool, but you can use Yahoo search as well. When searching for information or typing URLs, you use the onscreen keyboard. It's just like typing an e-mail except that the spacebar is replaced with Web-appropriate language like ".com" and a slash. That's a nice touch.

Thanks to the accelerometer, you can tip the phone on its side for a more comfortable landscape view. It doesn't matter which direction you rotate the phone, as it will work either way. It's also nice that the onscreen keyboard appears in landscape mode when using the browser. Most Web pages looked great on the screen, but visually busy pages like CNN.com can be too crowded. And because you can zoom in only a set amount, some text can still be too small to read clearly. You can store bookmarks and sync your favorite pages from your PC, but it works only for Internet Explorer and not Firefox.

YouTubeYou can activate the iPhone's integrated YouTube player straight from the main menu via a colored icon. Videos are organized using many of the same criteria as on the YouTube site, including Featured Clips, Most Viewed, Top Rated, and Most Recent. You can read the information attached to a video, such as the date posted and the poster's name, but you can't read comments. It doesn't appear, however, that the YouTube connection updates in real time. We uploaded a video of our own, and it didn't show up until a few hours later.

The Apple iPhone has a built-in Google Maps application.
WidgetsThe iPhone doesn't have integrated GPS, but it does have a widget for accessing Google Maps. You can get turn-by-turn directions between two points, with traffic information. We tried mapping routes from CNET's offices to various places. The directions were accurate. But with no GPS, the iPhone can't tell you where you are, so you'll have to figure out that yourself. Also, the lack of audio instructions will limit its usability while driving. The map interacts well with the calling functions; you can find a point of interest and ring it in just a few taps. We also like that you can get the Google satellite view.

Additional widgets point to stock information and weather reports. You can program your own tickers and get information like a share gain or loss and see the chart of a share price over time. The weather function gives you a six-day forecast for your choice of cities. For more options, there is already a selection of third-party iPhone apps. No games are included on the handset
Visual voice mailOne of the most intriguing features on the iPhone is the much-touted visual voice mail. iPhone's voice mail works much like a text-message folder in that it displays the caller's name or phone number and the time. What's even more fantastic, however, is that you can listen to the message instantly by pressing the individual message--you don't have to call your voice mail first.
The Apple iPhone has a 2-megapixel camera on the back.

CameraThe iPhone's 2-megapixel camera offers a spiffy interface with a graphic that resembles a camera shutter. You're offered no camera editing options, which we didn't expect. That means you can't change the resolution, choose a color or quality setting, or select a night mode. There's no flash either, and with no self-portrait mirror, those vanity shots are going to be tricky. The camera performed well in our tests, however. Photo quality was excellent with rich, bright colors and distinct object outlines. White looked a bit too soft, but we approve overall. On the downside, you can't shoot your own video, which is disappointing on a phone at this price.

As we said earlier, the photo menu is attractive and easy to use, particularly due to the pinching motion. You can also flip between photos by swiping your finger across the display. When selecting a photo, you're given the option of assigning it to a contact, using it as wallpaper, or e-mailing it to a friend.

Call qualityWe tested the quadband (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) Apple iPhone in San Francisco using AT&T service. Call quality was good for the most part, but it wasn't dependable. Though voices sounded natural, the volume was often too low, and the microphone has a sensitive sweet spot. When we moved the phone away from our ears ever so slightly, the volume diminished noticeably and we had to move the phone back to just the right place to hear clearly. The volume wasn't so bad that we weren't able to hear a friend who was in a crowded bar, but it just could be better. The speakerphone was also too quiet though conversations weren't too muffled.

CNET users have also reported volume problems, and a few people we called said they heard a slight background hiss. We didn't hear the hiss on our end, but more than one of our friends said they noticed it. Automated calling systems were able to understand us, but only if we were in a quiet room. On the whole, the call quality stayed the same in most environments.
Browser speedOur first test with the Safari browser was over CNET's internal Wi-Fi network. Web pages loaded in 5 to 10 seconds, though sites with heavy graphics took longer. It was a smooth experience overall, though it not quite as zippy as we had hoped. We thought that could be due to CNET's network, but it seemed to be more or less the standard. Pages took about the same time to load on a home network and just a couple seconds longer in a cafe. When not using Wi-Fi, you're stuck with AT&T's EDGE network, which is just too slow to render the lovely Safari interface enjoyably. With speeds in the 50-to-90Kbps range, it reminded us of a dial-up browser. In other words, it's pretty intolerable. CNET Labs tested the speed of the EDGE network against the Wi-Fi connection by comparing repeated results of the download time for a 9.4MB file. After two days of testing, EDGE resulted in an average download time of 15 minutes, 41 seconds for the file; Wi-Fi on average required a mere 1 minute, 11 seconds. In the end, our test results indicate that the iPhone's Wi-Fi connection is 13 times faster than using EDGE, although results will vary depending on location. We can only hope Apple adds 3G soon, especially since AT&T has a robust UMTS/HSDPA network.

ActivationActivation was easy using iTunes 7.3. Our computer recognized the iPhone right away, and the activation system started automatically. After a few prompts, it asked us if we wanted to automatically sync contacts from Yahoo and Windows mail and contacts from Outlook. It also asked us to if we wanted to sync Internet bookmarks but, as we said earlier, it won't import Firefox bookmarks. The integration with AT&T's account service is also seamless. We were able to select a plan and indicate whether we were a current AT&T customer. It even asked us if we wanted to port a current cell phone number. In all, it's much better experience than dealing with AT&T.

It's important to note that the iPhone is little more than an expensive paperweight until it's activated. You can make emergency calls, but you can't use any other functions, including the iPod music player. What's worse, if you cancel your AT&T contract, the iPhone becomes a paperweight again.
Battery lifeThe Apple iPhone has a rated battery life of 8 hours talk time, 24 hours of music playback, 7 hours of video playback, and 6 hours on Internet use. The promised standby time is 10.4 days. When we tested the iPhone with the Wi-Fi function turned off, we got about 7 hours, 45 minutes of talk time. When we tested it with the Wi-Fi activated, we came away with 4 hours less. Video time, however, clocked in at an impressive 7.3 hours. Music-only time was also satisfactory.

We got 28.4 hours of music playback time on a single charge. Just keep in mind that it's rare you'll be using just one feature for hours on end. As such, your battery life will vary widely as you switch between functions. Large color screens such as the one on the iPhone tend to be battery drainers, so you'll most likely need to charge your handset every couple of days. According to the FCC, the iPhone has a digital SAR rating of 0.974 watts per kilogram.

iPod touch-Touch comes to iPod

iPod touch-Touch comes to iPod

Music, videos, photos, and websites in 8GB and 16GB models starting at $299

Multi-touch interface.
The revolutionary technology that made iPhone a hit is now on one amazing iPod.

Gorgeous 3.5-inch widescreen display.
Touch your music in Cover Flow and watch video on a stunning, widescreen display.

Wi-Fi web browsing.
Browse the web with Safari and watch YouTube videos on the first-ever Wi-Fi iPod.

Music downloads from iTunes.
Search, preview, and buy songs from the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store on iPod touch.

Video. Now playing on iPod nano

Video. Now playing on iPod nano
A little video for everyone

The new iPod nano. Up to 2,000 songs or 8 hours of video at your fingertips.


It’s the small iPod with one very big idea: Video. Now the world’s most popular music player lets you enjoy TV shows, movies, video podcasts, and more. The larger, brighter display means amazing picture quality. In five eye-catching colors, iPod nano is stunning all around. And with 4GB and 8GB models starting at just $149, little speaks volumes.

Video
Watch up to 5 hours of TV shows, music videos, movies, and podcasts.

Enhanced Interface
Browse your music by album artwork with Cover Flow. View everything on your iPod nano in a whole new way.

Brighter Display
iPod nano sports a larger, 320-by-240-resolution display that’s 65 percent brighter than before.

Newly Redesigned
In anodized aluminum and polished stainless steel, iPod nano is now 6.5 mm thin and even more beautiful.

Oracle Real Application Testing

Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition
Oracle Real Application Testing

Agile businesses want to be able to quickly adopt new technologies, whether it's operating systems, servers, or software, to help them stay ahead of the competition. However, change often introduces a period of instability into mission-critical IT systems. Real Application Testing—with Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition—allows businesses to quickly adopt new technologies while eliminating the risks associated with change. Real Application Testing combines a workload capture and replay feature with an SQL performance analyzer to help you test changes against real-life workloads, then helps you fine-tune them before putting them into production.

Benefits:
- Uses real workloads—Replays real workloads, not synthetic or artificial loads
- Comprehensive—100% coverage for entire change lifecycle
- Scalable—Requires similar effort for small and large changes
- Predictable—Transfers exact resolution of changes from testing to production
- Cost efficient—Reduces testing effort by up to 90%

From: Oracle

Oracle Database 11g Enterprise-Oracle Database Options

Oracle Database 11g Enterprise
Oracle Database Options

Oracle offers a wide range of options to extend the power of Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition to meet specific requirements in the areas of performance and availability, security and compliance, data warehousing, and manageability. This range of options, combined with Oracle Database's extensive out-of-the-box capabilities, make Oracle's the world's #1 database.

Options:
- Real Application Testing
- Advanced Compression
- Total Recall
- Active Data Guard
- Real Application Clusters
- Management Packs
- Partitioning
- Content Database Suite
- Warehouse Builder
- OLAP
- Data Mining
- Spatial
- Database Vault
- Advanced Security
- Label Security

From: Oracle

Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition

Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition delivers industry leading performance, scalability, security and reliability on a choice of clustered or single-servers running Windows, Linux, and UNIX. It provides comprehensive features to easily manage the most demanding transaction processing, business intelligence, and content management applications.

Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition comes with a wide range of options to extend the world's #1 database to help grow your business and meet your users' performance, security and availability service level expectations.

Benefits:
- Protects from server failure, site failure, human error, and reduces planned downtime
- Secures data and enables compliance with unique row-level security, fine-grained auditing, transparent data encryption and total recall of data
- High-performance data warehousing, online analytic processing, and data mining
- Easily manages entire lifecycle of information for the largest of databases

From: Oracle

Oracle Database 10g Sets New Record for TPC-H Three TB Benchmark

Oracle Database 10g Sets New Record for TPC-H Three TB Benchmark
Achieves World Record Performance with Grid Computing

Oracle set the new world record TPC-H Three terabyte (TB) benchmark for Oracle Database 10g Release 2 using Oracle Real Application Clusters running on an HP ProLiant BL25p server blade cluster. With this achievement, Oracle sets up a new milestone as the fastest TPC-H clustered benchmark ever published, and continues to outpace IBM DB2.

With a server configuration made up of a 64-Node HP ProLiant BL25p cluster, each with one dual-core AMD Opteron 2.4 GHz processor and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, Oracle Database 10g with Oracle Real Application Clusters achieved a record-breaking performance of 110,576.5 QphH@3000GB with a price-performance ratio of $37.80/QphH@3000GB.

"Oracle continues to build upon its preeminent record for setting benchmark records in all the leading TPC size categories," said Richard Sarwal, vice president of Server Performance, Oracle. "Our goal is to always provide customers with high-performance, highly scalable database systems and these record-breaking results are yet another demonstration of our commitment to that goal."

Article from: Oracle

New Apple iMac

Apple iMac-Technology

As you might suspect, design doesn’t supersede performance. The new iMac is more powerful than ever, with a faster processor, next-generation graphics, and larger hard drives. And it’s loaded with everything you need to make use of that power, including a built-in iSight camera, Wi-Fi, and SuperDrive.

Intel Core 2 Duo processor
All iMac models feature advanced dual-core Intel processors along with other improvements that pump up the performance.

Built-in wirelessBanish the clutter.
The latest 802.11 Wi-Fi networking and Bluetooth technologies come standard with every iMac.

Built-in iSight camera
The high-quality camera is so neatly integrated, you’ll hardly notice it’s there.

Connections and ports
iMac has all the ports you need for your USB, FireWire 400, and FireWire 800 devices.

Glossy widescreen display
Your photos, movies, and games will come to life with richer, more vivid colors. Choose from 20- and 24-inch widescreen displays.

Advanced graphics
New ATI Radeon HD graphics deliver a stunning visual environment with more vivid, lifelike images.

More storage and memory
Now you have more room for your video and photo collections. And iMac now supports up to 4GB of memory.

SuperDrive
The slot-loading SuperDrive lets you play and burn your own CDs and DVDs.

>> The Future of Shopping

The Future of Shopping
With new developments, shoppers will have an efficient experience using a supermarket that will know their needs. Asina Pornwasin reports on the future store

You're running out of shampoo, bath cream and toothpaste, so it's time to go to the supermarket. To make sure that you won't forget all the necessary things, you pick up a key chain which is like a member card, and is equipped with a bar code scanning feature, to scan the product item and everything else you want to buy.

Welcome to the future store, where shoppers will find a more convenient way to shop. Forget all about jotting down a list of items on paper. With the new future store concept, all your shopping lists can be electronically sent in advance to the supermarket. Once you get there, just tap the member card, and all your lists will be loaded to a display device on your shopping cart. The cart will then guide you to where your products are stocked.

"Shoppers' lifestyles in the new era are going to change," said Fredric Lam, manager of the IBM retail innovation centre. "New technology developments will make the supermarket smart enough to facilitate customers with more convenience when shopping."

Member cards equipped with barcode scanning features are the first gateway to make your shopping experience more convenient. "With this," he said, "shopping lists on paper will become something of the past as people in the future will use the card to tap the product to record what they want to buy."

Network infrastructure is also necessary to allow people to send their shopping lists to the supermarket, and once they get there, technology will help them retrieve their information.
In the supermarket, various kinds of technology will be available. For example, a new personal shopping assistant (or PSA) will allow shoppers to view their electronic shopping list.

PSA, an 8.4-inch display device, will communicate directly with the supermarket's server through Bluetooth wireless, Wifi, or infrared connections. Lam explained that once people come to the supermarket and tap their member card at the gate, their information, including member ID, shopping record, and the latest shopping list, will be sent from the central server to the targeted PSA.

There is still more information offered through PSA, he added. Not only will it show a shopping list, it will show shoppers the location of the product's shelf so they can go direct to the right place.
Meanwhile, with the utilisation of technology, the supermarket can also send its promotional information direct to the PSA.

"The promotion can pop up on the PSA screen when shoppers walk past the shelves to pick up their goods, and this way the supermarket can offer customised marketing to each individual," he said.

Technology will also revolutionise the payment system. Lam said in the future store, people can forget all about standing in a long queue to make a payment, as they can pay for products via a self-checkout system.

The system will automatically detect each product item, and then summarise the total amount of payment. The system can detect each product by shape and weight to check that the product is the same as the barcode or RFID tag. "This is to prevent cheating," he added.

For the payment process, instead of paying with cash or a credit card, shoppers just put their finger on the fingerprint scanner to make a payment.

Lam explained that in the self-checkout counter, the system is online and connected to the shopper's bank account.

Therefore, once they put their finger and password on the scanner, the system will automatically ask the bank's system for approval for that transaction.

The new self-checkout system will also help the supermarket to keep records of their customers, and it can use this information to improve their loyalty programmes and to develop new campaigns or promotions specifically for individual customers.

In turning an existing supermarket into a new future store, Lam said supermarket operators can upgrade the system step by step.

"To make the new future store, it does not mean that supermarkets have to change their existing technologies and systems totally. They can select the application they want to use first and change it gradually," he said.

Article from: The nation

>> Global recognition sought for Thai-made software

Global recognition sought for Thai-made software
To encourage recognition of Thai software in the global market, a number of local software companies have teamed up to establish the Thai Software Export Promotion Association (TSEP).

The group consists of five companies - CT Asia, Wealth Management, Solution Corner, Good Idea and InStep - as founding members.

Chalermpon Punnotok, president of TSEP, said the association had been established with a strategy in mind to export Thai software.

The objectives of the group are to prepare global businesses for Thai software and to encourage the local software industry to train more people in terms of quality and quantity.
The association's strategy is to select software which is in niche areas, has solid target groups and involves innovations.

Initially, the association will focus on enterprise software such as what is used in workflow, call centres and financial management areas.

"We believe Thai software is competitive. The selected software must have strength and have been sold in Thailand already, so it can be sold in international markets as well," said Chalermpon.
Under the plan, TSEP will take local software companies to road shows in targeted countries to meet potential target customers in each country.

"To become international software vendors, we will help local software companies find their own customer bases in overseas markets in their own fields of strength," said Chalermpon.
This year the target for the association is to export software to countries in Southeast Asia, especially Vietnam and Laos, before moving to China, the Middle East and Europe over the next five years.

"As we want to build Thai brand awareness globally, we need to put a lot more effort into pushing Thai software to be accepted overseas. It is totally different from Thai brands in food, tourism, and medical industries that are already strong and well accepted," said Chalermpon.

He suggested this role should be adopted more strongly by government rather than the private sector.

TSEP in negotiating with the Software Industry Promotion Agency (Sipa) and Software Park Thailand for funds to establish activities in the global market.

The association requires support from government agencies in areas of advertising, public relations, marketing surveys and attending global events.

TSEP aims to strengthen the Thai software business so it becomes sustainable through customisation and crucial research and development.

"As the United States has Oracle, Germany has SAP, China has Huawei Technologies, Japan has Sony and Korea has Samsung, Thailand should have its own globally recognised IT-related product, especially software, to grab a global market share, instead of the local market being grabbed by global companies," said Chalermpon.

Article from: The nation

>> Top ten trends

Top ten trends
While people around the world are leading more mobile lives, it's expected there will be more affordable handsets and mobile services come on the market this year. A global business and technology consulting firm, inCode Telecom Group, has made predictions predictions of the Top 10 wireless trends to help identify wireless-market development and indicate ways that consumers and businesses will benefit.

Social networking gets mobilised. Mobility will be added to existing Internet business models, services and behaviour, driving traffic for wireless operators. Teens and twenties will become accustomed to constant connectivity and habit-forming websites and this leads to a wave of membership in mobile social networks. Location social networking - including friend and event finder services - are expected to gain popularity, even in the professional and over-50 segments.

Google, Yahoo and Skype are more compelling for users. As customer appetites for social data and video services spike, wireless operators offer more "all you can eat" pricing for high-end data packages. Social networking applications initially are preloaded on many mobile devices and become downloadable.

In the short term, wireless users are unlikely to plunk down between US$5.99 (Bt200) and $9.99 per month for mobile television services. Instead, look for per-view or per-minute pricing for "sneaking", a consumer tendency to watch key minutes of a sports event or drama while engaged in another activity.

Sneaking leads to more regular viewing, and within three to five years, mobile television becomes an indispensable service. Broadcast television is the primary driver of revenues and consumer adoption, but peer-to-peer video gains interest, too.
Multi-function devices become cheaper and more versatile.

Intense competition and margin pressure will continue in the handset market forcing prices of third-generation (3G) handsets below $90 and making them affordable for a wide range of users. Seeking to replicate the success of camera phones, device manufacturers will produce more multi-function units with music-playing, location, video and other capabilities. These lower-cost, multi-function handsets help wireless operators increase traffic and margins.

However, like swimming pools at hotels, some functions, such as music, are "must haves" used only by a few. Still, it's estimated that 20 per cent of all handsets sold in North America will be application specific - built for a usage proposition, such as music or video consumption or business productivity. WiFi handset capability could become the Trojan horse that allows Internet companies to bypass revenue from mobile subscribers.

GPS is the location technology of choice for the wireless industry. Handset manufacturers will continue to push GPS-enabled handsets as the technology evolves from popular in-car satellite navigation systems to a broadly accepted feature in wireless phones.

With Nokia having launched its first GPS-enabled handsets early this year, and bandwidth available to support new multimedia services, location-based service providers will build critical mass. Since there are 10 to 20 times more mobile phones sold than any other consumer-electronics device, wireless is a huge driver for GPS adoption. That's great for users and handset vendors, but the benefit to operators isn't clear.

AOL, Yahoo! and Google multimedia platforms challenge IMS.

As multimedia service platforms emerge, Internet service providers will build their own media architecture. That poses a risk to telecom operators adopting an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) approach. However, IMS needs a flagship application and develops slowly until entrepreneurs and venture capitalists create innovative IMS services as they did with the Internet.

Together, China and India will connect more than 10 million wireless customers per month in 2007, creating a subscriber base of 200 million customers. By the end of the year, China will finally start issuing 3G licenses. Wireless technologies are developed and deployed first in China and India, rather than Europe and North America as in the past. The result is a significant shift in industrial influence. Although Chinese infrastructure vendors may be viewed as the "Wal-Mart of wireless", that's more perception than reality.

Chinese manufacturers make rapid technology improvements and aim for long-term strategic advantage. Expect intensified focus to ensure a strong Asian influence in the 4G market.

Mobile advertising breaks loose. Major brands shift from basic SMS marketing to more sophisticated multimedia advertising. RBC Capital Markets expects mobile marketing revenues to balloon from $45 million in 2005 to $1.5 billion by 2010. With the technological ability to target and measure the effectiveness of mobile advertising, brands are more strategic in their approach. Operators under increasing price pressure will set limits on current handset subsidisation.

Brands take up the slack, subsidise handsets and services for target demographics, and take direct ownership of marketing channels. Rich 3G content and video services, and accuracy advancements in GPS-based location services, deliver further value to brands targeting existing and potential customers in innovative ways.

This year, mobile will make headway against fixed broadband operators, who have dominated Internet and cheaper voice service provision in the home. WiFi remains the primary wireless access technology. Low cost femtocells and combined WiFi/High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) routers emerge as attractive alternatives to VoIP over WiFi. The fixed operators may be strengthened by WiFi capabilities in consumer electronics devices - set-top boxes, game consoles and MP3 players - that enable cost-effective content downloads. However, innovative business models for HSPA will give mobile operators a real way to fight back, particularly in emerging markets.

Put strong security measures in place - this could be the year that hackers really start paying attention to millions of wireless devices, the growth in mobile data usage, and vulnerable points between mobile and fixed networks.

CIOs consistently cite security as their top concern in extending network access to wireless devices. Attacks, viruses and data security now exceed device loss or theft as concerns. Emerging services, such as VoIP and mobile payments, provide additional challenges. Vulnerabilities directly affect the bottom line, corporate image, regulatory compliance and competitive advantage. In the consumer segment, seamless mobility, off-portal content, IMS and convergence evolution continue to create new business needs for end-to-end security.

Enterprises can't resist the convenient, reliable, attractively priced, bundled mobile products entering the market. Corporations will switch from phones to mobile computers for transactions, data collection and messaging for a wide variety of employees. Many voice communications processes, such as order placement and delivery notifications, dispatch operations and remote asset monitoring, will continue to shift to wireless data to increase information access and field transaction volume across organisations.

Article from: The nation

>> 2-D barcode speeds up services for passengers

2-D barcode speeds up services for passengers
Nok Airlines will use a two-dimensional barcode system to maintain passenger information, and implement customer relationship management (CRM) to improve the quality of services.

Kramol Pulkes, vice president of information technology at Nok Airlines, said the firm was to develop a 2-D barcode to contain passengers' details in order to reduce human error.

The 2-D barcode will be provided to passengers by e-mail or Multimedia Messaging Service supported by General Package Radio Services after passengers confirm their electronic ticket. Passengers will then print out the barcode or use their mobile phone at the check-in counter to identify their ticket by a barcode reader without a second input of passenger information.

"The 2-D barcode does not only improve the quality of service, it reduces human error and cuts the check-in time. It also reduces the complexity of information processes and offers convenience to passengers," said Kramol.

By the end of this year, the firm in the first step will use a 1-D barcode to retain customer information. It will also, together with its partner, utilise 1-D barcode technology to improve productivity. The firm is also implementing CRM to support customer satisfaction and keep passengers' loyalty.

Pinyot Pibulsonggram, vice president of marketing at the company, said PDAs are now used to check in passengers under the Nok Xpress or Nok X service programme.

Nok X offers speedy check-in for Nok Air passengers who have only carry-on luggage. They can show their booking number and an ID card or passport to Nok Air's roving Xpress staff, who then print out their boarding pass from a handheld PDA. They can then be on their way to board the plane. The real-time system will be linked by wireless technology, and connected to a small mobile printer to print out the boarding passes instantly.

The firm also allows customers to book flights via telephone check-in services by calling 1318. The system then gives a booking number, their name and flight number to Nok Air staff, who check all the information is correct, and then inform the passenger as to where to pick up the boarding pass. Nok Air expects to carry around 22.4 million passengers this year.

Nok Air travellers can also book and pay for their flights using mPAY via WAP under the Nok Mobile Booking Service, as well as at Tsutaya President Park, Seacon Square or Big C Rajdamri.

Article from: The nation

>> Cisco Unveils Plans to Transform the Data Center

Cisco Unveils Plans to Transform the Data Center
Cisco Introduces New Data Center Products, Services and Programs to Support a Holistic View of the Data Center.

Cisco introduced a broad array of innovative data center products and solutions that will enable customers to better utilize their data center resources, deploy more robust business continuance, build cost-effective storage area networks, and enhance data security.

Cisco's vision for next-generation data centers, called Data Center 3.0, entails the real-time, dynamic orchestration of infrastructure services from shared pools of virtualized server, storage and network resources, while optimizing application performance, service levels, efficiency and collaboration.

"The network is uniquely positioned to be the platform for the data center, and Cisco is investing in innovations to help our customers transform their data centers for improved efficiency and increased business productivity. Data Center 3.0 provides our customers with a roadmap to build mission-critical data centers that improves collaboration within their organisations while dramatically reducing power consumption," said Tatchapol Poshyanonda, Cisco's managing director.

Over the next 24 months, Cisco will deliver innovative new products, programs, and capabilities to help customers realize the Cisco Data Center 3.0 vision. New products and programs announced today support that vision, representing the first steps in helping customers to create next-generation data centers.

Article from: The nation

>> Guidelines set for universal access

Guidelines set for universal access

The National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec) has announced Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) for 250 government agencies to develop their websites to support disabled people in order to ensure universal access.

Wantanee Phantachat, chief of assistive technology at Nectec, said the centre was issuing WCAG as a national guide to developers to create their websites to support Web accessibility to enable those with disabilities easier access to information.

"The centre has completed the national guidelines needed to develop websites for the disabled to encourage government agencies and the private sector to assist those with disabilities.
It will distribute the guidelines to more than 250 government agencies and conduct training for Web developers from government agencies as the next step," said Wantanee.

The idea is to allow disabled people in Thailand the same access to information and knowledge via the Internet as others, and ensure they have universal access to services. The centre will also upload the guidelines to a public website.

"The websites which follow the guidelines will provide an opportunity for disabled people to access information. So far no government agency website supports universal access," said Wantanee.

She said the guidelines would also be aimed at ensuring telecom companies and service providers developed communications services that were available to everyone on an equal basis.

The guidelines will also determine the format and standard for the development of telecommunications and information services for disabled people so it will be easier for them to use new technology and services.

The guidelines explain how to make Web content accessible to people with disabilities and are intended for all Web content developers and developers of authoring tools.

She said the guidelines would help people more quickly find information on the Web, and do not discourage content developers from using images and video. They also explain how to make multimedia content more accessible to a wide audience including techniques for document validation and testing, with an index of HTML elements and attributes.

"Disabled people in Thailand will soon enjoy universal access to improve their quality of life through access to knowledge and information via Web accessibility."

Private Satansat, an official at the Thailand Association for the Blind, said most disabled people now lack the opportunity to access knowledge and information from the Internet. To promote universal access and Web accessibility, government agencies should set the example and create their sites to allow disabled and blind people easier access to knowledge from the Internet through services such as electronic learning.

"The Internet is an important resource for the disabled to reach information. If Web developers build their sites following the WCAG standards it will very useful to these people," said Private.
He said however that disabled people have to purchase screen readers worth more than Bt40,000 per unit.

Wantanee said that Thailand now has around six million or 10 per cent disabled people in the population of 62 million. The centre expects the guidelines will encourage government agencies to create websites under the national standard at around 5 per cent in the first year with all websites supporting WCAG in the next five years.

Article from: The nation

>> Sensors become chips

Sensors become chips
Thai Microelectronics Centre (TMEC) has set its direction to develop sensor technology during the next two years, starting with basic sensor products and moving up to produce what it called smart sensors and smart control technology.

TMEC is a microelectronics research and development unit under the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec) to develop microelectronics prototypes aiming towards industrial mass production. It also has wafer fabrication facilities for small volume production of microelectronic and chip products.

TMEC will begin the development of basic sensors including thermal sensors, pH sensors and pressure sensors to serve industries. The outcome of the development is expected this year. As sensors are likely to be in widespread use in electronic products in the future, it will offer potential for the country to develop this technology, said Nectec's director Pansak Siriruchatapong.
He said since Thailand was a production base for electrical and electronic appliances, local development of sensor products would support local manufacturers who wanted to add more value to their products.

So far, TMEC has developed microelectronics for thermal sensors, pH sensors, blood pressure sensors, magnetic sensors and light sensors. Pansak said these were basic sensors that could be used in various devices including electrical and electronic appliances, medical devices, hard disk drives or electronic devices for agriculture or agritronics.

Nectec's assistant director Suthee Phoojaruenchanachai, who oversees TMEC, added that to make the sensor chips function as required, the centre would work with local universities to integrate the chips on IC boards.

"We will start with putting the sensor chips we produce ourselves in the lab on IC boards to make each sensor work as intended and next, we hope to develop all the systems into a single chip," Suthee said.

Apart from basic sensors, Pansak added that the plan also included the development of what he called a silicon microphone, a very small microphone which will be embedded in various kinds of electronic devices to detect sound. It will also be used as an input device for voice command applications.

Pansak said as the silicon microphone was related to microelectronics, it would be a key strength for TMEC.

To develop the silicon microphone requires microelectronic expertise to put several silicon microphones into an array so the microphone will be able to detect and separate sound to properly respond to the application.

"In the future, we believe there will be more use of voice-command devices, so this kind of microphone is important to make all the spoken-command responses accurate," he said.
TMEC plans to start silicon-microphone development next year.

Under TMEC's development path, the centre also hopes that its research activities will move towards the development of smart control technology for use in home appliances, automobiles, medical science, agriculture and environmental industries.

Smart control is a technology combining intelligent power-integrated circuits and smart sensors in a single chip. When used in automobile or home-appliance products, for example, it will add more value to the products and allow the device to offer functions which can be customised to serve individual user's requirements.

"We see that with this technology, future products like air-conditioners, for example, will be able to offer users more comfort. Instead of users having to adjust the temperature themselves, the device will detect the surroundings, such as temperature, heat and humidity, and then adjust for the most comfortable environment automatically," Pansak said.

TMEC plans to begin development of smart control technology in the next two years.
In addition to research activities, TMEC also offers wafer-fabrication services to produce small volumes of microelectronic products for outside organisations. The centre this year received a budget of Bt257 million to improve its utilities infrastructure to support wafer-fabrication processes and upgrade its machines to make the fabrication process more stable.

TMEC's director Amporn Poyai said that in the past, the centre instability of electricity, which made the fabrication process temporary halt at some times. With this new budget, the centre could build its own backup power source so the process could run continuously even if there was a blackout.
TMEC has a capacity to make 300 wafers per month. The technology used now is at 0.8 micron, which is suitable for use in the production of sensor chips. However, the centre plans to upgrade its production technology to 0.5 microns in the next two years.

From: The nation

>> More power in numbers-high-performance computing

More power in numbers
To create collaboration among Thai communities around the use of high-performance computing (HPC), a group of Thai professors has been working to establish formal cooperation in the form of the Thai HPC Consortium.

HPC is the use of parallel processing to run advanced application programs efficiently, reliably and quickly.

Chokchai Leangsuksun, director of Extreme Computing Research Group and associate professor of Computer Science, Louisiana Tech University, who initiated the Thai HPC Consortium, said the consortium was expected to be the basis for the collaboration of professors in universities throughout the country as well as having links to global universities, especially Louisiana Tech University. The consortium will be officially launched in the next few months.

The idea is to help academic communities take advantage of the use of high-performance computing technology and to encourage Thai researchers to share not only knowledge but also resources, both in research efforts and technologies, among themselves.

This collaboration complements the government's Thai National Grid Centre (TNGC). It is a grid users' collaborative and high-performance computing is a part of the whole of grid computing.
"TNGC has technology criteria for applicants to use the facility, so if some applications do not meet TNGC's criteria they can use the consortium's HPC facility to, for example, conduct their proof of concept. We give them more flexible platforms," said Chokchai.

Solid collaboration began six months ago when Chokchai and his colleagues in global IT firms came to Thailand to donate four cluster systems for high performance computing - 32 CPUs each - to Chiang Mai University, Kasetsart University, Thammasat University and Prince of Songkla University, to allow Thai researchers and professors to benefit from the use of the next generation of computation.

"All four universities are founding member of the consortium. In the future, the consortium will have more members. The consortium will also have technology backed up by the Louisiana Tech University," said Chokchai.

Instead of being an individual effort, the idea is to be a consortium where resources and knowledge can be shared. The establishment of the consortium is also aimed at promoting a greater awareness of high-performance computing technology and training the next generation of computational technologists.

"The consortium's plan is to provide training courses around the use of high-performance computing. High-performance computing is not easy to set up and use. It is quite complicated and the systems require a high level of knowledge and skill," said Chokchai.
He said using high-performance computing technology is not the same as the linear approach of the old way of processing.

Using high-performance computing involves managing a combination of all technologies to produce the highest performances.

From: The nation

>> Young Thai developers named software design champion

Young Thai developers named software design champion
A group of Thai engineering students won the first prize in the world final Imagine Cup 2007

Microsoft Corp. announced the winners of Imagine Cup 2007, after a week of intense competition among finalists chosen from a total of 344 students from 112 teams representing 59 different countries.

3 KC Returns" representatives from Thailand celebrated their victory in the worldwide Software Design Invitational and were awarded a $25,000 cash prize.

Imagine Cup, the world's premier competition for technology students or known as 'Technology Olympics', gives students the chance to unlock their creative genius and build solutions that tackle real-world issues facing society today.

Representing from Thailand, "3KC Returns"- the first-place winning team of students developed a software application called "Live Book" which enables the poorly educated to enhance their reading, writing and listening skills. Members of the triumphant team include: Vasan Chienmaneetaveesin from Chulalongkorn University, Prachaya Phaisanwiphatpong, Jatupon Sukkasem and Pathompol Saeng-Uraiporn from Kasetsart University.

"It's amazing to see the passionate students doing such great work. We are so proud and exciting that this is the first year Thailand has a chance passing to the top ranking of Imagine Cup competition, said Patama Chantaruck, Managing Director of Microsoft (Thailand) Limited. "The high caliber of the students and their projects is an indication of their potential to become great business and technology leaders, and a demonstration of how our local innovations have a lasting and transformative impact on education and beyond."

Under the theme of "Imagine a world where technology enables a better education for all", "Live Book" application is only putting any general text-book in front of Web Camera, the system will automatically capture paragraph on each pages, do character recognise, and transform each word into graphical new ones on screen, with attractive imaginary presenting its original description and vocabulary on paragraph, showing its meaning and teach them how to read it in the right way.

"This is such a great experience in our life," said Prachaya Phaisanwiphatpong from Kasetsart University, member of Thailand representative. "We try our best to proof that Thailand innovation can be accepted on global stage. The exciting thing about Microsoft's Imagine Cup is that we take what is possible with technology today and try to solve real world problems with software solutions"

The follow-up plan for the winning team is the Imagine Cup Innovation Accelerator program, which is a project from Microsoft to propel Imagine Cup software design champions into the next stage of developing their innovative ideas as a business. Teams selected for the Innovation Accelerator program receive technical support and business coaching to create the must-have technology and communications applications of the future. Over an intensive two-week period, students further develop their designs and viable business plans with close guidance from some of the best minds at Microsoft.

"The students who participate in the Imagine Cup represent the next generation of technology and business leaders." said Yik Joon Ho, Developer & Platform Strategy Director, Microsoft (Thailand) Limited "Their creativity and innovation speak volumes about the promise of technology to really make a difference in peoples' lives in the way we think, work and communicate.

Imagine Cup, now in its fifth year, challenges students to imagine a better world enabled by their own talent and also to contribute directly to the future of technology, software and computing. Participating teams are assigned to develop innovative technological and artistic projects aligned to a social cause each year. In addition, Imagine Cup complements Microsoft's Unlimited Potential commitment to create social and economic opportunity through programs and products that transform education, foster local innovation, and enable jobs and opportunities worldwide.

The next Imagine Cup 2008 will be held in France, Paris. The theme will be "Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment."

From: The nation

>> Guidelines set for universal access

Guidelines set for universal access
The National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec) has announced Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) for 250 government agencies to develop their websites to support disabled people in order to ensure universal access.

Wantanee Phantachat, chief of assistive technology at Nectec, said the centre was issuing WCAG as a national guide to developers to create their websites to support Web accessibility to enable those with disabilities easier access to information.

"The centre has completed the national guidelines needed to develop websites for the disabled to encourage government agencies and the private sector to assist those with disabilities.

It will distribute the guidelines to more than 250 government agencies and conduct training for Web developers from government agencies as the next step," said Wantanee.

The idea is to allow disabled people in Thailand the same access to information and knowledge via the Internet as others, and ensure they have universal access to services. The centre will also upload the guidelines to a public website.

"The websites which follow the guidelines will provide an opportunity for disabled people to access information. So far no government agency website supports universal access," said Wantanee.

She said the guidelines would also be aimed at ensuring telecom companies and service providers developed communications services that were available to everyone on an equal basis. The guidelines will also determine the format and standard for the development of telecommunications and information services for disabled people so it will be easier for them to use new technology and services.

The guidelines explain how to make Web content accessible to people with disabilities and are intended for all Web content developers and developers of authoring tools.

She said the guidelines would help people more quickly find information on the Web, and do not discourage content developers from using images and video. They also explain how to make multimedia content more accessible to a wide audience including techniques for document validation and testing, with an index of HTML elements and attributes.

"Disabled people in Thailand will soon enjoy universal access to improve their quality of life through access to knowledge and information via Web accessibility."

Private Satansat, an official at the Thailand Association for the Blind, said most disabled people now lack the opportunity to access knowledge and information from the Internet. To promote universal access and Web accessibility, government agencies should set the example and create their sites to allow disabled and blind people easier access to knowledge from the Internet through services such as electronic learning.

"The Internet is an important resource for the disabled to reach information. If Web developers build their sites following the WCAG standards it will very useful to these people," said Private.

He said however that disabled people have to purchase screen readers worth more than Bt40,000 per unit.

Wantanee said that Thailand now has around six million or 10 per cent disabled people in the population of 62 million. The centre expects the guidelines will encourage government agencies to create websites under the national standard at around 5 per cent in the first year with all websites supporting WCAG in the next five years.

Article from: nationmultimedia, Jirapan Boonnoon

>> Lifecycle of an Ajax Application

Lifecycle of an Ajax Application

The Ajax lifecycle is more like that of a traditional GUI than a traditional web application, with DOM objects acting like GUI widgets. The script registers event listeners on DOM objects, and manipulates the DOM in response to those events. As part of the event-processing cycle, the server may be invoked. There's actually a slight complication here in that the server calls are asynchronous, so the event-listening phase is split from the event-responding phase.

Here's a typical Ajax lifecycle within the browser:

- Visit: The user visits a site the usual way, i.e. by clicking on a link or typing a URL.

- Initialisation The page initially loads. Callbacks are established to handle user input, a loop might be established to continously refresh page elements.

- Event Loop: Browser Event An event occurs, such as a keypress.
- Server Request The browser sends a request to the server.
- ...
- Server Response A moment later, the server responds, and the response is passed into a request callback function, one that was specified when the request was issued.
- Browser Update The request callback function updates the DOM, including any Javascript variables, according to the response.

Of course, there are plenty of variants. In particular, many events are handled locally and don't actually trigger a trip to the server. Also, some Ajax applications are short-lived and the browser interaction is eventually terminated with the user submitting a form. Others remain to interact with the user as long as they are in the user's browser.

Note that the Browser Event and the Server Request occur in one thread, and the Server Response and Browser Update occur in a separate thread. This is due to the asynchronous nature of the server request. It's actually possible to configure XMLHttpRequest to make synchronous calls, but poor practice as it holds up the user.

>> Downsides of Ajax

Downsides of Ajax

Ajax is a trade-off. Any developer considering its adoption should be aware of the downsides, such as:

- Limited Capabilities: Some Ajax applications are certainly doing things people never dreamed were possible on the web, but there are still substantial restrictions of the web platform. For example: multimedia capabilities, local data storage, real-time graphics, interaction with hardware such as printers and webcams. Support for some of these are improving in recent browsers, some can be achieved by delegating to Flash, but many are simply not possible, and if required, would rule out Ajax.

- Performance Concerns: Constant interaction between browser and server can make an application feel unresponsive. There are, however, quite a few well-known patterns for performance optimization such as browser-side caching. These usually suffice, even for fast-paced applications like stock trading, but Ajax still might not work for really time-critical applications such as machine control.

- Internet Access Required: The user can't access an Ajax application in the absence of a network connection.

- Second Programming Language: Serious Ajax applications require some knowledge of Javascript. Many developers are discovering that Javascript is actually a more capable language than at first assumed, but there is nevertheless an imposition to use a language different to that on the server-side.

- Easily Abused: As with any powerful technology, Ajax concepts can be abused by careless programmers. The patterns on this site are intended to guide developers towards more usable solutions, but the fact remains that Ajax isn't always used in a manner that supports usability.

>> Whats Ajax

Whats Ajax?

A Primer on the Ajax Phenomenon

With all the hype about "Ajax web applications", you could be forgiven for assuming Ajax is some radical new plugin, akin to Macromedia Flash. And you would therefore be under the impression that Ajax is out of bounds until you upgrade your "so last month" browser, or at least download the coveted "Ajax plugin".

Good news: You can run Ajax right now. At least, assuming you have a web browser from the past few years - IE, Firefox, Safari, or Opera. Have you seen Google Maps or perhaps GMail? They're both Ajax applications. So are Zuggest and the AjaxPatterns Wiki Demo .

What do they all have in common? All these applications take a great leap forth towards the richness of standard desktop applications. No longer are you forced to wait five seconds for the page to reload every time you click on something. Ajax applications change in real time. They can let you drag boxes around, they can refresh themselves with new information, they can completely re-arrange the page without clearing it. And there's no special plugin required. Ajax is just a style of design, one that milks all the features of modern browsers to produce something that feels less web and more desktop.

Applications can act more like and be developed more like the days of Visual Basic, Delphi, PowerBuilder, C++ with GUI frameworks, etc. Thus, it is 90's GUI features but with a web browser: it strives to meld the best of web and the best of desktop GUI's. Web browser standards were originally designed for e-brochures only. Business forms and other needs were hacked into this e-brochure framework over time and it is clear that this after-thought retrofitting for different purposes has been ugly. Ajax attempts to remedy this.

Some of the characteristics of Ajax applications include:

- Continuous Feel: Traditional web applications force you to submit a form, wait a few seconds, watch the page redraw, and then add some more info. Forgot to enter the area code in a phone number? Start all over again. Sometimes, you feel like you're in the middle of a traffic jam: go 20 metres, stop a minute, go 20 metres, stop a minute ... How many E-Commerce sales have been lost because the user encountered one too many error message and gave up the battle? Ajax offers a smooth ride all the way. There's no page reloads here - you're just doing stuff and the browser is responding. The server is only telling the screen what changed rather than having it redraw the whole screen from scratch.

- Real-Time Updates: As part of the continous feel, Ajax applications can update the page in real-time. Currently, news services on the web redraw the entire page at intervals, e.g. once every 15 minutes. In contrast, it's feasible for a browser running an Ajax application to poll the server every few seconds, so it's capable of updating any information directly on the parts of the page that need changing. The rest of the page is unaffected.

- Graphical Interaction: Flashy backdrops are abundant on the web, but the basic mode of interaction has nevertheless mimicked the 1970s-style form-based data entry systems. Ajax represents a transition into the world of GUI controls visible on present-day desktops. Thus, you will encounter animations such as fading text to tell you something's just been saved, you will be able to drag items around, you will see some static text suddenly turn into an edit field as you hover over it.

- Language Neutrality - Ajax strives to be equally usable with all the popular languages rather than be tied to one language. Past GUI attempts such as VB, Tk, and Swing tended to be married to one specific programming language. Ajax has learned from the past and rejects this notion. To help facilitate this, XML is often used as a declarative interface language.

To prevent any confusion, these things are not characteristic of Ajax:

- Proprietary: "Ajax" is perhaps one of the most common brand names in history, but in the present context, "Ajax" is neither the name of a company nor a product. It's not even the name of a standard or committee. It's a label for a design approach involving several related technologies and open standards such as HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Each of these is "open" in the sense that its based on a published standard governed by a standards body and able to be implemented in any browser, free of legal and information constraints.

- Plugin-Based: Ajax applications do not require users to install browser plugins, or desktop software for that matter.

- Browser Specific: As long as the user is working with a relatively recent, mainstream, browser (say 2001+), the application should work roughly the same way. Browser-specific applications somewhat defeat the purpose of Ajax.

>> Oracle Reporting with the Familiar

TECHNOLOGY: Business Intelligence

Reporting with the Familiar

Create reports with familiar desktop tools and Oracle enterprise datasources.

People have a thirst for information, whether it's the weekly sales figures, a list of customers who have outstanding service requests, or just a list of customers who placed orders in the last week. Combine this with the need to produce invoices, customer letters, settlement checks, or even data for business-to-business interchange, and you can see that a typical organization's need for reports is only going to increase as time goes by.

As the internet and service-oriented architectures permeate organizations, sources for our reports seem to multiply, and these days reports can be based on technologies such as XML and Web services as much as on relational databases such as Oracle Database 10g. End users typically want to receive their report output in a variety of formats, with Adobe PDF typically used for pixel-perfect presentation reports, HTML for reports delivered via the Web, and formats such as CSV and XML for exporting and loading into other systems.

To address these varied reporting needs and to add industry-leading reporting and publishing features to the Oracle Fusion Middleware family of products, Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher 10.1.3 includes Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Enterprise, a complete set of reporting, authoring, and publishing tools that you can either install standalone or as an integrated part of Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition. Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Enterprise can be installed and run on a variety of J2EE-compliant application servers, including Oracle Application Server 10g.

Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher makes report publishing easy, by separating the data query from the report template, giving you the ability, for example, to create a single invoice retrieval query that is then associated, at runtime, with a variety of invoice templates to suit different categories of customers. Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher also handles multiple language translations and fonts, removing the need to purchase expensive single-use applications to print in particular languages or particular formats. Best of all, Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher uses familiar desktop tools such as Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat to lay out report templates, keeping the report building process within a familiar environment and reducing the requirement for training and additional software.

So once you've installed Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher, either standalone or as part of Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition, how do you go about building some reports? In the following examples, you'll first create a warehouse inventory report and populate it by using data from the order entry (OE) sample schema. Then you'll see the integration between Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher and Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition, using Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher to create a pixel-perfect report with an Oracle Business Intelligence Answers request.

Building a Database Report with a Parameter

Figure 1: The Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Enterprise home page

Log in to the Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Enterprise home page (the default username and password are Administrator/Administrator) to bring up a portal-style interface that shows the reports you can manage and run (see Figure 1).

The left side of the page provides a list of common tasks, and the main part of the page displays reports organized into folders and subfolders. To edit a folder, click the folder icon next to the folder name; to run a report, click the report name; to drill down further into folders and subfolders, click the folder name.

Before you can start building some reports, though, you need to configure Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Enterprise to add a JDBC datasource, which will point to the database used for the first report. To do this, click the Admin tab (see Figure 1), locate the datasources area of the page, click JDBC Connection, and then click Add Data Source. Next, enter the details for your installation. The following are examples and placeholders for the datasource, URL, username, and password:
- Datasource name: oe_ds
- URL: jdbc.oracle.thin:@::
- Username: oe
- Password: password
- Database driver class: oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver

The reports in this article are designed to query the OE sample schema. For your system, provide the correct datasource name, URL, username, and password; click Test Connection to check whether the details you entered are correct; and click Apply to save the details. You are now ready to create your first report.

The first report request is to create a warehouse inventory report in which the user can select a warehouse and see all the products and stock on hand. The data for this report will come from the OE.WAREHOUSES, OE.PRODUCTS, and OE.INVENTORIES tables. To start creating this report, first click the Reports tab to return to the Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Enterprise home page, click the My Folders link, and then click Create a new report in the Folder and Report Tasks area. In the Enter Report Name field, enter the report name warehouse_inventories and click Create. The new report appears on the right side of the page; click the Edit link under the report name to start the data set report definition.

Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Enterprise now displays the Data Set page, which includes a dynamic HTML interface that enables you to define the data model, lists of values, parameters, and templates associated with a report (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: The Data Set page

Click Data Model in the Report navigator (on the left side of the page), and click New to create a new data set. Name the query inventory_query, and select SQL Query in the Type field. Select the datasource you previously created from the Data Source list (oe_ds in our example), and check the Cache Result check box if you would like Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher to save the data requested by the report to speed up future requests.

The SQL query used to provide data for the report can be provided in one of two ways. You can either type it directly into the SQL Query text box, using the following SQL script:
select w.warehouse_name
, p.product_name
, i.quantity_on_hand
from oe.inventories i
, oe.products p
, oe.warehouses w
where w.warehouse_id = i.warehouse_id
and p.product_id = i.product_id
and w.warehouse_name
in (:warehouses)

(Note that the :warehouses bind variable will be used later when you add a parameter to the report.)

Or you can use the Query Builder feature to create your SQL statement graphically (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Query Builder

To use Query Builder, click Query Builder on the Report Definition page. On the Query Builder page, select OE from the Schema list, and then drag the WAREHOUSES, PRODUCTS, and INVENTORIES tables to the graphical (Model) view. (Note that you may need to enter the first letters of each table name in the Search field to locate them in Query Builder.) To join the WAREHOUSES table to the PRODUCTS table, first click the column selector to the right of the WAREHOUSE_ID column and then click the corresponding column selector in the INVENTORIES table to create the join. Do the same join with the WAREHOUSE_ID column in the PRODUCTS and INVENTORIES tables. Then click Conditions to add in the (:warehouses) condition required for the report parameter. Click SQL to see the generated SQL and Results to see a subset of the query output. Finally, click Save (at the top of the page) to close Query Builder, and copy the resulting SQL onto the Data Set page.

The next step is to define the report parameter and the associated list of values. Create the list of values by selecting the List of Values node in Report Explorer, clicking New, entering a name, and selecting the same datasource as before (oe_ds in our example). You can either manually enter the SQL that retrieves the list of values as follows:

select warehouse_name
from oe.warehouses

or use Query Builder to create the SQL statement as before. Click Save to close Query Builder, and click Save to save the list of values.

To create a report parameter to go with the bind variable added to the report SQL, select the Parameters node and again click New. When you complete the parameter options (see Figure 4), the Identifier value should be the same as the bind variable (:warehouses) specified in the query used to populate the report. Select Menu for Parameter Type and leave Multiple Selections unchecked, which tells Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher to generate a list from which users can make their parameter selections. Click Save to save the parameter values.

Figure 4: Adding a report parameter

You have now completed the initial stage of your report definition. Save your work, and return to the Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Enterprise page that lists your reports and the folder and report tasks. Do not view your report yet.

Create a Report Template
Now that the report definition is complete, it is time to create an accompanying template that Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher will use to determine how to display the report results. A particular report definition can have many templates associated with it, but for now you will lay out a simple tabular report template by using the Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher add-in to Microsoft Word. To install Template Builder, click the Template Builder link in Folder and Report Tasks (or locate it on the Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher installation disk).
After installing Template Builder and then starting Microsoft Word, connect to the Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher server via the Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher toolbar. Select Oracle BI Publisher -> Log On (see Figure 5).

Figure 5: Logging in to Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher

Using the login screen, enter the username and password you use to connect to Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher, and if this is the first time you have connected with Template Builder, enter the URL of the Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Enterprise server.

Before you can lay out the report template, you need to retrieve a sample set of data from the report data model. The Template Builder Open Template dialog box presents you with a list of all the reports you have access to; locate and select the report you just defined, and click Open Report to retrieve the sample data set (see Figure 6).

Figure 6: The Open Template dialog box

You can now start laying out your report template.

For this report, create a table of inventory items and stock levels, grouped by the warehouses in which they are held. To do this, select Oracle BI Publisher -> Insert -> Table Wizard in the Word document and then use the wizard to select data items for the table, and optionally the items on which the table is grouped and sorted (see Figure 7). In the case of this table, group the data by warehouse and sort on inventory item.

Add a total to the report to show the total stock on hand for all products in the selected warehouse. To do this, select Oracle BI Publisher -> Insert -> Field, and then in the Field dialog box, select the Quantity on Hand field and the sum calculation.

Now, when you view the report template in Microsoft Word, you can see the report layout and use the built-in formatting features in Microsoft Word to add images, change fonts, add highlighting, and so on.

To upload this template back to the Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Enterprise server, first save the template as an .rtf file to your file system and then select Oracle BI Publisher -> Publish Template As. Name the template, and click OK to upload it to the server. You can now return to Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Enterprise and view your new report.

Now that you have defined a report that uses relational data from an Oracle database, you can create a report that uses Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition as the datasource. When working with Oracle Business Intelligence Suite, you can either source your data directly from the Common Enterprise Information Model, the Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition equivalent of Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer's End User Layer, or you can change the report datasource type to Oracle BI Answers and select a request to use as the report datasource.

Now that the report datasource is specified, as shown in Figure 8, you can add parameters, lists of values, and then a report template in the same way you did before (for the report based on a SQL query).

Figure 8: Using an Oracle BI Answers Request as a datasource

Figure 9: Embedding an Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher report in a dashboard

Summary
This article has introduced features of Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Enterprise and Template Builder. It has showed how to create both SQL and Oracle Business Intelligence Answers-based reports and defined templates using the familiar Microsoft Word environment. You can define reports against your own application data; add features such as graphs, images, and even bar codes; and start to take advantage of Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher with Oracle E-Business Suite.

From: Oracle