Posts Tagged ‘information technology’

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Towards ever smaller Semiconductors Thursday, October 21st, 2010

Semiconductors have been getting smaller and smaller till now using innovative new technologies for their fabrication. Existing optical technology based lithographic processes, however, might not be effective beyond the 22 nanometer node. New technologies will be required to continue the trend of ever smaller semiconductors and computing devices.

Extreme ultraviolet technology has been discussed as one alternative to the above problem. However, 15 years of research into this technology has not delivered a production-ready process.

It is in this context that Leti’s Lithography laboratory in Grenoble, France is exploring alternatives. Leti is an applied research center for microelectronics and information and healthcare technologies. It is located at MINATEC, the micro and nanotechnologies innovation campus in Grenoble.

Leti provides an interface between industry and academic research, transferring innovative technologies into a wide range of sectors. With 1500 employees and more than 250 students conducting research in its laboratories, it has created a portfolio of 1500 families of patents. The laboratory has one of the most advanced equipment sets in the world, including two shaped e-beam systems, two Gaussian-beam systems, and the alpha version of Mapper Lithography’s multi-beam tool.

One of the technologies Leti is focusing now is fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FDSOI) technology that can lead to fabrication of smaller, denser and faster integrated circuits.

Read about Leti at their website and the story about their plans to highlight FDSOI and 3D technologies at SEMICON Europa at Nanotechnology Now.

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Posted in information technology, trends | No Comments »

Adapting to Student Lifestyles Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

Universities and colleges are adapting to the current lifestyles of students. For example, students are increasingly using smartphones that enable them to access email, organizer and the Web through the phones. Staff and students can tap the potential of this new device to exchange information and stay connected.

The Pierce College, for example, had developed a number of mobile applications and given them free to its students and others. With these, students can access:

  • Course lists, past, present and future
  • Faculty and staff directories, with contact numbers and details
  • Campus data, including campus overview and directions to the college
  • Pierce college blog

Students can quickly see:

  • Who their faculty members, advisors and financial aid specialists are
  • Their classes and schedules

The college found that students are increasingly using their smartphones to access the college website and portal. As such use becomes commonplace, it becomes possible to get many things done more easily and effectively. Conducting research, updating records and collaborating with peers all become easier. More work can be done when you can do things from where you are.

Colleges and universities that choose to deliver information and do other things with these modern devices tend to project an image of leadership and tend to attract better students.

 

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Posted in education delivery, information delivery, information technology, mobile web, smartphone applications | No Comments »

Cloud Computing: The Green Alternative Monday, October 18th, 2010

Visualize this scenario: You develop search engine software and install it on your system. The software sends out robot spider programs that crawl the Web and the data they bring back is stored on the system’s disks. An indexer program then analyzes the data and creates an index that is also stored on the disks. You use this index to do all your Web searches.

In addition to creating an infrastructure of computers, software, storage media and networks, you have also hired the programmers to develop and maintain the software, system administrators to administer the huge infrastructure and other required support staff.

The same scenario is repeated in all companies that need to search the Web for information, meaning that there are millions of such setups, each of them consuming huge amounts of energy and also creating huge amounts of e-waste, not to mention competing for the hard to find skilled programmers and system administrators.

Ridiculous scenario, you might comment. Why should all these companies develop and run their own search engines when they can simply access Google, Bing or Yahoo!

That is cloud computing for you. You use a service from an Internet (cloud) provider instead of setting up the whole infrastructure yourself.

Even when the service is not free, i.e. you have to pay for using the service, the total cost is likely to be dramatically less if you obtain the service from such a provider who serves a large number of customers requiring that service. The provider has dedicated (and constantly updated) infrastructure and staff for providing the service. And you pay only for what you use, which will be negligibly lower than what you will spend if you organize the service in-house.

And our planet earth will benefit because energy consumption and e-waste generation is far less.

Read about issues raised by cloud computing at Connecticut Law Tribune Website.

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Posted in cloud computing, environment, information technology | 1 Comment »

Smart Electricity Grids and Energy Efficiency Friday, October 15th, 2010

A huge amount of energy generated at power stations is lost at various points. There are losses during transmission of the energy to consumers, wasteful use of energy at the consumer ends and even theft of energy leading to unaccounted losses. Any effort at efficient use of energy, a scarce resource, can benefit communities significantly.

Smart Electricity Grids employ several means to achieve the final goal of efficient use of available energy. Sensing, measurement and control devices are used to automatically regulate energy consumption etc in response to specific conditions. Superconductive transmission lines might be used to reduce losses during transmission of power. Advanced Metering Systems is typically an essential component of smart grids.

Advanced Metering Systems (AMI) not only measure energy usage as conventional metering systems do but also analyze energy usage patterns and communicate relevant information to those involved, including suppliers and customers. Two-way communication allows information recipients to respond with actions that lead to solutions. For example, customers become aware of unexpectedly heavy energy usage and can respond with actions that lead to lowering of their energy bills.

Suppliers can tailor their charging pattern in ways that discourage energy use during peak load times. Advanced Electric Meters can record separately the energy usage in differentiated registers for each time period.

Read about a seminar on smart grid development in the Taiwan.

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Posted in energy distribution, energy efficiency, energy generation, information technology, sensors | 1 Comment »

Information Technology Skills in Demand: The Trend Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

What IT skills will be most in demand in tomorrow’s world?

Universities are exploring the possibility of using the new generation’s fascination with smartphones to advantage. One university is handing out iPads to freshers to research whether and how these can be used for better education delivery. Another university is thinking of co-opting students to develop mobile applications for education.

In Estonia, citizens will be voting through their smartphones.

And of course, much of the Web surfing and e-mail has moved to smartphones.

One can hence conclude that a major skill in demand will be the skill to develop applications for mobile devices and deliver information through them. According to 2010 IBM Tech Trends survey, software professionals expect that application development for mobile devices will surpass all other platforms by 2015.

Another trend noticed by the IBM survey is that cloud computing will overtake traditional on-premise computing. This means a requirement for cloud computing specialists.

Another in-demand skill will be the ability to use social media effectively. Social media like Facebook and Twitter reach a vast audience and businesses will naturally be interested in using this reach to market their products and services effectively.

Business analytics skill to identify what is going on is another critical skill that will be in demand. Much more information is now available through media such as the Web and persons skilled in working with the new analytic tools will find themselves in high demand.

Read about the survey findings at PR Newswire.

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Posted in cloud computing, education delivery, information delivery, information technology, mobile web, smartphone applications, trends | No Comments »

How exactly should Companies go about Using Cloud Computing? Sunday, October 10th, 2010

Cloud computing is the current hot topic in information technology. In essence it involves doing much of the computing work on the Internet “cloud” rather than locally. This can have a significant cost impact as organizations can reduce their spends on:

* Hardware such as servers and application software
* Upgrading from older versions of software to latest versions
* The time involved in planning, implementing and testing additions to the IT functionality
* Training and retraining staff involved in maintaining the hardware and software with each major change

Under full-fledged cloud computing, the vendor will provide the servers, software and storage while users will need only work at their local “terminals” entering data and doing other work. All software will be upgraded to latest versions by the vendor. Users pay only for what they use.

In actual practice, such complete shift of computing to the cloud is rare. Also, most companies and other users are already using cloud computing to some extent without even being aware of it.

In this fluid situation, few users have a clear idea of how to tap the full potential of the cloud computing development. While the term “cloud” computing might give way to another newly coined word in due time, the underlying technology and practices will be in use for a long time.

The Cloud Computing Fundamentals Report discusses all the issues involved such as its impact on business, selecting the particular model of cloud that meets your needs best and best practices for deployment and management.

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Posted in best practices, cloud computing, information technology, innovation | 3 Comments »

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Information Technology Saturday, October 9th, 2010

The United Nations has set eight anti-poverty goals to be achieved by 2015. The goals are: End poverty and hunger, Universalize Education, Achieve gender equality, Improve child health, Improve maternal health, Combat HIV/AIDS effectively, Move towards environmentally sustainable practices and Improve global partnerships.

Information technology has a significant role in achieving all the MDGs. In a recent message to the Plenipotentiary Conference of the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU), UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon stressed this point. “Experience has shown that greater access to broadband technologies has meant faster progress towards all the MDGs,” Mr. Ban said.

“The Internet drives trade, commerce and even education. Telemedicine is improving health care. Earth-monitoring satellites are being used to address climate change issues. And green technologies are promoting cleaner cities.

“Last month the Broadband Commission for Digital Development – a distinguished group of government officials, businesspeople and content developers, brought together under the leadership of ITU and UNESCO [UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization] – offered a blueprint, and I look forward to working with all partners in bringing it to life,” the Secretary-General said.

The ITU has been connecting the world from the days of “telegraph to radio, television, satellite communication and the Internet.”

Read the news at the UN News Centre Web page.

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Information Technology: How has it Affected Society? Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

Information technology has helped improve productivity. Work that needed hours earlier could now be done in minutes, e.g. finding a specific document from the archives. And work that was simply impracticable earlier is not only practicable but also easy to do now, e.g. generating an elaborate report on customer buying behavior from different data sources. There is much more, such as the ability to connect with headquarters from anywhere in the world using mobile devices.

While business has benefited in ways as outlined above, ordinary consumers have also benefited from advances in information technology. They have the iPhone and iPad, Facebook and Twitter, Internet TV and can video-chat with someone at the other end of the globe at little cost.

Amidst all these great developments, it might seem negativistic to talk about the adverse impact on society that the same developments have created. Yet the negative impact has also been serious enough to deserve extremely serious attention and purposeful action.

Consider the danger our children are exposed to through the easy access child predators have to them. The predators can establish contact with the children and win their trust and confidence, quite unknown to us unless we are very cyber-vigilant.

Cyber-fraud is another phenomenon that developments in infotech have helped. There are robots that crawl the web harvesting e-mail addresses; e-mail servers that focus on sending out spam mail; and fraudsters who use these to send out announcements that you have won a million dollars in some prize draw (which you will never get even after sending money as “processing fee” to the fraudster).

Read more details at PewResearch.

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Posted in fraud, information technology, privacy | No Comments »

MENA ICT Forum 2010, Amman, Jordan Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

A two-day ICT event with the expected participation of “500 key executives and decision makers in government and the private sector from around the world and region” is to be held in Amman, Jordan from October 10, 2010. The event is being held under the patronage of HM King Abdullah II of Jordan at the Business Park, the dedicated ICT hub located in West Amman.

Participants will include popular Emirate animator Mohammed Al Harib and Kuwaiti cartoon book creator Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa, through government ministers and regional heads of e-government to regional and international executives representing IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Yahoo!, HP, Intel and other leading technology-driven companies.

Instead of making presentations, the forum will focus on raising issues and on regional opportunities, with a view to create real value, real initiatives and real partnerships. In Jordan, ICT accounts for 14% of GDP and supports over 80,000 jobs. Jordanian companies are creating value across the region.

The forum is expected to discuss issues related to regional investment climates, legislative supportive systems, infrastructure and communications, cloud computing, emerging technologies, Arabic content, as well as education and human capital development.

Visit http://www.menaictforum.com/ for fuller details.

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China’s March on IT Services Front Saturday, October 2nd, 2010

During the eight months to August 2010, China’s software industry revenues were:

* Software design and development business 44.9 billion yuan
* Information technology consulting services 78 billion yuan
* Software products 287.5 billion yuan
* Software exports 14.4 billion US Dollars
* Outsourcing services 1.75 billion US Dollars

China’s software industry as a whole earned revenues of 828.6 billion yuan (123.67 billion U.S. dollars) during the above period, a rise of 29.8 percent over the previous year. The growth rate in revenues had gone up by 8.8 percent compared to the year before that.

A notable fact is that the revenues for the month of August 2010 were 105.5 billion yuan, a rise of 34.9 percent year on year.

Chinese government’s tax exemption policy helped the impressive growth of the industry. Early in August, the government had announced that it would exempt offshore services provided under outsourcing business from operating taxes. This exemption was granted to businesses in 21 cities in order to promote the development of this industry. The five percent operating tax exemption will be in force until the end of 2013.

China’s Ministry of Information Industry is a regulatory body in charge of the manufacture of electronic and information products, the communications and software industry. It is planning to bring out an English version of its website according to the Gov.cn website.

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Posted in business, emerging markets, information technology | No Comments »

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