mobile computing - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• A new AMD licensing deal could create more x86 rivals for Intel

  AMD is licensing its x86 chip architecture to a new joint venture it has formed with a consortium of Chinese companies.

• Hands-on: How HoloLens handles creating shared experiences

  As Microsoft began shipping its HoloLens augmented reality headgear, the company gave journalists a sneak peek into how developers can create networked experiences.

• ICT skills hotspots for 2015: Digital marketing, big data and mobile strategies

  The integration of technology and marketing is impacting the employment scene across industries, reports Hays New Zealand.

• Defence boosts mainframe capacity under $31 million contract

  The Department of Defence has finalised a $31 million contract to ramp its mainframe capacity over the next eight years and build a more robust technology infrastructure.

• Mobility and security deployment should go hand-in-hand: Adam Dodds, IDC New Zealand

  "Organisations will live and die by the value of their information and how it is protected from others,” says IDC New Zealand's Adam Dodds, as the research firm finds mobility is getting investment support across business units.

• In pictures: Kiwi engineers help set up instant network in typhoon ravaged areas in central Philippines

  Engineers from Vodafone New Zealand work with their counterparts from Smart Communications in Palo, Leyte, one of the areas hardest hit by supertyphoon Haiyan in central Philippines. The group set up an instant network to provide the first cellphone coverage for the local government and communities.

• Cloud, mobile and social networking to create new IT mainstream, says IDC

  Cloud computing, mobile technologies and social networking take a top spot in IDC’s predictions for what will shape the IT industry in 2011. The experts predict these three factors will contribute to the creation of a new mainstream platform for the IT industry.

• Take a tablet

  Apple founder and chief executive Steve Jobs might seem like an unusual candidate to start a revolution in medicine, but don't tell that to your average general practitioner.
  After decades of struggling with poor and clunky proprietary applications that have cost billions to develop but still can't talk to each other, doctors and clinicians fed up with waiting for any progress on ¬e-health have started to take matters into their own hands – literally.

• Asia leads global iPhone growth

  In the past 12 months, Asia has seen a massive increase in Apple iPhone users, the strongest take-up of Apple devices in the world.
  This is according to the April 2010 Metrics Report by mobile advertising network AdMob.

• To catch a cheat

  Have you ever peeked at your girlfriend's BlackBerry? Scrolled through call logs, text messages, emails? Perhaps your significant other has been spending too much time on the iPhone Facebook app reconnecting with old flames.
  Mobile gadgets have made spying all-too-easy, according to a recent survey by Retrevo, a consumer electronics shopping site. "Everyone's personal information is, more times than not, left sitting on the kitchen counter, readily available to 'curious' onlookers like spouses, partners, boyfriends, girlfriends, significant others, or who knows, even nosy mothers-in-laws," writes Andrew Wisner, Retrevo's director of community and content.

• The 10 mobile technologies to watch

  Organisations are ramping up both business-to-employee (B2E) and business-to-consumer (B2C) mobile spending, according to Gartner, which says that investments in mobile applications and technologies will increase through 2011.
  The analyst firm has identified 10 mobile technologies that will evolve significantly through 2011 and expects this evolution to impact both short-term mobile strategies and policies.

• Microsoft hits back over Gartner jibes

  Microsoft has hit back against jibes from the world's largest technology analyst firm, Gartner, which attacked its Windows Mobile operating system last week and questioned its future in an enterprise context.
  At Gartner's annual symposium in Sydney last week, analyst Robin Simpson advised companies not to invest in Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform.

• Text means less queueing before take-off

  Low fare airline Jetstar is about to trial a world-first mobile phone technology that issues boarding passes via SMS. In a bid to reduce check-in times and long queues, the SMS "passes" can be scanned electronically from the phone's screen at the departure gate.
  The SMS boarding pass was developed during the past six months by the Sissit Group, which was set up in Melbourne in early 2008 to work on airport immigration and other services.

• Challenges and competition ahead for mobile providers

  Mike Reynolds, CEO of 2degrees, says the biggest battle his company faces is being the third mobile phone network, breaking into a market with 100 per cent penetration by competitors.
  Despite this, he says there is still tremendous room for growth.

• The rise of the Lilliputians

  Cheap, ultraportable computers - dubbed Lilliputian laptops by some - are emerging as a driving force in the PC market, helping to propel sales despite fears that global economic uncertainty will stymie information technology spending.
  Barely a year after Taiwanese manufacturer Asus put a rocket under low-cost notebooks with the launch of its $500 Eee PC, almost every major computer maker has stormed retail outlets with alternatives of their own.