24 July 2009
Hit by PC Blight, Microsoft Profit Skids 29%
Dragged down by a slump in PC demand, Microsoft Corp. posted a 29% drop in quarterly profit and weak sales across all of its units. The quarter capped the software giant’s first full year of declining sales since it went public more than two decades ago. But executives at the Redmond, Wash., company struck a bullish note for the future, predicting the PC and computer-server markets, on which so much of its business depends, could see growth during the next calendar year. “We’re still in tough economic conditions and we don’t see that getting better in the near term,” Chris Liddell, Microsoft’s chief financial officer, said in an interview. “Having said that, there is some sense we have hit bottom.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124838125495076817.html
Swine flu website overwhelmed by demand as new cases double in a week
About 100,000 people caught swine flu in England last week, the chief medical officer revealed today, as the government’s online diagnosis service crashed within minutes of launch when thousands of people tried to log on at the same time. The world’s first government-run swine flu diagnosis website could not cope with the volume of traffic when it opened for business at 3pm today. Designed to handle 1,200 hits a second, the service was suspended just four minutes later when 2,600 people tried to access it every second.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/23/swine-flu-website-overwhelmed
East Africa finally joins broadband revolution
The jigsaw is finally complete. East Africa shed its tag as the only major inhabited coastline excluded from the global broadband map today when an undersea fibre-optic cable linking it to networks in Europe and India went live. The commissioning of the 10,625-mile Seacom cable, which will soon be followed by two other submarine cables, is expected to drastically lower the cost of high-speed internet services and telephone calls. The region is currently dependent on expensive and often unreliable satellite links, which has prevented the spread of internet access. In countries where much of the infrastructure has fallen into neglect since independence, the landing of the finger-thin fibre-optic cable has been hailed as a milestone. Aly-Khan Satchu, a financial analyst in Nairobi, compared its significance to the construction of the railway network in east Africa a century ago.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/23/east-africa-broadband-revolution
Google’s Android To Invade Homes
In a sign that Google’s Android mobile platform has a future far beyond cellphones, San Francisco-based start-up Touch Revolution says a string of well-known companies will introduce a range of Android-powered household gadgets before the end of the year.The devices will fall into three basic categories: home control devices, media control devices and home phones, says Bill Brown, Touch Revolution’s vice president of marketing. All the gadgets will feature touch-screens in sizes ranging from 4.3 to 10 inches, support Android as an operating system, and connect to the Web through wi-fi or wired ethernet. Depending on their purpose, they will sport bases (for perching on a desk or kitchen counter) or have a flat, tablet shape for handheld use or for embedding in a wall.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/22/google-android-homes-technology-wireless-google.html
Bharti boosts rural Indian subscriber base
Bharti Airtel, the Indian mobile group that is in takeover talks with South Africa’s MTN, added a record 8.5m subscribers in the first quarter of this year as it pushed deeper into India’s vast, under-penetrated rural hinterlands. The increase, Airtel’s highest-ever net addition, brought the group’s total number of subscribers to 105.22m. ndia’s mobile market is the fastest growing in the world, adding more than 10m subscribers a month. It presently has more than 415m users. The growing competition and the penetration of poorer rural areas is eroding average revenue per user, a key conventional measure of performance for mobile operators.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/78de7afc-77ac-11de-9713-00144feabdc0.html
O2 unveils small biz landline to mobile link
O2 is launching “Fixed Number Anywhere”, which allows you to automatically reroute calls made to a landline to a mobile phone. Small businesses often rely on mobile phones to keep in touch with customers. But new customers are often more trusting of businesses which are run from a landline number. A landline number also makes clear that the small business is local and not entirely ‘fly-by-night’ – which is another positive for new customers. Fixed Line Anywhere links any landline to any mobile, or group of mobiles. Calls can go from up to five landlines to one specific mobile, or to a group of mobiles – either all at once or according to a priority list.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/24/mobile_landline/
Wireless power system shown off
A system that can deliver power to devices without the need for wires has been shown off at a hi-tech conference. The technique exploits simple physics and can be used to charge a range of electronic devices. Eric Giler, chief executive of US firm Witricity, showed mobile phones and televisions charging wirelessly at the TED Global conference in Oxford. He said the system could replace the miles of expensive power cables and billions of disposable batteries. “There is something like 40 billion disposable batteries built every year for power that, generally speaking, is used within a few inches or feet of where there is very inexpensive power,” he said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8165928.stm
Kenyans invent bike phone charger
Two Kenyan university students have invented a device that allows bicycle riders to charge their mobile phones. Jeremiah Murimi, 24, and Pascal Katana, 22, said they wanted their dynamo-powered “smart charger” to help people without electricity in rural areas. “We both come from villages and we know the problems,” Mr Murimi told the BBC. People have to travel great distances to shops where they are charged $2 a time to power their phone, usually from a car battery or solar panel. The two electrical engineering students have been working on the invention, which they are selling for 350 Kenyan shillings ($4.50) each, over the last few months during their university break.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8166196.stm
