Not  the first of it's kind, to be sure, but the first to be held in Taiwan. From the 1st of May, and during five days, one of these events will take place in Taipei, with the aim of decreasing the distance that the leaders in this sector hold over them (I'm talking about the Japanese and the Koreans).

Among the speakers that will take turn at the Robotics Forum, we find the Japan Robot Association, several Japanese enterprises, the Sweden-based ABB (?) and ours truly Micro-Star International (MSI).

Last year, the Taiwanese industry sold industrial robots that "only" amounted to 608 million dollars, which is the some 5.56% of the world total. From this position, the ambitious government plans want to turn Taiwan (in the not so distant future) into one of the leading players in the theatre of intelligent robotics.

Link:  DigiTimes.

More than a year after the release of Windows Vista, there's still no end in sight for Windows XP. It turns out that HP plans on continuing selling PCs with the old OS installed (taking advantage of the “downgrading” to Windows XP option their Windows Vista license grants them).

The already seven years old Windows refuses time and again to be finally shut down. Another thing is if you were thinking about just buying the software, because that won't be possible after the 30th of June. The "final date" has previously been postponed, but it looks like this time it is for real, so you should hurry and sign here if you want to do something about it. But remember, the people at InfoWorld aren't asking for another moratory, they want it to remain on the selves for as long as people demand it. Doesn't sound very likely.

Link: X-bit labs.

Hydrogen cars could very well be the future, freeing us from petroleum dependency, because it's an energy fuel that can give quite some punch without contributing to pollution. The only drawback is that... it's quite difficult to obtain when Dr. Manhattan isn't around.

At present, the main obstacle for hydrogen to get "mainstream" is the amount of energy needed to produce it. Said process is simplified when gas is used, but gas has more or less the same shortcomings that petroleum does.

In the quest for hydrogen, Thomas Wood, from the Department of Chemical Engineering at the A&M University, is pretty sure to have found a way to use a genetically modified bacteria to help making hydrogen. By "simply" removing six genes from the E.Coli bacteria, you actually get a small hydrogen factory. The big if about all this, at the moment, is that the bacteria needs sugar, as much as a man's weight (every day) to satisfy the energy needs of an average American family.

Link: TG Daily.

The Microsoft engineers themselves admit Windows Vista to be bloated (Eric Traut: "A lot of people think of Windows as this large, bloated operating system. That may be a fair characterization,"). When he says "a lot of people", he surely means everybody, because there's already quite some talk about Windows 7 being released next year, and some projects like MinWin are so anti-Vista that sales reality must be very lame.

But what can YOU do about it?

If you find yourself among those people that need Windows Vista, or just want it for the looks, there're two options: you get a good computer or you trim Vista down. And there's an application called vLite that will allow you to do just that. Last week, version 1.1.6 (that brings back "Service Pack Slipstream" support) went Release Candidate, so you can delete everything you don't need from the list of things to be installed with the OS. You can leave Vista at half the size it has by default, which should improve responsiveness.

Link: vLite.

The best photographers image processing tool around has just been updated to version 1.4.1. With robust support for more than 150 camera raw formats, the new lightroom gives PC users something shout about. Lightroom is great for working on digital images because adjustments you make to images in Lightroom won't alter the original data, whether you're working on a JPEG, TIFF, DNG, or camera raw file.

Included in the Lightroom 1.4 Update: OS X 10.5 (Leopard) printer driver compatibility update and additional camera support for the Canon EOS 450D (Rebel XSi), Nikon D60, Sony A350 and more. Grab it while it's hot.

Adobe Lightroom 1.4.1 

Owners of the Canon 40D digital camera (you know who you are you lucky people) will be pleased to hear there is an important firmware update available from Canon.

The new verson is 1.0.8 and it includes the following improvements and fixes:

   1. Fixes a phenomenon in which Image Stabilization operation emits a sound when certain buttons are pressed, with the EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS lens attached to the camera.

    When pressing the shutter button halfway down or pressing the AF-ON button, the IS operation sound is normal. (This phenomenon will not affect the durability of IS unit parts)

   2. Fixes a phenomenon in which the Image Stabilization operation emits a sound from the lens when IS lenses are attached to the camera.

   3. Fixes a phenomenon in which a part of the image looks unnatural when reviewed on the LCD.

Depending on the color of the background, the edges of some objects in the image may appear to have a jagged edge and look unnatural. (Even if the image played back on the camera's LCD is affected by this phenomenon, the actual image data is not affected.)

   4. Corrects errors in the Spanish and Norwegian menu screens.

    Spanish:

    In the metering timer setting of the Live View Function setting, the units for 10 and 30 minutes are in singular form "minuto"; they have been corrected to "minutos".

    Norwegian:

    Picture Style was described as "Bildetype"; it has been corrected to "Bildestil".

Improvements made in previous versions are  included in this new firmware, so if you have yet to update your 40D, scoot on over to the Canon website.

Camera bags are essential for lugging about and protecting your digital investment but before you rush out and buy the latest super backpack take a look at this little green number from Lowepro. If you care about the environment, you'll be pleased to hear that Lowepro have built a rather fine camera bag out of recycled materials. Constructed for tough outdoor useage, the Lowepro Primus AW features rugged construction with a recycled, water resistant outer fabric and a seam-sealed AW cover to protect all your fancy camera gear. This pack also conforms to a variety of body types with an adjustable 8-point harness system giving the adventure photographer exceptional comfort under heavy load. In commemoration of Lowepro's 40th anniversary, it is an industry first backpack designed for the professional photographer and made primarily from recycled materials. Funds raised from the sale of the Primus AW backpack will support Polar Bears International PBI, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the worldwide conservation of the polar bear.

The Primus AW backpack, constructed of 51% Cyclpet®, a 100% post consumer recycled fabric, is the first backpack of its kind, and establishes the Primus AW as the industry standard for eco-friendly carrying solutions. Each bag contains enough recycled material to equate to approximately 22 soda bottles. By preventing this material from reaching a landfill, .0034 cubic yards of landfill space, 15,109 BTU's of energy, .002 barrels of crude oil and .12 gallons of refined oil is conserved throughout the production process.

We applaud Lowepro for taking this step and showing products can be made that help the environment while looking good too. For more details and where to purchase, head on over to the Lowepro website.

Research From TechNavio highlights Rapid Fall in Server Spending Due to the Rise of Virtualization.

There is overwhelming evidence that spending on servers is slowing down significantly across a number of market sectors in some cases by up to a factor of five, according to research conducted by TechNavio from Infiniti Research.

Using TechNavio - a comprehensive research solution that addresses the spectrum of intelligence needs of IT industry Sales and Strategic Planning teams - Infiniti has identified the trend as the direct result of virtualization deployment and the drive to greener computing. The findings have been released to time with Storage Expo, being held at Olympia on 17th October.

Rahul Agarwal, co-founder of Infiniti Research and head of business development for TechNavio, stated: “According to research in 2006 data centers worldwide housed about 29 million servers, having grown at 15% a year since 2000.  By units, server shipments grew 5.9% in 2006 according to IDC, but our analysis of current server shipments and virtualization adoption levels suggests that this growth is going to slow to only 2% in 2008.  By 2009 it will actually go into a sustained decline to reach about 24.5 million by 2014,”

“Our view is that to offset this volume pressure, hardware vendors will be forced to improve unit margins by building in virtualization capability, memory and I/O interfaces in the hardware.  Our research also appears to indicate that some vendors may push thin client sales as desktop virtualization proliferates,” he continued.

“For hardware vendors attending Storage Expo this year our message is this – the server market of tomorrow will be a value game and not a volume game. In addition, compared to yesterday, hardware vendors will need to cooperate much more closely with software, services and networking vendors in order to meet client needs and win in the market,” he added.

While the initial pace will be set by large enterprises, the long-term play in green computing is clearly in the SMB sector, which typically is less efficient in that they use lower end servers and have not gone through server consolidation on the same scale as their larger peers. TechNavio has identified Stonebridge Bank, a small regional bank in Pennsylvania as an organization driving this trend.  It has recently gone from 131 servers to just 26. 

One other key finding of its research is the impact server consolidation and virtualization will have on the environment. 

“According to our research the average sized server has the same carbon footprint as a mid sized four wheel drive consuming 17 litres of fuel to travel 100km.  Therefore, over the next five years or so a reduction of somewhere in the region of five million servers will have the same environmental impact as taking five million four wheel drives off the road!” concluded Rahul.

TechNavio is a powerful web-based repository of market insight, developed by Infiniti Research specifically for the IT industry. TechNavio brings technology sales and marketing planners a pinpoint source of market size, competitor, vendor and customer data from around the world, across all technology areas and major industry groups. It enables sales and marketing teams to gain unrivalled coverage and understanding of the global IT landscape.
 
Drawing on years of experience conducting detailed market studies for both multinational and innovative start-up technology companies, Infiniti has ensured that all TechNavio information has been thoroughly researched and validated by company analysts, whilst being referenced against published opinion by leading IT research firms and commentators.

For more information about TechNavio from Infiniti Research, and to subscribe to its research findings, please visit: www.technavio.com.

It all started Friday, January 4, when Warner Bros. Entertainment announced they would go Blu-ray exclusive, in regards to the HD video market. Warner Home will continue releasing HD DVD movies until late May, but only as second rate launches (after the regular DVD and Blu-Ray versions have already been on sale).

After the typical reaction from Toshiba (main player in the HD DVD camp), saying they will keep working, they must have been surprised as they had a contract with Warner. Accordingly they went and canceled their CES activity, while issuing a different statement:

"Based on the timing of the Warner Home Video announcement today, the HD DVD Promotional Group has decided to cancel 1:1 press meetings at CES, in addition to the press conference that was scheduled for Sunday evening. [...] We are currently discussing the potential impact of this announcement with the other HD DVD partner companies and evaluating next steps."

Not a week later, after New Line had followed Warner, it was HBO's turn to go Blu. Curiously, the decision comes not much later than the season six collection of The Sopranos  had been released (as far as HD-DVD is concerned, their first and last season).

Several weeks have gone by and the only news we have been hearing is all in Blu-ray's favour. We are still waiting to see which "steps" Toshiba and their partners are going to take. It certainly doesn't look good for HD-DVD players now.

Well, for one thing, you can get your system to actually use lots of memory. But if you are among those with 2 gigas or less: should you even bother?

At bit-tech, they have sort of revised 64 bit computational history, among personal computers and those of other kinds. The conditions the various operating systems offer are also examined, as they are a key condition for the programs to even work in 64 bit. They point out the lack of programs and drivers as one of the main reasons why we are still living on a 32 bit Windows world.

You probably know that a 32-bits OS only "sees" four gigas of memory, wich end up being reduced to some 3,2 GB (in the case of Windows XP Service Pack 2) because you have to  share it, spend some overhead with virtual memory and devices... you name it. But let's say you just don't care about using more RAM. What else do the 64 bits hold for you? Theoretically, a computer that "speaks" with words of 64 bits can process double the infromation per cycle. In practice, the best I have seen doesn't exceed a 75% performance increase (which isn't quite bad).

Hopefully, you will some day put to good use that Athlon 64 of yours, before it starts gathering dust.