11:08AM, Monday 29th October 2007 

PC Pro has tested Intel’s latest Core 2 processor, the first ever CPU based on 45nm fabrication.  Codenamed Penryn, the latest revision of the Core 2 processor line is more than an architectural tweak. It’s the first CPU to be based on the most advanced fabrication ever developed: the 45nm process. 

This is down 30% from the 65nm process that Core 2 has been based on since its launch. Intel has chosen to remain on the dual, dual-core design with two dies in the same physical package, rather than the “native” quad-core approach that AMD has pioneered with its Barcelona designs. 

The basic architecture of the new parts remains the same as the current Core 2 generation. Aside from the new fabrication process though, there are design tweaks and enhancements. Performance-wise the main boost is given by a fairly prosaic addition: an increase in Level 2 cache from the 8MB in current quad-core parts - 4MB for each pair of cores - up to a new total of 12MB. This is shared in the same way, with 6MB per pair of cores.  When they’re launched on 12 November, the cheaper Core 2 Quad and dual-core Core 2 Duo chips based on the new architecture will all feature the same boost, of either 6MB Level 2 cache for the dual-core or 12MB for the quad-core parts. Our test CPU was the top-end quad-core Core 2 Extreme QX9650, running at 3GHz. Bus speed and preferred chipset are identical to the current top-end part, the Core 2 Extreme QX6850, with a 1,333MHz front-side bus running on either a P35 or X38 chipset-based board. That allowed us to undertake a direct, clock-for-clock comparison on performance between the previous part at the same clock speed. Clock-for-clock comparison Penryn is the “tock” in Intel’s much-vaunted new “tick-tock” design strategy.

The idea is that every 18 months or so, it begins production of an existing architecture on a new fabrication process (the tick) and then 18 months after that brings in a brand-new microarchitecture based on the new fabrication process (the tock). This lets Intel squeeze more life out of existing designs and perfect the new fabbing process before adding the extra complication of a new architecture. From our results based on the clock-for-clock comparison, it’s clear that Intel is right to be moving to a new architecture in the next year or so, as the performance increase offered by the new 45nm Penryn is marginal. Against the 3GHz QX6850, percentage performance improvement is never anywhere near double figures. The extra cache and some instruction-pipeline tweaks give the QX6950 only around a 6% overall boost against the 6850 in our most CPU-bound test, the 3d studio Max render, with a time-to-first-frame of 30 seconds against 32 seconds for the older part. Overall, our application benchmarks moved from 2.19 to 2.28. Definitely faster, but only by 4% overall. As well as the extra cache and refinements to the instruction pipeline, the new parts also introduce SSE4 instruction extensions. However, as the number of instructions encompassed by SSE gets larger, they also get more specialised and even Intel itself has trouble coming up with concrete examples of where they’ll be useful, beyond video motion-prediction (used in encoding) and specialised 3D maths that could be useful in 3D rendering applications (but not games, where all 3D calculations are now performed by the GPU). 

The message from these results is that if you have a current-generation quad-core CPU you won’t gain much performance by upgrading, although you’ll almost certainly get a more overclockable part. The first-generation Penryn is by no means a disaster, but big performance gains will only come once the higher-clocked parts that 45nm will allow are released. David Fearon 

Source: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/133613/intels-penryn-core-2-processor-the-first-results.html 

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There’s plenty of things to love about OS X 10.5 that are flying under the radar. Here are Macworld’s 10 favorite low-profile features. Rick LePage, Macworld  Thursday, October 25, 2007 3:00 PM PDT It’s easy to focus on the big stuff in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard–Time Machine, Spaces, Stacks, Cover Flow,

the changes to the Desktop’s look-and-feel-but what interests me most about any major OS X update are the little things. These are the enhancements and additions that will increase OS X’s usability and make me more productive long after the hype over the marquee features has died down. 

After walking through Apple’s Guided Tour, and the 300-plus New Features page, and playing with the release version for a few days, I’ve come up with a list of 10 lesser-known gems to look for after you’ve installed Leopard.  Quick Look  I know that Quick Look has been given prominence in some of the Leopard presentations, but its role has mostly been as an aide de camp to Cover Flow. I’m withholding judgement on Cover Flow’s utility until I’ve had a chance to live with it for a while, but Quick Look is already one of my new best friends. 

To get a full preview of a file or a group of files, without having to launch multiple applications, all I will need to do is select them and press the space bar. And this works in the Finder, Time Machine, and Mail, among other places. How simple and elegant can something be? I love this above everything else.  Add Attachments to iCal  There’s a lot to love in the new version of iCal, including support for the CalDAV networked calendar standard.

 I’m particularly interested in the Event Dropbox feature, which lets you add multiple attachments to meetings, and then share those files when you e-mail invites to attendees. And you can use the Quick Look feature to preview those documents right in iCal. Even if you’re only managing your own events, attaching related documents (with things like Google maps, for example) means you’ll have less searching to do when the event arrives. 

Resizable Partitions  In Leopard, you can create and resize hard disk partitions on the fly, without having to erase your drive and start over. For people looking to create temporary workspaces for projects, or to boost productivity in Photoshop, this will be huge.  Smarter Dismounts  In the same vein, Leopard is smarter about ejecting partitions. In the past, if you ejected a volume from a partitioned drive from your desktop, Mac OS X assumed you wanted to unmount all the partitions on that drive.

With Leopard, you’ll get the option of only unmounting the volume you selected, or you can eject the whole disk. And, if you hold down the Control key when you eject a partition, it will only unmount that partition, bypassing the dialog box.  ntegrated Sharing  he new Finder makes it easier to connect to Macs on your network, either via file sharing (to look at volumes you have access to) or via the new Screen Sharing application (which is also used in conjunction with iChat).

The controls to do both are built right into the folder windows on your desktop. You have to have access to the Macs in question, but it’s a great way of blasting open your home network for sharing files and troubleshooting. And, if you have a .Mac account, you can set Leopard up so that you have access to your home computer from your notebook or remote computer when you’re away from home. 

 Brotherly Love in Boot Camp Yeah, I know Parallels Desktop 3 and VMware’s Fusion are all the rage. But I don’t like Windows sullying my pretty little Mac world, so it’s Boot Camp for me, thank you very much. Boot Camp with Leopard will add the one feature I really care about: letting me copy files between my Mac and Windows partitions. I can say good bye to my USB drive (aka USBSNEAKERNET) once and for all.

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,138953-c,macos/article.html   

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Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service 

College parties met business e-mail on Wednesday as Facebook Inc. said it is adding its social-networking platform to Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry devices. 

 T-Mobile USA Inc. will be the first carrier to build a Facebook application into the BlackBerries it sells, but BlackBerry users on any network will be able to download the application starting later Wednesday, Facebook Co-Founder and Vice President of Engineering Dustin Moskovitz said in a keynote address at the CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment show in San Francisco. 

In the keynote, Moskovitz demonstrated taking a photo with a BlackBerry Curve device, adding tags to it and posting it to Facebook without even starting up the Facebook application. Other features include the ability to set special ringtones for Facebook events and invite friends to join Facebook through BlackBerry e-mail. But it’s the open nature of Facebook’s platform, which allows third parties to add new applications, that sets the company apart, Moskovitz said. 

The tie-up brings together the highest profile social-networking player, with almost 50 million active users, and an enterprise mobile pioneer vying for market share against Microsoft Corp., Palm Inc., Symbian Ltd., Apple Inc. and other device and OS vendors. Executives of the two companies met at the CTIA Wireless Show in March in Orlando and agreed to work together, Moskovitz said. Openness is the key factor they had in common, he said. 

Starting from a base of thousands of colleges and high schools, Facebook last year opened its network to anyone, and members over 35 years old are the fastest-growing segment, Moskovitz said. RIM has its roots in corporate e-mail tied to specialized enterprise servers, so the partnership could help Facebook grow right where it’s catching up. 

The announcement came as Microsoft was buying a $240 million minority stake in Facebook, a purchase that values the company at about $15 billion. 

Facebook also announced a few other advances in the mobile arena, where it expects to have 4 million active users by the end of this month. There are Facebook services available on most major U.S. and Canadian carriers, and Moskovitz announced its first carrier deal outside North America, with O2 (U.K.) Ltd.

 One extension announced Wednesday lets users add information from third-party Facebook applications as a box in their mobile profiles. As an example, Moskovitz showed a user’s profile that listed two causes he supports. Another extension lets organizations text-message Facebook members to send a text message in support of a cause. The member’s support is immediately reflected on Facebook on the Web, he said. 

Social networking has to move to mobile to reach users where they are, especially younger people, and Facebook seems to be leading larger rival MySpace in getting there, analysts said. “If you didn’t build out your mobile capabilities, you would be losing out to those that have that functionality, as mobile becomes more important to people’s experience,” said Greg Sterling, of Sterling Market Intelligence, in Oakland, California. By making its platform more open to third parties, Facebook is making it easier for mobile developers to get involved, said Eddie Hold, of Current Analysis Inc.    Facebook has also set up its services for the iPhone’s full Web browser, creating a special site for use with the device. Sterling believes the Microsoft deal announced Wednesday will include a mobile component, too 

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/138921/facebook_teams_up_with_rim.html 

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Business Process Outsourcing, also known as Services Outsourcing Industry has become one of the keys to success in the busy world of Business. A smart way of managing time, saving expenditure on technology and resources, preserving energy and making efficient use of manpower by business firms are the qualities that may do justice to the acronym.

The core business processes are of utmost importance but the non-core operations such as human resources, billing and purchase, data management, customer services cannot be overlooked for they form the backbone of the outsourcing body. The flexibility of the work force in a Business firm can be maintained, if a path is paved for the BPO industry.

In today’s cut throat competitive world where Business companies are struggling hard to get to the top, BPO has proved as an added advantage. The efforts incorporated by BPO have made a rise in shareholder value and revenue gain.

The non-core operations make a long list of tasks, such as marketing, payrolls management, data processing, customer support. Along with these, BPO’s provide call center services, engineering services, banking, creative services, web analytics services, healthcare services, e-learning services, software services, KPO services and a host of other additional services.

The policy of ‘distribution of work’ can be associated with outsourcing where the non-core processes of a firm are separated from the core ones and an external service provider is handed over the non-core job. There by two entities work on the same parameter, yet with different levels of importance. Successful business giants like GE, IBM, British Airways and American express took up outsourcing long back in the 1980’s.With the advent of Multi National Companies, the impact of outsourcing can be seen at the highest in the present time with even the smaller companies strategizing on BPO to increase scope for productivity.

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/outsourcing-articles/business-process-outsourcing-bpo-241441.html 

for more info please visit our site: http://www.semaphore-software.com/offshore-outsourcing/offshore_outsourcing_services.htm

For any Enterprise Software Company, Product Management is one of the most critical functions. If products are utilized by more and more customers, than requests for new features will start to pile up, which is but obvious. In order to implement the needs of the customers, the job of product manager should be to prioritize the products in order, so as to keep, feature creep away from it.

Ismael Ghalimi put up his statement that the way we managed to outsource our product management function was through a process called Demand Driven Development (a.k.a. D3). D3 is based on a two-phase process that empowers our customers to tell us what they desire, and then they pay for it.We can take Identification Phase as Digg for the management of products. We issue the candidate list of features on the community website, and we let the customers and partners advise additional ones.

We then let the community to discuss and rate the features they like the most. We facilitate this process by providing additional input that we gathered from the field, and then promote the most popular candidate’s features.Once the feature has reached the Estimating status, we make a move in the Implementation Phase and begin with the including of engineering team to develop the elementary set of specifications for it.

We then multiply the number of required person-months by an average monthly cost, to which we add a 50 percent overhead, aimed at covering the maintenance of the feature for at least three years.Armed with these numbers, we return to our community, and ask customers to bid for the development of the feature. As soon as we get enough customers to pay for it, we close the bidding process and start the actual implementation.

When some features appear to be very specific to the needs of a particular customer, we ask for at least two customers to bid for it before we commit to its development. This measure helps us in ensuring that we reduce the risk of feature creep. Once the feature is implemented, three options are available to us: We can give it to the customers who paid for it three to six months before anybody else gets it, thereby creating an incentive for customers to contribute to its funding. 

 We can incorporate it into the Enterprise Edition of our product, thereby increasing the value of a subscription.  We can donate it back to our open-source community, thereby getting help from the community for its downstream maintenance. In order to make the participation of customers more in the funding, we give the customer credits towards future subscriptions to our Enterprise Edition, equivalent to 50 percent of the amount of funding they contributed. Such process gives you a very effective way to deal with what we call “checkbox” features.

Whenever, we are asked for such feature, we point our customers to our D3 website, and without any lapse of time, we get rid of nine out of 10 checkbox features.By opening our Product Management process in such a way to our customers, we really mould them into development partners, and share with them, the responsibility of developing the product they need and asking them to vote with their checkbooks.

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/outsourcing-articles/how-to-outsource-product-management-to-customers-239687.html 

for more info please visit our site: http://www.semaphore-software.com/offshore-outsourcing/offshore_outsourcing_services.htm

Business Process Outsourcing, also known as Services Outsourcing Industry has become one of the keys to success in the busy world of Business. A smart way of managing time, saving expenditure on technology and resources, preserving energy and making efficient use of manpower by business firms are the qualities that may do justice to the acronym.

 The core business processes are of utmost importance but the non-core operations such as human resources, billing and purchase, data management, customer services cannot be overlooked for they form the backbone of the outsourcing body. The flexibility of the work force in a Business firm can be maintained, if a path is paved for the BPO industry.

In today’s cut throat competitive world where Business companies are struggling hard to get to the top, BPO has proved as an added advantage. The efforts incorporated by BPO have made a rise in shareholder value and revenue gain.

The non-core operations make a long list of tasks, such as marketing, payrolls management, data processing, customer support. Along with these, BPO’s provide call center services, engineering services, banking, creative services, web analytics services, healthcare services, e-learning services, software services, KPO services and a host of other additional services. The policy of ‘distribution of work’ can be associated with outsourcing where the non-core processes of a firm are separated from the core ones and an external service provider is handed over the non-core job. There by two entities work on the same parameter, yet with different levels of importance. Successful business giants like GE, IBM, British Airways and American express took up outsourcing long back in the 1980’s.With the advent of Multi National Companies, the impact of outsourcing can be seen at the highest in the present time with even the smaller companies strategizing on BPO to increase scope for productivity. 

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/outsourcing-articles/business-process-outsourcing-bpo-241441.html 

for more info please visit our site: http://www.semaphore-software.com/offshore-outsourcing/offshore_outsourcing_services.htm