GrandCentral offers customers a single number through which they can forward calls to their work, home, or mobile phone; filter calls before answering them; record conversations; and access an archive of recordings and voice mail via the Web. Just like Google’s promise that with its Gmail e-mail service, you’ll never need to delete another message, GrandCentral promises to archive voice mail “for life.”

Google isn’t saying yet whether it will make and store transcripts of recorded conversations in addition to voice mail messages.

GrandCentral stopped accepting new customers after Google bought it, and even now, rebranded as Google Voice, the service is still closed to new business. Since its acquisition, GrandCentral has invited prospective customers to leave their e-mail address to reserve a number, and Google said it will begin responding to those requests “in a matter of weeks.”

Google claims its service is the only fully automated voice mail transcription service on the market. The transcriptions may include mistakes, and Google will make accuracy improvements over time, it said.

In contrast, other automated transcription services already on the market rely on a small amount of human intervention to improve transcription accuracy and teach the software new words on the fly.

Last week Skype began transcribing its customers’ voice mail messages into SMS text messages using technology from U.K. company Spinvox. If the Spinvox software is unsure about a word, it plays that part of the recording to a person who confirms or corrects the transcription.

Spinvox began launching services in the United Kingdom in 2005 and now powers the voice mail transcription services offered by North American carriers including Alltel, Cincinnati Bell, Rogers, and Telus. Telus will send transcripts to its subscribers via SMS or e-mail.

Another software company, Nuance Communications, announced a competing offering last April. It hasn’t named any customers yet, but operators in France and Spain are deploying its voice mail-to-text service, a company spokesman said last month.

Skype makes its transcription service pay for itself by charging for the SMS messages, but Google hasn’t said how it will make money from its transcriptions, which like other GrandCentral services are free.

One obvious revenue source for Google would be targeting advertising: when a friend leaves a message suggesting you meet for dinner, the transcript might be displayed alongside an advertisement for a local restaurant. Google might also use the transcripts to improve the profiles of its users’ interests that it is building in order to deliver interest-based or behavioural advertising, a move it announced on Wednesday.

Amazon

This offering clearly enables a lower TCO, depending upon how much time the application is actually up. Algebra not your strong suit? Fortunately, Geva Perry, a well-known cloud blogger, created a calculator to allow you to figure it out automatically. Filling out a spreadsheet too much work? Geva bottom lines it: if your app is up more than 12 hours per day for one year, it makes sense to use a reserved instance. Obviously, the blended pricing gets even more attractive over a three year period, where the yearly upfront payment works out to $166.

An interesting variation for companies is this scenario: an application that must always be available, but experiences intermittent large increases in use. Obvious examples are seasonal retail, monthly reporting, etc. For these apps, a mix of reserved instances for typical load with on-demand instances for short duration peak load will provide a good solution that leverages the flexibility of AWS while reducing minimum operations expenses.

Since one of the typical objections to cloud computing is that its TCO is higher than self-hosted systems, this new offering changes the equation — it may not affect the outcome of that discussion in every case, but it definitely tilts the balance toward the cloud. I believe the argument that cloud computing is, ipso facto, more expensive is more and more tenuous every day.

Microsoft also announced a change in its Azure cloud offering: they now offer standard SQLServer relational database support. The money quote: “a developer can take an existing application and just change the connection string to point it to the cloud and have it just work.”

Another common objection to cloud computing is that it isn’t easy to migration existing applications to the cloud. In particular, the PaaS offerings don’t support standard relational databases or SQL syntax. Cloud advocates argue that this isn’t a big deal, because applications are increasingly scale-oriented and run too large for relational databases anyway, which is why the key-pair persistence offerings of the PaaS vendors is more appropriate. I think they’re dead wrong in this assertion. While there is no doubt that what I refer to as “Internet-scale” applications and data stores are becoming more common, requiring scalable infrastructures beyond the capability of most data centers, the vast preponderance of applications fall into traditional architecture infrastructures, which rely on SQL databases as the persistence mechanism. Moreover, there is huge potential demand for IT organizations to migrate these apps into cloud environments if the economics are sufficiently attractive (which, as noted earlier, Amazon, at least, is diligently working on).

1.Banyak aplikasi yang terinstal
Jika ingin menginstal software sebaiknya yang penting dan dibutuhkan saja, jangan terlalu banyak menginstal software yang tidak digunakan. Hal ini secara otomatis akan mengambil space komputer sehingga pada akhirnya akan mengganggu kerja komputer itu sendiri. Jika sudah terlanjur terinstal, anda dapat menghapusnya dengan cara meng-uninstall aplikasi tersebut dari Control Panel.
2.Banyak file sampah
Ini mungkin yang sering dilupakan banyak orang yaitu tidak mengetahui file-file sampah yang seharusnya dibuang. Yang dimaksud file-file sampah adalah: file pada Recycle Bin, cookies, histroy IE, file bak, file temporary, dll).
Ketika menghapus file yang tidak digunakan, tidak secara otomatis file tersebut akan terhapus dari hardisk. Sebenarnya masih tersimpan dalam folder Recycle Bin, dan jika kita ingin mengambil file tersebut masih bisa. Hapuslah file-file dalam Recycle Bin karena seluruh file tersebut masih mengambil ruang hardisk. Pastikan Anda telah memilih file-file yang memang sudah tidak digunakan lagi, karena ketika mengosongkan seluruh file pada Recycle Bin maka file-file akan terhapus secara permanen dan tidak dapat dikembalikan lagi.
Cookies juga merupakan file sampah yang harus dibersihkan. File tersebut akan selalu muncul ketika sedang melakukan koneksi ke jaringan internet. Anda bisa menghapus cookies dalam Internet Options pada masing-masing browser (IE, Mozilla, Netscape, dll) yang digunakan. Selain cookies, History juga mempengaruhi sistem komputer. Semakin banyak History yang tersimpan semakin besar pula memori yang dibutuhkan.
File-file History secara otomatis akan muncul ketika melakukan koneksi ke jaringan internet. Apabila tidak dibersihkan akan mempengaruhi kerja komputer. Bersihkan file history pada menu Tools > Internet Option pada masing-masing browser yang digunakan.
Ada bebeberapa aplikasi yang secara otomatis menyimpan file cadangan (backup) seperti bak, backup, dan lain-lain. Jadi ketika menyimpan sebuah file, maka file lama akan tetap ada dengan format yang berbeda yaitu file.BAK. Bersihkan file-file ganda yang tidak digunakan, namun harus dipastikan bahwa file terakhir tersimpan adalah file yang akan dipakai.

3.Banyak aplikasi yang terbaca ketika Start Up
Beberapa software ketika pertama kali diinstal menyediakan pilihan yaitu: ikon ditambahkan pada Desktop dan ikon ditambahkan pada Taskbar Quick Launch. Sebaiknya tidak perlu meletakkn ikon program tersebut dalam taskbar karena ketika pertama kali sistem operasi bekerja (Start Up) maka akan membutuhkan waktu lama untuk mengaktifkan program tersebut. Memang secara sepintas akan memudahkan kita menjalankan program tersebut karena tinggal mengklik ikonnya dalam taskbar, namun sebenarnya menjadi beban sistem komputer karena harus menyediakan memori tersendiri.
Hal ini akan memperlambat kerja komputer. Aturlah beberapa aplikasi yang memang dibutuhkan dengan cara mengatur konfigurasi. Jalankan menu Start kemudian pilih Run, ketikkan msconfig. Nonaktifkan aplikasi yang tidak diperlukan ketika Start Up.

4.Manajemen Sistem tidak teratur
Komputer yang sering digunakan juga memerlukan penyegaran, salah satunya adalah dengan cara melakukan Scandisk dan Defragmentasi secara rutin minimal satu bulan sekali. Idealnya satu minggu sekali, tergantung frekuensi penggunaan komputer. Meskipun sesuatu yang sepele, namun sering dilupakan banyak orang. Lakukan Scandisk secara rutin untuk memperbaiki hardisk yang sering crash akibat litrik mati secara mendadak atau hang.
Selain melakukan Scandisk, yang tak kalah pentingnya adalah Defragmentasi secara berkala. Hal ini sangat berguna ketika tingkat penggunaan komputer tinggi. File-file perlu ditempatkan sebagaimana mestinya agar ruang kosong tidak berantakan. Jika ruang penempatan file berantakan bisa mengakibatkan kerja komputer lambat.

5.Pilih Kinerja atau Penampilan
Bagi pengguna Windows XP sebaiknya memperhatikan hal ini agar kerja komputer lebih cepat. Memang penampilan Windows XP sangat bagus, ikon-ikon yang ditampilkan berwarna-warni dengan efek mengkilap. Perlu diketahui, tampilan windows yang bagus tersebut membutuhkan memori yang tidak sedikit. Makanya jangan heran bila semakin lama kerja komputer semakin lambat.
Windows XP menyediakan dua pilihan yaitu Adjust for Best Appereance atau Adjust for Best. Jika memilih Adjust for best app maka lebih mengutamakan penampilan sehingga kinerja komputer mememerlukan memori yang lebih. Hal ini berpengaruh pada kinerja komputer. Sedangkan jika memilih Adjust for best performance maka lebih mengutamakan kinerja komputer dibandingkan penampilan sehingga tampilan Windows XP akan nampak seperti biasa tanpa efek bayangan ataupun mengkilap seperi windows versi sebelumnya.

6.Proses Shutdown tidak sesuai perosedur
Komputer yang sangat lambat bekerja membuat kita kesal dibuatnya, makin hari kian lambat saja. Kadang-kadang komputer langsung hang secara mendadak ketika sedang asyik bekerja. Kita akan mematikan komputer tersebut dengan cara menekan tombol Restart atau Booting. Hal ini dikerenakan kita tidak bisa mematikan komputer melalui proses Shutdown karena semua tombol keyboard tidak berfungsi.
Apabila sering mematikan komputer melalui tombol Booting, lama-lama bisa mengakibatkan sistem operasi tidak berjalan normal dan hardsik akan mengalami kerusakan (bad sector). Hal ini akan memperparah keadaan karena file-file sistem yang ada pada bad sector tidak dapat terbaca, sehingga komputer sering mengalami mati mendadak (hang).

The software, Google PowerMeter, integrates into the company’s iGoogle platform, where users create a customized page with lightweight Web-based applications. The PowerMeter is designed to show a granular, real-time view of electricity-consuming devices.

Although PowerMeter is just a prototype now, consumers will eventually be able to opt in to use it, and no personal information will be shared between Google and utilities, the company said. The electricity data will be stored securely, and users will be able to tell their utility to stop sending data to the PowerMeter, Google said.

Most consumers don’t have much data or context regarding their electricity consumption, according to Ed Lu of Google’s engineering team.

Google’s PowerMeter takes data from ”smart meters,” or advanced electricity meters and other electricity management devices. About 40 million smart meters are in use worldwide, with that number expected to rise to 100 million in the next few years, Lu said.

President Barack Obama’s economy stimulus plan includes investments to put up to 40 million smart meters in U.S. homes. Google takes data from a home’s smart meter and displays it in a graph. It can show the current day’s electricity consumption compared to the day before, but the graph can be expanded to get a historical view of peaks and troughs in electricity usage, Google said.

Google also plans to release APIs for PowerMeter that would let other software developers build applications around it. Google is making a strong push for agreements with utilities on how to standardize the data that’s available from smart meters. In a position paper dated Monday sent to California’s Public Utility Commission, Google said that “the data from the smart meter needs to be available to the consumer in real-time and in a non-proprietary format.”

California has been pushing ahead with Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) plans, which call for new meters that show real-time data well as pricing information to consumers.

So far, Google is letting its own employees test PowerMeter. The insights gained include at least two revelations about the electricity used to make toast and the inefficiency of 20-year-old refrigerators.

“One morning I noticed that my energy consumption was higher than normal,” wrote Kirsten, a Google program manager, who didn’t give her last name. “I went into the kitchen and found that the dial on our toaster oven was stuck and had been on all night.

“It was already burning and the once white exterior was now brown. If I hadn’t seen my energy consumption and known where to look, my apartment could have been toast,” she wrote.

Di Indonesia, Huawei memberikan layanan solusi UMTS/HSPA kepada operator terkemuka seperti: Telkomsel, Indosat, Excelcomindo Pratama (XL) dan Natrindo Telepon Selular (NTS).

In-Stat juga mengakui prestasi besar Huawei di bidang solusi dan produk nirkabel dengan berbagai temuan, diantaranya mobile broadband. Sampai saat ini, Huawei telah membangun 128 UMTS/HSPA atau sekitar 50 persen dari total jaringan komersil di seluruh dunia. Jaringan UMTS/HSPA lebih dari 25 operator mobile di Eropa pun didukung oleh Huawei.

Huawei juga menjadi  base station GSM peringkat kedua dunia dengan perolehan sebesar 24,4 persen dari 6 juta transaksi yang dilakukan pada tahun 2008. Sementara untuk basis CDMA, Huawei menjadi pemimpin industri dengan mengantongi 110 kontrak CDMA2000 1 x EV-DO.

“Laporan terbaru dari In-Stat ini membuktikan usaha terus-menerus Huawei dalam mengembangkan solusi mobile broadband untuk memenuhi kebutuhan pelanggan kami. Operator di seluruh dunia telah menunjukkan kepercayaan mereka kepada kami dengan memilih Huawei sebagai mitra strategis mereka,” ujar Wan Biao, Presiden Divisi Produk Nirkabel Huawei di Shenzen, China.

Ironisnya program tersebut dikembangkan oleh para hacker Indonesia, dan program yang dijalankan juga berbahasa Indonesia.

Program tersebut telah bertebaran dari milis ke milis, dan penggunaannya sangat mudah, tinggal memasukkan id friendster si target, maka dengan seketika akan muncul foto-foto pribadi si target.

Belum ada tanggapan dari Friendster mengenai hal tersebut, yang dimungkinkan karena belum ada pengaduan dari para pemilik account.

IDG News Service — There are deadly hazards in the fog that blankets California’s rural Central Valley every winter, but a WiMax network may now help warn motorists of what looms ahead of them and prevent accidents.

After a chain of crashes on a November day in 2007 killed two people and wrecked about 100 cars, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) set out to develop a solution. The result was a warning system called Fog Pilot, now in place on the stretch of road where that 2007 incident took place, that includes sensors and a series of electronic signs that tell drivers if traffic is slowing ahead. The components of that system, strung along Highway 99 in an area of mostly farmland, are linked via a private WiMax network.

While much of the attention on WiMax has been focused on publicly available carrier networks that use licensed frequencies, the technology can also be used for private networks and on unlicensed spectrum. The network used by Caltrans runs on the same unlicensed band used by IEEE 802.11a Wi-Fi systems and is based on fixed WiMax instead of the mobile technology that is being deployed nationally.

Between November and February each year, low-altitude areas of the Central Valley are often blanketed with a thick fog, named “tule fog” for the tule reeds that grow in the valley. At its worst, the fog reduces effective visibility to zero, meaning drivers can’t see more than five feet in front of their cars. (At that point, the California Highway Patrol stops traffic and guides cars through in groups.) Tule fog typically appears in the mornings and evenings, though on about five days in a season, it stays all day, according to Jose Camarena, a Caltrans public information officer

U.S. Highway 99 is a bad place to be when it’s fogged in. But it’s one of the state’s major north-south arteries, as well as the main route between towns and farms in the local area. “We obviously have a contradiction, where local drivers think they can keep driving 60 to 80 miles an hour when you only have 100-feet visibility, if that,” Camarena said. “Everybody always thinks, ‘It’s not going to happen to me.’”

An accident between just two vehicles can snowball into a pileup when fast-moving drivers can’t see that traffic has stopped ahead of them. So Caltrans set up a network of traffic and visibility sensors to detect when those conditions exist. Chameleon ITS Transportation Management Software from ICx Technologies processes the data to determine what warning signs should say. The Fog Pilot system has signs every quarter-mile that tell oncoming drivers if there is an accident, stopped traffic, or slowing ahead of them, Camarena said.

Fog Pilot has been set up in a trial deployment on a 12-mile stretch of the highway south of Fresno. For now, the sensor data comes to human operators who set up the sign messages remotely. But that takes one or two minutes, and for accident warnings, every second counts. So when the trial system is finished in a few months, it will be fully automated and able to change sign messages in 30 seconds or less, Camarena said.

Rather than lay down a wired network to link the sensors and signs, the builders of Fog Pilot chose WiMax. The Proxim Wireless Tsunami MP.11 5054 base stations and 5012 subscriber units transmit the conditions data. Fog Pilot uses a point-to-multipoint configuration for communications among devices that are close to each other and point-to-point for the quarter-mile links, said Darrell Alfaro, CEO of Moonblink Communications, the wireless contractor on the project. To send data beyond the highway network to the Internet, the system uses a handful of EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized) cellular radios, Alfaro said.

WiMax is a good protocol for this type of project, because it can deliver a high-bandwitch signal over distances of several miles. Even though the sensor network uses the 5.8GHz band shared with Wi-Fi and devices such as cordless phones, interference isn’t a major problem because the network is low to the ground and uses directional links, creating a narrow radio “tunnel,” Alfaro said.

As configured today, the network doesn’t need the bandwidth that WiMax provides, Alfaro said. But in the future, Caltrans plans to install video cameras for monitoring the situation on the highway. The WiMax network is ready to handle those data streams, he said.

Private, unlicensed networks make up only a small percentage of WiMax deployments, said IDC analyst Abner Germanow. Interference from Wi-Fi networks can be a problem. But in places where there aren’t many Wi-Fi networks, such as on Highway 99, it’s a realistic option, Germanow said. And for point-to-point wireless links, in general, WiMax is likely to displace proprietary systems and play a bigger role over time, he said. Standards mean many chipset and equipment vendors can make similar gear.

“The near-term reality of WiMax in point-to-point networks is that WiMax hasn’t necessarily decreased the cost of that point-to-point equipment, but the longer-term promise is that as the volume of chipsets increases … the prices on that gear will fall,” Germanow said.

If the test deployment of Fog Pilot works as expected, Caltrans would like to set up sensors and signs in many other dangerous areas of the Central Valley. The system could also be used to warn drivers of other types of conditions and the accidents they may cause, Camarena said.

S

Bisnis Digital Photo Kios sendiri mulai berkembang pada tahun 2003. Saat itu penjualan kamera digital pelan tapi pasti mulai menyalip penjualan kamera film, apalagi produsen ponsel mulai ikut melengkapi produknya dengan kamera di atas 1 Megapixel.

Dua nama besar fotografi juga terjun ke sektor cetak foto instan, yaitu Kodak dan Fujifilm. Kodak memasarkan mesin ATM Foto, dan Fuji Film membawa mesin cetak foto instan M Print Station (MPS) dan M Print Station Plus (MPS+). Namun, yang sekarang masih ditawarkan adalah (MPS+).
Dengan bentuk yang simpel dan disain berwarna kuning, mesin cetak Kodak ATM Foto bisa ditempatkan di mana saja. Konsumen bisa langsung mencetak foto dari ponsel via Infrared atau Bluetooth dan mengambil hasilnya hanya dalam hitungan detik. Harganya berada pada kisaran 80 juta rupiah.

Mesin MPS+, yang harganya berkisar Rp.50 Juta mampu mencetak foto dengan pilihan ukuran 2S (5×7,5 cm), 3S (10 x 7,5 cm) atau 4R. Mesin setinggi 1,36 meter ini juga bisa mencetak foto dari ponsel, CD, USB flashdisk, dan memory card. Konica Minolta pun membuat mesin cetak foto instan. Mesin Nice Print miliknya dipasarkan dengan sistem jual putus layaknya ATM Foto dan MPS+, harganya berkisar Rp.48 juta. Mesin tersebut mampu mencetak foto dengan ukuran maksimal 6 x 9 inci dan resolusi 300 dpi. Sementara Sony juga tidak mau ketinggalan mengeluarkan Sony Snaplab.

Kualitas cetak dari mesin-mesin ini masih kalah dengan hasil Lab, tapi sudah cukup baik. Mereka yang cetak foto di ‘ATM foto’ ini biasanya karena urgent, spontanitas atau yang ingin punya privasi dalam mencetak foto

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