Quake Rattles Asia’s Telecom Backbone
By Allan D. Francisco
The year 2006 is gone, but memories of the things it brought upon us will linger for quite a while, if not stay forever in our collective memory. Scandals, disasters, wars, and everything else that sometimes weaken our faith in mankind’s capacity to remain human, they all have dotted the path painfully etched by the past year.
But before taking its final bow, the year ended literally with a bang, and I am not talking about the Filipinos’ crazy penchant for lethal firecrackers.
On December 26, exactly two years after the Asian tsunami, which killed more than 250,000 people, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake off Taiwan’s southern coast demonstrated how frail today’s most advanced, state-of-the-art telecommunications infrastructure is. The undersea temblor showed that despite its seemingly pervasive presence, the Internet is still no match for Mother Nature, or at least, to one of its tantrums.
While the average Internet café-dwelling, online game addict believes that the Internet is as enduring as the ancient pharaohs’ pyramids or as the primeval forests in Congo and the Amazons, the Web is quite vulnerable to forces of nature.
This is true despite telecommunications networks’ built-in redundancy and flexibility features.
Meanwhile, Asian telecommunications companies are slowly recovering from the effects of the earthquake and are repairing their submarine cables and network connections. They say it would take some weeks to fully restore their systems to their full capacity.
Microsoft Wins Holiday Console Wars
Say what you will about Microsoft and how uncool the company and its products are, market research data show that the company’s Xbox 360 won the holiday retail sales competition in the US market.
The company sold some two million of its video game consoles in November and December. Compare that with 1.8 million Wii units and 750,000 PlayStation 3 consoles.
Some industry analysts, however, think that the numbers do not tell the whole story. According to market observers, Nintendo earns a lot from sales of its Wii video game console, while Microsoft and Sony lose money with each unit of their consoles sold.
Plus, analysts claim, Microsoft sold more consoles than its competitors did because the Redmond company had more units available.
But that is just the point. As one general said, wars are won with logistics.
That was how the Roman Empire lasted for quite a while. Aside from having the most advanced military hardware and best-trained army of their time, the Romans were good in building roads. These roads enabled the Romans to rule their empire with efficiency and dispatch, and allowed them to promptly move their soldiers, supplies and war machines where they were needed.
The console war, nevertheless, becomes a lot more interesting than it is now when Sony and Nintendo bring to the market enough numbers of their video game consoles to do battle with the Xbox 360.
Time to Say Goodbye to Hard Disk?
Are we seeing the final days of the hard disk drive? This came to mind after SanDisk Corp. recently announced a 32GB solid state drive.
Positioned by the company as a replacement for today’s HDDs, the 1.8-inch flash drive is aimed at corporate users, with the mass consumer market as the ultimate objective.
SanDisk believes that the drop in prices of solid state drives and corresponding advances in related technologies have created a market receptive to flash drive-equipped desktop and mobile computers.
The company says flash drives offer faster data access and lower energy consumption than those of HDD-based systems. I guess, this also means more durable and more quiet desktop and mobile computers.
Samsung’s Doble Cara
Samsung announced an LCD panel that displays different images or data simultaneously on the front and back of the same screen. The company claims that the product will replace two display panels with one, reducing thickness of mobile products as well as cutting power consumption.
The LCD is based on Samsung’s new double-gate, thin-film transistor architecture and uses a single backlight.
Industry adoption of the device would mean consumers can do spreadsheets while playing Need for Speed.
LG’s Doble Kargada
Sick and tired perhaps of all the internecine feuding and conflicting press releases, LG Electronics has announced it plans to sell a DVD player that will play both HD DVD and Blu-ray discs.
The two next-generation DVD formats have been competing for market share. Their incompatibility is forcing consumers, who more often than not are confused by the format rivalry, to choose between the warring camps. This conflict is blamed by industry analysts for slowing the consumer adoption of next-generation DVD products.
This dual-format next-generation DVD player from LG is a gem of an idea. I only wish somebody had this brilliant idea or something like it when the Beta and VHS video formats were slugging it out.
That’s all for the meantime, folks. Join me again next time as we continue watching IT this new year. For feedback: adlfrancis@gmail.com.
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