xpherion - technology blog

Data warehouse market got a jolt today. Microsoft today announced that it intends to acquire DATAllegro Inc., a provider of breakthrough data warehouse appliances. According to industry analyst this will trigger data warehouse vendor consolidation. This is a great move by MS after the sad saga of MICROHOO. DATAllegro acquisition buys Microsoft is new visibility and credibility in the DW market. DATAllegro was one of the first-mover vendors in the DW appliance market, and, though it has largely been out-developed, out-marketed, and out-sold by Netezza in this segment, still has considerable mind share, more

Technorati Tags: Data Warehouse, Microsoft, DATAllegro, Technology, SQL, Database

Your personal information is a valuable commodity to Phorm and to your ISP. By harvesting  the information you divulge every time you surf the internet, BT alone expect to make an additional $170M annually. The increase of data-mining, profiling of you and your surfing habits is a worrying trend, on a global industrial scale. And if they can do it without your legal consent or knowledge, so much the better.

This is just the beginning. There are many similar ambitious commercial and government partnership ’services’ in development, corrupted by the prospect of massive profits. In this climate, protecting your identity and safeguarding the interests of your family is paramount to your security and quality of life. Private companies that disregard your rights and record your personal and detailed online surfing behavior is tantamount to them putting CCTV cameras in every room of your house. It appears we can’t stop your ISP tracking and selling your surfing behavior but one solution could be to make the data they do collect absolutely worthless to their clients. more

Technorati Tags: phorm, antiphorm, Data pimping fight-back, Signal to Noise

This is a technology blog, but I had to post this story. This is sweet revenge against NEP. In one of the biggest upsets in Super Bowl history, New York shattered New England’s unbeaten season 17-14 Sunday night as Manning hit Plaxico Burress on a 13-yard fade with 35 seconds left. So long cheaters NEP. more

Technorati Tags: NFL, NYG, Super Bowl, New England Patriots, SPY GATE, Bill Belichick, Manning

Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving and is the beginning of the traditional Christmas shopping season in the United States. Many retailers open very early (typically 5 A.M.) and offer doorbuster deals to draw people to their stores. Black Friday is frequently but erroneously referred to in the media as the busiest retail shopping day of the year. While it has been one of the busiest days in terms of customer traffic, in terms of actual sales volume Black Friday is usually the fifth to tenth busiest day. The busiest retail shopping day of the year in the United States (in terms of both sales and customer traffic) is usually the Saturday before Christmas. This BestBuy door buster deal is for new Sony VAIO Laptop (instant saving of $350) with 1 GB memory, DVD RW and 120 GB hard drive,minimum 15 per store.

Technorati Tags: cheap laptop, best buy, BestBuy, black friday, BlackFriday, laptop, sony vaio, doorbuster

iPod Touch has been announced recently. Apple is doing really good job marketing this product. After creating a smashing success with Feist and the iPod Nano ads, buzz on the new iPod Touch commercial is busting out all over. The spot features a quick-cut tour of the gadget’s features backed by a rhythmic beat and an enchanting female voice. The tune starts with the words “music is my boyfriend” and searchers got busy looking up that phrase. However, those words aren’t the song’s title. This song is by Brazilian indie band Cansei de Ser Sexy (also known as CSS). Search for this band went up 300%. Apple’s marketing department took the commercial’s brilliant concept from a British college student. Searches on “ipod touch commercial song,” “ipod touch,” and “ipod touch review” have all jumped over 50% this week. more

Technorati Tags: ipod touch, ipod touch review, css, music is my boyfriend, Cansei de Ser Sexy, ipod nano, apple marketing

Android™, a complete set of software for mobile devices: an operating system, middleware and key mobile applications will be released as SDK on November 12, 2007. Android will be a “living” platform and google will be working with the developer community to continuously enhance and enrich the platform. Android is not the elusive Google Phone that has been rumored for several weeks, but a Linux-based software stack. SDK is going to licensed under the Apache version 2 license. Android would be a completely open, cost-effective and efficient way for developers to write applications for mobile phones. Android and the alliance are interesting because they show an effort to create some commonality in a sea fragmented by multiple operating systems. Android has an uphill battle against leading mobile operating system Symbian, which has roughly 70 percent of the market. Linux has about 15 percent of this market, with Research in Motion and Microsoft each owning roughly 5 percent. This is time for open source in mobile platform. This is good move by Google.

Reference: Where’s my Gphone, Open Handset Alliance

Technorati Tags: android, dream, google, htc, oha, sdk, open source, mobile, linux

This is exclusive inside look of new ASUS Eee PC from Tweaktown. The current ASUS Eee PC on sale has a Generic ASUS-customized Xandros Linux with “Easy” and “Standard” GUI modes that has all the essentials preloaded, including special draw programs similar to Paint, chat programs such as MSN and Skype and ICQ. According to the reviewer - With the top layer off I was ready to put down my tools and get the camera snap shots. Check out these gorgeous pictures. The Eee PC is opened up and if you zoom in you can see the backside of the motherboard. The central white crevasse in the middle is the slot where the DDR2 RAM fits in. In conclusion, the Eee PC is not for everyone; but having said that, it also seems to have a bit of everything (except a Microsoft OS, but they are working on that). It comes in a neat little package (Dimensions: 22.5 x 16.4 x 2.15~3.5 cm) with five different colors available, from the pastel green, blue or pink, to white or black. In the eastern countries it is already selling as fast as they can get them onto the market. The west however would be a little more circumspect and perhaps needs some time to grow into them, more

Static sample of Asus eee pc UI.

Technorati Tags: asus, eee pc, EeePc, disection, tweaktown, linux

Mac users who are getting the dreaded Blue Screen of Death while trying to update to the latest and greatest version of OS X. Lot of users in Apple Support forum getting a persistent blue screen that forces them to abort their installation of Leopard. It’s still not clear what’s causing this problem. Seems at least some of the the people experiencing problems had a third-party developer application called Application Enhancer installed. Some also had external disks or other peripherals attached when they pulled the trigger on the Leopard install. The OS went on sale on Friday all over the world. Many users later reported they were able to successfully install. more

Technorati Tags: apple, bsod, mac, osx, leopard