Family Learning Center

Posts Tagged ‘Economic Downturn’

Broadband Speeds Increase Around the World – But Not in the U.S.

Looking at data from the third quarter of 2009, content delivery network Akamai just announced that the average broadband speed in the U.S. declined by 2.4% in the third quarter of 2009 compared to the same quarter in 2008.
In the U.S., Delaware currently leads with 7.2 Mbps, though it remains far behind South Korea, where the average speed is almost 15 Mpbs. Currently, the U.S. is in 18th place, far behind Japan, Hong Kong, Romania and Sweden. The average U.S. broadband speed is currently 3.9 Mbps.

Sponsor

If you are looking for a fast Internet connection in the U.S., Sandy, UT and Iowa City currently offer the fastest connections. Delaware (7.2 Mbps), New Hampshire (5.9 Mbps) and Massachusetts (5.9 Mbps) are the top 3 states on Akamai’s list. The states with the fastest average broadband speeds can all be found on the East Coast.

It is interesting to speculate why average speed in the U.S. declined over the last year. Chances are that a lot of people downsized their connections during the economic downturn. If you have a theory, let us know in the comments.

IP Addresses: U.S. Leads but China is Catching Up

Akamai’s quarterly report also notes that the number of unique IP addresses increased by about 4.5% globally since the second quarter of 2009. The U.S. is still home to the largest number of unique IP addresses, but China is catching up quickly. In total, the U.S. was home to just over 119 million unique IP addresses in Q3 2009. With 49 million IP addresses, China is currently a distant second, but the number of Chinese IP addresses increased by 30% compared to Q2 2009, while U.S. addresses on increased by 9%.

Attack Traffic

Akamai also looked at where most of the traffic from botnets and other attack traffic originated from. Russia (13%) is currently the source of most of this traffic, followed by Brazil (8.6%) and the U.S. (6.9%). On a positive note, it’s important to note that attack traffic from the U.S. declined from 15% compared to Q2 2009. Attack traffic from China declined even more. In Q2 2009, 31% of all of this traffic originated in China. Now, China is only responsible for about 6.5% of all attack traffic.

Most of these attacks (78%) target port 445. On Windows systems, port 445 handles local printer and file sharing traffic.

Discuss

Read the whole story…

PC prices may rise, reversing six-year trend

Your next PC may cost you a bit more than expected if you buy later this year. Market research masters Gartner say that the price of building PCs will climb this year, reversing a six-year trend, due to component scarcity. That’s going to pose a bit of challenge to manufacturers who have focused on pumping out cheap netbooks during the economic downturn.

The biggest driver of the likely price increase is memory. The DRAM industry is in the midst of moving from DDR2 to DDR3, which means less of each type of RAM is being produced. DDR3 spot prices are up 23 percent over the last month; with memory comprising about a tenth of a PC’s overall cost, that’s a significant cost for OEMs to absorb.

It’s not just RAM: LCD panels and hard drive prices are on the rise, with the cost of the former expected to jump by as much as 20 percent. Optical drives are also suffering from supply constraints.

As a result of the recession, component manufacturers reduced capacity and delayed building additional plants. While investment is on the way back up, it takes time for new facilities to come online. In the meantime, OEMs face a dilemma: how much of the additional costs can they pass on to consumers and businesses without scaring them away from new hardware?

Read the whole story…

Shareholders ask Ballmer about Apple

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

While Bill Gates looked on, Microsoft shareholders asked CEO Steve Ballmer about Apple at their annual meeting this morning. Steve’s CEO-speak responses illustrate the larger problem.

Portfolio reports that one investor asked about the company’s reputation with young customers:

“I’m just wondering why your marketing group can’t do something to try to rein in this next generation, because you’ve got a real bad image out there.”

He also said that Apple’s ads make Microsoft look like “a buffoon.” That’s when the CEO-speak began.

“There’s certainly always opportunities for improvement,” Ballmer said. “[There is] … a group of people with whom our market share is less.”

When you hear “opportunity for improvement,” you’re screwed. Euphemistic language clouds meaning and hides the truth. Think “economic downturn” and “previously enjoyed” instead of “depression” and “used.” Or “opportunity for improvement” instead of “problem.”

Remember the Windows Mojave ads, in which producers tricked customers into thinking Vista was an unreleased version of Windows, only to then throw open the curtain and essentially say, “See? It’s really Vista! You DO like it! There’s nothing wrong here!”

Instead of telling people what they like, sanitizing language, insisting that the only reason the iPhone has 75,000 apps available is to make it usable on the Internet and denying your kids iPods, just say, “Our reputation with young people is poor and here’s what we’ll do about it.” That’s when you’ll get something done.

[Via MacDailyNews]

TUAWShareholders ask Ballmer about Apple originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Read the whole story…

Sun FlashFire’s record-breaking storage performance will make network admins giddy

Most businesses look for a good mix between value and performance for the hardware they lock in the server closet, the majority of those leaning toward the “value” side of the equation. However, for those companies that dodged the economic downturn entirely and want only the best, there’s the FlashFire storage array from Sun. It’s 2TB of rackmountable bits able to perform 1.6 million read and 1.2 million write operations per second, with a sustained throughput of 12.8GB/sec. Sun says these are records, and we can’t find anything to refute them, the closest being the RamSan-440 from Texas Memory Systems, offering an (until very recently) impressive 600,000 I/O operations per second with a 4.5GB/sec throughput. TMS, it’s been brought.

Filed under: Storage, Networking

Sun FlashFire’s record-breaking storage performance will make network admins giddy originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments
Read the whole story…

BillShrink’s new recommendation engine tells you where to stash your savings

BillShrink, a startup that advises its users on how to reduce their monthly bill payments, today launched a new savings tool that recommends the best savings and CD accounts for conserving cash. Calling itself a decision engine, the Menlo Park, Calif. company says it analyzes interest rates offered by more than 60 banks to help users choose the most lucrative combination of accounts.

BillShrink has evolved a lot since its launch last spring. It started out as a service to help users find the cheapest cell phone plans to fit their needs. Soon after that, it started telling people which credit cards to choose for the greatest savings as well. Earlier this year, it introduced a new tool to help users find the nearest gas station with the lowest prices. As you can imagine, all of these features proved to be very popular in the past year following the economic downturn. As consumers tightened their belts, they turned to web solutions for living within budget, and BillShrink picked up a lot of the business, particularly in June when its traffic shot up to 500,000 unique monthly visitors (according to Compete). Overall, it says it saved Americans more than $750 million in the last year.

Now that the economy has started to turn around, the company says it wants to help its users grow the money it has helped them save. The new savings account and CD recommendation tool is meant to do just that. To provide its customers with the best options, it takes into account their monthly saving goals (defined by the users), the fees attached to certain accounts, ATM locations, and liquid versus illiquid cash needs. With all of this data, it confidently tells its users where to put their money, the company says.

BillShrink is one of a flock of companies aimed at saving consumers money in their everyday lives. Mint, recently acquired by Intuit, did roughly the same, allowing people to set budget targets in different area of their lives and recommending deals and offers to save cash. Both Wesabe and Green Sherpa are incredibly similar, although the latter offers a paid subscription service to help its users monitor their general cash flow.

The company last raised funding in October 2008, bringing in $8 million from Trinity Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners. It has now raised $10 million to date.

Read the whole story…

Fortune names RIM fastest growing company… in the world

It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that RIM is doing pretty well even in the face of an economic downturn, but it looks like it’s been doing really well — at least according to Fortune, which has just named the Canadian company the fastest growing firm in the world. That’s apparently based on a combination of profits, turnover, and investment return over three years which, in RIM’s case, translates an 84% growth in profits in the past three years, a 77% growth in revenue, and a total return of 45%. It’s also actually the first time RIM has made the list, although that’s at least partly due to the fact that Fortune didn’t include non-US firms last time around.

Filed under: Cellphones

Fortune names RIM fastest growing company… in the world originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Read the whole story…

Pacific Biosciences takes $68M as genome sequencing becomes more competitive

Pacific Biosciences, one of the companies working to advance DNA sequencing technology, just brought in $68 million in new financing — bringing its total raised over the last year to a staggering $188 million. The Menlo Park, Calif. firm says it plans to use the money to prepare its new real-time sequencing system for commercial launch in 2010.

Its ability to raise such a substantial amount of money is significant for several reasons. Not only is it indicative of gaining momentum in life science investing (which had tapered following the economic downturn), it’s also a surprisingly large sum for a company operating in a space where the technology is evolving faster and more inexpensively. At the extreme end of this spectrum, Stanford University bioengineering professor Stephen Quake just announced that he mapped his entire genome in one week for a mere $48,000, using a Helicos Biosciences machine that would only cost $1 million to buy. (By contrast, the Human Genome Project took 13 years and spent $300 million to do roughly the same thing.) Granted, some have criticized Quake’s methods for only capturing 95 percent of the DNA data — but it’s still an impressive feat.

And perhaps a worrying one for larger companies like Pacific Biosciences, now feeling the pressure of up-and-comers innovating their way into cheaper, rapid-response technology. It certainly seems like its new real-time sequencing efforts feed into this vein. Of course, Pacific is operating at a much larger scale, with the potential to change the way doctors deliver personalized medicine. If fast, cheap technology can be made available to regular physicians, and they are able to sequence their own patients’ DNA in-office, there could be a massive shift toward preventative medicine, lowering health care costs and upping quality of treatment. On top of that, Pacific says it has adopted a tighter focus on the ways in which inheritance and environmental factors impact people’s genetic health — two other factors that could inform patients’ medical histories and alter the way they seek medical attention.

Some of these ideas have already been popularized by companies like 23andMe and Navigenics, which sequence DNA samples provided by regular people interested in mapping their genes and detecting genetic conditions early. A similar company, Illumina, provides kits for genetic research, but is also competing more directly with Pacific in developing next-generation sequencing technologies. As ScienceBlogs pointed out, Pacific will need to produce innovation that goes way beyond current capabilities in order to become the market leader in this area.

Pacific’s recent round of funding came from new investors Wellcome Trust, Monsanto and Sutter Hill Ventures. Current and past backers include Morgan Stanley, Deerfield Capital Management, Intel Capital, Redmile Group, T. Rowe Price, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Alloy Ventures, Maverick Capital, AllianceBernstein, DAG Ventures, Teachers’ Private Capital, and Blackstone Cleantech Venture Partners.

Read the whole story…