Fido picks up the Pebl
Motorola Canada’s MotoPebl is now available in Canada through Fido. The Pebl follows up on the success of Motorola’s Razr phone, which gained popularity with its stylish design. The Pebl features a soft-touch texture and rounded contours that give the phone an oval, clamshell shape. It includes a vertical external display and a dual-hinge mechanism the company said allows users to slide open the phone with one hand. On the inside, the phone is Bluetooth-enabled and features an embedded VGA camera with video recorder and playback, as well as speaker-independent voice recognition and quad-band technology.
Availability: Available now Pricing: $100 with a three-year Fido contract URL: www.fido.ca
Novell updates security management software
Novell is making an updated version of its security event management software available, which the company says will enhance customers’ overall compliance and identity management efforts. Sentinel Version 5.1.3, based on technology acquired with e-Security in April, provides security event management capabilities to enterprises. The software is designed to automate the collection of event log data from security devices and help users make sense of it through a common management console. Novell has worked to provide tight integration between Sentinel and Novell platforms, and the company said the integration will help customers manage security, identity and compliance with one infrastructure.
Availability: Available now Pricing: Starts at US$104,000 URL: www.novell.com
IBM rolls out entry-level SAN array
IBM has introduced an entry-level storage array for small and mid-sized businesses and departments within the enterprise. The company’s System Storage DS4200 Express Model is a 4Gbps Serial ATA disk system. It is mounted in a 3U-high enclosure and includes two RAID controllers. The DS4200 uses as many as 16 Serial ATA drives for a total capacity of 8TB. The DS4200 can attach to as many as four host computers. It can also support attachments to the IBM EXP420 Expansion Unit for scaling capacity to 56TB. For data integrity and fault tolerance, the system supports RAID levels 0, 1, 3, 5 and 10. It can attach to Windows, Linux, NetWare or Unix hosts either as direct-attached storage or as a storage area network (SAN). The DS4200 also uses 4Gbps Fibre Channel connectivity.
Availability: Available now Pricing: DS4200 starts at US$11,500, and 500GB Serial ATA disks for the dual-controller DS4200 start at US$900 URL: www.ibm.com
Linspire releases Freespire 1.0 early
Linspire Inc. has released Freespire 1.0, an open-source Debian version of the Linux OS. Linspire’s flagship product of the same name is sold by retailers such as Amazon.com and Wal-Mart as a low-cost alternative to Microsoft Windows. Linspire, intended for novice Linux users, is also based on the free version of GNU/Linux operating system developed by the open-source Debian project. The company had earlier promised to create an open-source version of Linspire to encourage a community of Linux developers. Freespire includes goodies from Linspire’s pay product, including its “click and run” software management tool, through which users can download drivers, codecs and software with one mouse click, which has been an obstacle for the OS’s growth. Linspire offers two versions of Freespire. Freespire 1.0 is described as 99 per cent open source, but it does contain some proprietary components where open source alternatives are not available. A second version, called the Freespire 1.0 OSS Edition, does not have any proprietary components.
Availability: Available now URL: www.linspire.com
Sony launches Wi-Fi personal communicator
Sony Electronics Inc. has unveiled a wireless-enabled device aimed primarily at people who like to send text messages and make free calls over the Internet. The new Mylo personal communicator is designed to operate on all 802.11b wireless networks, and Mylo is equipped with 1GB of flash memory to store music, photos and video clips. The device features a 2.4-inch colour LCD with a slide-out Qwerty keyboard for quick thumb typing and it comes with embedded IM applications from several companies, including Google, Yahoo and Skype. An Internet browser is also embedded, with Web mail service available through Google and Yahoo. Also included is VoIP software from Skype.
Availability: Available now Pricing: US$350 URL: www.sonystyle.com.
McAfee extends security risk management portfolio
McAfee has added two new offerings to its security risk management portfolio. McAfee Foundstone Enterprise 5.0 is a vulnerability management tool that lets companies prioritize and rank their highest-value business assets and then identify their most critical security vulnerabilities and the threats which could exploit them. McAfee Preventsys Compliance Auditor and Risk Analyzer helps companies to automate the reporting of security for compliance by consolidating and analyzing security data from multi-vendor sources.
Availability: Available now URL: www.mcafee.com
Lattix offers software architecture management for .Net
Lattix is extending its software architecture management product, which examines architectural dependencies, to .Net projects. Developers and architects involved in Microsoft .Net-based software projects can now use Lattix’s Lightweight Dependency Models (LDM) technology for controlling projects, with Lattix LDM for .Net. It allows for the visualizing and controlling of a software architecture to prevent dependencies from arising that should not exist, such as the implementation of a framework that depends on the business layer. Previously available for Java developers, the technology uses a dependency structure matrix to provide a representation of a system.
Availability: Available now Pricing: Professional Edition US$495, Enterprise Edition US$2,995, View Edition US$395 URL: www.lattix.com
Collaborative online learning
Waterloo, Ont.-based OpenText Corp. has released version 8.3 of its suite of integrated communications and collaboration software, FirstClass Collaboration Suite. The set of applications help users create collaborative online communities with capabilities that include e-mail, instant messaging, calendars, contact management, workgroup collaboration, document sharing, file storage, Web publishing, blogging, podcasting and unified voice and fax messaging. New features in the latest edition include a redesigned user interface, support for SyncML for mobile users, improved Mac support and an enhanced Web publishing tool.
Availability: Available now URL: www.opentext.com
Sun launches midrange storage arrays
Sun Microsystems has announced a new family of external storage arrays. The Sun StorageTek 6140 and 6540 modular arrays are the first products to be released under the combined brand name. The 6140 is a 4Gbps Fibre Channel array designed for both direct attached and SAN-attached storage. It offers 4GB of cache and a top capacity of 112 500GB SATA drives, for 56TB of storage. The system is designed for users such as telephony service providers. The 6540 has a similar design with a 16GB cache and capacity of 224 disk drives, for 112TB maximum. As a high-end system, it is designed for database-driven applications or for high performance computing tasks with large data sets.
Availability: Available now Pricing: 6140 starts at US$25,000, 6540 starts at US$85,000 URL: www.sun.com
Logitech offers new VoIP products
Logitech has introduced an array of new products designed for VoIP users, including a keyboard with dedicated call management buttons and a speakerphone. The EasyCall keyboard features dedicated buttons for launching the application, making a call, ending a call, changing a user’s online status and speed-dialing. The package also includes a mouse and headset as well as a speakerphone, which eliminates echo and has control buttons such as volume, mute, call answer and hang-up. Logitech also introduced a cordless handset for making and receiving VoIP calls. The phone communicates wirelessly to a module that plugs into the USB port on a PC and can be used within 164 feet of the PC.
Availability: EasyCall available now, handset in October Pricing: EasyCall US$129.99, handset US$199.99 URL: www.logitech.com
Tundra broadens PCI product portfolio
Ottawa’s Tundra Semiconductor has announced the availability of the Tundra Tsi350, a 32bit PCI-to-PCI Bridge. The Tsi350 is an industry-standard, low-power 32-bit 66MHz asynchronous PCI-to-PCI bridge targeting new designs or existing footprints using standard 32-bit 66MHz PCI-to-PCI bridges. Fully compliant with PCI Local Bus Specification Revision 2.3, the device has sufficient clock and arbitration pins to directly support nine PCI bus master devices for a wide range of applications, including communications and networking equipment, multi-function printers, imaging systems and embedded video recorders.
Availability: Available for sampling now, full production in October Pricing: Volume pricing is under US$8.00 in 1K quantities URL: www.tundra.com
IBM preps Linux version of Sametime
IBM is porting its Lotus Sametime offering to the Linux operating system, the first time this enterprise instant messaging platform will support the popular open source operating system. IBM anticipates there will be client and server versions of Sametime for Linux operating systems from Red Hat and Novell. Interest is expected to be high in industries such as education and government, and among small and medium-size companies, because of the generally lower costs of Linux systems and the flexibility of open source, said IBM. Sametime’s biggest competitor is Microsoft’s Live Communications Server, which doesn’t run on Linux. Other enhancements due in Sametime 7.5 include a refurbished user interface, improved privacy and security capabilities, embedded VoIP functionality and support for the Eclipse open source application framework.
Availability: Linux version of the desktop client before mid-September in Sametime version 7.5, server piece first half 2007 URL: www.ibm.com
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