ECS, Asus, MSI to have tablets at CES, Android 3.0 in March?

Elitegroup Computer System (ECS), Asustek Computer, and Micro-Star International (MSI) are planning on showing off their latest tablet PCs at CES 2011. We already knew this about Asus, but the ECS and MSI parts are news. In addition to all this, DigiTimes also specifically says that Google will release Android 3.0 in March 2011.

ECS is set to announce 6-, 8- and 9.7-inch e-book reader models, featuring capacitive touch screens, support for Android and Linux, as well as built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 3G. The company also hopes to showcase several Windows 7 and Android tablet PCs. Some models will feature 10.1-inch multitouch panels with Intel Atom CPUs, while others will have ARM-based processors from Marvell or Samsung in order to get eight hours of battery life. The company will also display 7-inch models at the show as well as several power-saving 14-inch or 15-inch LED enterprise notebooks with USB 3.0 and ECS' exclusive power saving software Super POSH.

MSI will show off a 10-inch Intel-based tablet PC running Windows as well as engineering samples of its ARM-based model running Android. MSI is also prepared to sell an Nvidia Tegra 2-based model in April or May.

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eBay tells late shoppers to go elsewhere

eBay is telling shoppers to go shop elsewhere. The San Jose-based website has introduced a new local shopping tool GiftsNearby, which, as its name implies, shows users where to find gifts at nearby stores. GiftsNearby shows local retail prices for each item, directions to the closest store with inventory availability, and an option to browse eBay for the gift, according to The New York Times.

If you ordered a gift from eBay today, it's very unlikely you'll get your purchase under the Christmas tree by Saturday morning. If you enter a zip code on the eBay site, you'll see if it's in stock at a store down the street, be able to compare prices between local stores, and even get driving directions. Unfortunately, this will require having to leave your computer and make the purchase the old-fashioned way, but it's better than telling your loved ones that Santa just couldn't get you a gift on time.

GiftsNearby is powered by Milo.com, a shopping search engine eBay acquired earlier this month for $75 million. Using Milo's existing partnerships, the feature only shows products that are actually in-stock at 25 national retailers. Best Buy is the only retailer that is working with eBay to let users reserve and purchase the gift online; they can then skip the line, pick up the item up at their local store, and earn eBay Bucks in the process.

It looks like eBay would rather have potential customers get their gifts from elsewhere than be unhappy that the website can't deliver on time. eBay has also added Milo technology to its RedLaser barcode scanning app, which lets consumers comparison shop, for iOS and Android.

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Facebook passes Yahoo, becomes world's third largest website

It was only a matter of time, and now it's finally happened. Facebook has passed Yahoo in traffic to become the third largest website in the world, according to recent numbers from Comscore. Facebook only just surpassed Yahoo, grabbing 648 million visitors compared to 630 million for Yahoo in November 2010, but the overall trend is the impressive part.

The top two spots are still held by Google (970 million worldwide visitors) and Microsoft (869 million worldwide visitors), respectively, though Facebook is rapidly gaining on them. Microsoft has clearly been growing much more steadily in recent months; Google's traffic seems to be flattening out. Facebook is undoubtedly growing the fastest while Yahoo simply isn't growing at all. It looks like the top three spots are going to be changing in the next few months. How and when they change might end up shocking some people.

Three months ago, Facebook passed Yahoo to become the second largest video site. Two months ago, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz admitted that Facebook could one day become Yahoo's number one competitor.

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Financial Times names Steve Jobs Person of the Year

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been named Person of the Year by The Financial Times. Love him or hate him, it's pretty much widely accepted that Jobs has managed to make Apple very successful in the last few years.

"When Steven Paul Jobs first hit the headlines, he was younger even than Mark Zuckerberg is now," according to The Financial Times. "Long before it was cool to be a nerd, his formative role in popularising the personal computer, and Apple's initial public offering on Wall Street ? which came when Mr Jobs was still only 25 ? made him the tech industry's first rock star. Now, three decades on, he has secured his place in the foremost ranks of the West Coast tech titans who have done so much to shape the world around the turn of the millennium. Long-time nemesis Bill Gates may be richer and, at his peak, arguably exerted greater sway, thanks to his monopoly over the world's PC software. But the Microsoft co-founder has left the stage to devote his life and fortune to good works. It is Mr Jobs who now holds the spotlight."

Last week, Time Magazine named Mark Zuckerberg Person of the Year. Which publication do you agree with, if either?

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IP Telephony and VoIP-Some Questions Asked

Although this is a techhnology dedicated blog, I decided to start a series of tutorial posts about a general technology which is not directly related to Cisco but it is a field in which Cisco is again a major player. This is IP Telephony and Voice over IP (VoIP). The two terms, IP Telephony and VoIP, are related around the same concept but in my opinion they are not exactly the same thing. Many people refer to these two terms interchangeably but they are not exactly the same. So, before moving on lets clarify the difference between IP Telephony and VoIP.


The truth is that despite the long presence of the VoIP technology, its penetration is not very widespread. According to In-Stat/MDR company, in 2004 VoIP was used only by 12% of U.S. businesses, a figure which is estimated to reach 70% this year. At international level the percentages are even lower. It is worth noting that large companies have the highest penetration. Factors related to delay the penetration of IP telephony are issues related to attitude (commitment to traditional technology), while clearly related with the technological immaturity of the technology in some places and the high cost of transition to IP platform. The technology is now mature enough and affordable, so it will also have higher rates of market growth compared to previous years.

VoIP can also be used by legacy TDM based PBX systems to transport voice calls over an IP WAN network or even over the Internet. Special voice gateways are used to connect to the legacy PBX telephone system on one end and to the IP network on the other end in order to translate the TDM voice stream into IP voice packets. So to summarize, IP Telephony is the overall concept of the modern form of voice communication which harnesses the power and features of VoIP technology in order to offer the overall experience of communicating effectively and with lots of extra features.

Bandwidth requirements are critical and are determined not only by the transmission rate of the codec used (from 3-4 to 64 Kbit / sec), but the extra load on the network, called IP headers, and other factors. Due to the presence of pauses during conversations, a technology was developed for detecting voice activity (Voice Activity Detection, VAD). With VAD, bandwidth requirements are reduced roughly in half. Thus, for example, for the G.711 codec with bandwidth of 64 kbit / sec, with the use of VAD technology the total bandwidth for a voice channel will be about 40 kbit / sec.

IP Telephony systems are those using entirely IP packets for voice communication, as explained before. In contrast to packet switched telephone systems (those based on IP protocol), conventional telephone systems apply the logic of direct connection between the two communicating voice parties through a dedicated circuit reserved exclusively for each contact. Thus the term Circuit switched telephone systems. In packet switched systems, however, the same communication line can be used to simultaneously pass different kinds of packets. Thus, the voice packets of one or more conversations may travel through the same route as other packets transferring data, video etc. This is the main difference between traditional telephony which is implemented to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and telephony implementation on IP networks (or more generally to packet switched networks).