Asustek Computer, one of the world’s largest makers of personal computers and the biggest maker of mainboards, plans to lift its freeze on hiring because of improving market conditions, a media report claims citing sources with knowledge of the matter. Even though the number of positions Asus plans to fill does not seem to be high, the fact that a large company actually has unbanned hiring seems to be quite positive in general.

In response to warming market conditions, Asustek has lifted a freeze on hiring that has been in effect since the end of 2008, reports DigiTimes web-site. Various departments are set to hire additional personnel, including the company’s handheld business groups, graphics card, notebook and handheld device businesses also require additional personnel. Moreover, it is reported that Asus is in short of engineers for its communications business, as well as sales and marketing personnel.

Jonney Shih, the chairman of Asustek Computer, is reportedly very enthusiastic about the company’s sales results in the third quarter of 2009 and expects a major uptick in demand for PCs in the following quarters.

According to DigiTimes, Asus will start hiring by the end of October or early November, and the firm will initiate interviewing for a total of more than 70 job openings. Even though 70 new positions at one of the globe’s largest IT companies may not seem that significant, the very fact that Asustek is ending its hiring freeze seems to be a good news in general.

Asustek Computer has reportedly confirmed the plans.

Tags: ASUS, Business

Last Saturday, we took the Honda Challenge Cup — a friendly competition on driving a Honda car to get the most fuel-efficient ride. I missed the earlier event a couple months back intended for the media people so I got slated for this last one.

The objective was to drive any of the Honda cars — Civic, Jazz, Accord and CRV — and use the least amount of gas along the way. Of course, there were tips given to us on how to achieve this.

Each team has two members, a driver and a navigator (my teammate was Randy of the Daily Contributor). I took the driver’s seat with the Honda CRV 2.0 MT. There were two legs of the race — one is city driving (The Fort to Makati to Petron NLEX) and the other is highway driving (Petron NLEX to Angeles City and back). Each stop is measured with the distance traveled as well as amount of gas consumed.

For the city drive, we logged 10 kilometers per liter while for the highway driving, we bumped it up to 14km/liter. Our overall average was 13km/liter. We won in our category by 1km/liter and also manage to land 3rd place over-all (the two Honda Civics won the 1st and 2nd overall).

Good thing the Honda CRV has a digital meter that shows you a rough average of your fuel consumption. I merely adjusted my driving speed based on the meter (which gave me an average 17.8km/liter).

The biggest lesson — driving at 60km/hour on a highway gets you the best results in fuel efficiency (others claim it’s supposed to be 80kmph). To make sure the highway patrol doesn’t flag me for driving below minimum speed, I always tail the slowest 10-wheeler truck in the rightmost lane.

Dual-core central processing units (CPUs) were considered a breakthrough in the personal computer industry back in 2005. In 2010, dual-core chips, albeit powered by processors with different micro-architecture, are set to enter the market of mobile phones, according to ARM, a leading developer of processors for portable electronics.

“We don’t need silly GHz speeds. With our dual-core A9, we can get two times the performance, without the speed draining the battery, so by the time you get home your phone is dead,” said Rob Coombs, director of mobile solutions for ARM, in an interview with TechRadar web-site.

Mr. Coombs added that ARM hopes that actual implementers would introduce dual-core processors for mobile phones sometime in 2010, but still, delays to 2011 were possible.

Dual-core processors will not only increase overall performance of mobile devices, but will enable new functionality, for example, speech recognition. In addition, multi-core chips will eventually allow mobile phones to do tasks like running productivity or even multimedia applications (when plugged to larger screen and keyboard).

“They will allow user interfaces to be a bit more reactive, with some cool and weird options. For instance, if future mobiles rely on speech recognition, which is a processor hogging application, we can deal with that,” added Mr. Coombs.

Tags: ARM

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India said Saturday a long-delayed auction of radio bandwidth for third generation (3G) telecommunications services will start in January and will be open to foreign firms.

The auction will start January 14, 2010 with bids to be submitted by December 21, the Department of Telecommunications said in an announcement posted on its website, adding that the time schedule could be revised.

The auction of 3G radio spectrum for mobile services will put India’s cellular market — the fastest growing in the world — on track for a new level of wireless telephony, experts say.

The government has said it aims to raise 250 billion rupees (5.38 billion dollars) from the sale of 3G bandwidth that would allow high-speed Internet, video downloads and other sophisticated services on cellular telephones.

The government hopes to use the money raised from the auction to help plug a yawning fiscal deficit.

“The government of India is keen that potential new entrants to the Indian telecommunications sector, as well as existing operators, should be encouraged to take part in the auctions,” the ministry statement said.

“Interested foreign entities are allowed to participate in the auctions directly and apply for licences subsequently.”

India has said it aims to sell four 3G licences and three broadband wireless access licences in 20 of the 22 telecom zones.

It does not have available spectrum to auction in the other two zones.

© 2009 AFP

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US telecom firm Verizon launched a high-definition movie channel on Friday, letting subscribers watch films on-demand on televisions or on the Internet.

EPIX debuts on Verizon’s FiOS TV and online at epixhd.com free of charge this weekend, but will cost about 10 dollars monthly thereafter, according to Verizon.

“We’re taking the lead in delivering the richest and best entertainment to movie-lovers, on whatever platform they choose,” Verizon vice president of content strategy and acquisition Terry Denson said in a release.

EPIX is a joint venture involving Viacom Inc., its Paramount Pictures unit, and film studios Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Lionsgate.

The channel will showcase recent releases from Paramount, Paramount Vantage, MGM, United Artists and Lionsgate, along with thousands of classic films.

© 2009 AFP

Chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp. said in an interview that although Nvidia is known for its graphics processing units (GPUs), Nvidia is a software company. While the claims seems to be a little strange, it outlines the direction that Nvidia plans to invest in: software applications that leverage take advantage of Nvidia’s chips and offer exclusive capabilities.

“Nvidia is a software company, [software] will be what will drive our growth. We just don’t write the application, but we create all the core technology, we create more core technology for visual computing than any other company in the world. […] What you are and how you make money doesn’t have to be the same. […] Apple is a software company but they make money by selling hardware. […] Nvidia is an integrated complete visual computing and parallel computing solution technology company,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia, in an interview with CHW web-site.

At present Nvidia offers GeForce graphics processor that support rather traditional features like those supported by DirectX, OpenGL, OpenCL, etc application programming interfaces. However, in addition Nvidia also offers rather exclusive features, such as Stereo 3D Vision and PhysX for gamers as well as CUDA-exclusive applications for consumers. Although neither of the technologies seem to have become truly important in general, Nvidia does hope that going forward its exclusive features will drive consumers towards GeForce-branded products.

It is rather noteworthy that previously Mr. Huang has always pointed that it cost hundreds of millions of dollars to create a leading-edge graphics processing unit and only Nvidia was capable of investing that large sum of money.

At present Nvidia is mostly known for its GeForce graphics cards for gamers as well as Quadro graphics cards for professionals. However, the company is working hard to promotes its Tesla products among scientists or high-performance computing professionals as well as Tegra devices among users of portable consumer electronics. Apparently, according to Mr. Huang, Nvidia’s strategy is to offer exclusive software features for those markets as well.

“In the future, software is the most important thing; anyone can make chips, it is really expensive, but anyone can do it. The hard part is to inspire people to create amazing things. We have software, systems, architecture, tools, compilers, and languages, whatever it takes…,” said Mr. Huang.

Tags: Nvidia, Geforce, Quadro, Tesla, PhysX, Tegra

While there are a lot of HD media players out there, I think there’s still room for more. So when I got a review unit of the BriteView-CinemaTube HD Media Player, I thought WD TV has some pretty nifty competition up ahead.

The CinemaTube does not have an internal storage so you need to hook it up with an external HDD. While this is a cheaper configuration, you still need to buy your own HDD with an enclosure. That means you’ll also need two power cables to hook both the player and the external drive.

The media player’s enclosure is made of up of plastic. Nothing really wrong with since it feels very light but it also gives an impression of a cheap construction (even the painted logo of BriteView-CinemaTube is a little off).

It’s compatible with all hard disk format windows(NTFS), Linux (EXT2/3), and MAC (HFS). The player supports a large number of video formats — MPEG1/2/4 (M1V, M2V, M4V), MPEG1/2 PS (M2P, MPG), AVI, ASF, WMV, MKV, H.264.

CinemaTube supports multiple audio output formats, including MPEG I Layer 1,2,3(2-CH), MPEG II Layer 1,2 (Multi-Channel), LPCM, ADPCM, FLAC, AAC, WAV, WMA and OGG, RA, Dolby Digital AC3 and DTS. DTS (downmix) is supported by CinemaTube so you do not need additional DTS receivers to enjoy HD videos with DTS tracks.

Unlike the DW TV, the CinemaTube is also a torrent downloader (the built-in torrent engine does all the downloading without the need of a PC). The LAN port at the back is the primary connection to hook it up to the internet but I think you can also use a WiFi dongle on one of the USB ports to get it on wireless. The only approved and dedicated WiFi adapter is the WL-6200C which is sold separately.

At the back panel, you get a conservative number of ports — 1 HDMI, 2 SUB 2.0, Ethernet, AV and SPDIF. The UI and navigation of the CinemaTube is pretty simple, straightforward and easy to understand.

Most useful is the preview panel/screen that allows you to view a short clip of video you are browsing before playing them (no need to guess what the video file is).

Although I have not tried it, the device can also do UPnP Streaming so you can watch CNN, ESPN, CBS and Hulu via 3rd-party applications like PlayOn and TVersity.

The CinemaTube will retail for Php6,350 when it comes out in November. You can check out www.digilivingph.com for more info abut the product.