Posted on Thursday Nov 17th 2011 by Nicholas Kolakowski.
Having been integrated into Microsoft, Skype is now moving ahead with new Facebook integration and some new features for its Mac and Windows versions.
The latest versions of Skype for Mac and Windows now boast the ability to conduct Facebook-to-Facebook calls from within Skype. Starting such a call involves connecting the user's Skype and Facebook accounts, then selecting a Facebook friend with whom to chat.
"This new feature lets you maintain social connections with your Facebook friends and complements previously announced features such as being able to see when your Facebook friends are online," read a Nov. 17 posting on the official Skype blog.
Skype is also smoothing the video-rendering capabilities of Skype 5.4 Beta for Mac, and has added to Skype 5.7 Beta for Windows a group screen-sharing capability for any Windows users with a Premium subscription.
Microsoft purchased Skype for $8.5 billion earlier this year, turning the voice over IP provider into a business division headed by Skype CEO Tony Bates. Microsoft executives have repeatedly announced their intention to tightly integrate Skype's assets with Microsoft products, ranging from Xbox Kinect to Windows Phone, although support for "non-Microsoft client platforms" such as the Mac will apparently continue for the duration.
Microsoft ended up paying far more for Skype than its previous overlord, eBay, which had agreed in 2005 to pay $2.6 billion in cash and stock for the then two-year-old company. Four years later, a team of private investors-including Silver Lake Partners and Andreessen Horowitz-took it off the auction Website's hands for $1.9 billion in cash. Before the Microsoft acquisition, Skype had supposedly been raising money for an initial public offering, but that offering was delayed after the company appointed Bates to the CEO role in October 2010.
Microsoft also has a tightening relationship with Facebook, whose social-networking features (such as the increasingly ubiquitous "Like" button) have been incorporated into the Bing search engine.
Despite the massive Skype acquisition, most of Microsoft's recent corporate activity has centered on partnerships with Facebook, Nokia and the like. This spares Microsoft, despite its considerable financial reservoirs, from having to shell out billions on potentially risky takeovers; however, it also raises the specter of discordance in strategic aims between partners.
(Sources - http://mobile.eweek.com)
"....semua makhluk ciptaan Tuhan samada manusia,binatang,tumbuhan, alam semulajadi dan sebagainya,saling perlu memerlukan,saling bantu-membantu kerana mereka berkait,terikat antara satu sama lain dalam satu kitaran yang berhubungan. Justeru, jangan diputuskan ikatan itu, kelak, seluruh kitaran akan musnah..." Ahmad Rais Johari
Sunday, November 27, 2011
From Edison’s Trunk, Direct Current Gets Another Look
Thomas Edison and his direct current, or DC, technology lost the so-called War of the Currents to alternating current, or AC, in the 1890s after it became clear that AC was far more efficient at transmitting electricity over long distances.
Today, AC is still the standard for the electricity that comes out of our wall sockets. But DC is staging a roaring comeback in pockets of the electrical grid.
Alstom, ABB, Siemens and other conglomerates are erecting high-voltage DC grids to carry gigawatts of electricity from wind farms in remote places like western China and the North Sea to faraway cities. Companies like SAP and Facebook that operate huge data centers are using more DC to reduce waste heat. Panasonic is even talking about building eco-friendly homes that use direct current.
In a DC grid, electrons flow from a battery or power station to a home or appliance, and then continue to flow in a complete circuit back to the original source. In AC, electrons flow back and forth between generators and appliances in a precisely synchronized manner — imagine a set of interlocking canals where water continually surges back and forth but the water level at any given point stays constant.
Direct current was the electrical transmission technology when Edison started rolling out electric wires in the 19th century. Alternating current, which operated at higher voltages, was later championed by the Edison rivals Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse.
The AC forces won when Tesla and Westinghouse figured out how to fine-tune AC transmission so that it required far fewer power plants and copper cable.
DC didn’t die, however.
AT&T adopted direct current for the phone system because of its inherent stability, which is part of the reason that landline phones often survive storms better than the electric grid.
And household appliances and much industrial equipment — everything from hair dryers to jet planes — are built to use DC. Embedded converters bridge the mismatch between the AC grid and the DC devices on the fly.
But those constant conversions cause power losses. For example, in conventional data centers, with hundreds of computers, electricity might be converted and “stepped down” in voltage five times before being used. All that heat must be removed by air-conditioners, which consumes more power.
In a data center redesigned to use more direct current, monthly utility bills can be cut by 10 to 20 percent, according to Trent Waterhouse, vice president of marketing for power electronics at General Electric.
“You can cut the number of power conversions in half,” Mr. Waterhouse said.
On a far smaller scale, SAP spent $128,000 retrofitting a data center at its offices in Palo Alto, Calif. The project cut its energy bills by $24,000 a year.
The revival of DC for long-distance power transmission began in 1954 when the Swedish company ASEA, a predecessor of ABB, the Swiss maker of power and automation equipment, linked the island of Gotland to mainland Sweden with high-voltage DC lines.
Now, more than 145 projects using high-voltage DC, known as HVDC, are under way worldwide.
While HVDC equipment remains expensive, it becomes economical for high-voltage, high-capacity runs over long distances, said Anders Sjoelin, president of power systems for North America at ABB.
Over a distance of a thousand miles, an HVDC line carrying thousands of megawatts might lose 6 to 8 percent of its power, ABB said. A similar AC line might lose 12 to 25 percent.
Direct-current transmission is also better suited to handle the electricity produced by solar and wind farms, which starts out as direct current.
In most situations, solar or wind energy has to be converted, and sometimes reconverted, into AC before it can be used. With HVDC, conversions can be reduced. DC grids can also more easily manage the variable output that occurs, say, when a storm hits or the wind dies.
In the United States, the Tres Amigas power station in New Mexico will use HVDC links to connect the nation’s three primary grids — the eastern, western and Texas grids. Ideally, it will create a marketplace where customers in New York and Los Angeles will be able to buy power from wind farms in Texas, which often have to dump power because of the lack of local demand.
HVDC Light, a version of HVDC invented by ABB in 1997 that is designed for shorter distances, has started to gain popularity because its cables are coated with extruded plastic. That allows cables to be buried underground more easily, avoiding some of the land-use hearings that have delayed proposals for above-ground AC transmission lines in the United States and Europe.
Direct current is also getting more attention at the level of individual buildings.
Nextek Power Systems, for example, has developed a system for delivering power via DC to lights and motion sensors through a building’s metal frame, instead of through wires.
Paul Savage, chief executive of Nextek, based in Detroit, understands why the public might view that notion with trepidation. But he said the current was not enough to electrocute anyone.
“If you licked your fingers you might get a little bubbly feeling, like if you put a nine-volt battery on your tongue, but it is not noticeable if you’re in a non-wet environment,” he said.
Of course, AC remains by far the dominant standard for electricity, and many are dubious about “DC is better” arguments.
Hardware for HVDC and other direct-current applications is expensive, so capital costs have to be recovered through efficiency. Google, never shy about experimenting with energy-saving technologies, has veered away from DC data centers, claiming that the capital costs do not justify the switch.
Still, sales and sales inquiries are climbing, DC advocates said. Just don’t expect Current War II, said Mr. Sjoelin.
“This is a complement,” he said. “We’re not going back to Edison.”
(Source - http://www.nytimes.com)
Today, AC is still the standard for the electricity that comes out of our wall sockets. But DC is staging a roaring comeback in pockets of the electrical grid.
Alstom, ABB, Siemens and other conglomerates are erecting high-voltage DC grids to carry gigawatts of electricity from wind farms in remote places like western China and the North Sea to faraway cities. Companies like SAP and Facebook that operate huge data centers are using more DC to reduce waste heat. Panasonic is even talking about building eco-friendly homes that use direct current.
In a DC grid, electrons flow from a battery or power station to a home or appliance, and then continue to flow in a complete circuit back to the original source. In AC, electrons flow back and forth between generators and appliances in a precisely synchronized manner — imagine a set of interlocking canals where water continually surges back and forth but the water level at any given point stays constant.
Direct current was the electrical transmission technology when Edison started rolling out electric wires in the 19th century. Alternating current, which operated at higher voltages, was later championed by the Edison rivals Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse.
The AC forces won when Tesla and Westinghouse figured out how to fine-tune AC transmission so that it required far fewer power plants and copper cable.
DC didn’t die, however.
AT&T adopted direct current for the phone system because of its inherent stability, which is part of the reason that landline phones often survive storms better than the electric grid.
And household appliances and much industrial equipment — everything from hair dryers to jet planes — are built to use DC. Embedded converters bridge the mismatch between the AC grid and the DC devices on the fly.
But those constant conversions cause power losses. For example, in conventional data centers, with hundreds of computers, electricity might be converted and “stepped down” in voltage five times before being used. All that heat must be removed by air-conditioners, which consumes more power.
In a data center redesigned to use more direct current, monthly utility bills can be cut by 10 to 20 percent, according to Trent Waterhouse, vice president of marketing for power electronics at General Electric.
“You can cut the number of power conversions in half,” Mr. Waterhouse said.
On a far smaller scale, SAP spent $128,000 retrofitting a data center at its offices in Palo Alto, Calif. The project cut its energy bills by $24,000 a year.
The revival of DC for long-distance power transmission began in 1954 when the Swedish company ASEA, a predecessor of ABB, the Swiss maker of power and automation equipment, linked the island of Gotland to mainland Sweden with high-voltage DC lines.
Now, more than 145 projects using high-voltage DC, known as HVDC, are under way worldwide.
While HVDC equipment remains expensive, it becomes economical for high-voltage, high-capacity runs over long distances, said Anders Sjoelin, president of power systems for North America at ABB.
Over a distance of a thousand miles, an HVDC line carrying thousands of megawatts might lose 6 to 8 percent of its power, ABB said. A similar AC line might lose 12 to 25 percent.
Direct-current transmission is also better suited to handle the electricity produced by solar and wind farms, which starts out as direct current.
In most situations, solar or wind energy has to be converted, and sometimes reconverted, into AC before it can be used. With HVDC, conversions can be reduced. DC grids can also more easily manage the variable output that occurs, say, when a storm hits or the wind dies.
In the United States, the Tres Amigas power station in New Mexico will use HVDC links to connect the nation’s three primary grids — the eastern, western and Texas grids. Ideally, it will create a marketplace where customers in New York and Los Angeles will be able to buy power from wind farms in Texas, which often have to dump power because of the lack of local demand.
HVDC Light, a version of HVDC invented by ABB in 1997 that is designed for shorter distances, has started to gain popularity because its cables are coated with extruded plastic. That allows cables to be buried underground more easily, avoiding some of the land-use hearings that have delayed proposals for above-ground AC transmission lines in the United States and Europe.
Direct current is also getting more attention at the level of individual buildings.
Nextek Power Systems, for example, has developed a system for delivering power via DC to lights and motion sensors through a building’s metal frame, instead of through wires.
Paul Savage, chief executive of Nextek, based in Detroit, understands why the public might view that notion with trepidation. But he said the current was not enough to electrocute anyone.
“If you licked your fingers you might get a little bubbly feeling, like if you put a nine-volt battery on your tongue, but it is not noticeable if you’re in a non-wet environment,” he said.
Of course, AC remains by far the dominant standard for electricity, and many are dubious about “DC is better” arguments.
Hardware for HVDC and other direct-current applications is expensive, so capital costs have to be recovered through efficiency. Google, never shy about experimenting with energy-saving technologies, has veered away from DC data centers, claiming that the capital costs do not justify the switch.
Still, sales and sales inquiries are climbing, DC advocates said. Just don’t expect Current War II, said Mr. Sjoelin.
“This is a complement,” he said. “We’re not going back to Edison.”
(Source - http://www.nytimes.com)
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