Microsoft Releases Windows Azure at PDC

The first thing done in the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference conference is not providing full details about Windows 7, but introduce an operating system (OS) for cloud computing, called Windows Azure. Previously the polecat Steve Ballmer as "Windows Cloud," Windows Azure becomes the basis of the hosting service which gives it easy for developers to operate the application in the cloud computing infrastructure based on Windows - called Azure Services Platform.

Windows Azure as the foundation of the Azure Services Platform to help developers create applications cloud computing - so if you're not a developer, this may not be very meaningful to you, only means that Microsoft also has begun to enter the cloud computing world. Windows Azure is not an OS for user, they will still be using Windows 7, successor of Windows Vista.

Microsoft is not the first big companies that offer services such as this, since Amazon already offers the first affordable infrastructure cloud computing services with Amazon EC2 and Google App Engine. The difference, using the Azure Services Platform to give serious limitation for many developers to develop applications using the only technology that is supported such as Microsoft IIS and. NET.

According to Amitabh Srivastava, Corporate VP of Microsoft is one of the key developers of Windows Azure is a high have scalability infrastructure to operate the Microsoft-based application, offers a variety of services including virtualization, storage and networking and more, all operated in a data center owned by global Microsoft. Some of the main components of the Azure Services Platform are:

Windows Azure as a server for management and storage, computing and network
* Microsoft SQL Services for database services
* Microsoft. NET Services which is the implementation of the. NET in the cloud
* Live Services to share, store and synchronize documents, photos and files in a variety of PC, mobile phone and the site (similar to the Live Mesh may be?)

In addition, Microsoft also offers most of its corporate applications Microsoft Online Services to be used as a paid service. Famous products such as Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Office Communication Online and Office Live Meeting for the user without the need to maintain their own company.

And why Microsoft is now also start lift cloud computing paradigm? If one does not remember, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer a few years ago is one of the most hard cloud computing criticize, accuse Google Chrome as the issue as "the OS for the web application" but still only operated in Windows. Leave your opinion through a comment below.

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Customer Loyalty in E-Commerce

Creating customer loyalty is an important thing done by the because in the online vendors and customers to create new funds needed high enough, that is 20% -40% higher compared to the market noninternet(traditional market) [Reichheld and Schefter 2000].
In addition, customer loyalty is also good for the impact and benefits pekembangan
from online vendors. For example kenaikkan customer loyalty will be of 5% cause the increase in profits 30% -85% (depending on the type of industry that involved) [Reichheld and Schefter 2000].

Therefore, any posts on it this time the author seeks to explain the aspects that can affect customer loyalty. The harafiah customer loyalty on a vendor means that will cause customers to do more transactions with these vendors. One way to increase customer loyalty is to provide services of good quality, which can be expected to create customer re-do the transaction with the vendor's [eg, Heskett et al. 1994].

Quality of service is very subjective depending on customer's side, but on the Generally, the quality of these services are to be guided SERVQUAL, a identify the 5 things that determine the quality of service, namely:
- Tangible: the environment associated with the occurrence of a transaction physical (facilities, equipment, display)
- Reliability: the product in accordance with the orders and sent on time
- Responsiveness: the ability of dealing with service providers assist customers in case of problems
- Assurance: the ability of providers to ensure customers through the ability and the policies that are owned by service providers it.
- Empathy: service providers are able to make the customer feel a personal note.
With the quality of good service and is expected to increase trust of customers.

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Opportunities Organic Agriculture in Indonesia

Entering the 21st century, people began to realize the danger caused by use of synthetic chemicals in agriculture. People are wise in choosing food for health in a safe and friendly environment. Healthy lifestyles with the slogan Back to Nature has been a new trend to leave the old patterns of life using non-natural chemicals, such as fertilizers, chemical pesticides and synthetic hormones in the growth of agricultural production. Food is healthy and nutritious can be produced with high new method, known as organic agriculture.

Organic agriculture is the cultivation of agricultural techniques which rely on natural materials-without the use of synthetic chemicals. The main objectives of organic agriculture is to provide agricultural products, especially food safety for the health of producers and consumers and does not damage the environment. Healthy lifestyles so coordinate has the international security requires that agricultural products should be consumed have attributes safe (food safety attributes), the actual high-nutrition (nutritional attributes) and environmentally friendly (eco-labelling attributes). Consumer preferences, such as this cause demand world of organic agriculture products increased rapidly.

Indonesian wealth of resources have a unique tropical biodiversity, plenty sunlight, water and land, culture and society that respects nature, the potential for organic agriculture is very big. Organic agricultural products market of the world increased by 20% per year, therefore the development of organic cultivation of agricultural crops in priority need high economic value to meet the needs of the domestic market and export.

Opportunities Organic Agriculture in Indonesia

Area of land available for organic agriculture in Indonesia is very large. From 75.5 million ha of land that can be used for agricultural businesses, new about 25.7 million ha of rice fields have been cultivated for crops and (BPS, 2000). Organic agriculture requires that land not used or not by exposed to pollution chemicals and have good accessibility. Quality and area into consideration in the selection of land. Land that is not exposed to pollution land that has not grown, but in general, so is less fertile land. Generally fertile land that has grown with the intensive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Land use such as this requires a long enough period of conversion, which is about 2 years.

Volume of organic agricultural products to reach 5-7% of total agricultural products sold in international markets. Most in supply by developed countries such as Australia, the United States and Europe. In Asia, organic agricultural products market is dominated by many countries far east as Japan, Taiwan and Korea.

Market potential of organic agricultural products in the country is very small, only limited to the middle to the top. Various constraints faced by, among others: 1) there is no adequate price incentives for producers of organic agricultural products, 2) need expensive investments in the early development of the land must select a truly sterile material of Agrochemicals, 3) there is no certainty of the market, so that farmers are reluctant to produce these commodities.

Planting area of organic agriculture, Australia and Oceania have most knowledgeable land that is approximately 7.7 million ha. Europe, Latin America and North America each approximately 4.2 million, 3.7 million and 1.3 million hectares. Planting area of organic agricultural commodities in Asia and Africa are still relatively low at around 0.09 million and 0.06 million hectares (Table 1). Vegetables, coffee and tea dominate the market of agricultural products in addition to the international organic farm products.

Table 1. Organic planting area of each region in the world, 2002

No. Area of region (million ha)

1. Australia and Oceania 7.70
2. Europe 4.20
3. Latin America 3.70
4. United States Utar 1.30
5. Asia 0.09
6. Africa 0.06

Source: IFOAM, 2002; PC-TAS, 2002.

Indonesia has the potential big enough to compete in the international market even if gradually. This is because the various comparative advantages among others: 1) there are many resources that the land can be opened to develop a system of organic agriculture, 2) technology to support organic agriculture is enough available, such as making compost, planting it with soil, biological pesticides, and others.

Further development of organic agriculture in Indonesia should be addressed to meet global market demand. Thus commodities-commodities such as vegetables and exotic crops such as coffee and tea that have the potential to export need to be bright enough to be developed. Products such as coffee, Indonesia is the second largest exporter after Brazil, but the international coffee market in India does not have a trademark.

Development of organic agriculture in Indonesia has not need a new institutional structure, because this system is almost as well as intensive agriculture, such as at this time. Institutional farmers as farmers' groups, cooperatives, associations or corporations are still very relevant. However, the most important agricultural institutions need to be able to strengthen the bargaining position of farmers.

Modern Organic Agriculture

The last few years, organic agriculture, modern agriculture system in the entrance of Indonesia and sporadic small-scale. Developing modern agriculture organic produce safe food for the health system and environment-friendly production. But the general concept of modern organic agriculture has not been much known and much is. While the emphasis is more to leave the synthetic pesticides. With the development of knowledge and technology, health, environment, microbiology, chemistry, molecular biology, biochemistry and others, organic agriculture continues to grow.

In modern organic agricultural system required standards of quality and this is applied by importer countries with very strict. Often one organic agricultural products must be returned to the country, including exporter to Indonesia because the uterus is found residues of pesticides and other chemicals.

The many products that claim a product as organic agriculture that are not certified to create doubt in the consumers. Certification of organic agricultural products can be divided into two criteria, namely:

a) Local Certification for the domestic market. Agriculture is still tolerate the use of synthetic chemical fertilizers in the amount of the minimum or Low External Input Sustainable Agriculture (LEISA), but have very limited the use of synthetic pesticides. Control by using the opt biopestisida, tolerant varieties, biological and agensia. Team to formulate a national certification has been established by the Ministry of Agriculture, with the involvement of universities and other parties associated.

b) Certification for the export and certain circles in the country, such as the certification issued by IFOAM and SKAL. Some of the requirements that must be met, among others, the conversion of land, storage of organic products, seeds, fertilizers and pesticides as well as processing the results must meet specific requirements for organic agricultural products.

Some prospective commodities that can be developed with the organic agriculture system in Indonesia, among other food crops, horticulture, plantation, spices and medicinal plants, and livestock, (Table 2). Facing the era of free trade in 2010 expected future organic agriculture Indonesia can export products to international markets.

Table 2. Eligible commodities to be developed with the organic agriculture system

No. Commodity Category

1. Food Crops Rice
2. Horticulture Vegetables: broccoli, red cabbage, petsai, caisin, cho and white, shoot cabbage, spinach leaves, pumpkin siyam, oyong and baligo. Fruit: jackfruit, durian, salak, mango, oranges and mangosteen.
3. Coconut Plantation, nutmeg, cashew nuts, cloves, pepper, vanilla and coffee.
4. Spices and medicinal Ginger, turmeric, temulawak, meeting and other meetings.
5. Livestock Milk, eggs and meat

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AMD chipmaking arm launches as 'Globalfoundries'

The new company is expected to make New York a hub of chip development and manufacturing. Globalfoundries, which had been provisionally named The Foundry Company, is headed by Doug Grose, formerly senior vice president of manufacturing operations at AMD. Hector Ruiz, formerly AMD's CEO, will become chairman of the board. It will be headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif.


The breakup of AMD will present challenges from day one. AMD has become, essentially, a design house for chips. "We will have to step back so we're respecting AMD as one customer of many," Grose said in a phone interview Tuesday. Grose said that this won't be an entirely new experience for AMD, whose ATI graphics chip unit already has a longstanding foundry relationship with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). "They already have that rigor and methodology in place," he said.

Though manufacturing will initially be centered in Dresden, Germany, the company plans to break ground on a $4.2 billion manufacturing facility at the Luther Forest Technology Campus in Saratoga County, N.Y., later this year. This is expected to cement existing R&D ties with IBM, which also has chip development and manufacturing bases in relative proximity to Saratoga County. Last year, AMD described this corridor in upstate New York as "one of the leading areas in the world for nanotechnology."

Grose said that Globalfoundries has joined the "other side" of the IBM alliance, which is "industry standard product." In short, though AMD previously had focused on high-performance PC processor-centric technologies, Globalfoundries will now focus on what is described as "bulk" chip technologies "where the majority of the marketplace is," Grose said. "That's everything from consumer, handheld, wireless up into graphics markets," he said.

Globalfoundries will target next-generation 32-nanometer and 28-nanometer manufacturing process technologies as the "sweet spot for leading-edge customers," Grose said. The company's Dresden facilities are slated to begin 32-nanometer production next year. Output in New York is slated for 2012, focusing on 32-nanometer and smaller geometries, Gross said.

And who specifically will Globalfoundries target as customers? "Look at the top ten fabless companies and you will get a pretty good cross section of who we have started to--or will talk to very quickly," Grose said. Though Gross would not name names, top fabless companies include Qualcomm, Nvidia, SanDisk, and Broadcom.

AMD will own 34.2 percent of Globalfoundries , while the Advanced Technology Investment Co. will own the rest. ATIC is an investment company wholly owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, which is part of the United Arab Emirates.

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Tracking Traffic with Cell Phones

The idea is simple, says Alex Bayen, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the university. “Smart phones with GPS collect data from a regular commute and send it to a central system,” he says. “The system puts the data into a mathematical model that estimates traffic in real time and then broadcasts it back to the Internet and phones.”

The researchers’ model combines traffic data collected from static road sensors as well as from volunteers’ cell phones. Participants will receive personalized information such as travel-time estimates and traffic speeds along relevant routes.

Traffic monitoring is nothing new. Companies such as Inrix and Navteq accumulate traffic data using sensors embedded in streets and in toll booths, and from GPS sensors on vehicles like FedEx delivery trucks and taxis. This information is fed to in-car navigation systems and used by websites such as Google Maps, Mapquest, and traffic.com to provide live traffic data.

But the problem with existing systems, says Bayen, is that they only account for certain roads. Road-based traffic sensors show highway traffic conditions well enough, he says, but do not show conditions on many side roads. The Berkeley project, called Mobile Millennium, will fuse static sensor data provided by Navteq with cell-phone data from (hopefully) thousands of drivers across the Bay Area. Part of the project’s goal, explains Bayen, is to better understand how to use traffic data collected by cell phones–essentially a giant sensor network–for traffic prediction.

The Mobile Millennium software was released to the public at a press conference attended by Bayen and representatives from Nokia (which recently acquired Navteq), the California Center for Innovative Transportation, and the California and U.S. Departments of Transportation. The software runs on Java-enabled cell phones with a GPS chip. This includes Nokia’s N95 handset and the BlackBerry Pearl 8110 but not, currently, Apple’s iPhone. The researchers recommend that people who use the software have an unlimited data plan because large amounts of data need to be streamed from each phone.

For some users, privacy will be a more serious concern, and the researchers are aware that success depends on people feeling safe enough to participate. Bayen says that the software automatically strips out identifying information from data uploaded from each phone. Furthermore, instead of transmitting data constantly, devices only transmit data when they pass through preprogrammed GPS locations, which the researchers call virtual trip lines. This separates traffic-flow data from the identity of a driver or her vehicle without impairing the quality of data that is gathered, Bayen says.

Scott Sedlik, vice president of product marketing at Inrix, says that virtual trip lines are a clever solution to the issue of privacy. “From a technology perspective, we think they’re doing a creative implementation,” he says.

Sedlik believes that GPS-enabled phones will ultimately play an important role in acquiring more-useful traffic data, but he also foresees some challenges. He points out that some people will always be reluctant to upload their location information to a remote server. Another problem, he notes, is that “an app like this is a huge battery drain.”

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Are they the cell phones of the future?

What’s been missing until recently, however, is the cherry on the netbook cake: the ability to get online with a built-in 3G modem. By tapping into a cell network, netbook users could get online just about anywhere the day takes them.

That’s changing quickly as netbook makers scramble to include 3G data cards in these small wonders of the notebook world. “By adding a 3G data radio, an ordinary netbook becomes a powerful online tool,” explains Phil Solis, principal analyst at Oyster Bay, N.Y.-based ABI. “By delivering wireless broadband speeds, it brings the office out into the field.”

With a connected netbook, a mobile executive can not only do the basics, like check on e-mail and keep up with the news on Web sites, but also view online videos, download media-heavy presentations and sit in on videoconferences. In other words, if it can be done in the office with a wired data connection, chances are that it’s now fair game on the road. About the only thing it can’t do is help get the day’s gossip at the coffee machine.

At the moment, only a handful of netbooks come with a 3G option, but Solis forecasts that by 2013, 72% of netbooks will have 3G built in. The irony is that on top of putting mobile mavens in touch with the world, adding a 3G data modem could actually lower the price of such systems.

How? Some netbooks are now being sold the same way as cell phones — the network that supplies the data service effectively subsidizes the purchase price of a 3G netbook by between $200 and $400 in return for a contract for delivering data. For example, you can purchase a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook for only $99 with a two-year AT&T LapConnect contract. You can get the same deal on an Acer Aspire One from RadioShack. Word is that 3G versions of the HP Mini 1000 and the MSI Wind U120 should arrive in the coming weeks.

Sound too good to be true? It might be. With the service costing about $60 a month, the discount turns into a profit over two years. So the $400 subsidy that lowers the price of the netbook to $99 is more than made up with the $1,440 that the user will be spending on data over the next two years.

Already have a netbook? An alternative is to install a USB 3G card. Although it will, in all likelihood, deliver the same flow of data, add-ons do eat more battery life. As with subsidizing the cost of the notebook, the card is usually free or offered at a low price if you sign up for two years of service.

To see how connected netbooks can help those who live and work on the road, I tested two netbooks with built-in 3G capabilities (the Acer Aspire One and the Dell Inspiron Mini 9), along with a Lenovo IdeaPad S10 outfitted with AT&T’s external USBConnect Mercury card.

All three systems are similar in that they weigh the same and tap into the same AT&T network. But how they get online and how they handle the data they get couldn’t be more different. The Mini 9 uses an Ericsson-made card, and the IdeaPad uses a card manufactured by Sierra Wireless; both can work only with AT&T’s network. The Aspire One, on the other hand, uses a Gobi card that can connect with any of 350 networks throughout the world, including AT&T and Verizon in the U.S.

The beauty of incorporating a 3G modem into a netbook is the ease and convenience that it can provide. Rather than searching around for a Wi-Fi hot spot, you have access to over 900Kbit/sec. just about anywhere in the U.S. While their broadband speeds varied widely from place to place, the two netbooks were more than fast enough for working the Web, downloading media-heavy presentations and even watching a few YouTube videos.


-By Brian Nadel-

February 25, 2009 (Computerworld) Sometimes it seems that netbooks are everywhere. I’ve spotted them at airports, coffee shops and on commuter trains. No wonder that ABI Research forecasts sales of 35 million netbooks this year, more than double the 15 million systems sold in 2008.

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