Tech Stream

Tech Stream 042

5 March 2010

Listen and download: MP3

USB ports – Photo from Flickr by Philippa Willitts.

This week in the Tech Stream we’ll find out whether “Green IT” is still the buzz phrase for business that it was 12 months ago and look at moves by one company in Asia to convert internet cable landing stations into next generation data centres. These will be capable of satisfying a growing demand for high bandwidth content in the region.  Plus we road-test the latest USB3 enabled technology; and Bajo from Good Game looks at why we don’t finish our video games and what developers are doing to keep us hooked.  Plus all the latest technology news from the week, just click the MP3 link at the top of this story to listen or read on after the jump for more details.

We cover off the week’s technology news first up, including the story of Apple filing a patent infringement lawsuit against Taiwanese mobile handset maker HTC.  The suit involves, according to reports, “20 Apple patents related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware.” Gizmodo found footage of Apple’s Steve Jobs saying that the company has “always been shameless about stealing great ideas”.  Irony FTW.  Many HTC phones feature touchscreen technology and run Google’s Android operating system. Google responded to the suit, also telling Gizmodo “We are not a party to this lawsuit. However, we stand behind our Android operating system and the partners who have helped us to develop it.”

In other news this week the first sites on the mainland of Australia to be connected to the National Broadband Network have been chosen.  Roll out of fibre to homes and businesses  in these “live trial” areas – some of them in regional areas – will test network design and construction methods.   Also, a massive underwater cable linking the United States and Tahiti has landed on the Big Island of Hawaii. The cable stretches nearly five thousand kilometres, allowing high speed internet connectivity between French Polynesia and the US.  Pacific Business News says the underwater link is expected to significantly improve communication services throughout Tahiti, Bora Bora and other surrounding islands.

Our first guest in the Tech Stream though is Bill Barney, CEO of Pacnet which owns the region’s largest privately-owned submarine cable network, with landing points in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Philippines, Singapore and China.  He tells us why they are upgrading their cable landing stations to provide data centre services.

We then chat with Phillip Sargeant, Research Vice President in the Data Centre Systems Group within technology research firm Gartner. Phillip tells us what is driving companies to adopt green ICT technology and policies with regard to their data centres and other parts of their business.

Sydney based technology journalist and blogger Neerav Bhatt roadtests some new USB3 gear for us, but warns that it’s still very early days for the new format and most PC hardware and operating systems are yet to support it properly (if at all). You can check out his USB3 test results over at APC magazine.

And finally Bajo drops in from Good Game to talk about why some people don’t finish video games.  I embarrasingly admit that i never completed the now severely dated Might and Magic IV: World of Xeen. You can see someone attempting to speed-run the final boss in this Youtube video.  OMG, advanced graphics!  I am so old

Got a game you’ve secretly never finished? Or any other comment to make about the program this week?  Drop me a note below!