SAN FRANCISCO – Are you a Facebook junkie? If so, you probably find yourself hopping back and forth between a Facebook tab and whatever else you happen to be doing in your browser. That’s not terribly productive.

If you’re a Google Chrome user, you can keep Facebook front and center with MyStatusBar. This extension adds a Facebook status bar to the bottom of your browser, where it stays visible in every tab you have open. That way you can keep up with the latest messages, friend requests, and notifications, all without clicking away from your current page.
Here’s how to get set up with MyStatusBar:

1. Head to the extension’s page in the Chrome Store, then click Add to Chrome.
2. Wait until you see a new tab, then click the Login to Facebook button at the bottom.

3. That’ll open a pop-up window, where you’ll click Log in with Facebook.

4. Now you’ll see a permissions list. You’ll probably want to allow them all to get the maximum benefit from MyStatusBar, but you can certainly disable any you’re uncomfortable with. (Needless to say, using an extension like this requires access to your account.)

5. On my system, I had to click the X in the bottom-right corner of that window, the one just above the blue MyStatusBar bar, to make the Allow button visible. Without clicking that button, you can’t finish the setup.

And that’s it! Now just open a new tab and you’ll see your Facebook status bar at the bottom. Neat!

It works much like the standard status bar, but adds a Search field and a handy “Share this page” button (useful for sharing any page that doesn’t have its own Facebook button). My only complaint is that when you click, say, the message or notification icon, it opens a new Facebook tab rather than a pop-up showing the actual content.

That said, you can scroll through status updates by clicking the up/down arrows, which is definitely nice. As something a Facebook junkie myself, I’m liking this add-on a lot.

SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook is now officially a public company, scads of new millionaires are on a Silicon Valley spending spree, and media outlets near and far have yet to pipe down about the IPO, likely one of the most anticipated in history.
But is the long-term viability and success of Facebook a slam dunk? You’d think so, considering 900 million people on the planet use the social network now valued at nearly $105 billion.Not everybody thinks so.The Telegraph’s Michael Deacon says he was once addicted to Facebook but now thinks its users hardly have anything to say on it compared with Twitter, which he calls “magnetic” because it “incessantly breaks and circulates news.” He even goes as far to say Facebook in a few years will “be as sad and lonely a ghost town as MySpace.”
I wouldn’t go quite that far, but he makes some valid points. Many people have grown tired of Facebook and do prefer alternate social networks, such as Google+.
Google certainly is serious about social and it’s no secret that Facebook wants more of Google’s advertising, but who will come out on top?
Social Networking RivalryYes, Facebook has a huge head start in social compared to Google, but Google+ users tend to be fiercely loyal because, honestly, it’s a great — albeit very different — product .
Unlike Facebook, Google+ is where you’re more likely to engage with strangers — many of whom reach out from countries around the world.

Just this morning I had a Google+ chat with a blogger from India who, even though he uses both Facebook and Google+, was only able to reach me through the latter where in seconds we were having a conversation about the merits of both social networks. Such contact wouldn’t have happened on Facebook because my Facebook friends are all in the U.S. and most of them know me personally, which means I keep my chat disabled because I don’t want people I haven’t seen in 20 years messaging me every time I check my stream.

Eric Norstrom, a molecular and cellular neurobiologist, is another person with whom I’ve connected through Google+.
Here’s how he aptly puts it:

“G+ is not FB, Twitter, or anything else. It’s G+. It’s great for content aggregation and collaboration in addition to the services provided by the other major social apps. It’s not people bleating on a street corner. It’s more like, you walk down a street and don’t see anyone, but then you go into a building and you find that there’s a party going on. Not only that, it’s a good party with interesting people talking about things you care about and leaving out things you don’t. Less noise, more signal.”

He’s right about Google+ being a more lively place to hang out. You’re not likely to see inane posts — most contain photos, videos or links to other interesting content. This morning someone in one of my circles shared a post by Google Maps touting a NASA map that shows where the May 20 eclipse can be seen. (See also “Google+ vs. Facebook: See How They Compare.”
Google’s Many Products are an Advantage

While there certainly were some privacy concerns when Google said it would share user data across its products, it can’t be denied that the company has created a slick and seamless experience for users.
On my Android phone I use Places, Maps and Navigation, YouTube, Voice, Talk, Calendar, Drive, Goggles, and Play Music, and many of these apps sync to the cloud for integration to the desktop.

In essence, Google has a very large window into what I’m doing, where I’m going, what I’m watching, and who I’m talking to. And this window stays open for much of every day I’m online or using my phone.

While Facebook also garners data from me when I’m on its network, I’m not there very often, relatively speaking.

Battle Over Advertising

Facebook has many fans, is growing on a billion users, and now has a big pile of money with which to continue to innovate. For instance, the company recently said that at some point it could launch an advertising network to display ads outside of its platform. That would be huge and put the company in a much better place to compete with Google.
CNET’s Rafe Needlemanwrote a great piece summing up the many ways Facebook and Google’s trajectories cross, particularly when it comes to advertising. And as he points out, both companies have their strengths.
“The infusion of public IPO money will embolden Facebook to take on Google directly in areas where it’s clearly weaker — primarily advertising, but also search and mobile. Google will defend its turf while simultaneously attacking Facebook in social (and hopefully in identity services),” he writes.

That last part — identity services that let you sign into a Website or account using your Facebook credentials — is definitely something Facebook has a good hold on, and as Needleman points out, it’s something Google needs to get better at marketing.

But Google is kicking it with mobile. CEO Larry Page, in a letter to investors last month said the company is “seeing a hugely positive revenue impact from mobile advertising, which grew to a run rate of over $2.5 billion by the third quarter of 2011 — two and a half times more than at the same point in 2010.”
Can Facebook figure out how to get some of that pie? It had better — its users are now using the social network more from their mobile devices than from their desktops.

If it doesn’t, Michael Deacon’s dire prediction about Facebook might just come true.

ViewSonic Corp., a global provider of computing, consumer electronics and communications solutions, has introduced Pro6200 720p home entertainment projector with big screen enjoyment at an affordable price. The 720p 1280 x 720 native resolution supports 1080p Full HD entertainment experiences with substantially precise visual entertainment for home entertainment. With a lamp lasting for 6,000 long lifespan, the environmental Pro6200 saves total cost of ownership and extends the projector’s lifespan. Extensive input options, including HDMI, S-video, composite, component interface, and a 5W stereo speaker are all included to provide genuine and dynamic audio-visual performance. Auto keystone correction automatically adjusts skewed images. With easy configuration and simple alignment, the Pro6200 helps you build an incredible home theater.

Product Features includes: HD 720p native resolution and support for 1080p content; auto keystone correction for easy set up; interface flexibility for multiple displays with high definition projection; 3D ready support for true-to-life visual experience; ECO Mode with 6,000 hours lamp life; and integrated 5W speaker.

“We believe our diversified, best-in-class approach to information storage has helped catapult EMC to the top of the NAS/unified storage market,” said Pat Gelsinger, President and Chief Operating Officer, EMC Information Infrastructure Products. “EMC has a long and proven track record of effectively adding new technologies to its product portfolio and nurturing them to outperform the market. EMC’s industry-leading products from its Unified Storage, Isilon and Backup and Recovery divisions are stand-outs in this area. Our vision, customer centric focus and ability to execute are why we’re outstripping the competition in this growing and highly competitive market. Our solid product strategy and vision for transforming and accelerating our customers’ journey to the cloud is driving our leadership.”

Overall, Gartner reports worldwide vendor revenues for the NAS /unified storage market increased 32.5% in 2011 compared with 2010, reaching $6.8 billion. The estimated pure NAS market grew 21.5% to $4.5 billion. The report also cites block storage vendors adding NAS capabilities to their SAN storage arrays with a unified management interface as a key growth driver for this market.

Additionally, the report discusses the hard-disk drive (HDD) shortage due to flooding in Thailand in October 2011. The report points to the significant impact on the low-end NAS market, noting that EMC is the only top-tier storage system vendor in the market. Other vendors were adversely affected due to their disk drive sales volumes being too low to form a strategic relationship with HDD suppliers, and low-end drives being more severely impacted by the flood than midrange or high-end drives.

EMC Corporation is a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. Fundamental to this transformation is cloud computing. Through innovative products and services, EMC accelerates the journey to cloud computing, helping IT departments to store, manage, protect and analyze their most valuable asset — information — in a more agile, trusted and cost-efficient way. Additional information about EMC can be found at www.EMC.com.

Large Account Resellers (LAR) are the only Microsoft partners who can place Microsoft volume license orders, such as Enterprise Agreement, Select, etc. to Microsoft directly. Dimension Data Philippines was awarded the LAR license to add value to enterprise clients using the ‘Full Services’ model. ‘Full services’ is a platform to execute the full range of services, such as professional services, managed services, training services and software services to clients.

“This is a fantastic achievement for Dimension Data Philippines and it is a great recognition and affirmation of our longstanding and successful relationship with Microsoft,” said Ernesto Batungbacal, President and Chief Executive Officer for Dimension Data Philippines. “We were awarded Microsoft Partner of the Year in 2011 and now, coupled with this LAR status, we are certainly well positioned to maximise the full value of our client’s software assets, offering them an unparalleled competitive edge.”

Mr. John Bessey, Managing Director, Microsoft Philippines, said that, “We welcome a new addition to Microsoft’s LAR program and look forward to a close partnership with Dimension Data. Their strong commitment and a high level of expertise in providing comprehensive enterprise solutions would be a great compliment to our partner ecosystem as we move forward. We see great opportunities working with Dimension Data in driving strong value propositions to address our Philippine enterprise clients’ needs.”

Effective April 2012, Dimension Data will provide its clients with the infrastructure and operational processes to ensure effective deployment, management, control and protection of the full suite of Microsoft’s products. Dimension Data’s expertise in implementing software and licenses for a variety of complex architectures has also helped facilitate smarter purchasing decisions based on actual user experience. This will enable clients to optimise the use of their software assets, avoid legal, security and human resource issues, improve forecast of IT resource requirements and reduce software, compliance and licensing costs.

Dimension Data Asia Pacific, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dimension Data Holdings plc, operates in over 60 offices across 13 Asia Pacific countries. Dimension Data helps clients plan, build, support, manage, improve and innovate their ICT infrastructures. It combines an expertise in networking, security, data centre solutions, Microsoft solutions and converged communications & contact centre technologies, with advanced skills in consulting, integration, training and managed services to design ICT solutions to accelerate the business ambitions of its clients. Dimension Data is a member of the NTT Group. www.dimensiondata.com

To ensure enhanced mobile device performance, the ZoneFlex 7982 is the only three-stream 802.11n AP that dynamically sends and receives Wi-Fi signals at different angles (polarizations).  When used with maximal ratio combining (MRC), a method where more receivers are used to gather signals from each channel and add them together to get the best result, the use of polarization diversity can yield an addition 4dB of effective receive sensitivity.

By combining MRC with polarization diversity, the ZoneFlex 7982 is able to capture the full signal of mobile devices even as they vary their orientation. This gives carriers and enterprises the unique benefit of stable connectivity at higher speeds delivered to mobile and moving devices at greater distances – particularly important for tablets and smartphones that tend to remain in constant motion.

Within an ultra lightweight (7oz./198gm.) and compact footprint (5”Lx 5”Wx1”H/ 13cm L x 13cm D x 2.8cm H) the ZoneFlex 7321 supports up to 256 concurrent users and brings a new level of price/performance to the value end of the Wi-Fi market. The industry’s most feature-rich and affordable entry-level 802.11n AP, the ZoneFlex 7321 is dual-band selectable, making it ideal for smaller, single AP deployments such as hotspots, SMBs and remote offices as well as in emerging economies requiring more affordable, robust solutions.

Unique in its class, the 7321 supports transmit beamforming and capacity-driven channel selection to deliver high performance and extended range with up to 4dB improvement in signal gain.

ChannelFly, supported on all Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi access points, is a capacity-driven channel selection technology that learns the channel capacity environment in real time to ensure the best channel selection and interference mitigation in areas with Wi-Fi congestion. With ChannelFly, maximum throughput is delivered to clients at all times throughinnovative network-wide channel plans that maximize spectrum re-use, and two-stream client performance is greatly improved.

Both ZoneFlex 7982 and 7321 support standard 802.3af power over Ethernet (PoE) and can be deployed as either standalone wirelessrouters or as part of a centrally managed Smart WLAN.

In addition, both products support a variety of advanced features including bandsteering, airtime fairness, and predictive, capacity-drive channel selection (ChannelFly). When used with ZoneDirector, the ZoneFlex 7982 and 7321 offer a wide range of value-added applications such as SmartMesh networking, client load-balancing, time-based broadcasting, dynamic per-user rate limiting, guest networking, hotspot authentication, wireless intrusion prevention and dynamic pre-shared keys.

For more information, visit RuckusWireless at http://www.ruckuswireless.com.

Dell has announced additions to the PowerEdge portfolio  with new blade, rack and tower servers designed to deliver value and performance in demanding enterprise and mainstream environments. The new blade servers offer strong performance gains and improved efficiencies from the shared power, cooling and network infrastructure, and professional IT services. The new tower and rack servers are built to enhance customer IT infrastructures with enterprise-class capabilities and tailored chassis designs for small and midsize businesses.

Dell introduced industry-leading innovations in the PowerEdge 12^th generation servers based on input gathered from more than 7,700 customer interactions in 17 countries across four continents. The company was the first-to-ship servers based on the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family with the first wave of PowerEdge 12^th generation servers in March 2012.

The new PowerEdge rack, tower and blade servers expand on Dell’s commitment to deliver end-to-end solutions optimized for maximum throughput from storage to switch to server to blade enclosure. With these new PowerEdge servers customers can experience energy efficiency, scalable storage, networking and security features at an unprecedented price for performance. The new PowerEdge rack, tower and blade servers include Intel Xeon processor E5-2400 and Intel Xeon processor E5-4600 product families.

The PowerEdge M420 is the world’s only quarter height 2-socket blade server, offering extreme computational density, performance and efficiency. The PowerEdge M1000e, the only chassis in the world with the thermal engineering to support individually serviceable, enterprise-class, quarter-height blade servers, holds up to 32 PowerEdge M420s. Customers can stretch their infrastructure budget farther by doubling the nodes per chassis with the greatest 2-socket density server on the planet in the PowerEdge M420 and the Dell Force10 MXL 10 blade switch. The PowerEdge M420 is designed to adhere to stringent government requirements while offering world class density with no compromise to datacenter availability and performance.

Dell offers robust anytime, anywhere systems management of platforms and infrastructure to simplify operations throughout the server lifecycle, with key innovations including:

·         Dell also significantly improved cooling while increasing density in the PowerEdge M820, which is the first four socket blade server capable of Fresh Air configuration and allows customers to deploy highly dense solutions while significantly decreasing cooling costs.

·         The PowerEdge 12^th generation servers are the world’s only full generation of rack and tower servers to all offer Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller 7 (iDRAC7) with Lifecycle Controller 2.0 for deploying, updating, maintaining and monitoring their systems without a software management agent, regardless of operating system. In addition, industry-leading Chassis Management Controller (CMC) has been updated to support up to 288 independently serviceable blade nodes, all from a single console, using a single IP address.

Large and small businesses are continuously challenged to scale appropriately; balancing the risks of either significantly overpaying for equipment they do not use or being caught with underpowered equipment and losing business cycles. The new PowerEdge 12^th generation servers can provide customers with increased application performance, availability and scalability, and key innovations including:

Downtime and data loss determine business revenue and performance as companies are increasingly dependent on cloud-based applications, virtualized solutions, and high performance computing. Businesses must now deliver IT solutions that not only ensure redundancy and maximize uptime, but can scale to address increased demand while maintaining cost efficiency. Customers running PowerEdge 12^th generation servers can now benefit from continual access to the applications that drive the business, with innovations including:

·         The new PowerEdge M420, M520 and M820 blade servers offer performance and efficiency improvements, and leading features including hardware RAID and hot-swappable hard drives.

·         The world’s first full product family portfolio to servers to offer enterprise-class RAS features for redundancy and fault-tolerance, memory mirroring, memory sparing, hot plug hard drives and redundant power supplies. This provides IT administrators with continuity and consistency across their entire server infrastructure from the datacenter to remote and mobile locations.

·         The industry’s first server family portfolio to all offer Redundant Failsafe SD Hypervisors across the entire family, so customers can take advantage of server virtualization with built-in redundancy and fault tolerance.

For more information, visit www.dell.com.

Globe subscribers can avail of the Samsung Galaxy S III under My Super Plan Unli Surf Combo, which comes with unlimited mobile browsing, bonus call and text services, and choice of unli boosters for the ultimate smartphone experience. With Globe My Super Plan Unli Surf Combo, the country’s only customizable unlimited data plan, Globe provides users with uninterrupted surfing, their gadget of choice, and freebies all in one subscription. This plan also helps maximize the features of the Samsung Galaxy S III.

            Touted as the most human phone yet, the Samsung Galaxy S III boasts of highly-intelligent features that are easy to use but exceptionally powerful. With the Direct Call feature, users can simply hold up the phone onto their ears when texting and the device will automatically call the person for them. Globe My Super Plan subscribers can enjoy this feature with the different call freebies of their choice such as free call minutes, free international call minutes or unlimited calls to a Globe or TM number.

            The Samsung Galaxy S III also comes with the Social Tag feature, which allows users to keep track of their loved ones easily. With its face recognition technology, family and friends are automatically tagged on the photos taken. The feature also enables users to view social networking statuses of the friends they tagged in the photos. Social Tag is best enjoyed with Globe SuperSurf, which gives unlimited mobile internet access for an entire month.

            Multitasking also comes true to form with the device’s Pop-up Play feature, which enables users to play a movie and continuously run it floating on the screen while browsing the web or sending a text message or e-mail. Globe subscribers can watch videos all they want with Globe SuperSurf, while they can enjoy sending free text messages with a Globe My Super Plan freebie.

The Galaxy S III is powered by Samsung’s own 1.4GHz Samsung Exynos 4 Quad processor, 4.8-inch Super HD AMOLED screen, 1GB RAM, an 8-megapixel rear camera and comes packed with the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android’s operating system. Using a micro-SIM form factor, the combination of internal storage and expandable SD card storage sets the S III with a maximum storage capacity of 128GB.

“As the first Philippine operator to bring Samsung Galaxy S I and S II to the Philippines, Globe is proud to be carrying the Samsung Galaxy S III once again, powered by our portfolio of personalized and fully-customizable data plans and backed by a stronger and more reliable HSPA+ network which we continue to aggressively expand nationwide,” said Peter Bithos, Globe Senior Advisor for Consumer Business. “

Bithos added, “What better way to fully enjoy the exciting features of this amazing phone than to pair it with a Globe postpaid plan that you can customize based on your needs. And with the Globe Guarantee, subscribers are assured they will never experience bill shock ever again because they will never pay more than P999 as long as they are registered to any of our data plans. On top of that, we guarantee 24/7 access to all our customer service channels and after-sales support for the devices.”

Pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy S III will begin on May 23, 2012 via www.globe.com.ph/galaxys3. New subscribers can call the Globe Sales Hotline via toll-free number (02) 730-1010 or visit www.globe.com.ph/galaxys3 to place their orders. For Platinum subscribers, they can get in touch with their Relationship Managers for reservations.