kRIS Blog

Nikon D3X

admin — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 10:04:42 +0000

Nikon announced DX3 a DSLR 24.5-megapixel CMOS FX format sensor, full resolution shooting at 5 FPS, ISO from 100-1600 (expandable to 50-6400), TIFF, JPEG or NEF (RAW) file formats up to 138MB, and a newly updated EXPEED image processing system. The top-tier digicam won’t come super cheap, hitting shelves at $7,999.95 — but if you need something like this, money probably isn’t much of an issue. More here.

Spice your Gmail with colours

admin — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 22:23:31 +0000

Google recently released Gmail Themes so that you can now choose a new style for your Gmail account. There’s around 30 odd themes that were launched, there’s a shiny theme with chrome styling, another one that turns your inbox into a retro notepad, nature themes that change scenery over time, weather driven themes that can rain on your mailbox, and fun characters to keep you in good company. There’s even an old school ascii theme (Terminal).

To customise your inbox, go to Themes under Settings tab of Gmail.

Picasa 3 beta

admin — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:13:01 +0000

Google released new version of it photo editing and management tool Picasa 3 which is in beta.

Picasa new features overview is listed here

http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=93773

Not to be outdone by Picasa 3, Picasa Web Albums also has some spiffy
new features:

“Name tags” is a new feature in Picasa Web Albums that makes it fast
and easy to organize and share your photos based on the people in them

“Featured Photos” which link to public galleries of other users with
especially beautiful pictures

A slideshow of “Recent photos”

“Popular Tags” which lets you see how other Picasa Web Albums users
label their pictures

And the game “Where in the World?” where you can try and place a
picture on a map as close as possible to the place where it was taken

If you are having issues downloading, or outside of the U.S. and would like to download
Picasa 3 in English, you can do so from http://dl.google.com/picasa/picasa3-setup.exe
Enjoy!

VDI

admin — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:01:25 +0000

VDI - Virtual Desktop Infrastructure is a concept comprised of different solutions or products to acheive a VDI. VDI is a desktop replacement solution that increases security, decreases cost and delivers higher availability for the desktop while continuing to provide end-users with the functionality of a stand-alone desktop.
Companies can run desktops inside virtual machines that are located in a central data center. Users access these desktops remotely from a PC or a thin client over a remote display protocol (e.g. RDP/ICA)

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure is made up of:

* Operating System Virtualization - Virtualized operating system layer to provide multiple virtual machines on the same physical hardware.
* Remote Display - A device to display the connection
* Application Delivery System - Technology to deploy and update applications within the desktop
* Connection Broker - A broker that provides the remote display protocol, possibly provides remote access, possibly access to local devices.
* Virtual Machine Management - Manages the provisioning/deprovisioning of private or shared virtual machines.

I have finished testing VMware, Leostream & Citrix VDI. Currently working on SUN VDI.

I Will post on these and more.

16TB Ram PC

admin — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:04:50 +0000

The next version of Mac OS X will address 16TB of Ram. Snow Leapord will extend the 64bit technology in Mac OS X to support breakthrough amounts of RAM - 500 time more whats possible today.

Virtualisation in a Nutshell

admin — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 00:09:45 +0000

Managing a server farm brings many challenges with it.

Most IT Managers will be familiar with the difficulty of managing server sprawl, with single applications occupying under-utilized servers and dedicated DR infrastructures. Access to storage compounds the problem with even more under-utilized hardware in the form of dedicated storage systems.

Not only is it expensive, but it’s difficult to manage and time-consuming to make changes or introduce new servers.

Virtualisation is a technology that solves these problems and reduces costs at the same time. It allows servers and storage to be treated as a single pooled resource which it then divides up virtually. It creates virtual machines which can be utilized optimally and installed or decommissioned in minutes.

It’s easy to see why it is being adopted by IT managers everywhere.

So what is Virtualisation? Simply put the term describes changing the operating environment from being physical device based to Virtual device based. In the case of Server Virtualisation, physical servers are managed as one pooled resource which is then divided up into multiple instances of Virtual Servers –allowing them to be created, moved and optimized in just a few minutes.

Virtualisation can be applied to memory and storage too. With virtual memory, for example, computer software effectively gains access to more memory than is physically installed, via the background swapping of data to disk storage. Similarly, virtualisation techniques can be applied to other IT infrastructure layers - including networks, storage, laptop or server hardware, operating systems and applications.

Virtualization

admin — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 00:07:38 +0000

Virtualization is the technique of managing and presenting storage devices and resources functionally, regardless of their physical layout or location.Virtualization allows multiple virtual machines, with heterogeneous operating systems to run in isolation, side-by-side on the same physical machine. Each virtual machine has its own set of virtual hardware (e.g., RAM, CPU, NIC, etc.) upon which an operating system and applications are loaded. The operating system sees a consistent, normalized set of hardware regardless of the actual physical hardware components.

Virtual machines are encapsulated into files, making it possible to rapidly save, copy and provision a virtual machine. Full systems (fully configured applications, operating systems, BIOS and virtual hardware) can be moved, within seconds, from one physical server to another for zero-downtime maintenance and continuous workload consolidation

ANZ Graduates Site Hacked

admin — Sat, 27 Aug 2005 20:40:55 +0000

I received text this morning about 9.30am from my friend that the anz graduates website(http://www.anzgraduates.co.nz/) was hacked. First I didn’t beleive it but when I saw it, I was shocked.

This (www.anzgraduates.co.nz) link can be accessed from (www.anz.com/nz/about/opportunities/) under (New Zealand - Student Opportunities Program)

Pictures as of 12.26pm 27/Aug/2005.