Matthews Studio Equipment Introduces SKYSCRAPER @ NAB Show

At NAB 2012, Matthews Studio Equipment will introduce a new series of lighting stands designed for the new world of production needs. SKYSCRAPERS are the end product of four years of talking to grips and gaffers throughout the world, and listening to their needs for this digital shooting format.

“MSE’s large, heavy duty, safe and easy to operate cranking light stands are working throughout the world, serving the international production industries,” says Robert Kulesh, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for MSE. “The original Crank-O-Vators have lifted lights and equipment everywhere from Burbank to Dubai and parts in between for the past 20 years, and are still in use everywhere. The CineVators and Super Cinevators are raising large lighting fixtures as well. And, the former baby of our line, the Crank-O-Vator II series is just as popular.

“However, the industry has changed and shooters needs have changed. And we are expanding our line to match. SKYSCRAPERS offer the production professional the same sturdy and robust stand – with the new production needs in mind.”

SKYSCRAPERS load at a lower height and raise to much higher operating levels. Because they are made from aluminum, the weight is significantly less than any other cranking stand in the industry. SKYSCRAPERS weigh in at 110-160 lbs., load at 53” to 58” and raise up to 137” to 180”. Maximum load tops out at 286 lbs. “This is quite different from other stands, including our veteran stands,” says Kulesh. “And, because each stand is constructed from square tubing, the chance for rotational torqueing is eliminated.”

MSE offers three models suitable for both stage or location work. All models feature these lower loading heights, CE certified cranking systems and a unique “knocker locker” safety locking system on all risers. “And, because of the aluminum construction they are easier to handle and fold into a compact configuration without the need of additional transportation support,” he adds.

SKYSCRAPERS and many of the other Matthews Studio Equipment, Technology That Complements Your Imagination, can be seen in the Central Hall, Booth C5437.

Toshiba Introduces Face-Tracking for Glasses-Free 3D TV

Tired of wearing those silly glasses to watch 3D television? Toshiba has launched a glasses-free 3D TV in the UK early this month. According to the BBC, while this 55 inch TV isn't the first "spec-free" 3D TV to grace the world, it will be the world's first of its kind in a large-screen size.

So what's the price of this latest advanced technology? If you want to experience glasses-free 3D, you'll need a whopping £7,000 or about $11,000 (N1.7m). For what the product boasts though, it'll be well worth your viewing pleasure.

The Toshiba ZL2 is capable of so-called 4K resolution, which is four times the resolution of current hi-def screens. Besides the 4K resolution, the TV uses 'eye or face tracking' to adjust the picture to each person watching the screen. The BBC states that the screen directs different images to your left and right eyes which cause the illusion of 3D. It also means you can look around the display and interact with it unlike ever before on a TV set. The way eye tracking works is that the TV set captures the viewer's location and sends images back meant for each eye at specific angles and 3D illusions. This is a pretty interesting and innovative concept.

According to Good3DTV, the TV set is right now only available in the UK and costs £7000. It also offers a display size of 55” and is the first one on the market at comparable size that offers glasses-free capabilities. “The previous 3D sets that did not need any special glasses, were launched in Japan in 2010 and had screen size between 12 and 20 inch.”

This is the first one of this size, and also the first one to come with eye-tracking without additional peripherals required.

According to available information, the TV has "high-powered" computers in the back of the TV that "aim separate beams of parallax 3D at each viewer." Be sure to cap your viewing parties at nine though. The screen is only able to provide up to nine different viewing positions.

The only problem with this seemingly fantastic new product is that no video players are capable of playing 4K resolution and no discs currently even contain that resolution. With that said, the Daily Mail states that Sony and some other companies have begun to shoot in the next generation of high-def resolution shows and movies.In the meanwhile, the Toshiba TV will reportedly be able to "upscale" 2D content to 3D. Although the results of such artificially created 3D effects may be less than totally satisfying, at least it will give the set's owners something to watch.

While the price seems steep, you better get in line now. The TV is exclusively available at the John Lewis store on Oxford Street in London. There's been no name given to this TV or even a statement from Toshiba on when it will be available worldwide.

Airtel Nigeria Told To Reverse Name To Econet Wireless

This is really interesting times in the Nigerian telecoms sector as the Federal High Court of Nigeria thru the Honorable Justice Shuaib, has handed down judgment in the matter instituted by Econet Wireless Ltd ('EWL') against Bharti Airtel Nigeria Limited. The summary of the judgment states that Econet Wireless Ltd, an international company, domiciled in the United Kingdom, is a bonafide shareholder of Bharti Airtel Nigeria Limited and holds 5% of the issued shares of the company and therefore Airtel should reinstate the shareholding of EWL.

The Court went ahead to order that all actions, and resolutions taken by the company, since October 2003, at which EWL was entitled to be notified, and to participate in, as a shareholder, but was prohibited, are null and void. This includes decisions to sell shares, issue shares, and also transfer shares to third parties.  This by extension also includes the multiple name changes the comapny had undergone as the Court also ordered that the name change from Econet Wireless Nigeria Limited, effected in 2003, was irregular, and must be reversed forthwith.

In line with that ruling, the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) has been ordered to cancel any certificate previously issued for the change of the name of the company and restore the name of the company to Econet Wireless Nigeria Limited. As a result of the judgment by the Honorable Justice Shuaib, Econet Wireless Limited through its lawyers has now written to the company, with requests to: Immediately reissue shares in the company to Econet to reinstate its 5% interest and provide Econet full access to information relating particularly to board decisions and shareholder resolutions in accordance with the Companies Act, the shareholders agreement between the parties and in pursuance of the orders of the Federal High Court of Nigeria.

Econet Wireless intends to review the decisions taken by the board and other shareholders to ascertain which actions are in violation of the order of the High Court. Commenting on the decision, Econet Wireless Group Chairman - Mr Strive Masiyiwa said: "It is universally accepted throughout the world, that when shares in a company are allotted and share certificates issued, as confirmation of ownership, this is sacrosanct.

"In October 2003, Econet Wireless Ltd received a letter from the chairman of the company - Mr Oba Otudeko, in which he advised that at a board meeting directors had decided that Econet Wireless was no longer a shareholder, Econet's share certificate had been cancelled, and Econet's name removed from the shareholder register. The motive for this unprecedented action was the circumvention of Econet Wireless' rights as a shareholder in order to facilitate the sale of shares, first to Celtel International, and later to Bharti Airtel.

"As a result of these actions, Econet Wireless was left with no option but to seek redress through the courts. An application was filed in the Nigerian Federal High Court in October 2003, more than eight years ago. Since then, every legal avenue to delay the process was pursued by the defendants through their lawyers, in order to frustrate Econet Wireless.

"I am very disappointed that whilst it was clear to Celtel, Zain and Bharti-Airtel that Econet Wireless was a shareholder, they still chose to pursue a path, in which the end justified the means. It is clear even to those with the most basic understanding of company law that the board of a company has no power in any jurisdiction to simply cancel the shares of a shareholder but their desire to own the company was so great that they were prepared to overlook the facts and ignore our rights

"The board of Econet Wireless and I remain willing to sit down with Bharti-Airtel, to review the best way forward for all parties. In the meantime, we have a fiduciary responsibility to take all of the necessary steps to vigorously protect the interests of our shareholders."

Meanwhile, Airtel emailed a statement said it would appeal the judgement. “In the light of the judgment by the Federal High Court of Nigeria regarding Econet Wireless Limited’s (EWL) claim to the ownership of 5% equity in Airtel Networks Limited (Airtel Nigeria), an appeal against the said judgment has been filed by Airtel Nigeria. The Company abides by and has full confidence in the law of the land, and believes the Appeal Court will determine the appeal on its merits.

“In addition, the judgment will have no impact on the equity holding of other shareholders in Airtel Nigeria. “We wish to assure our customers, employees and business partners that the ruling will in no way affect operations or the company’s ability to fulfill obligations to its stakeholders."

Infosys sets new global performance benchmark as Finacle lose Nigerian account

Infosys has announced results of a performance benchmark for Finacle e-banking solution (version 10.3) on the Oracle platform. The 10.3 version of Finacle e-banking, built on new generation technology, provides a single unified view of the customer's relationship with the bank. With this performance benchmark, Finacle e-banking solution reinforces its ability to provide faster responses even when supporting higher volumes and a large user load. 

The benchmark measured the online processing window, loaded with 33,000+ concurrent users, on a large retail banking deployment consisting of 26 million registered users and 46 million accounts.

In the benchmark, reviewed by Ernst & Young, two key tests for online and batch processing were undertaken to demonstrate the ability of Finacle e-banking solution. The online benchmark results demonstrate that a bank can perform more than 550,000 online transactions and support more than 2.8 million web page visits within 30 minutes. This benchmark highlights that the solution can meet high scalability requirements and user load while still ensuring efficient service delivery on the channel. 

During this benchmark, the solution supported more than 195,000 user log on within a 30 minute window delivering sub-second average response time. The transaction workload mix consisted of viewing balance summaries, fund transfers, payments, account transaction histories and making credit card payments. Finacle processed this multi-transaction mix without any loss of speed or quality of service. The benchmark, which also measured the solution’s batch processing rates for two typical payment processes, highlighted exceptional performance by Finacle – throughput of 899 and 549 records per second, respectively, for the two batch jobs.

Haragopal Mangipudi, Global Head - Finacle, Infosys said, “In today’s banking, internet will play a major role to acquire, retain and service customers. Finacle has constantly evolved to meet the demands and expectations of the new-age banks. The new benchmarks in scalability and agility, set by Finacle e-banking solution, are a direct result of our unwavering focus on product innovation. Aggressive R&D investments have honed the evolution of the solution’s superior architecture and design to deliver the speedy business outcome that our clients demand.”

The systems under test included Oracle's SPARC T3-1 and T3-2 servers for the Web and application tiers, with Finacle e-banking solution deployed on multi-node Websphere application server cluster. At the back-end, Oracle Database 11g was deployed on Oracle's SPARC Enterprise M-Series system with the latest quad-core SPARC64 VII+ 3.0 GHz processors. During the benchmark runs, Finacle e-banking solution was deployed in a virtualized environment using the Oracle Solaris Zones feature of Oracle Solaris. 

In a related development, Finacle back-office system has lost a major account in Nigeria after its second largest site, Oceanic Bank International was assimilated into the folds of another bank, Ecobank Plc. Oceanic Bank, which has 376 branches accross Nigeria was recently declared insolvent by the apex regulatory body CBN and subsequently had its assets acquired by Ecobank Transnational Bank Plc. For Infosys and its representative in Nigeria, this loss which can go up to as much as $200 million, represents a major blow. 

Though Finacle is still live in the largest bank in the country, First Bank Plc, the cut in its revenue flow from Oceanic will no doubt reduce significantly the projected profit of Infosys this year. 

HTC Rezound: Is It The most powerful smartphone?

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus was released late last year and hit the shelves of Verizon, it immediately shot up to the top spot in the smartphone spectrum of the wireless provider, and for a good reason. Not only does it come with fire-breathing components under the hood, it also packs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich for its operating system, the latest version of the Google mobile operating system. Be that as it may, some people passionately claim that the HTC Rezound is easily just as good as the Google flagship handset and have argued vehemently to this effect.

The question now is if the HTC Rezound has what it takes to take the best Android phone title for Verizon from the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. The two superphones was put side by side and did a little comparison between the two to give you an idea which really is more worthy of the title.

Both the HTC Rezound and Samsung Galaxy Nexus were released back in November but in terms of design and construction, the Google flagship edges out the HTC superphone being the sexier of the two with its dimensions of 135.5 x 67.9 x 8.9 mm compared to the bulky Rezound’s 129 x 67.9 x 13.7 mm. The Galaxy Nexus is whole lot lighter too at just 135 grams compared to the Rezound’s 170.1 grams.

Internally, the two devices use different chipsets in their respective innards with the Rezound favoring the SmapDragon platform while the Galaxy Nexus goes for the OMAP platform. Both chipsets bring dual-core capabilities to the superphones but the 1.5 GHz Scorpion processor of the HC handset has a slight edge over the Galaxy Nexus which only has a 1.2 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor. Both devices have dedicated GPUs handling graphical concerns. In terms of storage capacity, both the Rezound and Galaxy Nexus pack 16 GB of internal memory but the HTC device comes with a dedicated microSd card slot for memory expansion so we’d have to give this round to the Rezound. The Galaxy Nexus on the other hand evens out the playing field by running the latest Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system compared to the Rezound’s Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread.

In terms of display, the Galaxy Nexus has the slight edge here given its massive 4.65-inch SuperAMOLED display having the edge over the Rezound’s 4.3-inch SuperLCD panel although both of the displays come with a 1280 x 720 resolution. The camera department of the Rezound certainly gets the better of the Galaxy Nexus with its 8MP rear shooter and 2MP front snapper compared to the Google handset having a 5MP camera at its back panel and 1.3MP webcam out front.

At this point in time, it is very clear that despite the flagship status of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the HTC Rezound has the slight edge between the two superphones in terms of their specs sheets. However, the best Android phone for you is really relative and all boils down to preference. Would you like to play with the latest version of Android? Then you definitely want the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. But if you go for sheer power, then the HTC Rezound is your best bet.

NetApp shuns Nigeria...takes Africa Hub to South Africa

Data storage and network management company NetApp has opened its Africa hub in Johannesburg yesterday, as it seeks to capitalise on the continent's economic boom.vThe company, which already has offices in Kenya, Angola and Nigeria, says that SA is to be NetApp's regional hub that is to assist the business to focus more on sub-Saharan Africa, which the World Bank forecasts is to have strong growth domestic product growth of over 5% in 2012 and 2013.

“It's a sales office primarily,” says Mike Styer, NetApp's Africa manager. Styer says the office has pre-sales and post-sales resources, field support, project management, management resources and marketing resources. The data storage company has an indirect business model, which means its services are sold purely through its partners in most markets around the world, including Africa.

Its staff complement in SA has subsequently grown to 22 people since it started operating in the country in 2001, but Styer says NetApp's new Johannesburg office has the capacity to house 30 to 40 staff. NetApp's aim to increase its attention on emerging markets, such as Africa, comes at a time when global storage sales levels are increasing and becoming a more competitive space, according to experts.

Ironically, the sub-saharan market that will be serviced from SA is actually being controlled by Nigeria where NetApp has about 80% market share. Relying mostly on the same strategies employed by other global IT brands, the move by NetApp to take its continental hub to SA instead of Nigeria, where they have better market opportunities, is not unconnected with the fear of some of the companies about being tainted by corruption scandals that has become quite a common occurrence in the IT industry especially in Nigeria.

Research company IDC reported that overall external storage system revenue increased 7.7% year-on-year in the fourth quarter last year, to $6.6 billion.

NetApp's revenue increased from $2.352 billion in 2010 to $2.911 billion in 2011. It had the third biggest global market share in external storage sales with Hewlett-Packard (HP), as EMC's market share stood at 29.4% in the fourth quarter and its rival IBM at 15.2%.

Despite NetApp's strong growth, it was dwarfed by EMC, which marked the highest growth among the top five vendors, with revenue of $1.93 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011, up 22.4% year-over-year. Furthermore, companies such as HP, which have traditionally been more well-known for manufacturing hardware, have made strides in the data and storage markets.

But Styer is not worried about increased competition in the space. “We're not everything to everybody, and I think the guys like IBM, HP, Dell: they try to position themselves in a particular space; that they can be everything in a data centre or everything in an organisation. We don't; we do storage, we do it very well.”

3D Technology Set to Change Home Entertainment

As 3D technology becomes increasingly more impressive, you may ask yourself if a 3D TV is your next big entertainment investment. The best 3D HDTVs, such as the Panasonic TC-P55VT30, LG 55LW6500, Sharp Elite and the Sony XBR-HX929 display lifelike, vibrant images that seem to come out of the screen and into your living room. Three-dimensional films are no longer cinema exclusive; they are now a very real option for your home theater.

Viewing 3D images is nothing new. Stereoscopy, a technique used to create the illusion of depth in an image, has been around since the 1800s. In the 1950s and 1960s, many filmmakers were making movies with three-dimensional technology, but 3D cinema rapidly died out due to the expense and technical difficulties of producing the movies. Plus, no one wanted to wear those paper glasses with the red and blue cellophane lenses because they washed out the film's colors and created blurry images. Now we have entered a renaissance of sorts for 3D cinema production and technology. As Hollywood continues to release astonishing three-dimensional movies, the TV manufacturers have decided that you need that same immersive experience in your living room as they add this capability to their new lines of top-tier HDTVs.

There's a feeling that for sheer 3D effects – especially in terms of depth and leap effects – the bright-and-breezy LCD sets from Samsung are the most effective. The downside is that LCD TVs do seem to be affected by 'crosstalk' – when each eye sees part of the image intended only for the other eye.

Sony and LG's 3D TVs, meanwhile, are much cleaner, though not quite as impressive when it comes to the sheer impact of their 3D effects. Plasma, meanwhile – only from Panasonic, so far – appears to be clean and free from crosstalk, but so dark. The glasses get rid of a huge amount of brightness to leave a rather dingy image, but arguably the most impressive and comfortable overall image. Crosstalk remains a real and tiring barrier to enjoying 3D, especially over extended viewing periods. Plus, of course, its effect runs counter to the clarity of the HD Blu-ray images that 'alternate frame' 3D was designed to keep. 

Meanwhile Sharp is giving the best of 3D TV experience through their Elite series sets, which have very high picture quality that the present technology can provide. It is indeed value for money that one would get through this TV set.

Bruce Schepers, the Exec VP of Sales and Marketing at Pioneer Electronics Canada says, “Elite has always represented the pinnacle of viewing technologies for home theatre aficionados around the world.” It was in 2008 that Sharp came to own 14 percent of Pioneer by investing a sum of $358 million into the company. It has been Pioneer who have pioneered the Elite TV sets.

What would impress the viewer or consumer at the first instance is the metal frame of the set giving it a sturdy look. Then would come the high quality of image and color that one gets to experience watching the images on the sets of this series. It can even handle different lighting conditions.

One would also note the deeper black levels on the Elite series TV than that on any other TV sets and that includes the Plasma as well. Connecting sources which are non HD, like those from Netflix, or Apple TV would render crystal clear pictures on the Elite sets. Even the contrast is of high quality. One would be fascinated with the effect of watching 3D from a Blu-Ray device and that includes 2D as well.

Watching NBA or tennis or even Super Bowl would be an experience to talk back home about while for gaming enthusiast, there are five HDMI ports to connect the gaming consoles and players and so on. The 3D TVs also come with a single touch connectivity feature to Netflix as also the built in Wi-Fi. There is also a huge array of video apps for playing streaming video.

The technology that the Elite sets use for getting this type of picture and color effect is the RGB+Y technology. The addition of yellow gives all these color enhancement effects. Another technological extra that the Elite sets incorporate is the advanced frame creation system. This gives the effect of greater than 240 Hz refresh rate and thereby giving better picture clarity.