COMMUNICATIONS

Access Server

MRV’s new GSM/GPRS wireless modems bring wireless capabilities to the company’s LX 1000 line of console servers. Using the new modem, IT personnel can configure and maintain remote systems connected to LX 1000 console servers. The use of a cellular data network eliminates the need to wire remote locations or configure a Wi-Fi network over long distances. The dual-band wireless modems can connect directly to a remote system via a cellular connection, or they can connect to a remote system via the Internet.
http://www.mrv.com/newsroom/pr/pr-view.php/181

Security

EMC has introduced the EMC SAMS (Surveillance Analysis and Management Solution), which includes the hardware, software, and services necessary to store, archive, search, and analyze large quantities of data from security devices such as surveillance cameras. EMC’s SAMS can also manage petabytes of data from access-control devices, intrusion-detection systems, identity-recognition systems, visitor-management products, sensors, and alarms. SAMS includes analytic software for analyzing information on a desktop system, from a central station, or over a wireless device. The product is also designed to handle video-capture and load-balancing especially well.
http://www.emc.com/news/emc_releases/showRelease.jsp?id=3132

NFR Security introduced three new intrusion prevention sensors featuring Confidence Indexing and Dynamic Shielding technologies. These technologies are designed to let security personnel enforce policies and protect against network threats. The new sensors, which are a part of NFR’s Enterprise Series, all have throughput rates eclipsing 1Gbps. The Sentivist Smart Sensor ES500, ES1000, and ES2000 have respective inline data rates of up to 500Mbps, 1Gbps, and 2Gbps, while their passive data rates are 1Gbps, 2Gbps, and 4Gbps, respectively.
http://www.nfrsecurity.com/news/detail.php?id=355

Switch

D-Link has introduced the xStack 3800 Series stackable switches, which simultaneously provide 15.4W of power across all 10/100Mbps Ethernet ports. The switches also include four 1Gbps ports. Among the features are multilayer management, advanced routing, and PoE. Among the 24 ports are two built-in Gigabit copper ports and two copper/SFP Gigabit ports. The xStack 3800 Series products support configuration of access-control lists and port, MAC-address, 802.1p-priority, VLAN, DSCP, IP-address, protocol-type, and TCP/UDP-port-number filtering. The products also include RADIUS authentication for network logins, protection from address spoofing, SSH/SSL support, Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol, and CPU monitoring. D-Link plans to add Q-in-Q Double VLAN tagging support, IPv6 awareness, and OSPF routing. The DES-3828 will cost $1,299.99, and the DES-3828P will cost $2,199.99.
http://presslink.dlink.com/pr/?prid=240

Wireless

Moxa’s AWK-1100 was created specifically for industrial environments and can operate in temperatures ranging from 0 to 60 degrees Celsius. WPA security protects data transmissions while 802.1X and RADIUS provide authentication. The AWK-1100 also includes a DIN-Rail mounting feature, and the IP30 case should offer decent protection. Redundant power supplies offer one final measure of protection.
http://www.moxa.com/news_events/News_08_11_2005_132.htm

END NODES

Components

SATA II offers increased transfer speeds (3GBps instead of 1.5GBps), but it’s relatively new, meaning some motherboards may not offer SATA II support. If your motherboard offers support for PCI Express, Addonics’ new PCI-E SATA II adapter adds one internal SATA II port to your hard drive along with one external (eSATA) port. Addonics is also offering a new adapter for notebook computers. The new CardBus Adapter slides into the CardBus expansion slot on notebooks and provides two eSATA ports. While the faster PCI-E adapter delivers faster transfer rates, the CardBus adapter uses the slower PCI bus to deliver 150MBps (or about three times the transfer rate of USB 2.0). The PCI-E adapter sells for $44.95, and the CardBus adapter sells for $49.99.
http://www.addonics.com/news/product_announcements/2005/eSATA%20controller%20PCI%20Express%20and%20Cardbus%20news%20release.pdf

Mobile

Fujitsu launched the compact LifeBook P1500 notebook, which features an 8.9-inch tablet-like Wide Format SVGA touchscreen. The WinXP Pro-equipped LifeBook P1500 comes with an ultra-low voltage 1.9GHz Intel Pentium M Processor 753 and Intel’s 915GMS chipset. The P1500 supports as much as 1GB of system memory. Fujitsu is offering the P1500’s base configuration for $1,499.
http://www.computers.us.fujitsu.com/www/news.shtml?aboutus/pressreleases/pr_080805

Monitors

Elo TouchSystems is extending its family of entry-level touch monitors with the 1515L. The 15-inch LCD touch monitor is designed for POS, point of service, loyalty systems, and countertop kiosk information systems and can act as a desktop or wall-mounted unit. The 1515L uses either Elo’s antiglare IntelliTouch surface wave or AccuTouch five-wire resistive touch technology (which registers input from a finger, gloved hand, credit card, or stylus) along with a dual/serial/USB touch interface. Elo placed controls on the side of the display and locked them out to prevent public use. The 1515L has a 1,024 x 768 native resolution and 400:1 contrast ratio.
http://www.elotouch.com/company/pressrel/us/050809.asp
http://www.elotouch.com/products/lcds/1515l.asp

Sony has announced two new LCD lines for the business and education markets. The StylePro Series, starting at $315, offers front headphone jacks and the ability to swivel in nearly a full circle. Meanwhile, the DeluxePro line, starting at $410, provides digital inputs, stereo sound, and a USB hub that acts as a KVM switch. Both series feature 17-inch and 19-inch displays.
http://news.sel.sony.com/pressrelease/6048

Projector

Canon introduced three new LCD Multimedia Projectors: models LV-7245, LV-7240, and LV-X5. Canon also announced the new RE-455X Visualizer. The LV-7245, LV-7240, and LV-X5 Multimedia Projectors are ideal for locations requiring bright, high-quality XGA (1,024 x 768) image display. These new projectors also support UXGA (1,600 x 1,200) and SXGA (1,280 x 1,024) resolution display using high-quality compression. All of the new models have a 400:1 contrast ratio and a 1.2X zoom lens. The new projectors also feature color correction to compensate for differences in wall color when a projection screen is not available. The RE-455X Visualizer was designed as a companion product to the new Multimedia Projectors but can also be used as a standalone unit to offer XGA-resolution image capture for everything from print documents to 3D objects. Key features of the RE-455X Visualizer include One-Shot Autofocus, a 12x Power Zoom Lens, adjustable twin fluorescent lamps, auto and manual exposure, and white balance.
http://www.usa.canon.com/templatedata/pressrelease/20050808_projectors.html

Server

Dell has expanded its family of PowerEdge servers with the PowerEdge 830 and PowerEdge 850. According to Dell, the two servers offer twice the memory of previous models, advanced management features, and a choice of three processors. The PowerEdge 830, a single-socket tower server designed for small businesses, workgroups, and remote offices, is ideal for tasks such as messaging, Web serving, and Internet access. Dell claims that with dual-core technology, the PowerEdge 830 offers up to 62% greater performance than its predecessor, the PowerEdge 800. The PowerEdge 850 is a single-socket rackmount server intended for use as a Web and infrastructure server. Like the PowerEdge 830, the PowerEdge 850 can take advantage of dual-core technology, delivering up to 79% greater computing-intensive performance and up to 26% greater Web-serving performance than the PowerEdge 750. Prices for the PowerEdge 830 and PowerEdge 850 start at $699 and $749, respectively.
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/corp/pressoffice/en/2004/2005_08_08_rr_001?c=us&l=en&s=corp

Storage

Verari Systems unveiled the VS7000 storage system, a 4Gb Fibre Channel storage system and the highest performing system in Verari’s VS series. Boasting features such as replication, virtualization, and snapshot software, the VS7000 provides a maximum 1,600MBps bandwidth and 475,000 I/O operations per second. The VS7000 combines Fibre Channel and SATA technologies into a single pool of shared storage. Its 4Gbps inferfaces are well suited for HPCC environments that use global namespace file systems, and it is a fitting choice for backup and replication.
http://www.verari.com/news/archive/PR080905.asp

SOFTWARE

Business Productivity

NetSimplicity Software announced the availability of the Visual Asset Manager Enterprise Edition. This new edition expands on the features brought forth in NetSimplicity’s Visual Asset Manager by giving users full visibility into where their assets are deployed and the value of those assets. NetSimplicity teamed up with E-ISG on this product. As a result of this partnership, VAM Enterprise Edition can now offer services such as data collection, process management, appraisal, deployment oversight, and custom reporting. This new software is compliant with the Sarbanes-Oxley requirements and is available starting at $499.
http://www.netsimplicity.com/company/news/08_09_05.asp

Data Communications

Packeteer’s new Host Analysis Plug-in is a reporting and troubleshooting tool. The plug-in supports PacketShaper WAN devices, analyzes traffic flow, and pinpoints a variety of indicators of network abuse or unapproved entry. The software checks for unusual bandwidth consumption and lets administrators find users who are running unapproved, bandwidth-hogging programs. The Host Analysis Plug-in uses a Web interface that lets users drill down to the flow level and lets administrators enjoy application-layer visibility. Administrators who already have PacketShaper device and active service contracts can download the Host Analysis Plug-in free.
http://www.packeteer.com/company/news/pr.cfm?pr_ID=50871&checksum=4C0B1F6DB7DA17F796E44CF89F68323F

Red Hat announced the new Red Hat Network with Monitoring Module, which supports Solaris. The Monitoring Module has four main areas of functionality. First, users can create probes to monitor their systems. The main purpose of these probes is to measure certain system variables and warn the user if these variables reach levels harmful to his system. Next, you can group these probes into suites. This feature allows you to deploy numerous probes at the same time, while still being able to enter the suite and launch a single probe when necessary. Also, the Red Hat Network with Monitoring Module has a sophisticated notification process that warns you when system levels are dangerous. The final main feature for this device is its reporting capabilities, which allow customers to view graphs of the data a probe has collected over a set amount of time, while also letting the user quickly view recently collected raw data.
http://www.redhat.com/en_us/USA/Home/Company/News%2Band%2BEvents/Red%2BHat%2BPress%2BRelease%2BArchive/2005/Red%2BHat%2BNetwork%2Bwith%2BMonitoring%2Band%2BCross%2BPlatform%2BSupport%2BSoon%2BAvailable..html

Graphic Design

Macromedia announced Macromedia Fireworks 8, which lets users produce high-quality graphics and images that are lightweight enough for the Web. Macromedia’s Fireworks 8 supports vector and bitmap images and includes more than 25 new blend modes, such as overlay, color burn, additive, and subtractive, for changing the appearance image attributes. The application also comes with tools for developing pop-up menus in CSS formats. The utility is also fully integrated with Macromedia’s Dreamweaver 8 and Flash Professional 8. A full license for Macromedia Fireworks 8 will be available for $299 next month.

Macromedia also announced Macromedia Studio 8, which includes the new releases of Macromedia Dreamweaver, Macromedia Flash Professional, and Macromedia Fireworks, along with other tools such as Macromedia Contribute and Macromedia FlashPaper. Some of the key new features in Studio 8 include new video encoding tools, CSS enhancements, and visual authoring tools for XML.
http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/proom/pr/2005/announcing_fireworks8.html
http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/proom/pr/2005/announcing_studio8.html

Imaging & Printing

ScanSoft launched the newest version of its popular OCR and document conversion software with ScanSoft OmniPage Professional 15. This new version includes accuracy improvements for paper and PDF conversion that ScanSoft claims is 25% better than the previous release. In addition, OmniPage Professional 15 includes Google Desktop Search with unique OCR Indexing capabilities to easily locate scanned documents. Another key feature of OmniPage Professional 15 is its ability to process emails, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and Excel spreadsheets into flat and secure PDF archive files using a batch processing mode. OmniPage Professional supports more than 30 formats for easy conversion from digital documents into other formats. Additionally, a new Form Converter utility lets users turn scanned paper, static PDF, and Word forms into fillable Microsoft InfoPath, PDF, and XML forms.
http://www.scansoft.com/news/pressreleases/20050809_op15.asp

Messaging

AdventNet is targeting its new Zoho Virtual Office software at users who need to collaborate with others who are in remote locations. The program includes several applications, such as bookmarks, calendar, contacts, tasks, documents, Webmail, instant messaging, and others. The program supports Linux and Windows and also supports multiple groups. A 50-user subscription is available for $295.
http://www.adventnet.com/news/zoho-virtual-office.html

Citrix Systems announced Citrix GoToMeeting 2.0 with many new features, including meeting recording and playback, specific application sharing, and drawing tools. Other enhancements to Citrix GoToMeeting 2.0 include attendance reporting, a developer’s tool kit to enable companies to integrate Citrix GoToMeeting Corporate into other applications, Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook integration for meeting scheduling, and one-click meeting invitations. Citrix GoToMeeting Corporate administrators have exclusive rights to sort and manage meeting organizers into groups and subgroups and the ability to personalize invitations with the option to add information about specific company policies. Citrix GoToMeeting Corporate 2.0 uses end-to-end encryption with SSL and 128-bit AES for high security. Citrix GoToMeeting 2.0 is available in two versions: Citrix GoToMeeting and Citrix GoToMeeting Corporate.
http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/news/news.asp?newsID=21632

Operating Systems

The Fedora Project, sponsored by Linux giant Red Hat, has announced that its Fedora Core 4 now comes with the GFS (Global File System). A native 64-bit enterprise cluster file system, GFS supports up to 256 x86, AMD64, EM64T, and Itanium nodes. The formerly proprietary file system is now freely available to the open-source community.
http://www.redhat.com/en_us/USA/Home/Company/News%2Band%2BEvents/Red%2BHat%2BPress%2BRelease%2BArchive/2005/Fedora%2BCore%2B4%2BNow%2BAvailable%2Bwith%2BGlobal%2BFile%2BSystem.html

Security

CollectiveTrust introduced ScamAlarm to protect Windows users from phishing, identify theft, and fraud. ScamAlarm receives continuous updates of known phishing sites and has security checks in place and protects users from any site that does not pass the security check. ScamAlarm is intended for use with other security software, including antivirus, antispam, antispyware, and firewall utilities. ScamAlarm is compatible with Win98/2000/XP/2003 and IE 5.5 or later or NetCaptor 7.5 or later. A 30-day evaluation copy is available for download. A license costs $29.95, but CollectiveTrust does offer volume discounts for ScamAlarm.

McAfee announced a number of enhanced features to McAfee Entercept, its host intrusion software. McAfee Entercept now has the ability to control USB storage devices. The main focus of this feature is to block USB-based malware from compromising the integrity and confidentiality of data and applications. McAfee Entercept was designed to be used in all enterprises, even those in the financial, pharmaceutical, and health care fields that require stringent policies to safeguard customer data.
http://www.nai.com/us/about/press/corporate/2005/20050808_182329.htm

Tenable Network Security’s new Thunder 2.0 SEM (Security Event Manager) is a module that supports the Tenable Lightning Security Manager. Administrators can now monitor performance, detect intrusions, respond to incidents, and centralize compliance log information. The module collects events and applies statistical profiling to determine whether the activity is unusual. It keeps track of connections and server behavior. Admins can add correlation rules to the hundreds of rules that are available for the application and access and analyze all normalized events anytime.
http://www.tenablesecurity.com/news/pr34.shtml

Storage

LSI Logic, the only company to produce 4Gbps Fibre Channel and SAS HBAs, has included support for both interfaces in the latest version of its MyStorage management software. Users can coordinate multiple technologies in a system with a single software utility. MyStorage helps minimize SAN installation time and simplifies adapter management. In addition to supporting SAS, MyStorage lets IT personnel manage both 2Gbps and 4Gbps Fibre Channel. The software supports the following LSI Logic SAS HBAs: SAS3442X, SAS3080X, and SAS3800X. MyStorage supports the following LSI Logic Fibre Channel HBAs: LSI7104XP-LC, LSI7204XP-LC, LSI7404-XP-LC, and LSI7404EP-LC.
http://www.lsilogic.com/news/news_archives.html?p=irol-news

Web Development

Macromedia released the Macromedia Flash Professional 8 authoring tool for developing interactive Web sites, presentations, and content. The application now includes drop shadow, blur, glow, bevel, and color adjust tools for designing effects, animation, text, and video for mobile devices. Other features include the custom easing tool and the FlashType font-rendering engine. Macromedia Flash Professional 8 will be available next month for $699.

Macromedia also introduced the latest version of its Dreamweaver professional Web design and development tool. Dreamweaver 8 consists of layout, code editing, and application development tools for creating Web pages with XML and CSS. The new version features a simplified approach to Web development that works well for both professionals and beginners. The utility is also fully integrated with Macromedia’s Fireworks 8 and Flash Professional 8. Starting next month, you’ll be able to purchase a full license for Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 for $399.
http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/proom/pr/2005/announcing_flashprofessional8.html
http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/proom/pr/2005/announcing_dreamweaver8.html

SERVICES

System Management

Yaletown Technology Group is targeting IT administrators in enterprises with its UFI (Universal File Importer) 5.1. The system supports FileNet Corporation’s Enterprise Content Management repositories, as well as dynamic record classification and file system shortcuts. The system automatically manages file in real time (either in place or by loading content into FileNet). The system can also load proxy objects in FileNet Records Manager, which means the source objects can be locked down. The UFI 5.1 also supports dynamically assigning FileNet properties such as Records Manager classification to documents based on metadata fields. UFI 5.1 is a part of YTG’s CONSPECT compliance package.
http://www.yaletech.com/news/2005_Aug_1.asp