The iPod has a patented display called “Retina”, with a resolution of 960X640 pixels. The camera and microphone in the iPod face the front, so customers can make video calls over Wi-Fi. The rear-facing camera allows the customers to show their counterpart what they are seeing. This rear-facing camera is also capable of recording HD video.

The iPod is now connected to the “Game Center” with over 65,000 game titles, which makes it easy for customers to indulge in multi-user game playing. The app store now holds over 100,000 apps, and from the latest reports, the number of downloads from the store has exceeded 3 billion.

The device is built on Apple’s A4 processor and requires the company’s proprietary operating system iOS 4.1 to run.

Read more about this amazing new electronic gadget from the IT and consumer electronics giant, here.

The company has posted net revenue of USD 30.7 billion, which is higher by 11.4% compared to the same quarter’s performance of 2009. Operating profit zoomed up to USD 2.3 billion, which is 5% higher than that reported for the same quarter last year. The GAAP diluted earning per share (EPS) has worked out to USD 0.75, which is higher than the USD 0.69 notched up for Q3 2009.

Amongst its various business lines, the services stream increased its revenue by 1% to USD 8.6 billion, while the sale of enterprise storage and server equipment fetched it revenue of USD 4.4 billion, which is a whopping 19% increase over the previous year’s third quarter. The company earned USD 863 million revenue in software sales. There are two groups focused on two different domains – the Personal Systems Group, which notched USD 9.9 billion and the Imaging and Printing Group, which notched USD 6.2 billion.

The company’s financial services arm too saw a growth of revenue by 14% and touched USD 764 million.

Cathie Lesjak, Interim CEO and CFO

Read more about the financial performance of this IT biggie, here.

Founded in 1987, McAfee had clocked about USD 2 billion in revenue in the previous year of 2009.The company has over 6,000 employees spread in offices around the world. The company’s forte is software-centered security solutions such as “Total Protection”, McAfee Antivirus, McAfee Internet Security, Firewall and “IPS”.

Post acquisition, McAfee will function as a 100% subsidiary of Intel, and be managed by the company’s Software and Services Group which is headed presently by Ms. Renee James, senior vice president and general manager. Mr. David DeWalt, President and CEO of McAfee is joining Intel along with the entire management team.

The strategy behind this acquisition is to offer a holistic solution to the customer for security that combines both hardware and software elements, especially in the connected devices space – and not many in the competition are a master at security in this space.

Read more about the latest news in Intel’s acquisition spree, here.

Post the acquisition, Day Software will operate as a product line within Adobe’s Digital Enterprise Solutions Business Unit. The CEO of Day, Mr. Erik Hansen, too will join Adobe, and will report directly to Rob Tarkoff, senior vice president and general manager, Digital Enterprise Solutions.

Day Software is known to be a pioneer in the enterprise content management (ECM) space. The company’s flagship product is Content Repository Extreme (CRX), which is a leading Java Content Repository (JCR) in the industry. Another of Day’s products worth mentioning here is “CQ5″, which is a single unified suite that offers web content management, digital asset management and social collaboration. The suite won the prestigious 2009 InfoWorld “Technology of the Year Award” in the web CMS category.

The company has been trading on both the Swiss Stock Exchange (SIX) and also the American OTC exchange.

With this acquisition, Adobe hopes to further strengthen its hold on enterprise software solutions, using Day’s expertise in content management, digital asset management and social collaboration.

Read more about the latest acquisition by Adobe, after its last purchase of Omniture in 2009; here.

The Cupertino, California-based company has built the new computer on Intel’s Xeon processors, and incorporated quad-core and 6-core CPUs that together tot up a speed of 3.33 Ghz. Because of the way these chips are designed – on a single die -, the cores share up to 12MB L3 cache, with an integrated memory controller. This translates to faster memory bandwidth and lower latency of memory. An technology called hyper-threading built into the Intel architecture has been exploited to increase the number of cores from 12 to a virtual 24.

The Mac Pro now comes with ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics processor, which the customer can upgrade to HD 5870. These processors have their own 1GB of memory.

The device has a 1TB SATA hard drive preinstalled, with space to accommodate 4 SSDs. There are two Mini DisplayPorts and one dual-link DVI port in the system, allowing customers to hook up two LED Cinema Displays without an additional graphics card or adapter. The Magic Mouse is included as part of the configuration.

Read more about the latest series of computing beasts from Apple, here.

As per the information available, after hiving off, the cable modem group will become part of Intel’s Digital Home Group. Employees of the cable modem group of Texas Instruments have received offers from Intel to join the company at sites in their home countries. The cable modem group is primarily based in Israel.

The motivation behind this strategic move for Intel is to now offer a complete digital set top box solution for residences. Intel will manufacture and sell set top boxes, residential gateways and modem products to the cable OEM retail market. Part of this solution will comprise the Puma product lines belonging to Texas Instruments. Puma, along with the DOCSIS (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) technology is coming Intel’s way.

This is yet another attempt by Intel to move into the consumer electronics industry in a big way. Other CE products that Intel is focusing on include digital TVs, Blu-ray disc players, companion boxes, and the like. Read more about a strategic move by the processor manufacturer, here.

Datacap is headquartered in Tarrytown, New York. The company was founded in 1988 by Mr. Scott Blau and Mr. Noel Kropf. The duo has now joined IBM as Directors of Enterprise Content Management, and the company’s operations have been merged into IBM’s ECM division.

The company’s flagship product is Taskmaster, which it claims to be the only client/server, rules-based document capture workflow platform. The software allows for highly flexible solutions to be developed in the twin applications of image indexing and data entry automation. A diverse range of documents can be handled through the software, including medical claims, tax returns and unstructured forms such as invoices and shipping documents. The software also provides the facility to remotely scan, index and administer data captures from a browser.

Datacap has > 200 customers from a variety of government agencies such as the departments of public health, departments of taxation, county Superior Courts, and the like; besides private sector companies such as BlueCross BlueShield of Arizona and Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company.

Read more about the latest acquisition by IBM for inorganic growth, here.

This software makes it possible for local government agencies to share with each other, data generated by them internally. The data that can be shared includes third party datasets which has been licensed under Collective Purchase Agreements, such as from Ordnance Survey and other data suppliers. It also enables contractors to submit their own digital data to the agency.

The way the software has been architected, an automated and audited workflow is set up between the stakeholders which streamlines the entire licensing and ordering process seamlessly. A real-time console in the agency’s main office allows the authorities to manage their data distribution.

The idea is for the agencies to provide a responsive service to their stakeholders, including staff, partners and contractors, in the form of data sharing in a secure environment. This leads to cost reduction, reduced paperwork and elimination of avoidable contact.

Contractor Portal has been developed on the FME platform developed by Safe Software. It is available as a hosted or installed solution.

Read more about this latest collaboration tool for sharing data between government agencies, here.

The first hint of a new version of their browser being in the offing came in November 2009, during the Professional Developers Conference held in Los Angeles.

The new browser is expected to leverage the power of the underlying graphics and other processors that make up the hardware to boost its speed. There will be stronger support for HTML5 than what has been possible in IE8 releases. The new browser is also likely to run only on Windows 7 or the higher versions of the Vista operating system. This means that users with XP or below will be required to upgrade their machines if they want to enjoy the new browser.

While IE8 scored a measly 20 out of 100 on the ACID 3 test, the IE9 has leapfrogged to 32 out of 100. Still, that makes it far behind Firefox version 3.xx which has managed to score an impressive 96.

Read more about the newest version of the internet browser from Microsoft, here.

Ocarina Networks operates in the domain of optimization technology for heavy-duty storage. The company’s offerings have the potential to free up 30% to 75% of existing storage capacities, releasing network bandwidth, power, cooling, data center space and management, resulting in CapEx and OpEx savings. In today’s business environment where data is largely unstructured, the company’s technologies can make a significant difference.

The acquisition of the company will allow Dell to integrate Ocarina’s products into its existing deduplication solutions portfolio.

Murli Thirumale, CEO, Ocarina Networks

Ocarina Networks was founded by Murli Thirumale in 2007, who was its CEO at the time of the acquisition. The company had been a vendor for Dell for over a year. Post acquisition, Dell plans to invest in further engineering and sales capabilities of Ocarina, and would not immediately move the company’s operations from its present premises. The present management team is also likely to remain intact.

Read more about the latest acquisition of Dell in storage technology domain, here.

The company has notched up revenue of USD 10.8 billion, which is up by USD 2.7 billion over its revenue for Q2 2009. Operating income zoomed to USD 4.0 billion which is USD 4.0 billion more than the income in the corresponding Q2 of 2009. As a result, the net income has come to USD 2.9 billion, with an EPS of 51 cents which makes Q2 2010 a watershed quarter for Intel, in its 42 year history.

The company’s sales are in tune with trend in the market: more mobile microprocessors are being sold than desktop processors. Server microprocessors too sold higher by as much as 13% as compared to Q1 2010. The company has spend USD 3.25 billion in research and development, as well as in mergers and acquisitions.

Intel is at the forefront of microprocessor manufacturing. The company is in direct competition with AMD, and it shook off a long-drawn litigation with the latter in the last quarter through a one-time settlement payment that saw a dip in its reserves in the earlier quarter.

Paul Otellini, President & CEO, Intel

Read more about the latest financial results from Intel, here.

Total revenue for Q2 2010 was USD 23.7 billion, which is 2% more than the total revenue reported for Q2 2009. The net income reported for Q2 2010 was USD 3.4 billion. This is 9% more than the USD 3.2 billion net income reported for Q2, 2009. This has yielded a diluted earnings per share of USD 2.61, which is 13% more than the EPS in the corresponding Q2 of 2009.

These computations have led to pre-tax income of USD 4.6 billion.

Of the different income streams, the company experienced the highest jump in Business Analytics of 14%, while the streams of software and services posted an increment of just 2%.

In the second quarter, IBM signed services contracts that notched up USD 12.3 billion. However, contracts for outsourcing services saw a dip by 19% to USD 6.5 billion. New-business outsourcing was more than extensions of older contracts. Contracts for transactional services (such as consulting, integrated technology services, and the like) too saw a dip by 3% to USD 5.8 billion.

Mark Loughridge, CFO, IBM

Read more about the latest financial performance of an IT biggie, here.

These new services include:

- shipping to destinations around the world, which means that a customer now has the option to order a single issue of any publication on MagCloud.

- new options for binding hard copies, which means that magazines with pagecount more than 300 can be printed with perfection.

- and an application that enables consuming digital material on the iPad, which is available for free from App Store. There is also an option to buy a hardcopy version of the content. This implies that any publisher can now offer content in both digital and print format to iPad users, using the MagCloud platform.

The MagCloud publishing ecosystem provides facilities to publishers who want to save on preproduction costs or the hassle of minimum print runs. Because the market is moving towards more and more niche, targeted readership, the platform provides people to experiment with their chosen target with minimal investment.

The platform also creates a level ground for new and novice publishers who may have little experience, little or no reach and minimal capital.

Read more about how a SaaS platform is being ramped up to prove more useful for its users, courtesy HP, here.

Peter Oppenheimer, CFO, Apple

The company has reported revenue of USD 15.7 billion for the quarter, compared to the revenue of USD 9.73 billion for Q3 2009. This has yielded a net profit of USD 3.25 for the quarter, which is again better than the net profit of USD 1.83 billion for Q3 2009. The impact has been favorable on EPS, which was computed to USD 3.51 per diluted share. This quarter also saw a generation of USD 4 billion in cash.

A notable feature of this quarter was the launch and sale of iPads, which shipped out 3.27 million units within the quarter itself. This is over and above the sale of 8.4 million iPhones, 9.41 million iPods and 3.47 million Macintoshes. Another notable feature was the launch of iPhone 4, the next generation of the smartphone mobile from Apple that has revolutionized the mobile industry.

The company is expecting to touch revenue of USD 18 billion in Q4 2010, up from the present quarters USD 9.73 billion. The diluted EPS is forecast to touch USD 3.44.

Read more about the financial performance of an IT biggie, here.

Lightroom is a digital photography workflow solution that allows users to manage their images from a single application. The software has inbuilt facility to hold and organize image libraries, and it has the tools to reduce noise and sharpen the images very seamlessly.

Lightroom 3 has the additional capability to operate in 64-bit environment, and it supports DSLR video files and tethered shooting in select cameras from Nikon and Canon. Improvement over the previous versions include a more intuitive importing option, added previews and default selections which enable photographers to access and sort images and search for specific images. Another useful feature in this version is the Automatic Lens Correction, which provides the facility to apply profiles to correct for undesirable geometric distortions, chromatic aberrations and lens vignette effects.

The product also comes with plug-ins to connect with online sharing sites in a seamless fashion.

Read more about the latest version of a digital media software product from Adobe, here.