Open-source software continues to grow in popularity as a result of its cost-effectiveness and functionality.

In an attempt to provide larger corporate clients with a complete, professional and low-cost load balancing solution, South African-based development outfit Snapt has joined forces with HAProxy’s commercial arm, Exceliance.

The first open-source alliance of its kind will result in a more widely accessible product offering, which will extend both the reach and functionality of Snapt’s existing HAProxy user interface, as well as Exceliance’s renowned HAProxy Enterprise Edition (HAPEE).

Plans are currently underway to release a joint product, which looks set to allay any fears companies may have about dabbling in the world of open source. Not only will the new offering provide comprehensive developer-backed support and warranties typical of more commercial software, but will make use of Snapt’s revolutionary user interface, making the product exceptionally easy to use and manage.

“This product will be the first of its kind to really deliver an open source solution with all the benefits of a more commercial offering,” says Dave Blakey, CEO of Snapt. “Not only will clients be able to enjoy the peace of mind afforded by comprehensive developer-backed support and full warranties, but they’ll be able to do so at a fraction of the price of commercial software.”

“This alliance increases Exceliance’s value proposition, enabling us to better cover market needs byaddressing the cloud computing environments” said Christophe Pouillet, Exceliance’s CEO.

The newly formed alliance also brings good news for existing clients of both companies. Snapt’s existing clientele can look set to enjoy the benefits of full support, whilst current HAPEE clients will also enjoy the increased ease of use afforded by Snapt’s HAProxy user interface.

Snapt and Exceliance’s new joint-product will be made available in May 2012. Annual subscription packages will start at USD 5,000 for the bronze, 2 server plan and scale up to USD 40,000 for large enterprise clients.

About Snapt HAProxy and Exceliance

Snapt HAProxy is a powerhouse front end interface that turns the already robust HAProxy Load Balancer into a feature rich and easy to use tool. It allows companies to share the load of SQL, SMTP, HTTP, or any TCP traffic across any number of servers, and can be easily expanded with weights, maximum limits and several balancing methods to become the perfect, customisable ADC and allow its users to become proactive instead of reactive. It gives usersaccess to features like advanced reporting, control over the config file, status alerts and numerous other tools that improve overall use of the HAProxy load balancer, as well as introducing full redundancy and SSL offloading/termination, and layer 7 support. Snapt HAProxy is easy to install and runs on any specified hardware, allowing users to directly control its performance. The software also comes packaged with on-going technical support, in order to ensure long-term efficacy

Exceliance offers a full line of load balancers to improve performance, guarantee quality of service and ensure the availability of critical business applications. Developed using HAProxy open source load balancing software, Exceliance solutions  are known for their processing performance, reliability and wealth of features. Offered at more affordable prices than other commercial solutions, they cover 100% of the needs of 95% of the market and are easy to deploy and to administer.  They are available in two different formats: rackable hardware appliance and virtual appliance.

Headquartered in Jouy-en-Josas (Yvelines, France) has around 100 customers in the banking, retail groups, energy and e-commerce industries and the public sector. Exceliance solutions are also used by many hosting providers.

For more information, please contact Robert Shone on 071 735 3228 or rob@iclinic.co.za or visit http://www.snapt-ui.com or http://www.exceliance.fr

Cape Town based travel technology company Tourism Radio that brought us its travel application for mobile phones Hummba, has teamed up with Frommer’s Unlimited to provide local travel information for mobile audio guides.

The new partnership aims to revolutionise the world of mobile travel guides by providing intelligent city guides for a fulfilling travel experience.

Tourism Radio’s technology will see it seamlessly integrate its audio clips with Frommer’s travel content that will automatically play when a user enters their specific location. Why Frommer’s? Well, for one thing, the company has been providing reliable and comprehensive travel guides for over 50 years.

The initial partnership launch will see the release of audio and text travel guides to a number of popular travel destinations including London, New York and Paris. Information at these destinations will include Frommer’s recommended restaurants, tourist attractions, hotels and night life spots. Information will also provide insight into how to experience each city as a local, where to find the best deals and how to travel safely and conveniently.

The guides can be downloaded as standalone applications for Android and iPhone or accessed through Hummba, currently available for Android and iOS devices with BlackBerry and Nokia versions coming soon.

Tourism Radio founder and CEO Mark Allewell says “We like to think of our partnership with Frommer’s as serendipity on steroids. Travellers will now be able to easily access an unprecedented amount of quality travel information, directly from their mobile phones. We’re also delighted to partner with one of the world’s oldest and most respected travel companies, and we look forward to producing guides that cater for every traveller’s needs.”

Director of E-Business Development, Frommer’s Unlimited, Craig Schickler comments that “Offering Frommer’s travel information through Tourism Radio’s intelligent mobile audio guides is an exciting new way for travelers to access our expert travel advice at the right time in the right place. We are happy to be working with Tourism Radio and together helping shape memorable experiences for travelers around the globe.”

The Tourism Radio audio guides in partnership with Frommer’s are available for download ranging in price from $0.99 to $4.99 which depends on the amount of travel content they contain.

A selection of free, lite guides, to several popular destinations around the world, are also available for download which give travellers the opportunity to sample the content before committing to the purchase of a full guide.

To read more about Hummba and find out how to download the app click here.

News has recently broken of a new feature that First National Bank (FNB) will add to its FNB Banking App for iOS and Android powered devices. The news of the ‘geo-payments’ application leaked into its mobile app, 48 hours before its official launch on 9th May.

Once the news broke, FNB CEO Michael Jordaan posted the following tweet:

The news of #FNBGeopay broke sooner than expected. Only 48 hours till we reveal all.

— Michael Jordaan (@MichaelJordaan) May 7, 2012

The new app aims to provide a way for individuals who have an FNB eWallet to send and receive money through their mobile devices. The users involved in the transaction need to be within a 500m radius of each other but don’t need to know each other’s banking details. While non FNB customers can receive a payment through the application, only FNB customers can actually send payments.

FNB has also added that the GeoPayments app is available in the new version of its Banking App for Apple, Android, and BlackBerry devices.

The launch of yet another innovative app by FNB, secures them a position as the leader of mobile banking in South Africa.

Source: My Broadband

Personal Computer manufacturer Lenovo Group Ltd. has reportedly said that it will be spending $800 million on a brand new research, development and production center for smartphones and tablets in China in order to expand beyond its PC business and become more competitive in the in the mobile device market.

The company broke ground on Monday at the new facility in Wuhan in the Hubei province, which it has said is expected to begin production in October 2013.

The company has also mentioned that the new facitlity will contribute to the creation of about 10, 000 jobs over the next few years of which several thousand employees will focus mainly on smartphones, tablet computers and other mobile devices for China and global markets.

Lenovo also revealed that sales from the industrial base were projected to reach 10 billion yuan by 2014, and to rise to 50 billion yuan within the next five years.

Lenovo Group chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing explains that “We are aggressively moving forward into the PC Plus era  and are accelerating development in smartphones, tablets, and other mobile Internet terminal markets. We’re determined to firmly seize the tremendous opportunities for innovation in this market, so that Lenovo’s customers have even more opportunities to own our award-winning products, from PCs to mobile Internet devices.”

Lenovo has selected China as the first market for its upcoming K800 mobile device, a 1.6GHz Intel Medfield-based smartphone due to launch in the second quarter of 2012.

In April, Lenovo revealed its IdeaTab S2109 Android tablet.

Source: The Next Web

With past and present rumours buzzing around what the next iPhone will offer up, that is expected to arrive in September or October of this year, iLounge has shared some new and very specific details that it has obtained, about the much anticipated device.

Among other changes, the new details suggest that Apple will be abandoning the rumoured “teardrop-shaped iPhone 5” in favour of yet another glass-bodied design with new dimensions.

So far, details of the new iPhone include:

• A longer and thinner shape than the iPhone 4 and 4S measuring approximately 125mm by 58.5mm by 7.4mm. This is a 10mm increase in height and nearly 2mm reduction in thickness.
• A flat, rather than curved, metal panel that will be added to the central back of the phone.
• A screen measuring about 4″ on the diagonal.

• A new aspect ratio with additional pixels on both the top and bottom of the screen.
• The introduction of a new Dock Connector since its inception, believed to have fewer pins than the prior 30-pin Dock Connector with the shape of the hole closer to a pill shape than the prior rounded rectangle.
• The use of Gorilla Glass 2 which can be manufactured thinner with identical strength to the earlier iPhones’ Gorilla Glass or at the same thickness with greater strength.

This is the new Beoplay A3 iPad Dock from Bang & Olufsen Play that creates stand-alone, innovative and user-friendly devices. The Beoplay is part of the Danish company’s iPad dock range and is essentially a mix of a stand, speaker system and case that turns your iPad into your very own portable TV.

The triangular shaped and elevated dock, comes with speakers mounted on both sides. The system serves to optimise viewing and sound on your iPad by enabling it to stand upright horizontally or vertically or resting it flat on its back. For example, You can read the morning news while sitting at the breakfast table, listen to music in bed by resting it on your bed-side table or read a recipe while cooking by placing it on the counter-top. The Beoplay ultimately lets you use your iPad without having to hold it in your hands, lean over it on a flat surface or rest it in your lap which doesn’t exactly make for great viewing or sound.

The speakers use an orientation sensor to activate the proper speakers depending on whether you’ve got it resting in horizontal or vertical orientation that ensures a full audio experience enabled by its multiple resting positions mentioned above.

Other features include a built-in battery good for five hours of playback, an integrated dock connector and adapters for any model of iPad.

This device comes with a price tag of about $730. That’s about R5621 at the current exchange rate.

What do you think of Bang & Olufsen’s Beoplay A3?

Source: Uncrate

Gmail has recently announced in a blog post the graduation of three new Gmail labs, one of which includes its automatic message translation, a handy tool that lets users translate email messages that are sent or received into a variety of languages.

Automatic message translation was first experimented by Google in May 2009 to find out how people would respond to and use it.

With an overwhelmingly positive response from various users, Google decided that it was time to take it out of the lab and bring it “into the real world”.

In the next few days, Google will be rolling out the new feature to all users which allows for all emails to be translated into the language of their choice. Next time a user receives an email in another language or wants to send an email in a language other than their own, all they have to do is click on ‘Translate Message’ that will appear in the header at the top of the email.

Other options include completely turning off the translating feature for a specific language if a user happens to be bi-lingual for example or turning on the translation as a default for a particular language. So, you can select the ability for every message that comes through from your friend in Germany to be automatically translated into English, for example or when your German lessons start paying off, disabling it.

The remaining two Gmail labs that have graduated along with the message translation are Title Tweaks and Smart Mute. With Title Tweaks, users can now more easily see new messages in their inbox by Google changing the text in the browser tab. Rather than seeing ”Gmail – Inbox (20) – user@example.com”, the tab will now read ”Inbox (20) – user@example.com – Gmail”. It’s not a huge change but is useful if you have a lot of tabs open in your browser.

Smart Mute sees improvements made to muting “so you can be sure that noisy email threads stay out of your inbox”.

In addition, Google will be retiring some of the less popular labs this week including Old Snakey, Mail Goggles, Mouse Gestures, Hide Unread Counts, Move Icon Column, Inbox Preview, Custom Date Formats and SMS in Chat gadget.

HP has had some tough times in the past year – after their then-CEO Leo Apotheker announced that HP would be stepping out of the PC game, their sales figures took a small dive, but luckily he got ousted before such rash moves. HP is now once again back in the number one spot when it comes to overall PC sales worldwide.

Canalis’s research now starts to include tablet devices under PC sales, and Apple’s iPad sales has contributed significantly to Apple’s sales numbers, but even so, HP’s sales was slightly higher overall. So Apple was in second place, Lenovo in third (with big increases in sales) and Acer and Dell taking the fourth and fifth spots.

What is clear however, is that tablet devices has started to eat away at the previously very popular netbook market:

“The total client PC market grew by 21% to 107 million units. Importantly, while the pad category exhibited the highest growth – more than 200% year on year – notebook and desktop PC shipments were up too, rising 11% and 8% respectively. Netbook shipments, however, were down 34% on the year-ago quarter – the sixth such fall in succession.”

It seems like buyers are moving away from poorly built cheap hardware, and would rather purchase tablet devices that give a much better user experience and better designed hardware.

“If you look at the US, pads are approaching 40% of all client PC shipments” said Canalys VP and Principal Analyst, Chris Jones.

These massive sales figures in the tablet category must be making HP nervous, seeing as they decided to drop their WebOS based tablet, only weeks after being launched. Other top manufacturers all have tablet devices, but HP has decided to rather throw their weight behind upcoming Windows 8 tablets.

Source: Canalys

Take a look inside the offices of Microsoft’s headquarters in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

The space has been designed to optimise what is called ‘hotdesking’ , where employees and senior executives are not assigned specific desks or individual offices. Rather, a variety of different types of work areas are provided, conducive for conducting different kinds of work. This includes “teamwork benches, enclosed and semi-enclosed meeting rooms, open informal meeting areas, concentration booths, individual work carousels and work lounges.”

The spaces provide either a more formal working environment or place for employees to relax and wind down in areas that include simple and comfortable furniture with pops of colour and natural lighting.

The office, designed by Sevil Peach and Veldhoen + Co. took several years to implement as it was important to the company to receive employee feedback to ensure that staff were receptive to the idea of ‘hotdesking’ before going ahead with the design.

View the office images below:

Source: Stephen Searer for Office Snapshots; Photography: Gary Turnbull, Harold Pareira and Matthijs Borghgraef

According to The Next Web, Apple has had a planning request approved to build on off-site restaurant for employees primarily so that staff can talk freely amongst themselves during their breaks without worrying about any possible eaves-droppers from other competing companies.

The new cafeteria approved by the Cupertino Planning Commission, will be located a short walk or drive from Apple’s Infinite Loop headquarters and will provide a meeting room, restaurant, lounge areas and courtyard facilities.

At a meeting held on Tuesday when the plans were approved,  Apple’s director of real estate facilities, Dan Whisenhunt explained that “We like to provide a level of security so that people and employees can feel comfortable talking about their business, their research and whatever project they’re engineering without fear of competition sort of overhearing their conversations.”

Whereas the current Caffe Macs located at Apple’s HQ on site, allows visitors, the new off-site restaurant will be exclusively for Apple employees and provide them with the privacy they need to talk freely.

The new restaurant is a short-term solution for Apple who are planning on building its brand new “Spaceship” headquarters once those plans are approved which will accommodate 13, 000 of its employees on 2.8 million square feet.

The image below from the Cupertino Council website shows what the restaurant will look like once completed: