Apple’s Premium Headphones Go Back to the Drawing Board (- InftekHosting.Com)

Apple’s Premium Headphones Go Back to the Drawing Board

When Steve Jobs convened the “Let’s Rock” event to unveil the new iPod Nano in September, he made a point of whetting our appetites for premium in-ear headphones with remote and mic that were said, at the time, to be shipping in October. It’s now December and the Apple website still says “Coming Soon.” Apple engineers [...]

When Steve Jobs convened the “Let’s Rock” event to unveil the new iPod Nano in September, he made a point of whetting our appetites for premium in-ear headphones with remote and mic that were said, at the time, to be shipping in October. It’s now December and the Apple website still says “Coming Soon.”

Apple engineers were ordered to revise the design, which required Apple’s overseas contractors to retool their manufacturing process, resulting in the extended delay, according to sources cited by MacBloz on Monday.

The premium headphones, slated to retail for $79, are intended to compete with high-end audiophile headsets costing two and three times that amount from the likes of Bose and Sony, and according to the MacBlogz sources, that standard has not yet been achieved. On the other hand, it should be premature to rule out a splashy marketing deployment of the eagerly anticipated headphones just in time for last minute holiday shopping.

Via MacBlogz.

Touch and Go: Tactile iPhone Case for Sight Impaired

This prototype tactile iPhone case called Invisual allows sight-impaired users to get the most out of the smart phone. It would work in conjunction with special accessibility functions, such as text-to-speech features and moon type tactile alphabet keyboard. Portugal-based designer Bruno Fosi crafted the silicon case with modified bas-relief buttons that correspond to the iPhone home [...]

This prototype tactile iPhone case called Invisual allows sight-impaired users to get the most out of the smart phone. It would work in conjunction with special accessibility functions, such as text-to-speech features and moon type tactile alphabet keyboard.

Portugal-based designer Bruno Fosi crafted the silicon case with modified bas-relief buttons that correspond to the iPhone home screen. Fosi says that the iPhone thus covered keeps all its functions intact, including multi-touch and finger flick scrolling.

Via Yanko Design

Kerio Announces Partnership with Sonian to Offer Enhanced Email Archiving Service
New Alliance Provides Added Email Storage and Management

Kerio Celebrates New Office Opening in Germany
New Location Outside Cologne to Serve As Central Office in Western Europe To Provide Increased Services to Channel Partners

Dedicated Server Firm, SoftLayer, Reports Strong Growth and Profitability

Dallas, Texas - (The Hosting News) - December 2, 2008 - On-demand hosting services and virtual data center provider for the small to medium enterprise (SME), SoftLayer, has reported strong growth and outperformance of all projections throughout 2008.

The company provides highly automated, on-demand data center and IT services that allow businesses to more efficiently utilize their resources and decrease their capital expenditures. SoftLayer’s growth continues despite general U.S. economic woes, indicating that the company’s model for providing outsourced IT environments has considerable mainstream market advantages.

Lance Crosby, Chief Executive Officer, SoftLayer remarked, ”As much as we’ve accomplished this year, we keep moving forward, continuing to innovate and enhance our offerings and provide customers the ultimate virtual data center solutions. In these tough economic times our solutions are more relevant than ever. We will be launching additional virtualization and cloud computing options that give our customers highly scalable, flexible solutions for their business’ computing needs.”

Through October of this year, SoftLayer has reached a number of key milestones, including:

• Annual recurring revenue of over $60 million, up from $33 million in 2007
• 40%+ EBITDA margins and growing
• Continued GAAP profitability
• More than 5,500 active customers across 110+ countries
• More than 18,000 deployed servers
• Receiving Tech Titans award for the fastest growing company in Dallas
• Pending completion of a SAS-70 Type II review in December 2008

Additionally, SoftLayer has expanded its leadership position this year through significant achievements such as:

• Launching version 3.0 of the industry-leading SoftLayer Open API
• Completing an end-to-end rewrite of SoftLayer’s Infrastructure Management System (IMS), a proprietary and leading-edge management platform, to provide even more scalability and automation
• Deployment of a massively scalable data warehouse to support growth in back office systems and capabilities
• Adding a third data center in Washington, D.C.
• Expanding its data center facilities in Dallas
• Launching new enterprise-class services including:
• CDNLayer, SoftLayer’s content delivery network with best-in-industry pricing
• Anycast DNS, for geographically redundant DNS routing
• Global load balancing
• Launching of virtualization solutions including Microsoft Hyper-V, Parallels Virtuozzo, and Citrix XenServer
• Delivering the industry’s first deployment of Intel’s Dunnington chipset: a quad-processor, hex-core platform for high-performance computing environments

Headquartered in Plano, Texas, SoftLayer delivers next-generation web hosting and virtualized data center services on a global basis from facilities located in Dallas, TX; Seattle, WA; and Washington, DC. Utilizing proprietary management tools coupled with the industry’s first Network-Within-a-Network topology, the company delivers unprecedented power and control to securely manage IT environments while providing unparalleled scalability.

For more about SoftLayer, please visit: www.softlayer.com.

Holiday Gift Idea: VladStudio’s Beautiful, Whimsical Wallpaper Clocks

This post has been corrected to accurately reflect its subject’s nationality. The post author was originally directed to the Italian version of the designer’s website, resulting in a misunderstanding as to his national origin. Vlad Gerasimov is one busy guy. Proprietor of the outstanding design shop VladStudio, this Russian designer has created hundreds and hundreds of [...]

This post has been corrected to accurately reflect its subject’s nationality. The post author was originally directed to the Italian version of the designer’s website, resulting in a misunderstanding as to his national origin.

Vlad Gerasimov is one busy guy. Proprietor of the outstanding design shop VladStudio, this Russian designer has created hundreds and hundreds of wallpapers, backgrounds and wallpaper clocks, a sampling of which is displayed in the gallery below.

Vlad has also created a few dozen PhotoShop tutorials that can have you designing like a pro in no time.

You can purchase a lifetime registration good for receiving higher quality, signature free downloads and Adobe source files until December 31st for $19.99, $10 off his regular registration fee.

This is great stuff and well worth checking out, a fine holiday gift idea for the artist or designer on your gifting list.