Glo Networks Technical Blog (Glo Blog)

It seems what was left of Microsoft’s diminishing lead in market capitalisation has finally been eaten up by Apple (or at least by one measure of market capitalization). While this probably will not come as a surprise to those who are interested in such things; when looking at the history of both companies it does mark an important milestone.

With both companies founded in 1975 this has been no short journey for either. However since that time Microsoft has maintained its dominance pretty much consistently, and it has only really been in the last 10 years (which has seen the release of such iconic Apple products as the iPod, iPhone and the Macbook) that Apple providing a challenge to Microsoft’s market supremacy.

Through out the ’00′s Apple  created several iconic, genre leading products with which Microsoft have seemed to struggled to compete . Business products aside, we would challenge you to offer a Microsoft product in the last 5 years that rivals Apples innovation. One possible exception worth considering is the Xbox 360, which was  ground breaking in terms of online connectivity when released in 2005. That said Apple have yet to enter the console gaming market!

More information and figures can be found in the following articles: Engadget, Financial Times, TGDaily

Posted by James in Desktop Hardware, Desktops and Laptops, Laptop Hardware, Operating Systems, Software | No Comments »

As part of every day life here at Glo Networks, we try and keep abreast of technical news and information – both good and bad.

Today the Sunbelt Software blogged about a recurrence in Twitter controlled Botnets.

If you’re not sure what a botnet is, it’s basically a collection of compromised computers that are controlled by one or more individuals.

Twitter controlled botnets aren’t new, but a simple to use, easily available, application to help create the program to do this is new. The “problem” with them is that its relatively easy for Twitter to track and/or block these control accounts.

The really great thing is that once Sunbelt got in touch with the Twitter team they responded in 13 minutes. Thats impressively good – although Glo Networks isn’t anywhere near the same scale as Twitter, we do take pride in responding to our customers via our online helpdesk within 10 minutes.

Whilst we might have been critical in the past about Twitter, it’s undoubtedly here to stay and its really great to see that their team are on the ball.

Posted by Karl in General | 1 Comment »

If you have one of the new macBook Pros from Apple. The ones with the dual nvidia GT 330M cards in then you really should pop this great bit of software onto your mac. Without this software on there you don’t know which card is currently running your mac. The fancy nvidia one isn’t needed for most tasks as it warms the macbook up and sucks the battery. But interestingly it appears that Parallels and VLC both switch it on ! Parallels does even with 3D turned off on it’s VMs.

Not any more they don’t !

Posted by Chris in Desktops and Laptops, Laptop Hardware | 4 Comments »

Did anyone watch Strike Back on Sky 1 this week ? Who else cringed at ‘Because we’ve only got one upload we can’t …’  when they were explaining why they couldn’t trace an uploaded video on the internet ? (I had to listen to it a few times to check that my ears worked.) Hint … an anonymous proxy would have gone down a lot better.

We at Glo Networks would like to offer our consultancy time for free to TV and Film to ensure ridiculous comments like that don’t get scripted, filmed, edited then released in the future.

Posted by Chris in General | 3 Comments »

Apparently some of us here at Glo Networks have been slacking on keeping up with the Apple iPad release information, and this has been on the Apple website for about “a week”.

However, incase you’re like the rest of us geeks who don’t bow entirely to the feet of Jobs then you may be interested in hearing that the iPad is due for release in the UK on Friday 28th of May, with pre-orders being accepted from Monday 10th of May.

Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Switzerland also have the same dates.

The iPad has a suggested retail price of £429 (inc. VAT) for 16GB, £499 (inc. VAT) for 32GB, £599 (inc. VAT) for 64GB for Wi-Fi models and £529 (inc. VAT) for 16GB, £599 (inc. VAT) for 32GB and £699 (inc. VAT) for 64GB for Wi-Fi + 3G models. However, some mobile carriers (O2, Vodafone and Orange) in the UK have plans for subsidised units.

Interestingly Apple are claiming that they have sold over one million iPads and users have downloaded over 12 million apps from the App Store and over 1.5 million ebooks from the new iBookstore.

Posted by Karl in General, Mobile | 2 Comments »