VizWorld.com

Another great milestone in system virtualization comes upon us today, as Parallels Desktop 5.0 is shipping and boasts OpenGL2.1 support.

Per AppleInsider, the developer said that the tests, conducted by Crimson Consulting Group, also found that the new Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac is up to 300% faster for virtual machine operations than its predecessor. In addition, 3Dmark 2006 Professional test scores perform up to 7 times better for 3D and graphics performance.

In addition it has support for Aero (on Vista), multiple monitors, 8 virtual CPU’s, 64-bit Windows and Snow Leopard.  Free trials are available, and the full version is $79.99.

via O’Grady’s PowerPage – Your Mobile Technology Destination » Parallels Desktop 5.0 Released.

Hardware opengl, parallels, software, virtualization

Anandtech is reporting that due to yield issues with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s (TMSC) 40nm process, prices are headed up for the ATI Radeon 5870 and 5850. Wafer yields have apparently fallen from 60% to 40%. Simply put, ATI is passing on their increased manufacturing costs to consumers. While the MSRP for the 5870 is $379, Newegg is showing all of the 5870 cards as out of stock and with a price of $399.

This shortage was first revealed in a story by Digitimes on October 30th. Because of this, several vendors are delaying their mass shipments of systems with the ATI Radeon 5870 and 5850 to the first quarter of 2010. Additionally, the mobile version of the 5000 series, which will be used in notebooks, will be delayed to the first quarter of 2010.

Both NVIDIA and AMD manufacture their GPUs at TSMC. Therefore this impacts both graphics card makers. However, AMD is currently selling their latest graphics cards, the 5870 and the 5850. NVIDIA has yet to release their latest graphics card, which is codenamed Fermi. NVIDIA will be releasing Fermi in the first quarter of 2010.

While ATI was first out of the gate with their latest graphics cards, and has an advantage over NVIDIA, the delay works to NVIDIA’s favor since the shortage is forecast to exist until Fermi comes to market.

Hardware amd, ati, nvidia

A new web startup company “Nebul.us” aims to visualize your personal browsing behavior and provide a means of selectively sharing this data with friends or the world in general.  It has the popular social network features (Friends, sharing, connecting with twitter, etc) but for our interest is has a nice circular visualization of your history.

The visualization itself consists of a circular donut shape, with online types of media represented as rings, and visits or online service usages mapped as separate bands. The shape and position of these bands represent a standard clock face: the length and position of a band corresponds to the time one visited a particular website or online service. Users can navigate through the content rings and narrow down to a specific day or hour, or a specific web page, song or photo, to discover specific usage patterns, to check how much time they spend on a particular page, or to share any of this content with others.

Nebul.us via Nebul.us: Visualizing (and Sharing) your Online Activity – information aesthetics.

Science nebul.us, socialmedia, web

Travel to Italy is a bit expensive for most people so if you really wanted to follow along with the VIEW Digital Convergency conference in Torino Incontra, Turin Italy, head on over to CGSociety where they’re posting regular updates from the conference.

The VIEW Conference for 2009 was opened this morning by Maria Elena Gutierrez and some esteemed members of the Turino and Piedmont councils. These are the people that have been instrumental in bringing the funding and national recognition to the conference. From Chambers of Commerce, Universities to the Piedmont State politicians.

via CGSociety – VIEW CONFERENCE 2009 Diary.

Graphics conference, view

All of you young budding game developers have a new toolkit in your arsenal, the newly released Unreal Development Kit.  A new free version of the popular Unreal3 & Development tools, it brings the power of the Unreal Engine into hands of game developers worldwide.

“I’m excited about the possibilities the Unreal Development Kit opens to those who are looking to get into the game business but don’t otherwise have the means to acquire world-class technology and tools like ours,” said Mark Rein, vice president of Epic Games. “UDK is Unreal Engine 3, which has been used to create games in a wide range of genres, as well as military simulations, 3D architectural walkthroughs, animated movies and more. Users are only limited by their imaginations. Go ahead make something Unreal!”

The UDK comes with PhysX, LightMass, AnimTree, integration systems for SpeedTree, Bink, and FaceFX, and all of the usual Unreal Engine features like UnrealScript.  Licensing restricts it to noncommercial or educational use, so you’ll eventually need to purchase a commercial license if you plan to sell your game.

via News – Epic UDK.

Graphics, Science engine, library, sdk, unreal, videogame

SGI’s earnings call, covering the quarter ending September 25th, seems to show the company in a decent light, with sales of $100.1M.  The merger with Rackable was a bit rocky, sucking up a good portion of Rackable’s cash and requiring some extensive restructuring, but:

“SGI delivered a solid quarter in terms of revenue, gross margin and operations,” said Mark Barrenechea, SGI’s president and chief executive officer, in a statement. “Operationally, our integration is ahead of schedule in most key areas. We also introduced new products that could expand our addressable market by over $1.7 billion while investing for long-term growth.”

Some other interesting tidbits is that over 10% of its quarterly non-GAAP sales come from “long-time” customer Amazon, which was news to me.  A full third of their sales came from ISP’s, and a quarter came from Government and Defense contractors.

via SGI-Rackable combo posts big revenue gains • The Register.

Hardware amazon, economic, finance, sgi

Purdue University is kicking off a new center dubbed “Visual Analytics for Command, Control and Interoperability Environments” (VACCINE), funded by the US Department of Homeland Security, to create tools and software for use by government agencies and emergency personnel.

“We are creating ways for people to get information interactively in an understandable format to help them make the right decisions and take preventive measures,” Ebert said. “For example, simulations to see what would happen if you were to quarantine a certain city to control the spread of pandemic flu or whether reallocating police patrols would reduce crime.”

The center will be co-led by Purdue and Rutgers, and consists of a team of 15 universities.

via Untitled Document.

Science analytics, dhs, purdue

A great infographic from “Mibi” of WallStats fame details numbers about the Nursing profession including salaries, employment, the kinds of “crap” (both literally and figuratively) that they deal with, and the long-lasting nursing shortage nationwide.

Nursing Statistics.

Graphics, Science infographic, medical, poster

The American Society of Cell Biology (ASCB) has launched a new project called “The Cell: An Image Library” to build a multi-dimensional image library of the cell for use in research, clinical, and educational communities.  They’ve been awarded a $2.5M stimulus grant from the National Institutes of Health and are collaborating with Glencoe Software, the commercial arm of the Open Microscopy Environment Consortium, to create it.

Jason Swedlow, CEO of Glencoe Software, and co-founder of the OME, said, “Glencoe Software and OME see the ASCB Image Library as a critical resource for life science researchers all over the world. We are pleased that our recent work on OMERO and the Glencoe DME is being deployed in this challenging application. Combined with our deployment of the JCB DataViewer (http://jcb-dtaviewer.rupress.org), this demonstrates the capabilities of OMERO and the Glencoe DME and further solidifies our industry-leading capabilities to deliver complex image data management solutions to the Life Science research community.”

via Glencoe Software to Support the ASCB ‘Stimulus Grant’ to Build Virtual Image Library of the Cell | Reuters.

Science biomed, nih

What exactly makes a graph effective, versus what makes a graph a cluttered collection of overinformation, is a constant matter of discussion and research.  Researchers from NC State and the University of Idaho have presented results of some interesting work at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

To determine whether design elements — such as background pictures — affect a viewer’s ability to read a graph, the researchers ran an experiment using rectangular bar graphs. They tested how accurately people could read the bar graph when it was presented against three different backgrounds: a blank background, a background filled with rectangles, and a background filled with circles.

via Chart Junk? How Pictures May Help Make Graphs Better.

Science ergonomic, research