Digium, Inc.'s newly released standalone G100 & G200 VoIP Gateways are an integral part of the company's mission to simplify further the deployment of Asterisk-based, converged-media networks. The gateways, which are built on a combination of the Asterisk open-source communications engine and an advanced embedded platform, complement the heretofore standard solution of telephony ports as interface cards on standard PC hardware. The power-saving embedded design features a highly efficient digital signal processor (DSP) to handle all media-related operations. The G100 & G200 are built to support both TDM-to-SIP and SIP-to-TDM applications. Digium says that the combination of the company's intuitive user interface, the flexibility of Asterisk and the purpose-built media processing capabilities of the DSP results in a gateway platform that outperforms the “dated designs” found in the market today.
While text editors typically show a scant few lines of code, the upgraded CodeSonar and its new architecture visualization system from GrammaTech, Inc., scales to millions of lines of code. The new system tackles the growing complexity of large software systems, allowing developers to test and analyze the interrelationships between elements of source code via visual inspection and analysis of their software. Real-time, fluid transitions allow for the visualization of massive data sets at a wide range of levels of abstraction. GrammaTech says that CodeSonar goes beyond what is offered in other visualization tools, which are effective at displaying small-scale parts of the program structure, such as fragments of class hierarchies and subsets of the call graph. CodeSonar, says the company, is unique in its ability to show whole-program structures as well as deal with complexity found in certain smaller projects. CodeSonar visualization runs through a standard Web client, such as Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome or Microsoft Internet Explorer.
The new 6WINDGate Cloud Edition from 6WIND is targeted at suppliers of both physical and virtual network appliances for data centers. These suppliers, says 6WIND, are under intense pressure not only to deliver new cloud-optimized solutions with the best possible cost/performance but also to accelerate their development schedules and be early to market in new product categories. Building on the success of its Mobile Edition software, which already is deployed in two-thirds of LTE networks worldwide, 6WIND has developed the Cloud Edition to apply its unique technology to address critical performance and scalability challenges faced by cloud infrastructure providers. The 6WINDGate Cloud Edition product includes an integrated suite of optimized networking protocols matched to the specific requirements of network appliances. These include protocol termination, QoS, routing, switching, security, tunneling and VPN functions. Support for industry-standard hypervisors also is included.
“There's more to being a geek than most people think when they hear the word”, says O'Reilly Media—which is why the publishing company sees no sign of irony in the title of its new book Fitness for Geeks: Real Science, Great Nutrition, and Good Health by author Bruce W. Perry. The book is a treatise on the science behind one's health and exercise routine, which O'Reilly says will appeal to a broad audience of scientists, programmers and people with inquisitive minds who want to experiment with health the way they tinker with technology. By applying the same technical approach they use to debug software or hack hardware, readers will learn both what to do and why it works. Whether they have an established exercise routine and want to dig deeper to realize the physiology behind it, or if they're just looking for a way to get away from the computer to exercise in a manner that speaks to them, this book helps readers discover a new method for building and maintaining fitness and a healthy lifestyle.
Michael J. Hammel is one of the ur-names associated with the GIMP graphic design and photo manipulation application. Back in the 1990s, the producers of Linux Journal published the first edition of Hammel's book The Artist's Guide to GIMP, which No Starch Press recently released in a fully updated 2nd edition. The new edition, which carries the subtitle “Creative Techniques for Photographers, Artists, and Designers”, illustrates how to put the GIMP's powerful tools to work to produce professional-looking advertisements, apply impressive photographic effects, and design cool logos and text effects. Hammel demystifies the notoriously challenging elements of the GIMP not with a boring list of menu paths and options but with step-by-step tutorials that help to accomplish important tasks. After a crash course in GIMP's core tools like brushes, patterns, selections, layers, modes and masks, the reader will learn photographic and Web-design techniques, as well as type and advertising effects. Readers of all levels will be inspired by the art that they can create.
The new PowerBroker Servers Enterprise solution from BeyondTrust was created to confront the challenges related to managing Linux and UNIX user accounts in heterogeneous networks. BeyondTrust describes PowerBroker as “a cost-effective approach to allow organizations to seamlessly manage privileged access on Linux and UNIX systems across dynamic physical, virtual and cloud environments through Microsoft Active Directory”. The result is a reduction in costs, complexity and susceptibility to security breaches, especially inside jobs. PowerBroker provides an intuitive GUI to implement privileged access policy and the ability to log, monitor and report on all user access and activities. This approach empowers IT organizations with the ability to delegate root tasks and authorization on Linux, UNIX and Mac OS X platforms without ever disclosing the highly sensitive root password. Furthermore, businesses of every size and industry are better able to satisfy critical internal and external compliance requirements and regulations, including SOX, HIPAA, GLBA, PCI DSS and FISMA.
As the world moves to 10GbE and 40GbE, and the number of packets that need to be analyzed in data centers and telecom reach tens of millions per second, the need for time stamping with nanosecond-level precision is growing. Enter Napatech's new Time Synchronization Endpoint (NTTSE), a new time synchronization endpoint unit supporting the IEEE1588 PTP time synchronization protocol. NTTSE can be installed as an IEEE1588 PTP slave, allowing Napatech customers to synchronize all appliances in their data center using Napatech intelligent network adapters to an IEEE1588 PTP master. NTTSE is suitable for applications in which high-precision time stamping of captured packets is required, such as latency monitoring for financial networks, telecom protocol analysis or Ethernet network performance monitoring.
Three disparate companies—Fritz Technologies, LynuxWorks and TransLattice—joined forces to create the new S.E.C.U.R.E. Virtual Computing Platform to meet the exacting requirements of sensitive cloud deployments in government and commercial data centers. The companies posit that S.E.C.U.R.E., short for Secure, Enterprise, Cross-Domain, Unified, Resilient Environment, “creates the ideal environment for situations requiring secure hosting of applications, geographic redundancy of applications and data, and secure cross-domain transfer of information.” At S.E.C.U.R.E.'s core is Fritz Technologies' secure server-based separation kernel (SepKer), which was created working with the LynxSecure 4.0 separation kernel from LynuxWorks. SepKer virtualization is complemented by TransLattice Application Platform (TAP), a “lattice” application and data distribution solution that adds resiliency and efficiency. TAP fully distributes both the application and its data across multiple VMs and system platforms within a secure domain, ensuring nonstop operations, even in the case of the loss of one or more components of the computing lattice.
www.translattice.com, www.lynuxworks.com and www.fritztechnologies.com
