You can now customise your own Raspberry Pi hardware thanks to an agreement signed by the company with its long time partner, Element14.
Various options are available for the bespoke service which will be initially targeted at hardware partners with a long term plan to potentially get individual orders shipped.
Element14 acknowledged that you would need to order at least 3000 units to benefit from the service and from its consultancy service.
More than seven million Rasperry Pi units have been sold to date according to Eben Upton, the CEO of Raspberry pi Trading with three million units sold in 2015 alone.
Initially geared towards the education sector, the Pi's popularity for industrial applications has been growing massively with around a third of orders (1m units) placed by businesses.
Customising your Pi is not that straightforward though as it requires some technical knowledge; Upton mentioned that customers will probably have a prototype or a schematic of what they want.
Because of the custom nature of the service, he was not able to provide an example of how much a customised board would cost or how long it would take to be delivered.
Customers won't be able to tinker with the DRAM routing, change the GPU and related software or the power supply setting. "Everything else," as Upton put it, is "up for grabs".
He also suggested that media players would probably be the most likely to benefit from the service as the Broadcom system-on-chip that powers the Pi is particularly adept at handling video content.
Raspberry Pi hardware will however still remain proprietary with part of the revenue generated from sales of the product line used to prop up the (open source) software.
Element14 confirmed that it will aggregate popular customisation requests with the reference designs shared to the community and potentially mass produced if there's enough demand.
MSI has announced the official launch of its X-Slim notebooks, with the 13 inch X350 and 360s, the 14 inch X420 and the 15.6 inch X620 all being shown off in Las Vegas.
All the X-Slim notebooks feature the Intel CULV platform with Intel Core 2 Duo processors, and the flagship X620 has already won a German design award apparently.
The new slimline 15.6 inch MSI X620 has a 16:9 cinematic LED backlit display, built in ATi Mobility Radeon HD Discrete graphics card and a 3D Boost button which MSI claims makes it great for gaming.
Apparently the X620 has an impressive 10 hour battery life, 2-spindle optical drive and a total weight of only 2.4kg.
The X420 offers consumers a 14 inch HD widescreen display in 16:9 format, with HDMI and Bluetooth, weighs in at just 1.5 kg including battery, and is less than one inch thick.
The X420 comes in what MSI describes as a 'gorgeous cappuccino brown colour' and has ATi Mobility Radeon HD 5430 discrete graphics card with 1GB DDR3 VRAM, Intel's Core 2 Duo processor, 3D Boost and a battery life of 'up to 9 hours'.
"The X420's star feature is its full support for two of the latest mobile broadband technologies, 3.5G and WiMAX. These technologies allow for anytime, anywhere enjoyment of wireless connectivity and mobile operating efficiency," adds MSI's release.
"These similary to the X420 and X620 are slim and stunning in design and offer an array of excellent features," says MSI, without giving full details.
Apple and Samsung are back at it in their "it's really not done yet?" patent trial, and while this go-round focuses mostly on monetary damages, Cupertino had its bid to ban certain Sammy devices re-ignited by an appeals court today.
The ruling was a unanimous decree that Judge Lucy Koh made errors in denying Apple's post-verdict request for a permanent injunction on 26 Samsung phones and tablets.
While the appeals court stuck with Koh's denial from a design patent perspective, it decided another look is needed when it comes to a different set of patents.
"[W]ith respect to Apple's utility patents, we conclude that the district court abused its discretion in its analysis and consequently remand for further proceedings," the court's ruling read.
In layman's speak, the court wants Koh to look more closely at evidence that Apple was "irreparably" harmed when Samsung decided to play copy cat.
Apple argued that Samsung copied its "revolutionary" iPhone, a device that took thousands of man hours and billions to develop. While Apple was awarded many millions in damages, it also referred to the case that captivated the tech world last year as a "classic" example of an instance when patent infringement should lead to a product ban.
For its part, Samsung has said that the monetary damages it's been ordered to pay do a dandy job of covering any IP infringements. The South Korean firm has been ordered to pay Apple $550 million (about £341m/AU$585m), but it's currently trying to cut that figure down.
The 26 devices in question are predominantly older products and don't include flagships like the Galaxy S4 or Galaxy Note 3. If you were in the market for a Samsung Droid Charge, for example, now may be the time to buy one in case Koh ends up banning the handset after re-examination.
However, Apple also sought a ban on any product that makes use of the infringing utility patents even if it wasn't listed, meaning newer devices could be subject to an import and sales injunction.
Today's ruling may also give Apple leverage in a separate patent case with Samsung, set to start next year.
We've asked Apple and Samsung for comment on the federal appeals court ruling, and a Samsung spokesperson sent us this statement:
"We are pleased that the Federal Circuit affirmed the denial of a permanent injunction over Apple's design patents and trade dress. While the Federal Circuit also ordered the district court to reconsider a portion of its rationale concerning only Apple's utility patents, the remand concerns a very narrow scope of evidence presented by Apple. Therefore, we are confident that an injunction will be avoided."
You might think winning a government contract for your small IT consultancy is impossible. The truth is, the U.S. government is looking for small businesses to bid for government contracts. Susan Harkins offers six pointers on how your consultancy can be a successful government contractor.
Every year the U.S. federal government contracts with businesses to the tune of billions of dollars. Thanks to Obama's stimulus plan, there are more opportunities than ever. As I mentioned in last week's post "Why specializing may help IT consultants cash in," the stimulus plan earmarks about $20 billion for technology-related jobs.
You might think the stimulus money is out of your reach but the U.S. government is going to award a lot of that money to small companies and consultancies. If your consultancy qualifies as a small business, you've actually got a bit of an edge. Currently, the U.S. government is required to award their contracts of $3,000 to $100,000 to small businesses.
The downside to government contracting is all the red tape. Government contractors must jump through myriad hoops to satisfy wage and safety regulations, and sometimes the effort is too much for small companies with limited resources and staff.
If you decide to open the door to this opportunity, here are six tips on how to make your government consulting experience a success.
The bidding process isn't for the meek, and it might take months or even a couple of years to land your first contract. Being patient will serve you well.
You can't just bid on a contract; you must register with the federal government via its Central Contractor Registration process. Be sure to include all the (optional) codes for the appropriate product categories and to supply past performance references. A comprehensive registration makes it easier for government representatives to find you.
Registering probably isn't enough; you must be proactive by getting to know the people who can help you get a contract. The place to start is FedBizOpps.gov. This site puts vendors and government representatives together.
Your technical expertise, performance, and great bid might not be all you've got going for you. If you work in a Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) or you're a service-disabled veteran, your bid might receive special preference. Take advantage of these special considerations if you qualify.
Large businesses must work with a certain number of small business contractors, so sign up to be considered. You can learn who's looking for subcontractors in your area by searching the SUB-Net database. In other words, you sign up twice — once through the CCR process and again with large businesses looking to subcontract some of a large contract.
If you don't win a contract, ask the agency why; they will tell you what you did wrong or if someone just outbid you. In either case, you'll learn something valuable that you can put to use the next time.
The truth is, the process is laborious, tedious, and often seems to be more about disqualifying you than finding the best match. It's the nature of government contracting, but the money's out, there and someone's going to win those contracts. It might just be you.
Self-service business intelligence is about enabling non-expert users to make well-informed decisions by enriching the decision process with situational data, i.e., data that have a narrow focus on a specific business problem and typically, a short lifespan for a small group of users. Often, these data are not owned and controlled by the decision maker; their search, extraction, integration and storage for reuse or sharing should be accomplished by decision makers without any intervention by designers or programmers.