• Gain an understanding of business information systems with a focus on system development
• Understand the phases of system development life cycles
• Understand the differences between traditional system development methodologies like Waterfall and new agile object-oriented methods
• Understand and perform basic techniques of data modeling using entity relationship diagrams and the Unified Modeling Language (UML)
• Create process models to document the processing requirements of a business system using UML
• Create UML object models
• Understand computer-aided systems engineering (CASE) technology usage for information and process modeling.
• Understand "Best Practices" of client interface design
• Understand the genesis of project management and its importance to improving the success of information technology projects
• Understand the tools and techniques of project management such as:
  • Project selection methods
  • Work breakdown structures
  • Network diagrams, critical path analysis, and critical chain scheduling
  • Time and Cost estimates
  • Earned value management
  • Motivation theory and team building

Video-chip producer Novafora has agreed to buy once high-flying chip maker Transmeta for $255.6 million in cash, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Novafora is in stealth mode and won’t make its first product until next year, according to The San Jose Mercury News.

Transmeta was known a decade ago for its Crusoe chip that was considered a rival to Intel’s Pentium, but its products were not widely adopted. More recently it has been licensing its intellectual property for chips requiring extremely little power to former rivals. Transmeta also announced Monday it has entered a non-exclusive patent license agreement with AMD.

Novafora CEO Zaki Rakib told the Mercury News the company wants that low-power chip technology for its digital video chips.

SPONSOR: IBM Reduce Data Storage by 80% Green Business is Good Business

EMC Targets Consumers with Spinoff

EMC is spinning off two of its recent acquisitions into a separate company focused on helping consumers store and protect their personal digital information, whether that be family photos, financial records or whatever.
The Boston Herald reports it will be called Decho, for digital echo. It will combine the personal backup product of Mozy, acquired in

T-Mobile is gradually putting veils off from its secret line of products for holiday season. The latest to come from T-Mobile’s camp is Samsung Gravity. As was reported earlier, Samsung Gravity has arrived on T-Mobile on Nov17.

The handset has a slider form factor and is a perfect solution for text messaging.

Samsung Gravity is now available at T-Mobile retail locations in aqua and white or lime and grey color schemes. Loaded with multiple features, Gravity includes support for MMS, email support, video messaging and built in instant messaging. Among instant messaging clients, it sports AOL instant messenger, ICQ, Windows Live and Yahoo! Messenger.
Also included in the handset is Stereo Bluetooth, a music player with supports for MP3, AAC and AAC+ audio files, microSD card slot for memory expansion up to 4GB and 1.3-megapixel camera with 4x zoom and video capture.

Samsung Gravity is available at T-Mobile retail stores for $49.99 with a two-year service agreement.

Rumor has it over at TechCrunch that Apple is working on some type of search engine.

If you think about it, the idea is not so far-fetched: Apple’s Safari browser has 6-7% market share and currently uses Google exclusively as the search engine for both the standard and mobile versions on the iPhone and iPod. Through the maligned MobileMe, Apple has a suite of personal productivity tools that bring more traffic to them on a daily basis, which means there is a lot of searching going on without a lot of monetization on Apple’s part, according to Michael Arrington.

Plus, there’s the Android factor.

Google’s Android-y competition to the iPhone is not to be ignored. Arrington notes that Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who sits on Apple’s board of directors, usually sits out of discussions involving Apple’s mobile strategy.

Big hole in the theory, though: if, in fact, Apple were building a search engine, where are all the search expert and engineer hires? No one’s losing any bodies to Apple…yet.

Plus, Apple is on the receiving end of considerable fees from Google for search marketing money earned from Safari — and without an advertising business, too, Google would still be relied upon.

So it looks like there’s no full-scale search momentum going on at Apple — but for a company built around innovation and UI (and marketing), perhaps this is working toward a new interface built around search.

What do you think?

Fastest all-around desktop we've tested to date; first PC to hit 60 frames per second on our high-resolution Crysis test; pristine build quality.

The bad: Costs roughly the same as a year of undergraduate in-state tuition.

The bottom line: Falcon Northwest's latest Mach V provides a model for the coming trends in high-end computing. From the latest Intel CPU, to solid-state storage, to copious amounts of memory, there's lot to admire about his PC. You will also have to pay for it, which unfortunately will thwart all but the most well-off gamers and enthusiasts.

The slim tower PC trend makes perfect sense to us. For those who only need a basic desktop, why bother with a clunky midtower design?

Each of these trimmed-down PCs will provide all you need to get online, create documents, and play around with your digital media. And all but two of these units (bad show, Slimline and Inspiron) invite you to bring them into your living room and connect directly to your television via an HDMI output.

None of these sub-$1,000 desktops is a multimedia powerhouse, so forget about watching HD video, 3D gaming, or intensive editing. But for the basics, in a small, easy-to-like package, these slim tower desktops have a lot of appeal.

Samsung’s latest smartphone, the Epix, is now available from AT&T on an official basis. This new smartphone will feature a touch screen and most interestingly, it comes with a built-in optical mouse technology. Since touch screen technology is all the rage these days, Samsung has also taken the same route with the Epix, allowing for a much more intuitive navigation experience. This is also the first smartphone in the US that uses a built-in optical mouse that can be switched to a 4-way navigation key for a more traditional navigation experience, just in case you aren’t too interested in touch screen navigation. You have a choice of using either your finger or the built-in stylus for a more accurate selection.

The Samsung Epix is equipped with a cool silver finish and is powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system. Features include the following :-

• Wi-Fi connectivity
• Integrated aGPS that works with AT&T Navigator, AT&T Navigator Global Edition and other GPS-based applications
• AT&T Video Share support
• Global roaming for staying connected everywhere
• 2 megapixel camera
• Full QWERTY keyboard
• Stereo Bluetooth connectivity
• 4.6″ x 2.4″ x 0.5″
• 2.5″ TFT color display

With Windows Mobile 6.1, the Epix brings a powerful personal computer experience to a compact device. Microsoft Office Outlook Mobile keeps people connected with synchronization of schedules and contacts, Internet Explorer Mobile provides improved quick and easy Web browsing and Office Mobile enhances productivity with the ability to manage Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. Additional Windows Mobile 6.1 features on the Epix include threaded SMS messaging, Internet connection sharing, mobile banking and Voice Command.

Intel is not only content to offer you computer processors and integrated graphics as well, but they are now into the flash memory game with their latest offering, the Intel X-25E Extreme SATA Solid-State Drive. This is their top of the line solid state drive which will target server, workstation and storage systems. Since solid state drives do not have moving parts unlike mechanical drives, you will find it to be able to contain your data in a much more secure manner thanks to the 50nm single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory technology used. Any computer system that is equipped with this drive will not suffer from the performance bottlenecks associated with conventional drives. SSDs are also great at reducing the total infrastructure, cooling and energy costs, in order to lower the total cost of ownership for enterprise applications by a projected 500% figure.

According to Intel, their new X25-E SATA SSD is able to increase server, workstation and storage system performance by 100 times when compared to regular hard disk drives as measured in Input/Output Per Second (IOPS). It seems as though a storage model that utilizes SSDs will see a reduction in energy costs by up to five times, which is always plus point these days considering soaring energy prices that don’t seem to drop.

The product was designed for intense computing workloads which benefit primarily from high random read and write performance, as measured in IOPS. Key technical performance specifications of the 32 GB Intel X-25E SATA SSD include 35,000 IOPS (4KB Random Read), 3,300 IOPS (4KB Random Write) and 75 microsecond read latency. This performance, combined with low active power of 2.4 watts, delivers up to 14,000 IOPS per watt for optimal performance/power output. The product also achieves up to 250 megabytes per second (MB/s) sequential read speeds and up to 170 MB/s sequential write speeds, all in a compact 2.5-inch form factor. Intel achieves this breakthrough performance through innovations such as 10-channel NAND architecture with Native Command Queuing, proprietary controller and firmware efficient in advanced wear-leveling and low write amplification. The 32GB X25-E is capable of writing up to 4 petabytes (PB) of data over three-year period (3.7 TB/day), and double that for the 64GB version - delivering outstanding data reliability.

Intel will be offering the 32GB capacity drive for $695, with the 64GB version expected to be available in Q1 2009.

Any gamer worth his or her salt will definitely have had experienced the power of an NVIDIA card in their lifetime, and most of them will have nothing but praises for it. The company, after all, is the No. 1 video card manufacturer in the world and have remained at the top of their game for quite some time already. Their engineering team was recently given a challenge - to come up with a desktop GPU which is able to merge full system I/O and discrete-level performance in half the size of previous integrated graphics solutions. Needless to say, that team has gone above and beyond the call of duty to roll out a 16-core CUDA-capable graphics architecture which allows mainstream PC users to play the latest computer games despite being on a tight budget. Oh yeah, the fact that silky smooth high-definition Blu-ray video playback is also possible makes the new 9 Series mGPUs an almost certain winner.

Features found on the new NVIDIA GeForce 9-Series motherboard GPUs include :-

• 16-cores for processing DirectX 10 games and CUDA-accelerated applications
• High-quality video playback with NVIDIA PureVideo(R) HD technology, which offloads 100% of all video processing from the CPU to the GPU
• Support for advanced audio and video connectivity, including uncompressed LPCM 7.1 audio, dual-link DVI, and HDMI
• Support for NVIDIA Hybrid SLI Technology, which boosts performance up to 70% above the motherboard GPU
• Single-chip design with much smaller footprint than competing chipsets makes it ideal for small form factor and ultra-slim media center PCs

You will be able to find motherboards from ASUS, ECS, EVGA, Foxconn, Galaxy, Gigabyte, J&W, MSI, Onda, Zotac, and XFX that support the new GeForce 9-Series GPUs from this month onwards. Prices vary from brand to brand, but hey - at least these beat those piss poor integrated graphic chips from Intel by more than a long mile.

At the DEMO conference in Palm Desert, California yesterday, the audience of 500-some technology veterans watched in rapt fascination as a company called Livescribe introduced its brilliant invention: a pen.

Well, not just a pen—a computer that looks like a pen. The Livescribe Pulse Smartpen does have ink and it makes lines on paper, but it also records a digital file of whatever you write—both text and sketches—by using an infrared camera to read a code of tiny, nearly invisible gray dots on the paper. (It can also read bar codes.) To make it work, you need to either buy a recycled paper notepad from Livescribe, or roll your own by downloading a graphics file that prints on most laser printers. (This part of the technology isn’t from Livescribe, but from a company called Anoto that also licenses it to other companies like LeapFrog, where Livescribe’s CEO used to work.)

It also records the sound around you and links it to what you were writing at the time. Tap the pen to that text again, it reads the little dots, and you get an audio playback from that time. As a journalist with lousy handwriting and no shorthand skills, I could use that. Just write an outline of what someone is saying in an interview, and tap on the notes to hear again what the person said.

That in itself would be very cool, but the Livescribe folks have bigger plans that drift into the range of world domination. (The CEO Jim Marggraff told me that he plans to sell one billion of the $150 pens in the coming 10 years.) Here are some other things the pen can do:

Create 3D audio files
The Livescribe headphones include microphones, so you can record the sound exactly how and when it hits each of your ears. Play it back through any headphones, and you get the same effect as if you were hearing sounds around you—like someone laughing of to your right or mosquito buzzing on the left. (Livescibe originally added that feature so you could “focus” on the voice of someone speaking on a recording from a noisy room.)

Create flash animations.
Whatever you write or draw can be captured as a flash movie. Play it back and you see the drawings take form on your screen—like those old Looney Tunes cartoons when Donald duck talks to the animator as he draws (or erases) the landscapes around him. Click on parts of the text in the animation and launch any linked items such as Web pages, audio files or videos.

Access commentary in a book
The pen works for writing as well as reading. As an example, Livescribe showed me a Bible, printed on the special paper, where you can tap on words to get footnote-like commentary or hear pronunciations of the bizarre Old Testament names.

Write an email
The pattern of dots on every sheet of paper is unique. (Livescribe says the Anoto system provides enough values to cover several continents without repeating a number.) So if you write on a specific piece of paper, the pen can use the dots not only to figure out what you wrote, but to figure out where you wrote it. Scratch a note on the back of someone’s business card, for example, hook the pen up to your computer, and the software sends an email of your note to the card owner. Scratch a rant out on the back page of a magazine and you can automatically send a letter to the editor.

Livescribe Pulse goes on sale in mid-March, starting at $150. Look for more about it on the paper pages of PopSci.