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The poor get poorer and the rich get richer with Apple’s iPad-based textbooks

Apple’s iBooks2’s reinvented textbooks really are something. They’re gorgeous, they’re fast, they’re real-time interactive with up to date information and they’ll only cost $14.99 or less. But, to use them, you’ll need an iPad–minimum list price: $499.

Can you afford that for your kids? Can your school board? I could, but I’ve been lucky enough to do well in my career and I only have the one daughter. There’s certainly no way that any county I’ve ever lived in during my life in West Virginia, Maryland, or North Carolina could afford to give every student from K to 12 an iPad. They’re lucky when they can provide any kind of computer seat for each kid.

That’s why there have been programs like the so-called $100 laptop: the OLPC (One Laptop per Child). The OLPC project aimed to put first low priced notebooks, the XO-1.5 and now tablets, the OLPC XO Tablet, into the hands of kids who don’t go to private schools.

These XO Tablet is powered by a 1GHz Marvell Armada PXA618 processor, and have a mere 512MBs of RAM. It can run a minimized version of Red Hat’s Fedora Linux with the simplified Sugar interface on top of that and it can also run Android. Price: $100.

Compared to an iPad, the XO Tablet is junk. But, they’re also much more affordable and isn’t getting information into the hands of students what a textbooks are all about? Wouldn’t it be great if you could use Apple’s iBook textbooks on an OLPC? Or, for that matter, any of the other low-priced Android tablets or tablet/e-book readers like the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet or Amazon Kindle Flame? Don’t hold your breath.

Apple seems to have no interest in bringing iBooks to Windows PCs, Linux computers, Android tablets or, for that matter, even its own MacBook Air. Low-end Android tablets? Give me a break!

What’s that you say? Why can’t you just create an ePub version of your iBook textbook and sell it to whomever? Well, first, iBooks Author can create books in iBook format, PDF and text. The iBook format appears to be a variation of the popular and open EPUB format. Closer examination of the format reveals, though, that it appears to be a proprietary fork of EPUB.

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Numecent Launches Application Jukebox 8.5 for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization

Application Virtualization and Streaming solution certified for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops 3.0

Numecent announced today availability of Application Jukebox for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and support for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 in line with the availability of the platform today.

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops combined with Numecent Application Jukebox delivers a flexible and comprehensive application delivery platform for your virtualized desktop infrastructure. Whether you are considering a migration to a cloud computing model or looking at a traditional hosted desktop solution, Application Jukebox can deploy your applications to the users who need them, when they need them.

“Using Jukebox technology, you can convert traditional Windows software to be delivered to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization-hosted desktops,” said NavinThadani, senior director, Virtualization Business at Red Hat. “”Combining Jukebox technology with the performance, scalability and cost benefits of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0, customers have a compelling combined solution.”

Application Jukebox Server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux can translate to a lower TCO by offering better performance and a consistent backend OS. Application Jukebox saves virtualization resources by reducing the size of desktop images since applications do not need to be included, and also by reducing the number of desktop images since different images no longer need for separating conflicting applications. Powerful license compliance and management keep application costs down and under control.

“Application deployment is the last mile of desktop delivery, virtual or not,” said Dr. Arthur S. Hitomi, Chief Technology Officer and Founder of Numecent. “With Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops, hosted virtual desktops have never been more scalable, automated and native.”

To download a free, fully supported 60-day trial of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0, visit www.redhat.com/rhev3 .

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Jaspersoft’s Java Reporting Engine Integrated with Cloud Foundry, Red Hat Virt

Open-source business intelligence (BI) vendor Jaspersoft recently made its popular Java reporting engine, JasperReports Server, available in the products of two fierce cloud competitors: VMware’s relatively young Cloud Foundry platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering, and the latest version of Red Hat’s Enterprise Virtualization.

The San Francisco-based Jaspersoft makes one of the most widely used set of open source BI tools. The company claims nearly 11 million downloads worldwide of its Java-based software, and 13,000 commercial customers in 100 countries.

The Red Hat integration was announced this week (Jan 18), along with the much anticipated general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 (RHEV3). Red Hat has made the JasperReports Server a core component of the new version of its virtualization platform. The embedded BI adds the ability to produce interactive reports, dashboards, and ad hoc reporting and analysis to the platform’s kernel-based hypervisor and related server and desktop virtualization management capabilities.

RHEV is billed by the company as an open-source, enterprise-ready, and complete virtualization management solution. Version 3.0 updates the KVM hypervisor at the core of the Red Hat offering, from version 5.7 to version 6.2. And it now runs on Linux as well as Windows. It also adds a new self-service portal for provisioning VMs, access via a RESTful API, the ability to store data locally on client machines and, via integration with the company’s private cloud management product CloudForms, a limited ability to manage hypervisors from other vendors.

VMware announced the availability of JasperReports Server in its Cloud Foundry package last week. The open source Java reporting tool is accessed via the Cloud Foundry command line tool, and allows users of the PaaS to build reports querying the Cloud Foundry data services. Writing on the Cloud Foundry blog, Jaspersoft’s Matthew Dahlman described the integration as “a logical extension for the most widely used Business Intelligence solution to move into the PaaS world” via Cloud Foundry.

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The poor get poorer and the rich get richer with Apple’s iPad-based textbooks

Apple’s new iBooks textbooks will widen the digital gap between the educational haves and have-nots.

Apple’s iBooks2’s reinvented textbooks really are something. They’re gorgeous, they’re fast, they’re real-time interactive with up to date information and they’ll only cost $14.99 or less. But, to use them, you’ll need an iPad–minimum list price: $499.

Can you afford that for your kids? Can your school board? I could, but I’ve been lucky enough to do well in my career and I only have the one daughter. There’s certainly no way that any county I’ve ever lived in during my life in West Virginia, Maryland, or North Carolina could afford to give every student from K to 12 an iPad. They’re lucky when they can provide any kind of computer seat for each kid.

That’s why there have been programs like the so-called $100 laptop: the OLPC (One Laptop per Child). The OLPC project aimed to put first low priced notebooks, the XO-1.5 and now tablets, the OLPC XO Tablet, into the hands of kids who don’t go to private schools.

These XO Tablet is powered by a 1GHz Marvell Armada PXA618 processor, and have a mere 512MBs of RAM. It can run a minimized version of Red Hat’s Fedora Linux with the simplified Sugar interface on top of that and it can also run Android. Price: $100.

Compared to an iPad, the XO Tablet is junk. But, they’re also much more affordable and isn’t getting information into the hands of students what a textbooks are all about? Wouldn’t it be great if you could use Apple’s iBook textbooks on an OLPC? Or, for that matter, any of the other low-priced Android tablets or tablet/e-book readers like the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet or Amazon Kindle Flame? Don’t hold your breath.

Apple seems to have no interest in bringing iBooks to Windows PCs, Linux computers, Android tablets or, for that matter, even its own MacBook Air. Low-end Android tablets? Give me a break!

What’s that you say? Why can’t you just create an ePub version of your iBook textbook and sell it to whomever? Well, first, iBooks Author can create books in iBook format, PDF and text. The iBook format appears to be a variation of the popular and open EPUB format. In theory, that would let you export an iBook textbook to any platform. Well, that’s the theory, but Apple’s author end-user license agreement (EULA) seems to forbid you to sell any formatted book created with iBook Author except through Apple. In other words, Apple iBooks are a closed shop for publishers and author as well as for would-be users.

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IGEL Supports Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0IGEL customers now able to leverage IGEL’s support of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 to deploy distributed high-performance, scalable and secure virtual desktop solutions.

Cincinnati, OH, January 21, 2012 –(PR.com)– IGEL Technology, the world’s leading provider of Linux-based thin clients, announced today its support of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 that will become available this week. IGEL is among the first manufacturers to support Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0, and IGEL Universal Desktop thin clients running IGEL Linux are among the first devices to support Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0.

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 allows virtualized Windows or Linux desktops to be provisioned in a secure and economical manner and accessed via the high-performance SPICE protocol from different enterprise locations, leading to manageability benefits for large-scale deployments. The powerful remote-display protocol, SPICE, used in Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization has been available in IGEL thin client hardware and software for some time. With Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization support, IGEL’s customers can benefit from the scalability and performance of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization to deploy large-scale VDI systems with higher densities, simplified management, improved costs and a superior end-user experience.

Focused on continuously improving its customers’ experience, IGEL has also adapted its own in-house-developed appliance mode for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops. This optional setting speeds up the log-on process and minimizes user interaction by bypassing the local thin client user interface. Only a few seconds after the IGEL thin client has been switched on, the log-on screen for the virtual desktop is displayed. When the appliance mode is disabled, IGEL thin clients also allow parallel access to other centralized IT infrastructures such as IBM mainframes, Windows Remote Desktop Services or other cloud services.

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