The New ThinkCentre Edge 62z is a Budget AIO PC from Lenovo

Budget All-in-one PCs. How often do you spot machines with both of those traits on the market? The answer’s obvious: not often. But Lenovo is here to break the ice once this time, offering the ThinkCentre Edge 62z.

The new AIO PC will be available at a (relatively) low cost of $549 or around Rs. 60,000. Instead of hardcore gamers, this system is targeted mainly towards offices and moderate users.

The specs

The machine will come with an 18.5 inch LCD display. That is said to be 65 percent less space-consuming than a 20 inch monitor.

Inside the machine beats an Intel Core i3 processor, but you can go all the way up to a crème de la crème Core i7 one. The amount of RAM you can get tops out at 8GB, and for the hard drive, 1TB is the limit.

The number of USB 2.0 ports (C’mon its a budget system after all) set is 6. A DVD burner is added in the mix too. Above the display, there’s a webcam. The ThinkCentre Edge 62z also comes with Integrated Intel HD Graphics.

An interesting thing to note here is that this thing comes with Windows 7. Its not the latest version but will be fine enough for a PC with no touchscreen. And a bit old hardware. The PC will be released in May for $549 or around Rs. 60,000 this year.

BlackBerry Reports Profits and Loads of Optimism

BlackBerry has finally announced its quarterly earnings after its name change. The new report comes with good news and hope of the arrival of better times.

To start off, BlackBerry said it earned profits of $94 million on $2.7 billion revenue, which may sound tiny compared to the 10 or even 11-digit figures of the industry leaders but is none-the-less a good start.

The no. of devices sold topped out at 6 million but out of those only around 1 million were BB10 products, namely the Z10. It is worth noting however that the Z10 has only just been launched on some crucial markets. Over 370,000 units of the PlayBook tablet were sold too.

Not everything is as rosy though. The company has said that its total no. of subscribers actually dropped, from 79 million to 76 million. A good bit of news however was that 55 percent of people coming to BlackBerry were coming from other platforms, while only the remaining ones were first time smartphone owners.

That surely is a good news as it indicates that the company has finally started to incur some pressure on the competition.

As it is turning out, the fight between Windows Phone and BlackBerry 10 will be the one to watch out. Both the companies, BlackBerry and Nokia (because WP is essentially about Nokia) have shown good, encouraging progress towards better times and will be ones fighting to get the third spot behind iOS and Android, or the spots above it in the long run, who knows.

Allied Bank to Get TPS IRIS Multi-Channel Enterprise Switch

TPS, a cards and payment solutions provider, has announced that Allied Bank Limited has decided to upgrade to TPS’ next generation multi-channel payment solution ‘IRIS’ to support its ambitious growth strategy.

Following a detailed switch selection process, where solutions for both in-house and outsourcing models were evaluated, Allied Bank has selected IRIS as its in-house payment switch because of IRIS parameterization, scalability, reliability and supporting cost-effective growth.

IRIS is a sophisticated payment application that offers one window solution for transaction processing, debit and prepaid card management, ATM controller, Transaction and ATM network Monitoring, Integrated Channel Management and ADC CRM.

Supported by IRIS advanced features, Allied bank can accelerate the execution of its far reaching strategy, including upgrading the network to support chip-cards, advance its mobile banking initiative, while providing value-added services to its accountholders. The bank will also benefit from a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), increased speed to market and facilitate in channel growth. Additionally ABL will use Instant Card Issuance capabilities, comprehensive Point of Sale (POS) and other payment products.

TPS has been associated with ABL since 2003 when it was selected by the bank to setup a transaction switch ‘Phoenix’ and other peripheral applications. In the span of 9 years, TPS technology has facilitated bank to scale and handle ATM network of 700+ ATMs and process the card life cycle of over a million debit cards.

To smoothly execute this upgrade project, TPS and Allied Bank has assigned a dedicated team consisting of highly motivated and trained senior personnel to manage this challenging and strategic project. All assigned resources will work as a closely-knit team with the aim to successfully deliver this project timely.

“At Allied bank we aim to offer innovative solutions and value added services to our customers. To meet this objective we plan to fully utilize IRIS scalable and modular architecture and features by rolling out new products and services, meeting customer’s requirements and expectations within shortest possible time. Our strategic partnership with TPS will contribute in our technology transformation and enhancing our service capability and to offer convenience and exclusive services to our customers,” said Mujahid Ali, Group Chief, Information Technology, Allied Bank Limited.

“It gives us immense pride to be a trusted partner of ABL, and be a part of ABL’s continuous retail payment growth initiative. We greatly value ABL’s confidence and trust in us and we are certain that the partnership of TPS and ABL will deliver long term benefits.” said Muhammad Sohail, CEO, TPS

Easypaisa and UBL Omni Termed as Global Leaders in Mobile Banking

Telenor’s Easypaisa and UBL Omni have been identified as a sprinters in a Global survey by the GSMA’s Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) programme.

The survey, titled Global Mobile Money Adoption Survey, analysed the state of the mobile money industry in 2012 and illustrates key findings from the programme’s Mobile Money Deployment Tracker, a database that monitors the number of live and planned mobile money services for the unbanked across the globe.

The annual survey was developed to quantify the state of the mobile money industry and to enable mobile money providers to benchmark their performance.

The findings from the 2012 Global Mobile Money Adoption Survey counted 30 million active mobile customers, 224 million transactions and USD 4.6 billion transacted on mobile money in June 2012.

While these numbers indicate increasing industry maturity, mobile money remains a two-tier landscape. There are just 14 fast- growing services or GSMA Mobile Money Sprinters while the rest are struggling to gain traction or young services still at a very early stage.

The findings of the survey which were carried out in June 2012 were released at the GSMA Global Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona last month.

Both Easypaisa and UBL Omni, mobile banking solutions from Pakistan, were identified as a “sprinter” because of their rapid growth, along with 12 other mobile money or branchless banking deployments around the world.

As of today, globally there are about 150 deployments with a total “registered” agent base of just over half a million.

Unlike most of mobile banking solution providers that are MNO, UBL omni is the only bank that was included in Sprinters’ list.

LG to Introduce Eye Recognition Feature in Optimus G Pro Smartphone

Smart Video, a new multimedia UX feature from LG will be unveiled for the first time in the Optimus G Pro.

Smart Video takes viewing videos on mobile devices to a whole new level of convenience with eye recognition that eliminates the need to manually control playback during the viewing experience.

Through the implementation of advanced eye recognition technology, Smart Video recognizes the position of the viewer’s eyes and automatically plays or stops the video without any manual input from the user. When the viewer’s eyes are no longer focused on the smartphone display, the front camera recognizes this and immediately pauses the video automatically. Once the user’s gaze returns to the smartphone, the video resumes playback from the point last viewed.

In addition to the Smart Video feature, Optimus G Pro will also be equipped with the world’s first Dual Camera function. The Dual Camera feature is an extension of the Dual Recording feature which debuted on the Optimus G Pro introduced in the Korean market last month. Dual Camera simultaneously captures photographs using both the front and back cameras for a picture-in-picture composition. Users can now be a part of the story, not just observers.

The Smart Video and Dual Camera features will be introduced as a part of the Value Pack upgrade which will be offered for the Optimus G Pro in the Korean market next month. These features will also be made available in other markets too.