Jenny L Williams

CompTIA has launched a new community aimed at encouraging more women into IT careers after the number of women working in the sector continues to fall.

The Advancing Women in IT community is aimed at supporting women into and through IT careers and to inspire women to enter the sector as well as providing mentorship and networking opportunities.

CompTIA says, “The community is a vital information resource, provides mentorship and networking opportunities, develops member-driven initiatives and programs, is active in legislation involving women and careers, and is actively involved in pursing the overall objectives of the CompTIA – ECAP (education, certification, advocacy and philanthropy). Members of this group are women who are currently in or aspire to be in IT careers and men who support this mission.”

It’s hoped the community will help reverse the decline of women working in IT.

CompTIA’s Brian Sherman writes in a blog post, “Research from the National Center for Women & Information Technology found that female IT industry employment reached its high point in 1991 at just 36% of the workforce. By 2009, that number dropped to 25 percent, and that negative trend shows no signs of changing. The latest numbers show a significant disparity in the number of undergraduate computer science degrees going to women— just 18% in 2009—compared to men. That’s especially discouraging when women garnered 57% of all undergraduate degrees that year.

The latest numbers show a significant disparity in the number of undergraduate computer science degrees going to women— just 18% in 2009—compared to men

Chair of the new community will be Sandy Ashworth, global director of channel relations and warranty for Unisys Corp.

Jean Mork Bredenson, president of Service 800, will act as vice chair.

The first community members meeting will take place at the CompTIA annual members’ meeting in April.

To learn more, the firm are running a webinar (hate the word), titled ‘Insights from a leader and her path to success’ with Marci Meaux, vice presidents of Cisco Systems’ sales enablement project.

Apple’s big announcement last week was about its Mac-only iBook Author application.

The free app available from iTunes allows users to create eBooks using Apple’s editing tools and then sell them via the tech giant’s iBookstore.

Tackling the publishing industry is a bold move – and, considering the soaring sales of eReaders such as Amazon’s Kindle, Apple is set to make big money.

And that’s also the catch. The announcement has sparked controversy after criticism about its user agreement (End User Licensing Agreement, EULA) locking eBook sales to the Apple platform – and taking a 30% cut.

My view is that, considering the app is free, Apple take a cut by way of payment for using their platform to host your content. And Apple’s platform isn’t exactly shoddy. It’s world-renowned for its apps – and perhaps in the future it will be for its eBooks too.

Companies will always attempt to force competitors out of the market. And no platform is perfect. For instance, Google’s eBookstore doesn’t currently support Amazon’s Kindle as an eReader device (although it plans to in the future).

Overall, being able to create eBooks for iOS devices will save expensive development bills – and maybe open up the market for similar offerings.

See the Storify round-up below for the different viewpoints emerging over the past few days:

If you’re a fan of film and cinema, you’ll no doubt either have – or wish you had – a decent home set-up that allows you to get the most out of your movies. But with technology developing so fast in the large in cinemas, how close are we really to a stay-at-home solution that mirrors the theatrical experience?

Size does matter

While it may not compare to standard cinema screens or the gargantuan 18.8 metre by 26.3 metre IMAX in Manchester, Samsung is the current record holder for the largest commercially available 3D-capable TV on the market. Measuring 75 inches from corner to corner, this imposing black monolith would need a pretty big living room to house it. But this isn’t all the Samsung D9500 has to offer, with an internal software system that renders 2D broadcasts into that all important third dimension.

A resolution solution

As theatres across the UK upgrade their projection technology with the likes of Sony’s incredible 4K system, which offers the highest picture quality possible, 1920 x 1080 pixel  high definition televisions have almost become the standard for most homes.

In May 2011, however, Sharp unveiled its latest ‘Ultra High Definition’ panel – capable of a screen resolution of 7680 x 4320 pixels. While it isn’t expected to hit the mainstream market until 2022, it certainly seems like soon ‘full HD’ won’t quite mean the same thing.

Sounding out the competition

There are a whole raft of Dolby Digital, 5.1, 7.1, SDDS and DTS-enabled sound systems you can have in your home nowadays and it really only comes down to how much you are willing to spend. Of course, a home cinema kit that rivals something you would hear in the cinema isn’t going to come cheap, but it’s important to remember that, unless you are a Premiership footballer, you’re probably not going to have the same kind of space to fill.

At the end of the day, audio quality can be very subjective… so there’s no reason why you can’t have theatre quality in the comfort of your own home.

Universal release dates

One of the biggest obstacles there seems to be around having a home experience that rivals what is available in theatres is content. It seems like Hollywood will never truly be able to have a universal format release for its films, as the knock-on effect for cinemas large and small could be fatal. Just last year, film news websites were reporting that certain chains were threatening to boycott Disney’s Alice in Wonderland after its DVD and Blu-ray release was brought forward.

There’s been talk of universal releases that allow people to pay a premium to download films the day they come out in cinemas, but this has yet to materialise. Fingers crossed for this one – but don’t hold your breath.

I’d like to think that if I wanted to go to a professional technology conference dressed as a showgirl, I could.

But here’s the thing: no-one else would be dressed up. It’d be like going to work in a wedding dress; it’d only be so long before that nice lady in human resources suggested I see the ’special mentor’ once a week.

So, scantily-clad ‘booth babes’ at a gadget show in Las Vegas is an equal measure of craziness. And writers, editors and tech engineers have been typing fury over all the mandatory female models hired to sex-up gadgets at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2012 show.

CEO of CES, Gary Shapiro, told the BBC, “Sometimes it’s a little old school, but it does work,” saying people like to gravitate towards “things” that are pretty. He added that the BBC’s efforts to get a story about CES’s sexism was “cute but irrelevant”.

One of the ‘booth babes’ said: “There are women who are into it [ie. technology] but I don’t know any that would choose tech world over shopping or cooking or taking care of kids.”

I’m going to bypass the dark-cave comment. I hope either the BBC spent an entire day tracking down someone to give them the quote or CES paid her a good whack to say it.

But it’s not just across the pond that scantily-clad women are paraded around at tech shows. I’ve experienced much worse in the UK at four o’clock in the afternoon, in the basement of a London hotel for a datacentre conference. And trust me, there’s not much that can be done to sex-up datacentres.

It wasn’t the models that were the problem for me. It was like they were simply dressed up for a hen party and out for the night to have fun. It was the fact they’d been hired, essentially, as titillating eye-candy that was so uncomfortable. The male attendees seemed embarrassed they were being unwillingly targeted in such a way. And the female attendees felt equally so.

Months after the event, a woman working in tech told me how embarrassed she was and how uncomfortable it made her, saying she wouldn’t be going to the conference again. This is the damage done. In an industry that desperately needs women to enter its workforce, it’s not doing a good job at making women welcome.

The real joke’s on the tech industry. Hopelessly trying to sell, sell, sell and alienating half their audience (yes, women buy gadgets and tech too). Get your marketing right and you might just sell a bit more and make a bit more progress.

I mean, the face of Iceland isn’t Kate Middleton, it’s Stacey Soloman. And Benedict Cumberbatch isn’t in L’Oreal’s TV ad trying to sell hairspray to women – Cheryl Cole is. Otherwise, it’s just not appropriate.

Booth babes shouldn’t be banned. A bit like enforcing a quota for women in company boardrooms would be on the wrong side of positive discrimination, forcing CES to stop hiring in booth babes isn’t needed.

According to Lady Geek and Forrester research, four out of 10 high-end gadgets are bought by women. Women already have a grip on the tech world, which is almost certainly going to increase as more and more females enter into technology industry careers.

The tech companies that fail to wake up from the 1970s will soon be as out-dated as its old-school gender perspectives and have no customers to sell to.

Lytro has introduced its new light field camera, which lets you focus a picture AFTER it’s taken.

Not only is it pocket-sized and rectangular, it has an eight-times optical zoom and is available in three different colours.

The reason this little light field camera has received so much hype is the way it captures light rays. Lytro says the light field camera captures the rays of light using a light field sensor, which collects colour, intensity and the direction of the light rays.

The camera also contains a light field engine to allow users to refocus pictures directly on the camera – after the picture has been taken.

The best part is the lack of need for a flash to take pics in low-light environments – no more unflattering dazzle shots.

The Lytro camera offers two storage models of 8GB and 16GB, starting at $399 and shipping in 2012.

The desktop application will only be available for Apple Mac operating system until a Windows version is released at a later date.

Spotify has released a preview of its mobile application for Blackberry devices.

Apple iPhones and iPods, Nokia and Windows Phone devices have had Spotify apps for a while. I’ve been using the iPod app and it’s brilliant –really makes Spotify worth paying for. (You need a premium subscription in order to stream songs over mobile apps).

Features include offline playlists so you can listen to music without mobile connection (and without using up data allowance). You can create and sync playlists.

From using the Apple app, I find the menu within playlists quite clunky. It’s difficult to search artists so you end up endlessly scrolling through tracks. The other annoyance is having to sync playlist tracks over a wi-fi connection every now or then. It’s often difficult to get the app to stay open to sync and so often leaves me without music for my commute.

So, it will be interesting to see how the Blackberry app compares.

The app has been tested on 9780 Bold, 9700 Bold, 9300 Curve, 9000 Bold and 8520 Curve devices.

CDMA-network phones and the Torch 9800 are currently not compatible with the app.

The app is only available as a preview for now.  A fully-tested version will be released to Blackberry App World in the near future.

Click here using your Blackberry web browser to start the installation process.

Spotify is also building a preview version of its mobile app for Linux. Spotify said there are still issues decoding local music on the Linux platform so there isn’t any support for local files. The version is also only available to Spotify Premium and Unlimited customers until they find a way of displaying ads.

Google and Samsung have unveiled the new Galaxy Nexus smartphone, the first phone to run Google’s Android 4.0 operating system (OS), code-named Ice Cream Sandwich.

The Galaxy Nexus features a HD Super AMOLED display, five megapixel camera, 1.2GHz dual-core processor and NFC (near-field communications) support.

Ice Cream Sandwich has a re-designed UI with multi-tasking notifications and full web browsing. The new Nexus will also feature software navigation buttons.

Google has integrated Android 4.0 with Google+ and extended its cloud services.

“Galaxy Nexus is connected to the cloud, keeping your email, contacts, and all other data synced across your devices. Galaxy Nexus gives users access to more than 300,000 apps and games available from the Android market and you can also buy and read books,” said Samsung in a statement.

The Galaxy Nexus will be available in the UK in November 2011. Google said it will be bringing more services to the UK over the coming months.

Galaxy Nexus gives users access to more than 300,000 apps and games available from the Android market and you can also buy and read books