Guglielmo Marconi born April 25, 1874 in Bologna son of wealthy Italian father and Irish mother.
Known to be very clever, Marconi was educated in Bologna in the lab of Augusto Righi, in Florence at the Istituto Cavallero, and, later, in Livorno.
Marconi had an interest in science and electricity. One of the scientific developments during this era came from Heinrich Hertz, who, beginning in 1888, demonstrated that one could produce and detect electromagnetic radiation—now generally known as "radio waves", at the time more commonly called "Hertzian waves" or "aetheric waves".

Hertz's death in 1894 brought published reviews of his earlier discoveries, and a renewed interest on the part of Marconi. He was permitted to briefly study the subject under Augusto Righi, a University of Bologna physicist and neighbour of Marconi who had done research on Hertz's work.
He repeated Heinrich Hertz's experiments and rapidly extended the range of detection. He mostly used his own self-built equipment in the attic of his home at the Villa Griffone in Pontecchio, Italy. His goal was to use radio waves to create a practical system of "wireless telegraphy" i.e. the transmission of telegraph messages without connecting wires as used by the electric telegraph.

Marconi is known to have improved wireless-telegraph system “kind of revolutioned it” He assembled and improved an array of facts, unified and adapted them to his system. Marconi's system had the following components:
•    A relatively simple oscillator, or spark producing radio transmitter, which was closely modeled after one designed by Righi, in turn similar to what Hertz had used;
•    A wire or capacity area placed at a height above the ground;
•    A coherer receiver, which was a modification of Edouard Branly's original device, with refinements to increase sensitivity and reliability;
•    A telegraph key to operate the transmitter to send short and long pulses, corresponding to the dots-and-dashes of Morse code; and
•    A telegraph register, activated by the coherer, which recorded the received Morse code dots and dashes onto a roll of paper tape.

Moving out of doors in 1895, he introduced a transmitter sparking between an elevated aerial and earth. After increasing the length of the transmitter and receiver antennas, and arranging them vertically, and positioning the antenna so that it touched the ground, the range increased significantly. Soon he was able to transmit signals over a hill, a distance of approximately 1.5 kilometres (0.93 miles). By this point he concluded that with additional funding and research, a device could become capable of spanning greater distances and would prove valuable both commercially and militarily.

Marconi was unable to interest the Italian government in wireless, so in 1896 he went to England, where he aroused official interest and received support from the British Post Office.  While there, he gained the interest and support of William Preece, the Chief Electrical Engineer of the British Post Office.
A series of demonstrations for the British government followed—by March 1897, Marconi had transmitted Morse code signals over a distance of about 6 kilometres (3.7 miles) across the Salisbury Plain. On 13 May 1897, Marconi sent the first ever wireless communication over open sea. It transversed the Bristol Channel from Lavernock Point (South Wales) to Flat Holm Island, a distance of 6 kilometres (3.7 miles). The message read "Are you ready".  The receiving equipment was almost immediately relocated to Brean Down Fort on the Somerset coast, stretching the range to 16 kilometres (9.9 miles).
Impressed by these and other demonstrations, Preece introduced Marconi's ongoing work to the general public at two important London lectures: "Telegraphy without Wires", at the Toynbee Hall on 11 December 1896; and "Signaling through Space without Wires", given to the Royal Institution on 4 June 1897.
Marconi’s instrument helped him to demonstrate quickly, to 8 miles and then 25 miles and more. In 1899 signals across the English Channel, between Boulogne and Dover, caused a sensation, though the distance was less than that covered by other transmissions.

In 1900 Marconi determined to try sending wireless signals across the Atlantic, despite the theoretical conflict between rectilinear propagation of Hertz radiation and the curvature of the earth. He had, however, already received signals at 250-mile range. Using the Poldhu transmitter, an established station in southwestern England, and a temporary aerial supported by a kite on Signal Hill, St. John's, Newfoundland, nearly 1,800 miles away, he received the first transatlantic wireless signals on Dec. 12, 1901.

Also in 1901 Marconi patented his "four-circuit" tuning system. Thus multiplex wireless telegraphy became possible, and the interference of one signal with another was minimized. In 1902 Marconi patented a sensitive magnetic radiodetector to replace the coherer and, in 1905, the horizontal directional aerial, which at once brought improvements in signal strengths and allowed the development of long-distance commercial wireless.

After 1905 Marconi spent much of his time as an entrepreneur, surrounded by a talented staff of engineers and administrators, developing wireless telegraphy. Attempts to introduce a transatlantic wireless press service in 1903 had been premature, but in 1907 commercial communication was established between Marconi stations at Clifden in western Ireland and Glace Bay, Nova Scotia.
In 1914 Marconi was made a Senator in the Italian Senate and appointed Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order in the UK. During World War I, Italy joined the Allied side of the conflict, and Marconi was placed in charge of the Italian military's radio service. He attained the rank of lieutenant in the Italian Army and of commander in the Italian Navy.

During World War I Marconi began experiments on shortwave radio and on aerials designed to transmit along narrow beams to minimize detection by an enemy. The year 1917 saw him as a member of the Italian mission to the United States on its entry into the war, and in 1919 he was a signatory to the Paris Treaty for Italy. He spent much of the next decade continuing the shortwave investigations begun in wartime, making useful discoveries, but none to compete with the great postwar expansion of the radio networks consequent on the development of radiotelephony and voice radio. He was hailed as the father of radio, but, especially in the United States, the real progress was made by a new generation.
Marconi joined the Italian Fascist party in 1923. In 1930, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini appointed him President of the Royal Academy of Italy, which made Marconi a member of the Fascist Grand Council.

Marconi died in Rome in 1937 at age 63 following a series of heart attacks, and Italy held a state funeral for him. As a tribute, all radio stations throughout the world observed two minutes of silence. His remains are housed in the Villa Griffone at Sasso Marconi, Emilia-Romagna, which assumed that name in his honour in 1938.

The IEEE standards group today officially ratified 802.11n, the most recent standard for Wi-Fi. The move officially takes the wireless spec out of the draft status it has been in since 2006 and lets companies develop 11n hardware knowing that it will work properly with any device that supports the technology. Officials plan to publish the final standard in mid-October.

The extended delay in approving the standard, which was first developed in 2002, stemmed primarily from competing "pre-N" technology from Atheros and Broadcom and their resistance to finding a common ground for the standard. While this was eventually settled, the competition led to the IEEE agreeing to certify so-called Draft 2.0 802.11n devices in March 2007 with the promise that these would eventually be upgradable to the final standard. The group went so far as to promise no major changes in 802.11n or its certification process.

The standard is already found in most modern computers and a small number of handheld devices and theoretically connects at 300Mbps, or about six times the peak speed of the more ubiquitous 802.11g format. Some of this speed comes from Multiple In, Multiple Out (MIMO) antenna arrays that piece together an incoming signal as it's bounced around an environment, improving not only the maximum speed but also the usable range.

Via: Electronista

Here are the top  open source IT management products that do a solid job replacing  big suites from HP, IBM, CA and BMC.that may costs thousands and thousands of dollars in licenses and support .they offer a low-cost or free professional services and free software downloads. They differ primarily in the features they offer and in the operating systems they support.

1. QUEST BIG BROTHER
This Web-based systems and network monitor supports most Windows, UNIX and Linux OSes, plus a repository of user-contributed scripts allow you to easily customize Big Brother to your network. Its GUI features a universally understood color code, where red means bad and green means good.
Big Brother simplifies IT systems management by allowing both system administrators and management to quickly and easily assess the health of the environment through a series of customizable, web-based, business dashboards. It features tests to notify administrators when defined events occur, thus facilitating proactive problem resolution to prevent critical outages or service breaches.

2. GROUNDWORK MONITOR PROFESSIONAL
Launched in 2004, it’s one of the first enterprise-scale open source network management offerings. It integrates more than 100 best-of-breed open source projects, including Nagios, Apache and NMap, onto one framework with additional features, such as a Web-based interface. Monitor Professional provides centralized management and monitoring of your enterprise network, including Linux, Unix and Windows servers, apps, databases and network boxes.
Optimized towards a single-site or department-level monitoring deployment, GroundWork Monitor Professional is designed to provide a comprehensive, supported solution that satisfies the monitoring, alerting and reporting needs of the organization, from system administrator to executive.
3. HYPERIC HQ ENTERPRISE
Aimed at the datacenter, there’s a commercial and open source offering Hyperic’s software is built to manage and monitor all layers of Web infrastructures, including hardware, middleware, virtualization and Web and open applications. You can use HQ's Live Exec to run diagnostics on remote resources in different locations it gives a performance and health of the network from operating system diagnostics to custom tools you build-in to HQ
It also offers trending and analysis. It supports Apache, JBoss, Linux and more
4. OPENNMS
This Java-based network management tool focuses on service polling, data collection and event and notification management. It currently supports a variety of open operating systems, including Linux, Mandrake and Solaris, as well as Mac OS X; Windows support is planned for OpenNMS 2.0.
5. OPENQRM
openQRM is the next generation, open-source Data-center management platform. Its fully pluggable architecture focuses on automatic, rapid- and appliance-based deployment, monitoring, high-availability, cloud computing and especially on supporting and conforming multiple virtualization technologies. openQRM is a single-management console for the complete IT-infra structure and provides a well defined API which can be used to integrate third-party tools as additional plugins.
, OpenQRM can manage thousands of Linux and Windows servers as well as track your datacenter’s usage and utilization. It also does automatic, policy-based provisioning. It, too, integrates Nagios for monitoring.

6. ZENOSS CORE
Written mostly in Python, this management platform offers events management and availability and performance monitoring of servers, network devices, OSes and applications. Zenoss runs on Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X; it will run on Windows with a VMplayer and the Zenoss Virtual Appliance.
Key monitoring and management features:
Discovery & Configuration Tracking
Availability & Performance Monitoring
Fault & Event Management
Alerting & Remediation
Reporting & Analysis

FOUR UNSUPPORTED PROJECTS
These four projects round out the top 10 open-source network-management tools. Unlike the other six products, these don’t have commercial service offerings or enterprise-scale enhancements. But they’re absolutely free, and may have everything you need to check the health of your network.
7. NAGIOS
This open-source host, service and network monitoring program runs under the Linux OS.

8. JUST FOR FUN NETWORK MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (JFFNMS)
Called, JFFNMS can monitor standard SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) network devices, servers, routers and TCP ports. It works on Linux, FreeBSD and Windows 2000/XP.

9. BIG SISTER SYSTEM AND NETWORK MONITOR
This project includes a real-time system and network health monitor, a Web application framework and a system administration application.
10. NETDISCO
This Web-based application is designed for mid- to large-sized networks and supports most SNMP network devices.

If the features of these low-cost network management tools haven’t convinced you of their enterprise-readiness, perhaps their customers will. Hyperic counts among its customer’s eHarmony, the online matchmaker, and La Quinta Inn and Suites, which operates more than 500 hotels. Groundwork’s customers include the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and construction company Rudolph and Sletten.

“Don’t settle on [a solution that] is not going to solve your problems and leave you open to risk. You will find innovation out there – and mostly you’ll find it in open source,” says Stacey Schneider, senior director of marketing at Hyperic.

By Joe: Intrusecurity

Like we promised to deliver here we are with a man (Ray Tomlinson) who has made it possible for all of us to communicate to friends, families, business partners, relatives, loved ones all over the world with just an email click away.

Ray Tomlinson in late 1971, he sent the first email message and the message is believed to be “QWERTYIOP” he recalls.
Ray is a man who picked @ as the locator symbol in electronic addresses and his invention “email” launched the digital information revolution of all times.
This all started in 1968 at BBN (Bolt Beranek and Newman) company where Tomlinson worked as a computer engineer. By then BBN was hired by the United States Defense Department to build ARPANET, the known precursor to the Internet. 
As he was tinkering around with an electronic message program called Send Message Program “SNDMSG” , which he had written to allow programmers and researchers working on Digital PDP-10s, (one of the early ARPANET computers) to leave messages for each other.

He says, those SNDMSG messages were not email exactly…..they only worked locally. The SNDMSG had been designed to allow the exchange of messages between users who shared the same computer. Users could create a text file and deliver it to a designated “mail box”. A mail box was simply a file with a particular name. Tomlinson wrote “It’s only special property was . . . [users] could write more material onto the end of the mailbox, but they couldn't read or overwrite what was already there."

While Tomlinson was working around SNDMSG, he had an experimental file transfer protocol called CYPNET which was transferring files among linked computers at remote sites within ARPANET. (At the time, the ARPANET consisted of 15 nodes, located at places like UCLA in California, the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and at BBN in Cambridge, Massachusetts.). He said “The idea occurred to me that CYPNET could append material to a mailbox file as readily as SNDMSG could”.
CYPNET had been designed to send and receive files with no provision for appending to a file. Tomlinson decided to adapt CYPNET to use SNDMSG to deliver messages to mailboxes on remote machines through ARPANET.

Tomlinson’s first problem he had with his first e-mail program was finding a way to separate the person to whom one was addressing a message from the computer or network they were using – which he solved with the symbol @.
He recalled. "I used the @ sign to indicate that the user was 'at' some other host rather than being local." He chose the @ symbol to distinguish between messages addressed to mailboxes in the local machine and messages that were headed out onto the network.
It could just as easily have been a square bracket or even a comma that would come to be typed in every e-mail address, “but they were already being used, and of the characters that were left, @ was best. Plus it conveyed a sense of place, which seemed to suit.”

Tomlinson proceeded by sending himself an e-mail message. The first message was sent between two machines that were literally side-by-side, those were BBN two PDP-10 computers wired together through ARPANET.

First, he chose the @ symbol to distinguish between messages addressed to mailboxes in the local machine and messages that were headed out onto the network. "The @ sign seemed to make sense," he recalled. "I used the @ sign to indicate that the user was 'at' some other host rather than being local."
Then he sent himself an e-mail message. BBN had two PDP-10 computers wired together through the ARPANET. "The first message was sent between two machines that were literally side-by-side. The only physical connection they had, however, was through the ARPANET," according to Tomlinson.  The message flew out via the network between two machines in the same room in Cambridge; and the message was QWERTYIOP “set of letters on the top of the computer keyboard.”
Once Tomlinson was satisfied that SNDMSG worked on the network, he sent a message to colleagues letting them know about the new feature, with instructions for placing an @ in between the user's login name and the name of his host computer. "The first use of network mail," says Tomlinson, "announced its own existence."
Tomlinson's new program almost instantly became the first killer app. "After we delivered the enhanced version of SNDMSG to other sites, (so that there was someone out there to talk to) virtually all my communication was via e-mail," he remembers. Two years later, a study found that 75 percent of all traffic on ARPANET was e-mail.

Today its estimated over a billion emails are sent out and received every single second. This has all been possible due to Ray Tomlinson’s love for invention and experimental ideas.
Today, e-mail has become one of the most important communications platforms the world has known, and from the various services available- Yahoo!, Hotmail, Gmail, Excite and many more out there.

However today, email has been turned by some people into a criminal tool that is menace of spam or junk e-mail.
Tomlinson said he doesn’t feel too guilty, though. "Spam certainly is a problem, but at the time I just didn't think about it. E-mail is like any tool - it can be used for good or bad. If you’re looking for a way to spread a virus with a computer, then you’re going to use the most popular communication tool - and that’s e-mail.
He continues “at that time, the number of people who used e-mail was very small (Between 500 to 1,000). So if you were getting spam, you'd know who was sending it. You'd be able to say to them: that's not a good thing to do."
But due to wide use of emails, possibilities of sending a message anonymously emerged.

All in all, Ray Tomlinson is among the many famous ICT people who have contributed greatly, positively to our developments in the world digital evolution.

Lenovo today announced three new PC devices that deliver power, performance and style to the digital home experience. Lenovo's first home theatre PC – the IdeaCentre Q700 – provides high definition 1080p playback and digital surround sound for a variety of multimedia formats displayed right on a user's HDTV. Lenovo's first home server - the IdeaCentre D400 - makes managing content across several PCs simple.

In addition, the IdeaCentre Q100 and Q110 nettops continue to push the envelope on thin and light design as the world's thinnest nettops1 while extending the entertainment experience with support for HD video on the Q110. Lenovo also expanded its ultraportable line with the thin and light IdeaPad U450p for extra portability.

The News

• The digital living room, with a PC as the centerpiece of the entertainment experience, continues to grow worldwide as more consumers create and consume content. Because consumers want a compact and easy-to-use solution to enjoy their multimedia, Lenovo designed two new product lines – the Q and D Series - to fit this digital life, in style.
• Due to explosive growth of multimedia content combined with a greater selection of varying types of PCs, consumers now are considering size, versatility, performance and price more than ever before when selecting PCs for their homes. Lenovo's Q Series offers a range of PC products to complement the home theater experience and simplify the living room or study.
• With more people creating and consuming content than ever before and home networks and high speed Internet adoption continuing to increase, home servers like the D400, are becoming important tools to manage content created on several different PCs and devices.

The Facts

• According to a June 2009 Forrester Research, Inc. report titled US Online Consumer Survey: Technology in the Home, 2008, "roughly two-thirds of US living rooms have a PC and an Internet connection along with the standard TVs, DVD players or DVRs. This presents an interesting opportunity for the consumption of video and music on PCs connected to entertainment devices, as consumers are interested in using these devices interchangeably for the consumption of digital content."2
• The home server market is growing. IDC forecasts home server shipments to have a compound annual growth rate of more than 110 percent from 2007-2012 for both home and commercial customers worldwide3.

Quote
• "Lenovo will be a great addition to the category of home servers powered by Windows Home Server software," said Eugene Saburi, general manager, Microsoft Solutions Marketing. "With the IdeaCentre D400 home server coinciding with the availability of Windows 7 on Lenovo laptops and netbooks, consumers will have an affordable solution that enables them to unleash the power of their home networks."
• "We created our latest IdeaCentre PCs to help consumers manage their personal and professional content with the performance they need and with a style that expresses their individuality," said Dion Weisler, vice president, Business Operations, Lenovo. "Our super small nettops give consumers the portability of a laptop, making them a versatile and affordable part of the digital home experience."
• "The Lenovo Q110 with NVIDIA ION delivers knockout graphics capabilities for its diminutive size," said Manoj Gujral, general manager, Desktop GPU Business, NVIDIA. "With its ION graphics processor, this tiny PC can do more than many full-size desktops, letting users enjoy full HD movies, play mainstream games, edit family videos and even quickly convert video to an MP3 player."

The IdeaCentre Q700 - Multimedia Powerhouse for the Home
Lenovo's DVD-like IdeaCentre home theater PC connects with multiple devices, including digital cameras, smartphones and more so consumers can watch videos in full HD resolution, view photos and listen to music all on their TV. They can also watch and record digital TV with the optional TV tuner and remote while seamlessly integrates multiple media sources into a single device.

Key Features Include:
• Full High Definition: Supports 1920x1080 graphics and 7.1 digital surround sound
• Fast Intel Core™2 Duo Processors: Provides silent and smooth video playback
• Plenty of Storage: Stores up to 1 terabyte of content with eight USB ports and an eSATA port

Additional details for the IdeaCentre Q700 can be found on www.lenovo.com

IdeaCentre D400 – Simple Storage for Work and Play
Lenovo's IdeaCentre D400 home server securely houses large amounts of data for professional and personal use, including videos, music and photos. Users can easily set up a home network to store and share files across different devices such as PCs and smartphones. They can also regularly back up PCs on the network to support a small office or home office.

Key Features Include:

• Plenty of Storage: Supports up to eight terabytes of total storage
• Expandable and Easy to Use: Mix and match different brands and capacities of hard drives and even add and remove them while the PC is running. Connect multiple external storage devices with five USB ports, including a front-mounted port with one-touch data copy function and an eSATA port for high-speed external data transfer
• Dependable and Secure: Duplicate important data on multiple hard disk drives for backup and security
• Access Anywhere: Remotely access files from anywhere with an Internet connection by connecting remotely to the hub via a secure web page4

Additional details for the D400 can be found on www.lenovo.com.

The Idea Centre Q100 and Q110 – Thinning Down the Desktop
The IdeaCentre Q100 and Q110 nettops complete the collection of new digital lifestyle devices and stand out with a stylish black patterned design. These tiny PCs measure 0.7 inches thin, making them the thinnest nettops yet1 at just the size of a small book. The nettops feature an Intel Atom processor, making them ideal for performing basic functions like web surfing, downloading content and producing Internet-based documents. The Q110 may be the smallest, most powerful nettop yet. Equipped with Nvidia ION graphics, the nettop supports HD video and can handle accelerated media conversion and other tasks consumers would expect from full size desktops.

Key Features

• Ultra Slim and Small - At only 6 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches thin, the size of this tiny desktop makes it perfect for tight spaces. The nettop can even be mounted on the back of a monitor.
• Energy Efficient- The Q100 runs on just 14 watts when idle and 40 watts at full operation
• Enhanced Multimedia: The Q100 supports VGA output, while the Q110 supports 1080p high definition video with DirectX 10 graphics for crisp and vibrant content and 3G games and also enables smooth playback with Nvidia CUDA technology

Additional details for the Q100 and Q110 can be found at www.lenovo.com.
The IdeaPad U450p Laptop – Thin and Light Pumps Up Screen Size
The IdeaPad U450p laptop is designed for those looking to balance mobility and performance with style and affordability. Following the introduction of the IdeaPad U350, the 14-inch U450p offers Intel consumer ultra low voltage processors, long battery life and a wide range of entertainment and productivity features.

Key Features
• Thin and Light: Sporting a sleek, textured design, the U450p laptop is 0.9inches thin and weighs less than five pounds.5
• Optimized for Entertainment: With a High-Definition 16:9 screen, an HDMI connector and fast DDR3 memory, the laptop provides an excellent entertainment experience. It also includes a DVD burner/player for anytime access to multimedia on a CD or DVD.
• Packed with Smart Features: The laptop comes with a range of smart features designed to make computing more convenient and productive, including OneKey™ Rescue System for easy data and system recovery and VeriFace™ facial recognition technology.
Additional details for the U450p can be found on www.lenovo.com.
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Pricing and Availability6
The IdeaCentre Q700 home theatre PC and IdeaPad U450p laptop are available immediately through business partners and www.lenovo.com. The IdeaCentre D400 home server and Q100 and Q110 nettops will be available in mid-September.

The IdeaCentre D400 home server and Q700 home theatre PC start at approximately $499. The IdeaCentre Q100 and Q110 nettops start at approximately $249 and $349. The IdeaPad U450p laptop starts at approximately $799.