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Tecno Tierra: AlertPay BankWire

2010-10-01T12:07:00.000-07:00

Tecno Tierra: AlertPay BankWire

Hola me gustaria saber cualto cobra el banco por recibir dinero de mi cuenta en alertpay

Es decir si quiero transferir 100 dolares de alertpay a el banco, cuanto podria costar
yo se que alertpay cobra 15 y el banco?

gracias

Gana dinero con internet

2009-11-19T06:40:00.000-08:00

Si tenés internet en tu casa y te interesa ganar un dinero extra por mes sin invertir nada, esta es una muy buena opción. Las PTC (pay to click) te pagan por ver publicidad, el proceso es muy simple, te registras y ves los anuncios durante 30 segundos y se va acumulando el dinero en tu cuenta, cuando llegas al mínimo requerido se puede solicitar el pago y te depositan el dinero en tu cuenta paypal o alertpay. Luego el dinero puedes utilizarlo para comprar muchas cosas por internet como por ejemplo cuentas GOLD de Fotolog, monedas en el Pet Society, comprar en EBAY, jugar al Poker, Casino online o cobrarlo en efectivo. Te recomiendo tener las dos cuentas tanto Paypal como Alertpay, ya que algunas paginas te pagan por paypal, mientras que otras solo lo hacen por Alertpay. El registro te lleva pocos minutos, no es necesario tener tarjeta de crédito y es la manera más segura de cobrar por Internet, para registrarte cliqueá en los banners al final de esta página.Aclaro que este no es el negocio de hacerse rico sin trabajar, pero si te anotas en varias páginas y le dedicas unos minutos en clickearlas todas al mismo tiempo, todos los y si conseguís algunos referidos, vas a generar un ingreso extra que nunca viene mal.
Eso sí, hay que tener en cuenta que muchas de las páginas que ofrecen dinero por ver publicidad son SCAM, o sea que no pagan, como por ejemplo AW Surveys, Bestbux.info, y las del admin Sandokan que es muy mala persona (Fastmoneybux.es diamondspanish.es) RICH PTC y todas las que dicen pagar 1 dolar por click; no pierdas tu tiempo y registrate solo en PTC seguras, todas las de esta lista son páginas que sí pagan.

Bueno comencemos, como primera medida, debemos tener nuestra cuenta Paypal y Alertpay para poder cobrar nuestro trabajo de ver publicidades. Para ello, nos registramos haciendo click en los siguientes

www.paypal.es o www.alertpay.com

nota: durante su registro elegir la opcion Personal de paypal, y no elegir la misma contraseña que las Ptc; asi no corren riesgo que les roben el dinero.

Una vez que tengas tu cuenta Paypal y Alertpay, te registras en todas las paginas PTC (pay to click) que quieras, obviamente mientras en mas paginas estes registrado haciendo clicks mas dinero ganaras.

te recomiendo las siguientes.

http://www.neobux.com/?r=fejasquindio
http://10bux.net/?r=antares_123
http://www.livebux.com/?r=antares_123
http://www.angelbux.com/?r=antares_123
http://www.adshow.eu/?r=antares
http://www.faranume.org/?r=antares
http://www.domptc.com/register.php?r=antares
http://buxchristmas.com/register.php?r=antares
http://www.leepubli.com/pages/index.php?refid=antares123
http://bux.to/?r=antares_123
http://www.jmgold.com/?ref=clariza
http://www.srsbux.com/?ref=antares
http://www.onbux.com/?r=antares
http://www.888bux.com/?r=antares

http://twitbux.com/?r=antares

Te registras y comienzas a clickear en la publicidad, al principio no ganas mucho, pero podes aumentar tus ingresos hacioendo referidos.

Buena suerte.

Catbird Launches vCompliance: A Comprehensive Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Service for Virtual and Cloud Environments

2009-09-04T08:03:00.000-07:00

Catbird, the pioneer in leading-edge security and compliance solutions for virtual and cloud data centers, today announced the immediate availability of vCompliance™, the industry’s first comprehensive automated monitoring and enforcement solution that ensures security and regulatory compliance for virtualized and cloud-based data centers. Based on Catbird’s vSecurity® platform, vCompliance’s real-time continuous monitoring service instantly detects compliance violations and quarantines offending assets to ensure ongoing compliance with leading regulatory standards, such as DIACAP, SOX, HIPAA and PCI.

With the increasing presence of VMware virtualization in regulated industries such as financial services, government, retail and healthcare, comes the attendant need to ensure that these deployments meet or exceed existing compliance requirements. vCompliance is designed specifically for these environments. It unites an automated, 24x7, network monitoring service with information from the hypervisor, including a full vulnerability management solution and network access control. These critical services are mandated by regulatory specifications. Catbird vCompliance provides numerous controls required by the leading regulatory standards organizations and the most common security frameworks.

“Maintaining compliance is the #1 concern facing security officers at enterprises moving to virtualized data centers,” said Edmundo Costa, Catbird COO. “Most regulatory bodies are beginning to update their specs to incorporate virtualization, and the absence of a single authoritative resource to guide IT security and operations professionals in achieving compliance has led to spotty enforcement and glaring gaps. vCompliance fills this void to ensure worry-free ongoing compliance, complete with automatic updates to the latest standards.”

“Virtualization is becoming increasingly present in datacenters where compliance is non-negotiable,” said Shekar Ayyar, vice president of infrastructure alliances, VMware. “To meet this growing demand, VMware works with partners such as Catbird to enable complementary solutions that take advantage of VMware virtualization to ensure compliance in a simplified, cost-effective yet more comprehensive way — providing customers with even better compliance than they could achieve with purely physical infrastructure.”

Finally, Compliance that Enhances Virtualization’s Appeal

Catbird vCompliance can actually make virtualized assets more compliant than physical, providing yet another incentive for businesses to move to cloud-based and virtualized environments, in addition to the inherent cost savings and provisioning ease. Designed for deployment as a cloud-based service, vCompliance provides a comprehensive and integrated virtualized compliance product, including:
Continuous and automated audit and enforcement to meet the requirements of PCI, HIPAA, SOX, DIACAP, etc.
Policy driven automated controls for auditing, inventory management, configuration management, change management, access control, vulnerability management, and incident response
Vulnerability scanning from inside the virtual subnets, with 100% visibility of all virtual machines
Automated enforcement and quarantine of out of compliance assets
Detailed statistics on compliance status for each individual asset, zone, virtual host or physical host
Automated, customizable reports (per compliance specification, per asset or per zone) geared for the appropriate organizational audience (management, operations, etc.) that provide a quick overview or deep-dive to help resolve compliance issues, ease remediation and restore full compliance
Web-based management

Integrated Compliance Management & Reporting Through VMware vSphere™ 4 and VMware vCenter™ Product Family

Via Catbird’s integrated security control console, Catbird vCompliance provides a compliance view of virtual systems in the vSphere management application. This integration brings real-time visibility and management of virtual and cloud security to a single web-based management interface, accessible from anywhere. The drag-and-drop dashboard supports automated discovery and hyperlink drill-down for intuitive management and ease of use. The multi-tenant portal provides more flexible administration options to meet the needs of multi-departmental organizations and service providers.

Seamlessly incorporated into the VMware vSphere™ 4 and VMware vCenter™ management workflow, VMware administrators can instantly monitor system compliance against standard or customized policies defined by corporate security or governance. Continuous status updates are delivered to the VMware vCenter console by “Catbirds” – stateless, non-invasive appliances deployed on the virtual subnets which act as the eyes and ears of the virtual environment.

In the event of an attempted policy violation, designated personnel are instantly alerted via an array of mechanisms and the offending activity blocked -- preventing a compromise of the integrity and compliance of the system. Detailed reporting, accessible directly from the console, provides automated event logs to ease troubleshooting and remediation.

Superbly Compatible for Exceptional Performance, Reliability

vCompliance is specifically designed to enhance overall data center performance with a minimal footprint and a flexible, fully XML and Web-services based architecture that allows for seamless integration with 3rd party reporting tools, trouble-ticketing and other enterprise-class services in a heterogeneous environment. In addition, Catbird is integrated with McAfee’s ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO) management console, providing customers with a single administrative interface for both virtual and physical security, and both network and end-point security.

"Our government and enterprise clients face regulatory pressure everyday from external and internal auditors," noted Adnan Hindi, COO of Catbird partner Palladian Technology. "With Catbird vCompliance, these customers can seamlessly deploy virtualization technology without compromising any of their established policies or 3rd party regulations, enabling a quick and easy shift to their virtualized data centers. We haven't seen any other product in the market with the depth and breadth of coverage that Catbird has."

“Catbird’s underlying technology is the most dependable and respected in the industry, relied on by hundreds of customers across some of the country’s largest Managed Security Services Providers to provide security and compliance for their customers,” Costa said. “Given the high cost of audits and financial damage that can result from a breach, ensuring ongoing compliance with an easy-to-deploy mechanism such as vCompliance can deliver a considerable ROI, along with peace of mind.”

Hardware Server Sales Slump as IT Pros Capitalize on Current Capacity and Add Virtualization and Consolidation to Get Through 2009 – New Research From

2009-09-04T08:02:00.000-07:00

TheInfoPro, an independent research company for the IT industry, today released new real-time data from its pending Server Study (final results due in October, Q3 2009) indicating that more than 50% of new servers being installed in 2009 will host virtualization, and future progressive growth indicates 80% by 2012.

Announced at VMworld 2009, TheInfoPro’s Server Study has conducted interviews with 195 IT pros wherein initial spending data indicates that 22% expect increases this year in server spending, but an additional 34% of the group indicates they’ll experience decreases. The IT pros range from Fortune 1000 (F1000) organizations to midsize enterprises (MSEs) in North America and Europe, and the interviews were completed between June and August 2009.

TheInfoPro Server Study also captures data about the rise of desktop virtualization, offers highlights on spending in each area of server management by vendor, and gives an in-depth look at VMware’s benefits and challenges in the current IT marketplace. For more information, visit TheInfoPro at booth #1322 or call the contact number below for a real-time briefing.

Hardware vs. Software Spending

TheInfoPro’s network of IT pros stated that virtualization and consolidation is a critical lifeline to optimizing the current capacity of their existing physical servers. Virtualization deployments will continue to expand in the coming months, with 70% of the respondents citing it as critical to meeting their business objectives. Though hardware spending continues to show little growth, more than 50% of respondents do expect to resume hardware acquisition once the economy stabilizes. For now, Hewlett-Packard is positioned as a strong vendor in future choice of spending and faces the lowest vulnerability to customer switching when compared to competing vendors.

In software, despite the revenue-dampening effect of enterprise licensing, Microsoft remained steady in its category, with 22% of respondents indicating they would spend more throughout the remainder of 2009. VMware and Red Hat remain strong in their respective categories, with 41% and 30% spending more in 2009, respectively.

“While virtualization does show continued growth in 2009, the depth of this penetration will really depend upon the ability to manage and deploy applications in these complex environments,” said Bob Gill, TheInfoPro’s Managing Director of Server Research. “The 2010 outlook and beyond are good indicators that even as IT budgets continue to rise, hardware spending will be looked at differently given the options of virtualization and consolidation.”

Virtustream Secures $25 Million Equity Financing

2009-09-04T08:01:00.000-07:00

Virtustream, Inc. a privately held infrastructure services firm, today announced the completion of new equity financing with total commitments of $25 million led by Virginia based Columbia Capital and Miami based Blue Lagoon Capital.

Virtustream is an infrastructure services firm committed to helping clients actualize the enterprise cloud by providing strategy, integration and managed services leveraging deep virtualization experience, and its own proprietary platform. The infusion of funding is part of Virtustream’s growth strategy and will be used to continue accelerating its platform development, build international presence and expand domain expertise.

“Columbia Capital is excited to work with this team of experienced virtualization and enterprise transformation professionals,” said Patrick Hendy, Partner at Columbia Capital. “We are very impressed with Virtustream’s proven management team and feel that they are well positioned to take the lead in the enterprise cloud computing space.”

“Virtustream has deep virtualization experience, breadth & depth of highly scalable services, strategic alliances with key hardware and software partners as well as unique business and pricing models making them a compelling alternative to larger firms,” said Rodney Rogers, CEO of Blue Lagoon Capital.

Virtustream also recently completed the acquisition of VirtualizeIT, the premier European consultancy practice dedicated to the advancement and adoption of virtualization technologies, and Brigh Technologies (Brigh), the leading North American provider for the design and deployment of custom solutions in the virtualization space. The union brings together pioneers in enterprise computing including being one of the first VMware professional services partners in North America and the 2008 VMware EMEA Partner of the Year. The stockholders of both acquired companies will have an equity interest in Virtustream, and all employees will continue their employment with Virtustream.

“Virtustream’s strategy is to fold VirtualizeIT and Brigh’s recognized virtualization services leadership into our existing capabilities to continue to build out our proprietary platform,” said Kevin Reid, CEO of Virtustream. “The platform will harness years of experience gained from thousands of successful physical to virtual transformations performed by both entities, leveraging the tools and historical data collected from those environments.”

“VirtualizeIT and Brigh’s clients recognize the complexity of being efficient in a virtualized environment and we now have the collaborative ability to address additional requirements. Typically, when companies undergo some transformation exercise to move from a physical to a virtual world they traditionally see annual savings ranging from 30 to 50%. By adding the Infrastructure Services that Virtustream provides to manage that platform, our clients can potentially yield an additional 10 to 20% benefit. Our Infrastructure as a Service offering delivers unique, industry leading resource level Service Level Agreements,” added Reid.

As a silver sponsor, Virtustream will be showcasing their solutions in booth #2314 at the VMworld 2009 exhibition in San Francisco at The Moscone Center from August 31 through September 3. Key leadership will be available to brief media and analysts on the firm’s differentiators in the enterprise cloud space.

Vizioncore Offers vConverter SC As Freeware

2009-09-04T07:59:00.000-07:00

Vizioncore Inc., the market leader in virtualization data protection and management solutions, today announced that vConverter SC (Server Consolidation) will now be available for free. Customers may use the tool to accelerate towards a virtualized environment, making the most of maintenance windows and reducing downtime on current physical machines.

vConverter SC offers an intuitive GUI to enable rapid simultaneous conversions of single or multiple servers without disruption to the source system. By combining cutting-edge disk and networking technology with extensive automation of pre- and post-conversion tasks, it boasts the ability to successfully migrate more servers per conversion window, saving valuable maintenance time. Furthermore the product is compatible with hypervisors from leading vendors such as VMware, Microsoft and Citrix, making it the perfect fit for almost every environment.

The move continues the precedent set at VMworld Europe earlier this year with the launch of the Virtualization EcoShell Initiative (VESI), another free offering from Vizioncore to the virtualization community. In providing these tools and services, the company is cementing its intention of offering a selection of the Vizioncore product portfolio for free, thereby widening adoption of virtualization across the market.

“We’re excited by the prospect of taking Vizioncore to a wider audience and by lowering the barriers to adoption,” said Devang Kothari, Product Manager for vConverter, Vizioncore. “We hope that end users looking to take the first steps into managing their virtualized estates will benefit from seeing how Vizioncore products help overcome their pain points and then be encouraged to deploy our comprehensive suite of virtualization management products.”

vConverter SC can be downloaded for free here. At VMworld 2009, visitors are invited see vConverter SC in action alongside other Vizioncore offerings at booth #1402.

New AppTitude 3.5 Adds Support for Citrix XenApp Virtualization To Leading Application Compatibility Testing Solution

2009-03-09T12:43:00.000-07:00

AppDNA, the worldwide leader in compatibility testing for application environments, today announced the general availability of its AppTitude 3.5 solution. The new release adds support for the Citrix® XenApp™ application delivery solution for both hosted and streamed applications. A beta for the XenApp support was introduced at the Citrix Summit event in October 2008 and was tested by a wide range of Citrix customers and partners. AppTitude 3.5 provides business benefits that include vastly reducing the time, cost and risks associated with deployment of OS migrations, software upgrades, virtualization and other changes.

What’s New in AppTitude 3.5

The new release of AppTitude™ allows organizations to check for application compatibility with XenApp (versions 3.0 through 5) and Windows Terminal Services. The new release has two separate reporting modules – the Server-Based Computing (SBC) Module for compatibility with XenApp hosted and Terminal Services configurations and the Virtualization Manager for XenApp streaming. AppTitude 3.5 supports two types of analysis – static and runtime – including an extended runtime analysis that can import customized OS images. This allows the AppTitude algorithms to adapt to the build configuration of the target OS platforms, which generate more accurate and relevant reporting for those customers with customized applications. It also offers new performance and security analyses that are essential for assessing application compatibility for XenApp and Terminal Services environments. A new 64-bit report in the Server and Desktop Compatibility Manager provides a dedicated view on application suitability for 64-bit computing. New support for external data source lookups enables third party and vendor databases, such as Microsoft’s list of certified Vista-compatible applications, to supplement AppTitude’s direct analysis.

“Companies are looking to application virtualization and XenApp to reduce the cost and complexity of managing and delivering applications,” said Bill Hartwick, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Citrix. “AppTitude 3.5 can help identify up front what changes, if any, need to be made to the application to deliver it with XenApp. By providing rapid and comprehensive visibility into their potential application compatibility issues, AppTitude 3.5 enables our partners to help customers more quickly and cost-effectively manage their applications in our virtualization environment.”

“With AppTitude 3.5, we can now provide unprecedented insight into application DNA for those organizations delivering applications with XenApp,” said Mike Welling, CEO of AppDNA. “With its extended runtime analysis and enhanced reporting capabilities, AppTitude 3.5 provides more accurate reporting and an even more powerful analytic dashboard for dramatically improving XenApp rollouts.”

Pricing and Availability

AppTitude 3.5 for Windows platforms and AppTitude Virtualization Manager for Citrix XenApp are available immediately from AppDNA. AppTitude pricing varies based on configuration, ranging from $5,000 for a typical pilot installation to a starting range of $50,000 for enterprise-wide deployments.

Red Hat Moves to Expand Server Virtualization Interoperability

2009-03-09T12:38:00.000-07:00

Today we made an announcement that I think is going to generate a lot of interest. Red Hat and Microsoft are working together to ensure virtualization interoperability. This is big news. Companies deploy virtualization to make their infrastructure more efficient. By allowing Windows Server to run as a guest on Red Hat virtualization, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux to run as a guest on Windows virtualization, customers gain new level of compatibility, interoperability and support. This is a major step forward for the industry.

Both Microsoft and Red Hat now have the capability to provide complete end-to-end virtualization solutions, from hardware to operating system, on the two industry-leading operating environments, which IDC says represent about 80 percent of today’s virtualized operating systems. This breaks through a major hurdle to more widespread adoption of virtualization.

Of course, it is also big news because it is rare that these two companies publicly work together. The companies continue to compete vigorously. But virtualization interoperability is very high on customers’ wish lists, and I’m pleased both companies have been able to respond in this cooperative fashion.

But for the record, it isn’t the first time Red Hat and Microsoft have cooperated. For example, Microsoft has recently joined the open source AMQP high performance messaging project, of which Red Hat was a founding member. Red Hat customers are already deploying AMQP technology with Red Hat’s Enterprise MRG product. The messaging element (the “M” in MRG) provides messaging up to 100 times faster than some legacy technologies.

One of the big questions on the minds of many members of the open source community is whether Red Hat has compromised its ideals. Nothing could be further from the truth. Red Hat’s growth, and its differentiation, come from its belief in and commitment to, the open source community model. It is our view – and this view is institutionalized throughout our company – that we have to serve the community, as well as our customers, shareholders, and employees. The moment we stop doing so, we eliminate the differentiation which drives our growth.

So we undertook this interoperability effort with strict adherence to our principles. The companies signed two agreements: One in which Red Hat joined the Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP), which validates Windows Server guests running on Red Hat Enterprise virtualization technologies, and the other which certifies Red Hat Enterprise Linux guests running on Windows Server Hyper-V.

The agreements contain no patent or open source license components. There are no financial clauses beyond simple certification testing fees. These are straightforward certification and validation agreements.

I am excited about this step forward for the industry. And I am pleased we did it without compromising our commitment to open source. That’s leadership we can be proud of.

Apple App Store's New Rival: Jailbroken Paid Apps

2009-03-09T12:37:00.000-07:00

With more 1.5 million jailbroken iPhones out there by some estimates, a new alternative to Apple's App store launched over the weekend to great interest in the iPhone community. Cydia Store, the de-facto app store for jailbroken iPhones, now offers paid apps, ending Apple's monopoly.

If jailbreaking your iPhone is not a big price to pay (besides losing your Apple warranty) in order to get all those cool applications that Apple deemed as unauthorized or kicked out of its App Store, then maybe you should have a look at the new version of the Cydia Store, which now features paid apps as well.

By now, Cydia allowed jailbroken iPhone users to install countless free (read: unauthorized) third-party apps, welcoming a growing community of developers that got their applications rejected from Apple's official store. The latest update to Cydia, released on Sunday, now includes a full-fledged app store, together with payment processing -- basically competing with Apple's solution, but on the grayer realm of legality.

It's clearly worth mentioning that Apple does not endorse jailbreaking or hacking into the iPhone's OS, allowing installation of third-party apps that were not approved by the Cupertino company. Actually, Apple tries to convene that jailbreaking your iPhone is a violation of copyright laws. However, hacking your iPhone proved to be a popular practice among many users.

Cydia brings for free to jailbroken iPhones highly requested features like copy/paste, camcorder possibility, or tethering options (iPhone as a modem). The new version of the Cydia app store, now supporting paid for applications opens a new world for those iPhone developers whose Apps were rejected by the official Apple App store. The first paid app in Cydia is a contacts application that puts contact photos alongside names and costs $1.

Nevertheless, the Cydia Store has downsides as well. Besides the main inconvenience of having to jailbreak your phone (which can be achieved easily these days), the store accepts payments only via Amazon Payment accounts (but a recent Twitter post from the store's creator, Jay Freeman, says PayPal payment is coming soon). Also, the store accepts only a limited number of app submissions at a time (submissions are halted now), highlighting the limited personnel to handle approvals.

But Cydia Store is certainly an interesting development in the iPhone world to watch over the coming years. The iPhone still lacks some features that many of its users crave for and it looks like plenty will try and get them, regardless of the legal uncertaintly they tackle in the process. And even though Apple tries to block jailbreakings with every iteration of the iPhone's software update, a few days later a new hack makes its way on the Internet.

System trouble halts Japanese weather data

2009-03-09T12:35:00.000-07:00

A computer problem halted the flow of weather data from the Japan Meteorological Agency to media organizations and other users today.

The cause of the problem, which occurred around 3 a.m. local time (6 p.m. GMT) in systems of the Japan Meteorological Business Support Center, is unknown, and the system hadn't been brought back online as of 1 p.m. local time.

As a result of the problem, the Meteorological Agency and many news organizations haven't been unable to publish current weather data and weather forecasts. The most up-to-date forecast on the agency's home page is that from 11 p.m. local time, Sunday night. On a typical Monday, it would have been updated at least twice before lunchtime.

Windows Server will Run in Enterprise Cloud

2009-03-09T12:32:00.000-07:00

Future versions of Windows Server will enable companies to efficiently manage and provide virtualized applications through the Web just like Microsoft Corp.'s upcoming platform-as-a-service, Windows Azure, a company executive said this week.

"The innovation in Azure and future versions of Windows Server will be shared, and that code base will continue to cross-pollinate," said Steven Martin, senior director for developer platform product management at Microsoft, in an interview. "The corporate data center at some point in time will look like a mini-cloud, partitioned by application workload."

First previewed last fall, Windows Azure is Microsoft's foray into bringing Windows Server online as a cloud computing platform. Developers will be able to port or write applications using Microsoft's popular .Net tools and Web standard interfaces such as REST, SOAP and Atom, and host them on Azure, similar to Amazon.com Inc.'s EC2, Salesforce.com's Force.com, or Google Inc.'s App Engine.

Azure is expected to be released later this year. Detailed pricing hasn't been released. Microsoft is expected to talk about Azure at its MIX Web development conference in Las Vegas next week.

Conventional hosting entails companies buying or leasing a server from a data center operator and running a set number of applications off it. That can be complicated to manage, entail a lot of upfront cost, and can be difficult to scale quickly on demand.

Azure, like other newer-generation cloud platforms, enables faster setup and easier scaling, and lets users pay for usage, thus avoiding upfront investment.

"Our goal is to completely hide the complexity of hardware from developers," Martin said.

Martin mentioned several Azure beta testers. One, a company called S3Edge, helps manufacturers recall defective products.

"Ideally, a product doesn't get recalled and they don't need to activate our service," Martin said. "But if it does, they need to be prepared to scale very fast."

An independent software vendor, Epicor Software Corp., is writing the next version of its ERP software so it can be hosted via Azure, Martin said, while another, Micro Focus, is taking Cobol applications off a mainframe and hosting them on Azure (as well as Amazon.com Inc.'s EC2) for its customers.

Azure runs on Windows Server 2008 inside Microsoft's data centers. The fact that Microsoft offers both Windows Server software and the Azure service as part of its "software+services" strategy, is a plus for companies unsure about committing completely to a cloud infrastructure, Martin said, whether because they think they can run it cheaper or with more agility, or because regulations require them to do so.

"We make it really easy for you to transition back to on-premises without having to completely rewrite your app. You control your own destiny," Martin said. By contrast, "if I'm a startup, it's gotta be in the back of my mind when I look at Amazon.com's 10-K, that 'Gosh, they may want to go back to just selling books.'"

Besides corporations, Web hosting companies may be interested in hosting Azure to make their infrastructure more nimble and efficient. Martin said hosting companies and other application service providers won't get access to Azure before enterprises, though.

Server Vendors Stung by Falling Sales

2009-03-09T12:31:00.000-07:00

If companies around the world are freezing technology spending, then it's the server market that appears to be bearing the brunt of the financial chill.

According to the latest Gartner figures, worldwide server shipments declined by 11.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 compared to the same period a year earlier, which added up to a nasty 15.1 percent contraction in overall revenue.

All vendors and most market segments posted declines, but the strange geographical concoction known as EMEA (European, the Middle East and Africa) posted the worst figures, showing revenue declines of 20.6 percent, ahead of the US which dropped 14.6 percent. Only Japan posted a rise, reflecting the fact that the worst of the slump had yet to reach the Far East.

Unix server shipments were down 10.5 percent, which sounds bad but was still less severe than the 11.4 percent experienced by the more mainstream x86 market. The single bright spot for server technology was blade servers which posted gains in a year, 2008, Gartner still predicts revenues will have increased by 30 percent.

As to vendors, IBM was the biggest loser, down 22.4 percent in server shipment numbers, with Dell (-7.1 percent), Sun (-3.9 percent), and HP (-1.6 percent) less affected. It is worth pointing out, however, that shipments don't tell the whole story; all of the above saw substantial falls in server revenue, which suggests that some have kept shipment numbers up by cutting prices.

"The weakening economic environment had a deep impact on server market revenues in the fourth quarter as companies put a hold on spending across most market segments," said Gartner's senior research analyst, Heeral Kota, perhaps stating the obvious. "Almost all segments exhibited similar behaviour as users sought to reduce costs and spending, deferring projects where possible."

What the figures underscore is that US spending has contracted sharply, while spending in Europe and other parts of the world has also dropped off sharply, not helped by fluctuating currency rates which can cause prices to rise.

The next year won't be much better. "The continued weak economic environment will cause users to be extremely cautious with levels of expenditure which will make for a particularly challenging environment for vendors. The server market already has high levels of vendor consolidation but the conditions expected during 2009 will increase the threat of further consolidation," said Kota.

Seagate, AMD Showcase Super Fast SATA Drive

2009-03-09T12:30:00.000-07:00

As the year marches on, work proceeds apace on the next big step in the Serial ATA specification. Alternately called SATA Revision (or just Rev) 3 or SATA 6Gbps, the updated specification was finalized late last year. This week at the FOSE '09 government tech show in New Orleans, Seagate is becoming the first hard drive manufacturer to publically demonstrate a SATA 6Gbps hard drive. Seagate's technology demo is in partnership with AMD, which has supplied the necessary chipsets to achieve the third-generation SATA interface's fast speeds.

The SATA spec bump is a natural evolution. Notes Seagate's Marc Norblitt, "We need to make the interface faster, so the interface doesn't become a bottleneck that causes performance to suffer dramatically. The higher the capacity of the drive, the higher the areal density; the higher the areal density, the more bits you get under the head in the same amount of time." That, Norblitt adds, translates into data being output faster.

The read speeds that Seagate has achieved, and will be demonstrating at the show, are about 550 megabytes per second (including command overhead). By comparison, SATA 1.5 achieved 120Mbps, and SATA 3 achieved 250Mbps. The demonstration uses an AMD reference motherboard, with an AMD SATA 6Gbps chipset and CPU, and a prototype 6Gbps drive. The drive uses the same SATA connectors as current-generation SATA drives, and is backward compatible with earlier SATA versions.

Although SATA 6Gbps will be here by year's end, Norblitt says he doesn't expect the technology to be needed for another two years. When such drives do ship, they will provide a future-proofed way for individuals to plan ahead. Norblitt expects Seagate will have a SATA 6Gbps drive to market in "late 2009." The company expects to focus on placing the drives in high performance PCs, gaming PCs, and low-end server PCs. -targeting channel. "We're targeting customers who want high capacity, high performance disc drives," explains Norblitt.

Among the big improvements for SATA 6Gbps: Better power management, and improved native command queuing. With regard to power management, the new spec gives more control to the host or device. Instead of shutting the interface off, it allows it to into a slumber mode, one that's initiated by either the device or the host. The updated native command queuing allows streaming commands. So how will SATA 6Gbps stack up against the other forthcoming interface speed bump, USB 3.0? "SATA is a storage interface; USB is a universal interface," Norblitt says simply. The two interfaces, he adds, will be able to co-exist.

Oracle Offers Sourcing Software as a Service

2009-03-09T12:28:00.000-07:00

Oracle on Monday took a step in the direction of on-demand ERP with the announcement of Oracle Sourcing On Demand, a SaaS module for handling the purchase of supplies and services.

The new product is based on components in Oracle's flagship on-premise ERP (enterprise resource planning) system, E-Business Suite Release 12.

The software allows various parties involved in the sourcing process to collaborate on decisions, ensuring the best deals are struck, Oracle said. It also "meets the highest security standards," includes packaged integrations with applications like Oracle Purchasing, and provides standard tech support as well as a help desk. Pricing information wasn't immediately available.

In providing targeted SaaS (software as a service) offerings along with traditional ERP systems, Oracle is following a path similar to its rival SAP, which already had an on-demand sourcing application, and is expected to announce a number of additional SaaS services later this year.

While Oracle has sold on-demand CRM (customer relationship management) software for some time, it makes sense for it to start with sourcing on the SaaS ERP side, since a number of specialized companies have already proven there's a viable market, said 451 Group analyst China Martens.

Other on-demand sourcing and procurement vendors include PowerAdvocate, Ketera and Coupa, the last of which was formed by former Oracle employees.

Companies that are setting up shop in a new country, for example, might be attracted to the SaaS model for sourcing, since they could get it up and running more quickly, Martens said.

"It's definitely an area we've seen lend itself to the SaaS model," she added. "It's a cool thing for Oracle to do here. ... For Oracle, the question now is do you look at other pieces of ERP [for on-demand]?"

Lifeboat Distribution Offers New Virtual Iron and DataCore Virtualization Solution Bundle

2009-03-09T12:25:00.000-07:00

DataCore and Virtual Iron "bundle" available through software distributor Lifeboat

Florida DataCore Software, the leading provider of storage virtualization, business continuity and disaster recovery software solutions, and Virtual Iron Software, Inc., a provider of enterprise-class server virtualization and virtual infrastructure management software, today announced that distributor Lifeboat Distribution has unveiled a new promotion for their resellers when they purchase DataCore and Virtual Iron licenses together. Lifeboat will provide their resellers with additional margin and marketing support for selling the new bundle. Lifeboat Distribution is an international specialty software distributor for virtualization and other technically sophisticated products. For more details, resellers should contact datacore@lifeboatdistribution.com.

Resellers now have more cost-effective alternative
Services and solutions provider TelosIT, Inc. already delivers solutions that combine DataCore with Virtual Iron. "Lifeboat’s decision to offer additional margin for using DataCore in conjunction with Virtual Iron is something we will leverage," said Kevin Carlson, CTO, TelosIT. "This represents a very cost-effective option for resellers and the resellers taking advantage of this opportunity will soon see just what high performance solutions are possible when combining these two robust offerings."

The DataCore and Virtual Iron combination benefits customers – virtual storage and virtual servers go hand-in-hand
Solutions provider TelosIT has already enabled Matrix Design Group, an award-winning interdisciplinary firm providing professional engineering consulting, including program management and client representation, for both the private and public sectors, to expand capacity and achieve dual-site data redundancy, while saving tens of thousands on lease renewals on its previous generation SAN with DataCore and Virtual Iron. "With DataCore and Virtual Iron in place both administration and management were simplified greatly and I was able to further reduce my IT spending." said Eric W. Smith, vice president, Matrix Design Group.

About Lifeboat Distribution
Lifeboat Distribution, a subsidiary of Wayside Technology Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: WSTG), is an international specialty software distributor for virtualization, security, application and network infrastructure, business continuity/disaster recovery, database infrastructure and management, application lifecycle management, science/engineering, and other technically sophisticated products. The company helps software publishers recruit and build multinational solution provider networks, power their networks, and drive incremental sales revenues that complement existing sales channels. Lifeboat Distribution services thousands of solution providers, VARs, systems integrators, corporate resellers, and consultants worldwide, helping them power a rich opportunity stream, expand their margin+ services revenues, and build profitable product and service businesses. For more information, visit www.lifeboatdistribution.com, or call +1.800.847.7078 or +1.732.389.0037.

About DataCore Software
DataCore Software, the leading provider of storage virtualization SAN software, fundamentally changes the economics of managing storage with innovative software that combines advanced functions and services with the agility and savings of hardware independence. DataCore lowers the cost and complexity of IT by making storage efficient, fast, flexible, fail-safe and virtual. DataCore's portable storage server software simplifies and automates capacity expansion and centralizes storage management for Windows, UNIX, Linux, MacOS, NetWare, VMware and other leading open system and virtual server platforms. DataCore is privately held and its corporate headquarters are in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. For more information, call (877) 780-5111 or visit www.datacore.com.

DataCore, the DataCore logo and SANmelody are trademarks or registered trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. Other DataCore product or service names or logos referenced herein are trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. All other products, services and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

About Virtual Iron Software, Inc. – True Server Virtualization for Everyone
Virtual Iron provides server virtualization software that reduces the cost and complexity of operating and managing IT infrastructure for organizations of all sizes. Leveraging industry standards, open source, and built-in hardware-assisted acceleration, Virtual Iron provides a complete and cost-effective solution including VI-Center, an intelligent virtual infrastructure management platform. Over 2,000 customer organizations worldwide leverage Virtual Iron today to support a broad range of data center initiatives including server consolidation, virtual server management, dev/test optimization, business continuity and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) enablement. The software is available exclusively through Virtual Iron's Channel One partner network. Trial versions of the software are also available for free download at www.virtualiron.com/free. For more information, visit www.virtualiron.com or e-mail info@virtualiron.com.

Asus' Dual Panel Touchscreen PC Concept

2009-03-03T10:54:00.000-08:00

Things were already a bit touchy-feely at the Asus booth at CeBit with the company’s EeePC T91GO. Fighting for the spotlight, there’s the Dual Panel touchscreen PC.

Despite being “just a concept,” the notebook is impressive none the less. The display models were labeled with some anti-social “do not touch” signs but according to Engadget, the models on hand were running Windows 7 and the onscreen keyboard looked pretty decent.

What’s your take on the touch screen craze going on at the moment? We’ve already seen two netbook tablets this week and now we’re seeing this concept model of a Dual Panel touchscreen PC. We’re all for notebooks (or netbooks) that convert into tablets but we’re not sure we like this idea of giving up our keyboards in favor of a virtual one; and for these to be in any way successful, the pricing will need to be pretty competitive.

What do you reckon -- you into it?

Layoff & Hiring News for IPhone

2009-03-03T10:46:00.000-08:00

Few headlines are as depressing as those announcing the yet another round of layoffs from yet another struggling company. On Friday, February 27, for example, Pilgrim's Pride announced it would close three chicken-processing plants, shedding 3,000 jobs. Alliant Techsystems announced it would cut 300 jobs. Mastercraft Boats said at least 110 workers would be let go.

In all, I read about 22 companies or government agencies planning to shed employees through Santhi Rudraraju's Layoff & Hiring News--007 app for the iPhone and iPod touch. The app, which works with Wi-Fi, 3G, or EDGe connection, feeding a steady flow of headlines from the full-featured Layoff Daily Web site.

Layoff's simple but drab interface befits these austere times. The app is not much different from any other garden-variety RSS reader and is fairly easy to navigate. Tap on a headline, and Layoff will launch a browser window within the app. It features two days' worth of headlines, updated in real time, as well as a section on major corporate layoffs and news of companies that are actually hiring--the latter no doubt being an effort to stave off reader attrition by suicide.

The app can be slow to load headlines--a problem the developer seems to acknowledge with a "thanks for being patient" message that appears every time you tap a section on the menu bar at the bottom of the screen.

Bottom line: Layoff & Hiring News gives you all the bad news you can stomach (and some good) in a no-frills package. Xanax sold separately.

Layoff is compatible with any iPhone or iPod touch running the iPhone 2.2 software update.

[Ben Boychuk is a freelance writer and columnist in Rialto, Calif. Feel free to drop him a line.]

2009-03-03T10:32:00.000-08:00

Fujitsu Siemens Computers Holding BV plans to launch in the middle of this year an enterprise desktop computer that consumes no energy when switched off, the company said Sunday at the CeBIT trade show in Hanover, Germany.

Computers, like most electronics, consume a small amount of energy even when switched off because of losses in the transformer or sensors that remain active for functions such as remote power-on. For a PC, the consumption when powered off is typically between 1 and 4 watts, said Fujitsu Siemens. The best that energy-conscious users can do is keep electronics on a power strip that they must remember to turn off.

The Esprimo 7935 packs a system that achieves zero consumption without pulling the plug, said Lothar Lechtenberg, a company spokesman.

Businesses with a lot of computers stand to save a significant amount of money each year by ensuring that their PCs aren't consuming power overnight, but there are disadvantages. Many companies administer software updates overnight, and having the machines unplugged means that wouldn't be possible.

Fujitsu Siemens said it has solved this problem by allowing the machines to be awake and consuming a very small amount of power during a predefined time slot during which updates can take place. Once the time slot passes, the machine returns to zero-watt mode until it is switched on by its user.

Other green credentials of the new computer include a power supply that is 89% efficient, which means less electricity is wasted through heat, and motherboards with no halogen or lead. The PC conforms to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star 5.0 standard, which will come into use in the middle of this year, and the German Blue Angel mark.

The machine is likely to cost between $757 and $883 (€600 or €700). Availability outside of Fujitsu Siemens' Europe, the Middle East and Africa sales area was not announced.

Intel opens up the Atom processor to TSMC

2009-03-03T10:30:00.000-08:00

Intel Corp. on Monday announced a partnership that could provide access to the chip design of its low-cost Atom processor to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

The partnership with TSMC could lead to customized chips that could provide Intel access to new markets it can't reach alone, said Sean Maloney, Intel executive vice president and chief sales and marketing officer, during a conference call with reporters.

TSMC will be able to provide its customers with details of Atom's design so that they can design chips based on its core.

Atom chips currently go into low-cost laptops, also known as netbooks, and devices such as mobile Internet devices (MID) and smartphones. Future Atom chips will include more integrated PC capabilities, such as graphics and Internet connectivity, that could push the processor into embedded devices and consumer electronics.

To date, Intel has alone developed and sold its Atom processors for netbooks and MIDs. The company wants to maintain tight control over the types of products the derivative Atom chips will go inside, Maloney said. Intel will not be transferring Atom's manufacturing process technology to TSMC, so any chips that result from the deal will be manufactured by Intel.

"What we're doing here [is] picking the segments we go after," Maloney said.

The companies have collaborated for close to 20 years on products, including WiMax chips.

Intel officials shied away from answering questions about whether the TSMC deal would affect Atom's product road map or future smartphone chips like Moorestown. Details surrounding the deal are still being worked out, Intel officials said.

This agreement is similar to a strategy employed by Arm Holdings, which generates revenue by licensing smartphone and embedded chip designs to chip makers, said Jack Gold, principal analyst at J.Gold Associates. Arm has licensed its chip cores to companies such as Texas Instruments and Qualcomm, which provide chips for smartphones.

"This is a direct attack on competing processors, especially the Arm processor, which is trying to move upstream from phones and embedded gadgets, while Intel is trying to move downstream with Atom into this overlapping space. The battleground in the middle will be aggressive and potentially bloody, with huge potential returns," Gold wrote in a research note.

The partnership will help Intel add a revenue stream by licensing out its Atom core and adds "massive market potential" through TSMC's customers, Gold wrote. TSMC has connections to many consumer and lower-end products, like smartphones and embedded device markets, especially in Taiwan and Japan, Gold wrote.

The partnership is a win for both companies, said Rick Tsai, president and CEO of TSMC, during the call. It is mutually beneficial because it will allow both companies to generate additional revenue and reach new markets, especially at a time when the semiconductor industry is struggling.

"People in our industry must work together ... so we can share the benefits," Tsai said.

Intel has taken a number of steps to develop integrated chips that could fit into new products like set-top boxes and TVs. Intel in February said it was prioritizing its move from the 45-nanometer process to the new 32-nm process technology, which should help the company produce faster and more integrated chips.

To that end, the company said it would spend $7 billion over the next two years to revamp manufacturing plants. It will also help Intel make more chips at lower cost and add efficiencies to the production process. Intel will begin producing chips with 32-nm circuitry starting late this year.

HP Shuts Down Upline Online Storage Service

2009-03-03T10:29:00.000-08:00

Hewlett-Packard Co. Monday said it has closed down its online backup service after less than a year of operation.

HP did not provide a reason for closing the service other than to say, "HP continually evaluates product lines and has decided to discontinue the HP Upline service on March 31, 2009."

Patricia Kinley, a spokeswoman for HP's Personal Systems Group, said the company stopped backing up files as of Feb. 26.

"HP will keep the file restore feature of the Upline service operational through March 31, 2009 ... in order for customers to download any files that have been backed up to Upline," she said in an e-mail response.

HP's Upline service had trouble from the start. Three weeks after opening in April last year, it went down for a week. Users at the time reported problems in the client software to upload and synchronize files with the hosted service -- calling Upline a good idea that was horribly executed.

The Upline service was among a number of subscription-based online backup models that emerged over the past couple of years, including EMC Corp.'s Mozy , Nirvanix , Carbonite , Symantec Corp.'s upcoming SwapDrive , ClunkClick and Robobak , and Yahoo Briefcase , which also announced it will be shutting down this month.

Like many of the other service offerings, HP had acquired the technology for Upline. HP bought start-up Opelin Inc. in November 2007 for its Titanize cloud-based file backup service.

HP's Upline service charged between $4.99 to $8.99 per month for unlimited online storage to home, family and professional users.

Sony's PSP Gets a New Look

2009-03-03T10:26:00.000-08:00

Sony's redesigned PSP is rumored to be getting a new look. But all changes to this portable gaming device, expected to be released later this year, are largely cosmetic.

The biggest change to the PSP's design is a sliding screen; as shown in a mock-up from VG247, it slides up to reveal various controls that are hidden beneath it when closed. new PSP, dubbed the PSP 4000, may be "significantly smaller in width," because of the new design, Eurogamer says.

According to reports, the PSP 4000 will have to be in the open position to play full-featured games, but there's no word on whether the rumored design includes game controllers or a keyboard underneath the screen. The 4000 may also allow you to play basic games, like LocoRoco, using the shoulder buttons (the L and R buttons at the top of the device) when the screen is closed.

This latest rumor comes after last week's news that the PSP may let go of its UMD drive to offload more bulk from the game system. Instead of the disc drive, Sony may look to sell games through the online PlayStation Store or perhaps even on Sony Memory Sticks. If the rumors are true, then the 4000 is a significant step forward for the PSP; however, the new PSP will still be based on current PSP tech with no improved graphics or gaming features. That being said, with the PSP 3000 and these new rumors, it's refreshing to hear about PSP updates that go beyond new colors, various entertainment bundles and incremental firmware updates.

The rumored release date for the 4000 is late 2009, and may be followed by a PSP2 in 2011 or 2012.

IBM Looks to Secure Internet Banking With USB Stick

2009-03-03T10:24:00.000-08:00

IBM's Zurich research laboratory has developed a USB stick that the company says can ensure safe banking transactions even if a PC is riddled with malware.

A prototype of the device, called ZTIC (Zone Trusted Information Channel), is on display for the first time at the Cebit trade show this week. IBM hopes to entice banks into buying it for online banking, which saves banks money on personnel costs but is constantly under siege by hackers.

When plugged into a computer, ZTIC is configured to open a secure SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) connection with a bank's servers, said Michael Baentsch, product manager for BlueZ Business Computing at the Zurich lab.

ZTIC is also a smart-card reader and can accept a person's bank card for verification. Once a PIN (personal identification number) is verified, a transaction can be initiated through a Web browser.

Web browsers, however, are a point of weakness for online banking because of so-called man-in-the-middle attacks.

Hackers have created malicious software programs than can modify data as it is sent to a bank's Web server but then display the information the consumer intended in the browser. As a result, a person's bank account could be emptied. Man-in-the-middle attacks are also effective even if the bank's customer is using a one-time password generator.

The ZTIC, however, bypasses the browser and goes directly to the bank. It ensures that the data exchanged is accurate.

For example, say a bank customer wants to transfer money. The customer will input US$100 into a form in the browser. The bank's servers will then try to confirm the amount. During a man-in-the-middle attack, the attacker is capable of transferring $1,000 but can modify the confirmation message to still show $100.

Since it has a direct secure connection with the bank's servers, the ZTIC will show the amount that actually has been requested to be sent. So even if the browser shows a confirmation for $100, the ZTIC will show $1,000, indicating a man-in-the-middle attack in progress, Baentsch said. The user would know to reject the transaction and press the red "x" button on the ZTIC.

"If malware is attacking your online banking transaction, it will show you something strange has happened," Baentsch said.

IBM expended a lot of effort to figure how to initiate an SSL session within a USB stick, Baentsch said. It takes some processing muscle, and since the USB runs independent of the PC, it does not have access to the computer's processor.

ZTIC uses a chip from microprocessor designer ARM, and the software has been designed so it can quickly establish a SSL session, Baentsch said. Although it is a memory stick, no data can be stored on it, which also prevents malicious software from infecting it.

Using ZTIC would also prevent phishing attacks, where a fraudulent Web site tries to elicit sensitive details from a user, and pharming attacks, where DNS (Domain Name System) settings have been tampered with, Baentsch said. ZTIC checks to ensure that the Web site has a valid security certificate.

IBM has internal figures on how much the ZTIC might cost for banks, but Baentsch wouldn't reveal them, saying that it would depend on the final design specifications of the ZTIC and other factors.

Extend Laptop Battery Life With Hassle-Free PC

2009-03-03T10:23:00.002-08:00

Three Quick Ways to Improve Laptop Battery Life

Like chocolate and episodes of Mad Men, there's no such thing as too much battery life. Alas, it's the rare notebook battery that'll give you more than a few hours--unless you know some tricks for squeezing extra juice. (And by the way, if you like these tips, be sure to check out "Tips for Laptop Users.")

Remember these three tips the next time you travel:

Disable Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Few airplanes offer Wi-Fi (yet), so turn off your notebook's power-sucking Wi-Fi radio. Same goes for Bluetooth.
Drop the screen brightness. You can afford to keep screen brightness cranked up when your notebook is plugged into an outlet, but not when you're flying coach. Drop the brightness setting a few notches, then get back to work. Chances are you'll hardly notice the difference. Then drop it a few more notches. The lower, the better.
Watch downloads, not DVDs. Notebooks are great for watching movies, but DVD drives consume a considerable amount of power. Leave the DVDs behind and choose digital downloads instead. Stock your hard drive with movies from Amazon or iTunes and you'll be able to watch longer. Don't want to pay for movies you already own? Use a tool like Handbrake to rip your DVDs, creating MPEG-4 files you can store on your hard drive (or put on your iPod).

Give Your Laptop Battery a Longer Lease on Life

Does your laptop spend more time on your desk than your lap? If so, you're probably causing your battery to wear out much sooner than it needs to.

See, it's a sad (and expensive) fact of life: You're lucky to get 18-24 months from a battery before it loses a good chunk of its charge capacity (meaning it no longer powers your laptop for as long as it used to).

And you're accelerating this unfortunate timeframe if you leave your laptop plugged in 24/7, which is common for most folks who work at a desk. Because the battery rarely (if ever) gets a chance to discharge, it loses its capacity to hold a charge.

The simple solution: Pull the battery out of the laptop and leave it out when you're deskbound. Most laptops can run on straight AC power, so there's no need for the battery. And it's easy enough to pop back in when you hit the road (though obviously you'll want to make sure it's charged, so plan ahead a bit).

It's a hassle, sure, but consider the price of a replacement battery: usually $100 or more. What's more, old, discarded batteries wreak havoc on landfills. Sooner or later, they'll leak acid into the ground. So it's in your best interests to keep your battery as long as possible, and to keep it from dying a premature death.

Turn Vista's Sleep Button Into a Power Button

As a recent Windows Vista convert (I just couldn't cling to XP any longer--a subject for another day), I'm mostly liking the OS. But I do have one small grievance: When I click the Start button and then click what looks like a power button, my system doesn't actually shut down. Instead, it goes to sleep.

Hey, Microsoft: I don't want it to go to sleep. I want it to shut down! But that requires an annoying extra step: I have to mouse over to another menu and choose Shut Down from a list of half a dozen options. If I'm in a hurry, it's way too easy to inadvertently click the wrong wrong.

Fortunately, there's a way to reprogram that "sleep" button to become an actual power button. Here's the process in a nutshell:

Open the Control Panel and go to Power Options.
Click Change plan settings for your selected power plan.
Click Change advanced power settings.
Expand Power buttons and lid.
Expand Start menu power button.
Change the setting from Sleep to Shut down.
Click OK.

Wow, could Microsoft have buried that setting any deeper? Thankfully, Windows 7 makes it much easier to reprogram this button's function. Now if we could just get an honest-to-goodness Shut Down button that doesn't require a visit to the Start menu, we'd really be making progress.

Rick Broida writes PC World's Hassle-Free PC blog Sign up to have Rick's newsletter e-mailed to you each week.

Apple Launches New iMacs, MacMinis, Mac Pros

2009-03-03T10:23:00.001-08:00

As had been rumored, Apple this morning upgraded its line of iMacs, MacMinis, and Mac Pros, with improved processor speeds and upgraded storage space. All of the new computers are now available in the Apple store.

The new iMacs, available in both 20-inch and 24-inch models, feature double the amount of RAM found in previous models : 2GB for the 20-inch version and 4GB of RAM for the 24-inch. Hard drive space also gets doubled, to 320GB for the 20-inch model, and 640GB and 1TB for the 24-inch model. The prices range from $1,199 for the base 20-inch 2.66-GHz model up to $2,199 for the 24-inch 3.06-GHz model with 1TB or storage space.

Mac Minis received a speed bump as well with 2.0-GHz processors, more disk space, and NVIDIA GeForce 9400 graphics cards. Two new models are available: For $599 you can get a 2.0-GHz Mac Mini with 1GB of RAM and a 120GB hard drive; a version with the same processor speed, 2GB of RAM, and a 320GB hard drive goes for $799.

Two MacPro models are available as well. A $2,499 model features a Quad-Core 2.66-GHz Intel Xenon Nehalem processor, 3GB of RAM, and a 640 GB hard drive, while a $3,299 model brings you two 2.66-GHz Intel Xenon Nehalem processors (8-Core), 6GB of RAM, and a 640 GB hard drive.

Also, both of the company's new wireless devices, Time Capsule and AirPort Extreme now offer simultaneous dual-band Wi-Fi on both the 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz bands, allowing all the devices on the network to use the most efficient band automatically. This will allow them to serve wireless Internet connections to both Macs and PCs, alongside Wi-Fi devices such as iPhone, iPod touch, and Apple TV. Time Capsule costs $299 for the 500GB model and $499 for the 1TB model. Airport Extreme comes at $179.

Intel goes to court in licensing spat with Nvidia

2009-02-20T05:41:00.000-08:00

Intel Corp. went to court this week to resolve a licensing dispute with Nvidia Corp. over the latter's plan to build chip sets compatible with Intel's latest Nehalem processors.

In a filing in the State of Chancery Court in Delaware, the chip maker on Tuesday asked a judge to rule that Nvidia is not licensed to produce chip sets that are compatible with any Intel processors with integrated memory-controller functionality, such as Intel's Nehalem microprocessors.

Intel launched its first Nehalem chips in November, when it introduced the Core i7 chips. The new chips integrate memory controllers inside the chip, which helps the CPU communicate with the memory faster. Future Intel laptop and desktop processors are also expected to include integrated memory controllers.

Intel had discussions with Nvidia for more than a year attempting to resolve the matter, but the talks were unsuccessful, said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. Intel had to go to court to resolve this dispute, Mulloy said.

In response to the court filing, Nvidia on Wednesday said that a four-year-old bus license with Intel allowed it to build chip sets based on Intel CPUs with integrated memory controllers.

"We are confident that our license, as negotiated, applies," said Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia president and CEO, in a statement.

The license revolves around usage of a bus, or point-to-point interconnect, that helps the CPU communicate with components in a PC. Nvidia is "aggressively developing" new products for Intel's current interconnect and Intel's future DMI (direct media interface) bus.

Nvidia makes chip sets -- a set of integrated circuits -- for Intel and for Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s CPUs to help processors communicate with components like network and storage controllers.

As CPUs integrate more capabilities like graphics, Intel may be trying to gain more control over its future chip technology, said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at Insight64. Intel plans to integrate graphics in a two-chip package it is expected to start shipping later this year.

"Intel [could] be saying 'We gave you some technology to go into old processors ... now we're not going to let you do that anymore,'" he said.

But Nvidia CEO Huang said Intel's CPU business is decaying, and the court filing is an attempt to save it.

"At the heart of this issue is that the CPU has run its course and the soul of the PC is shifting quickly to the [graphics processing unit]. This is clearly an attempt to stifle innovation to protect a decaying CPU business," Huang said.

Nvidia is trying to push GPUs as an alternative to CPUs, because GPUs execute advanced tasks like video encoding and decoding much quicker. It is also pushing the CUDA parallel programming architecture, a software tool kit that allows programmers to take advantage of the processing speeds of GPUs.

Both CPUs and GPUs are important and neither is going away soon, Brookwood said. However, CPUs are gaining more importance with GPUs taking on the role of a subordinate on laptops and desktops.

"Nvidia basically for the last year has been arguing that all the hard work is in the GPU and nobody's going to care about the CPU. Intel's been going in the opposite direction," Brookwood said.

As better graphics capabilities are integrated into CPUs, a smaller number of buyers will pay extra for a separate graphics card. That strikes at the heart of Nvidia, which is known for its graphics cards. The general computing trend is not on Nvidia's side, which is already facing a problem on how to grow its discrete graphics business during the recession, Brookwood said.

Analyst: HP financial results could mean bad news for Microsoft

2009-02-20T05:39:00.002-08:00

Hewlett-Packard Co.'s financial results could mean more trouble for Microsoft Corp. as the PC market continues to struggle, a financial analyst said Thursday.

HP's "weak systems results" and fiscal outlook suggest the "PC market remains challenging and unlikely to improve over near-term," said a research note by Barclays Capital analyst Israel Hernandez.

HP on Wednesday posted declines in all of its businesses except its EDS services business for its fiscal first quarter, ended Jan. 31. The company, like most others in the technology and other business sectors, is being affected by the global economic recession.

"HP's results and commentary suggest that PC, as well as server demand, remains subdued, a condition that is likely to persist given slowing global macro conditions that are rapidly affecting both consumer and enterprise sales amid mounting corporate layoffs," Hernandez wrote.

As a result, analysts will likely lower consensus estimates for Microsoft's fiscal third quarter, which the company is in now, he wrote.

It's HP's PC results that will affect Microsoft the most, especially if the market continues to decline.

Microsoft blamed lagging PC sales for missing estimates for its fiscal second quarter, the results of which it announced on Jan. 22. The company also said it would lay off up to 5,000 workers, an unprecedented move for Microsoft.

Microsoft did not warn Wall Street or investors that it would not meet expectations prior to announcing its first-quarter results, as some had expected. However, it did announce results and layoffs before the U.S. markets opened that day, which it typically does not do.

Microsoft had expected the PC market to grow between 10% and 12% in the first quarter, but the market was flat. The company also blamed the increased interest in netbooks, or low-cost mini-notebooks, for its financial shortfall.

Barclays' Hernandez noted that netbooks are the only category of PCs showing growth, but that this is detrimental to Microsoft's client operating margin and its Windows average selling prices. Selling Windows XP on a netbook means less money for Microsoft than selling Windows Vista on a full-featured PC, he wrote.

Indeed, Microsoft's problem with netbooks lies with Vista, which has too big a hardware footprint to run reliably or well on netbooks. XP runs fine, so XP and Linux are what original equipment manufacturers are preinstalling on most netbooks.

Microsoft hopes to alleviate the Vista problem and take more advantage of the netbook market in the future with Windows 7, the next version of its client operating system. Microsoft has said all versions of Windows 7 will run well on netbooks. Windows 7 is expected to be available before the end of the year or, at the latest, the beginning of 2010.

Microsoft is scheduled next week to give analysts an update on its current quarter on a conference call, which should give a better sense of how its quarter is shaping up.

Take Windows 7 for a spin with VirtualBox

2009-02-20T05:39:00.001-08:00

Everyone likes to try new and shiny technology toys like the Windows 7 beta, but when the price is having to replace your existing operating system, that's too much for most people. That's when being able to use a virtualization program can come in darn handy.

To test out how well Windows 7 works on a virtualized system, I decided to use Sun's VirtualBox software. While there are, of course, other virtualization programs out there, such as VMware's Workstation and Parallels Desktop, VirtualBox has two significant advantages over the others. First, it's free. Second, you can use it with several operating systems, including Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris.

In my case, I decided to use VirtualBox to run Windows 7 on two Dell Inspiron 530S systems, one running Windows XP Pro SP3 and the other running MEPIS 7 Linux. Each PC came with a 2.2-GHz Intel Pentium E2200 dual-core processor with an 800-MHz front-side bus, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB SATA drive and an Integrated Intel 3100 Graphics Media Accelerator. While not powerful systems, these proved to have more than enough CPU power to run both their native operating system and Windows 7.

Running VirtualBox

VirtualBox comes in two editions. The full VirtualBox is free for personal use and evaluation, but doesn't come with the complete source code. VirtualBox OSE (Open Source Edition), also free, does come with the source code and includes several enterprise-level features, such as an RDP (Remote Display Protocol) Server and USB support. (Other virtualization applications, like Xen, require tweaking before they'll support USB.) Both versions can run Windows 7.

In general, you'll need at least 1GB of RAM to run VirtualBox and a guest operating system. More RAM is always better. In my testing, I found that Windows 7 would actually run on as little as 512MB, while Vista really needs at least 1GB of its own.

VirtualBox should run on any recent CPU, but it does best with high-end processors that support hardware virtualization enhancements such as Intel's VT-x and Advanced Micro Devices' AMD-V.

The first step is to download a copy of VirtualBox. To run Windows 7 successfully, you'll need at least VirtualBox 2.1.0 -- I ran it on the latest version, VirtualBox 2.1.2.

VirtualBox lets you run Windows 7 on a Linux system.
Click to view larger image

If you're a Linux or OpenSolaris user, you can also obtain a copy using your software package manager program. VirtualBox supports openSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), SLE (SUSE Linux Enterprise) and Xandros. You can also find additional support, both for specific operating systems and in general, in the FAQ file and in the User Manual (PDF).

On Windows and Mac OS X, installation requires little more than clicking on the installation file and letting it run. It's a bit more complicated on Linux and OpenSolaris. On Solaris, you need to compile the program. On Linux, you'll need to follow some additional steps, which are described in the Linux download section.

Finally, if you need more guidance, you can find step-by-step instructions for VirtualBox 2.1.0 at the Two Guys Tech site.

Setting up the VM

Your next step is to set up a new virtual machine for Windows 7. You do this by clicking the New button, which will then ask you how big a hard drive you want for the operating system. The default is to give it a 20GB virtual hard drive. With Windows 7, I decided to give it a more generous 40GB. You can also let VirtualBox dynamically determine how much hard drive room an operating system can have, but I prefer to decide for myself.

This done, you set up how much RAM and video memory Windows 7 can have. I prefer to give the operating system an ample 1GB of RAM and 128MB of video memory. You can get by with less, but you'll start noticing system delays.

VirtualBox also lets you set up 3-D graphics acceleration and access optical discs, USB devices, shared drives and so on through its main interface. You can set this up after you have Windows 7 installed, but I prefer to get this basic configuration out of the way first.

Laptop face-recognition tech easy to hack, warns Black Hat researcher

2009-02-20T05:37:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON -- The face-recognition technologies offered by some laptop vendors as a way for users to securely log onto their systems are deeply flawed and can be relatively easily bypassed, a security researcher warned today at the Black Hat security conference here.

Nguyen Minh Duc, a researcher at Bach Khoa Internetwork Security Centre, a Hanoi-based security organization, showed how attackers could break into laptops from Lenovo, Toshiba and Asus featuring face-recognition technologies, simply by using digitized images of the actual user of the systems in each case. The attacks were conducted on a Lenovo system with its Veriface III technology, an Asus system featuring its Smart Logon software and a laptop using Toshiba's Face Recognition technology.

The attacks are possible because the underlying technology used by the vendors for face authentication can be easily fooled -- meaning it cannot be trusted for secure log-on purposes, Minh Duc said. He claimed that each of the vendors has been notified of the issue and urged them to reconsider the use of face recognition as a secure log-in option until the problem has been fixed.

Toshiba, Lenovo and Asus are among a handful of vendors currently supporting face authentication as a secure log-in option. The idea is to let a user's face serve as a password for gaining access to a system. Instead of logging in with a username and password, users simply sit in front of a built-in camera on the system that captures an image of their face and compares selected features from the image with those previously registered by the user. Users are granted access only if the images match.

Laptop vendors have touted the technology as safer and easier than relying on usernames and passwords.

The problem, according to Minh Duc, is that face-recognition algorithms cannot tell the difference between a digitized image and a real face. Because the algorithms, in effect, process digital information sent via the camera, it is possible to trick the software with an image of a registered user of a system, he said.

An attacker could obtain a photo of the user and tweak the lighting and viewpoint with commonly available image-editing tools, he said. Because a hacker is unlikely to know what the face stored in the system looks like, he might have to create a large number of digital facial images -- each with different lighting and viewpoints -- to fool the face-recognition technology. An attacker would need to have a reasonable amount of experience with image editing and regeneration to successfully carry out such attacks, Minh Duc added.

At Black Hat, Minh Duc showed how to access laptops from each of the three vendors simply by placing digitized images of actual users in front of the built-in laptop cameras. The approach worked even when the face-recognition software was set to its highest security setting. With the Toshiba face-recognition technology, Minh Duc had to move the images a bit to fool the technology because it looks for facial movement. It is also possible to use black-and-white images to fool one of the systems, he added.

What makes the vulnerability in laptop face-recognition technology particularly dangerous is that compromises are harder to spot, Minh Duc said. An attacker could gain access to a system without the real user ever knowing about it, he claimed.

Intel Eyes Cloud Computing With New Hardware, Software

2009-02-20T05:36:00.000-08:00

Intel is making a push into cloud computing with forthcoming changes in its Nehalem server line aimed at large data-center deployments.

As part of that initiative, the company earlier this week outlined hardware and software updates that it said will lead to energy savings and offer the scalability necessary for cloud-computing services.

Intel hopes to provide technology for low-range and midrange servers that can share workloads effectively if demand for a cloud application spikes, said Jason Waxman, general manager of high density computing at Intel. Server deployments would depend on resources needed by each cloud, with some requiring faster network connections or more memory. For example, hardware needs of a multimedia-intensive service like Google Earth would differ from those of an e-mail service like Gmail, Waxman said.

In addition to providing servers that deliver efficient cloud services, Intel wants the servers to be power-efficient. Waxman said that power consumption and cooling accounts for up to 23 percent of server deployments, so the company is building motherboards that could help cool systems efficiently while reducing energy costs.

Intel is developing a new motherboard, designed for servers used in cloud computing, that reduces power drawn to 85 watts in idle compared to 115 watts for standard Nehalem-based boards. A reduction of 30 watts per server could save up to US$8 million in three years in a deployment of 50,000 servers, Intel said.

The upcoming Nehalem-based boards will use Xeon processors due for release later this quarter. Intel will provide the motherboards through partners like Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM.

Specific motherboards can help cool down systems efficiently, which could reduce energy costs. Some of the redesigned motherboards remove slots to discourage use of power-hungry components and peripherals like graphics cards and hard drives. Users can instead access centralized storage over a network. Intel is also bunching together hot components so less would be needed to cool a system.

"We've actually worked with certain cloud service providers to ... change the fundamental settings to come up with something in the silicon -- whether it's the chipset or CPU -- to meet a particular optimized need," Waxman said.

The motherboards will include voltage regulators and work with software tools to monitor power consumption. One such software tool, called Dynamic Power Node Manager, will cap and balance power consumption between servers to cut energy costs. Intel tested Node Manager with Chinese search engine Baidu, which saved 40 watts per server during a cloud implementation.

Intel is also providing software tools like compilers and debuggers to improve performance and analyze software code. Optimizing code helps execute tasks more quickly and efficiently while using fewer system resources. That could save up $20 million over three years in a 50,000 server deployment, Waxman said.

The company has worked on optimizing search codes for most of the major search providers, Waxman said.

"We actually have people ... on site with these large cloud service providers doing hands-on tuning -- looking at their workloads ... to get more performance out of it," Waxman said.

One thing Intel can't control is the bottleneck of data throughput caused by slow network connections. Intel hopes to cut that with the VMDQ (Virtual Machine Device Queues) feature, which speeds up data throughput over virtual machines by intelligently queueing up server traffic. Hypervisors on servers with the queueing software work together to split traffic -- like storage and Web traffic -- to balance the traffic over multiple virtual machines. The feature cuts bottlenecks that typically affect a 1G bps network, Waxman said.

"In the past one virtual machine could hog up all the traffic. What you really want to be able to do is put things in a queue," Waxman said.

Taking advantage of virtualization technology, Intel also hopes to standardize the deployment of the DCMI (Data Center Management Interface) protocol across virtualized hardware and software environments to ease data-center task management. The specifications include features to measure power consumption to effectively share resources across a large-scale server deployment. For example, DCMI can cap power consumption on servers and monitor temperature to prevent servers from overheating.

Intel said that about 14 percent of servers purchased today go into a cloud deployment, Waxman said. That number will rise to 25 percent by 2012, with more cloud deployments going in large data centers of 50,000 servers or more, Waxman said.

Company Demos Development of Turn-by-turn IPhone GPS App

2009-02-20T05:35:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine has been longing for a smartphone for years, but he's continued to hold off on the hopes that when he does eventually get one, it will do absolutely everything from making phone calls to preparing grilled cheese sandwiches. Phones these days have gotten pretty close to his ideal, but they still lack one key ingredient for him (besides the sandwich-making), and that's GPS-based turn-by-turn directions.

The iPhone's built-in Google Maps are serviceable for many purposes, but if you've ever used an in-car GPS system with automatic rerouting and a snide British voice telling you when you've taken a wrong turn, you'll know that it falls short in many places. Last July, Apple VP Greg Joswiak said that he expected that hole in the iPhone's functionality to be filled eventually, but that there were technical obstacles.

The obstacles appear not to be just technical either, as some reports indicate that Apple's SDK terms prohibit such features on the iPhone, though some of this may possibly be because of Google's own terms of use for Google Maps, which restrict using the information for "real time navigation or route guidance, including but not limited to turn-by-turn route guidance."

This doesn't appear to have stopped some developers. At this year's Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona, Sygic showed off a prototype turn-by-turn navigation app for the iPhone, including voice prompts and automatic route recalculation, though it only contained maps for Europe. Sygic--which has developed similar applications for a number of other platforms, including many cell phones--says that it plans on submitting the program to the App Store, just to see how the cookie crumbles.

Sygic's not the only company interested in the GPS market, either. A company called XRoad has had two GPS applications on the iTunes Store for a couple of months now; however, the apps don't feature voice prompts or live turn-by-turn directions, and the user reviews of the product have been heavily mixed. Last June, GPS unit maker TomTom also said that it had an iPhone app ready to go, but as of yet, that software has yet to materialize.

It would seem likely, per Joswiak's comments if nothing else, that some sort of official turn-by-turn direction system is coming to the iPhone eventually, whether it be via Apple or a partnering company.

7 Technologies that Changed the World

2009-02-20T05:34:00.000-08:00

Today life without a cell phone, a laptop, or an Internet connection seems unthinkable. Tech has infiltrated daily life in so many ways that it's hard to remember entire generations found ways to reach others, stay up-to-date, and do their jobs without the technology innovations we take for granted.

PBS Nightly Business News took a close look at tech innovations and innovations from other fields. To celebrate its 30th year on television, the news show partnered with Knowledge@Wharton to select the top 30 innovations in the past 30 years -- innovations that may seem standard now, but whose creation changed the way business is conducted, directly affected quality of life, broke new ground, and more.

Here are seven technology innovations from that list.

RFID and applications (#23)

Long before Nike+ used radio frequency device to tell you how fast you're running, the technology was being used in World War II radar systems. In the '80s it was put to use in automated toll payment systems, enabling speedsters everywhere the ability to fly through the tolls.

GUI (#21)

The first graphical user interface was invented by Douglas Englebart in 1968, and in the late '70s and early '80s GUI design advanced, largely thanks to Apple. Because of these pioneers, we can take it for granted that we interact with our computer using a mouse and have easy-to-understand icons and other graphical controls instead of having to remember a bunch of computer commands.

Social networking via internet (#20)

Internet-based social networks really are very new. SixDegrees.com (1997) is the earliest social network site, according to PBS, but it wasn't until MySpace, which launched in 2003, that social networks began to appeal to the masses. Now, of course, there's Facebook, which gives you endless opportunities to have worlds collide, and Twitter, which empowers you to become your own paparazzi by dropping life tidbits, wisdom, and your comings and goings to your anxious followers.

Online shopping/ecommerce/auctions (#15)

Where would we be without Amazon, eBay and other online stores? Stuck in traffic on the way to the mall, that's where. Thanks to the Internet being opened up to commercial use, the ability for companies to capitalize on electronic transactions took off. As did our hunger for a more peaceful shopping experience.

Mobile phones (#3)

Take a look at your tiny little cell phone and be thankful. The first mobile phones, which Motorola unleashed on the market in 1983, were confined to the car (until a few years later when they became more mobile) and were the size of a briefcase.

PC/ laptop computers (#2)

1981 was a big year for computers: IBM launched the 5150 model (which it called a "personal computer") and the Osborne 1 became the first portable computer. Weighing in at 24 pounds, it challenges our current notion of laptop.

Internet/broadband/WWW (#1)

Coming in at #1 is the Internet. Our slavery to Google, our addiction to Twitter, our ability to keep up-to-date on any given news topic, our ability to send and receive far too many e-mails...The Internet enabled so many other phenomenon that it's startling to realize the Internet as we know it only arrived in the '90s. But it didn't take long to change our lives forever.

Adobe Flaw Heightens Risk of Encountering Malicious PDFs

2009-02-20T05:33:00.000-08:00

Security companies are warning of a new flaw in two Adobe Systems programs that could compromise a PC merely by opening a malicious PDF (Portable Document Format) file.

Hackers are exploiting the flaw in the wild, although attacks are not widespread yet, according to Symantec and the Shadowserver Foundation.

The flaw affects version 9 of Reader and Acrobat as well as earlier versions, according to Adobe's advisory. A buffer overflow condition can be triggered by opening a specially-crafted PDF, which gives the attackers control of the computer. Shadowserver wrote that the flaw could be exploited on systems running Microsoft's Windows XP SP3.

Adobe called the flaw "critical," it's most severe rating, and said it will release a patch for Reader 9 and Acrobat 9 by March 11. The company said patches for version 8 of Reader and Acrobat will follow, then finally for version 7 of Reader and Acrobat.

In the meantime, hackers will quickly try to use the flaw. PDF vulnerabilities are especially dangerous since the file format is widely used.

"Right now we believe these files are only being used in a smaller set of targeted attacks," Shadowserver wrote in its advisory. "However, these types of attacks are frequently the most damaging, and it is only a matter of time before this exploit ends up in every exploit pack on the Internet."

There are a couple of defenses PC users can employ until the patch arrives. Users should not open PDFs from untrusted sources, Symantec said. Also, since the attack relies on JavaScript, users can disable that function in Acrobat and Reader, Shadowserver advised.

"You have the choice of small loss in functionality and a crash versus your systems being compromised and all your data being stolen," the organization wrote. "It should be an easy choice."

Norway Pushes to Boot Microsoft's IE6 Browser off the Web

2009-02-20T05:31:00.000-08:00

A prominent Norwegian Web site is spearheading a movement to get users to abandon Microsoft's widely-used but aging Internet Explorer 6 browser.

IE6 doesn't follow established standards for presenting Web pages and has security problems, according to online marketplace FINN.no, which is asking users to upgrade to IE7, Mozilla's Firefox or Opera Software's browser.

FINN.no ("finn" means "find" in Norwegian) has to spend disproportionate effort tweaking its site to make it work with IE6, time that would be better spent introducing more tools for the site, wrote Erlend Schei, a Web developer for FINN.no.

The problem with IE goes back years. Microsoft developed IE before some Web standards, such as CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and RSS, were developed. As IE become dominant, Web developers wrote applications to work with IE rather than to Web standards.

The playing field changed as browsers such as Firefox came on the market in 2004, striving to accommodate World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards. But since the majority of Web users were using IE, it meant developers spent lots of time to ensure their pages were compatible with all browsers.

Microsoft said when it released IE7 that it adhered more closely to W3C standards such as CSS, but critics complained the company didn't go far enough, and older Web pages still didn't render right.

Microsoft is claiming that its latest browser, IE8, will be the most standards-compliant one it has ever released. IE8 is in release candidate 1 status, with a final release due in a few months.

IE6 was introduced with Microsoft's XP operating system in 2001 and had hung around for a surprisingly long time. Many new netbooks and other PCs that ship with XP still come with a copy of IE6, even though IE7 was released in October 2006.

FINN.no said around 17 percent of its 4.2 million users are still on IE6. According to figures from NetApplications, which tracks browser market share by version, IE6 holds 19.21 percent of the market, still more than the latest version of Firefox, 3.0, which holds an 18.3 percent share.

FINN.no said it appears companies have lagged behind home users in upgrading the browsers on their systems.

Other Norwegian Web sites are also picking up on the idea, posting notices encouraging people to upgrade. An "IE6 Warning Campaign" has also been launched on Facebook, with links to other Web sites that let Web developers cut and paste code that puts a warning on their own site.

A wiki page is also keeping track of information and Web sites worldwide advocating the upgrade.

Microsoft could not be immediately reached for a comment.

Microsoft unveils mobile apps store, backup service

2009-02-17T08:04:00.000-08:00

Microsoft will introduce an application store with its newest version of Windows Mobile software, it planned to announce at Mobile World Congress, where it also was to formally open a limited beta for its My Phone data backup offering.

Windows Marketplace for Mobile will come with Windows Mobile 6.5, the newest version of the operating system, and will give users access to thousands of applications, said Scott Rockfeld, group product manager for Windows Mobile. Microsoft also introduced Windows Mobile 6.5 at MWC on Monday, saying the software should become available on phones early in the second half of the year.

While applications stores have been around for some time, Apple's easy-to-use App Store, accessible from the iPhone, popularized the idea of buying and downloading mobile applications. Now, independent companies, operators and mobile phone makers are building stores that are accessible from handsets and that offer wireless downloads.

Nokia also planned to announce at MWC a new application store that will carry content and programs for users of its phones that run the S60 and S40 operating systems.

Offering an applications store is "table stakes" these days, said Sean Ryan, an analyst at IDC. However, Microsoft hasn't disclosed a lot of details about its store, such as how easy it will be to use. "So there are still a lot of factors out there. But as a concept it's a good thing and something they need to do," he said.

While Windows Mobile phones come in many different form factors, Microsoft offers developers a module they can use to ensure their applications work across all the phones, Rockfeld said. That means most applications in the store should work on most phones.

He sought to minimize the potential conflict between Microsoft and its device-maker customers and operator partners, some of which may also be building application stores. "This isn't the end-all be-all," Rockfeld said. "Handango will be there, mobile operators will have their stores. We're not forcing anyone to make the decision to come to us."

In addition to the Handango mobile application Web site, PocketGear launched a store for Windows Mobile applications last week. PocketGear also runs a store for Palm applications.

Microsoft has already begun doing outreach to the developer community to let them know how the store works and how they can get their applications into it, Rockfeld said.

Another new service that Microsoft will offer and that the company planned to discuss at MWC is My Phone. Details about the mobile backup service leaked out in early February. It is now available in a limited invitation-only beta, Rockfeld said.

New Loan May Clear DRAM Maker ProMOS

2009-02-17T08:03:00.000-08:00

A consortium of eight banks led by the Bank of Taiwan reached a tentative agreement to loan DRAM maker ProMOS Technologies the money it needs to make payments on a convertible bond, the bank said in a statement late Monday.

The deal, should it be made final, would ensure ProMOS's survival past a major bond redemption this week and keep DRAM prices from rising. Last month, German DRAM maker Qimonda filed for bankruptcy protection, sending DRAM prices up over 25 percent in a week. DRAM makers have suffered from a nearly 2-year downturn caused by a chip glut, and many companies have posted losses for at least a year.

The Taiwanese banks plan to loan ProMOS NT$3 billion (US$88.2 million), a smaller figure than the NT$5 billion ProMOS was seeking. The deal will not be finalized until boards of directors at each bank approve their respective portion of the loan.

The Bank of Taiwan has pledged NT$700 million of the total amount.

ProMOS needs the cash to pay up to US$330 million in expected redemptions of a convertible bond. The redemption was originally due to begin on Feb. 14, but since that date fell on a Saturday, it was delayed. Since Monday was a U.S. holiday, the redemption officially began Tuesday. ProMOS has seven days to make the payments.

Failure to meet the payment schedule could leave the chip maker with few alternatives but to seek protection from its creditors, analysts say. ProMOS has already lobbied business partners and the Taiwan government for funds to help it through this crisis, and only this eleventh-hour deal with banks may have saved the day.

A few forces may be compelling the banks to help ProMOS, analysts say. For one, the Taiwan government pledged late last year to help domestic DRAM makers by working with banks to delay loan repayment schedules and ease lending.

The banks may also have made the loan out to keep a major borrower afloat. ProMOS held NT$89.5 billion in debt owed to Taiwanese banks as of the middle of last year, according to an estimate by the island's economics ministry. Were ProMOS to file for insolvency, the repayment of those loans would be jeopardized.

Acer Takes on Smartphone Market

2009-02-17T08:02:00.000-08:00

Acer has jumped head first into the smartphone market with its Tempo family of devices. They are all touch-enabled and based on Windows Mobile, the company announced on Monday.

The Tempo family is to a large extent the result of Acer buying Taiwanese smartphone maker E-Ten last year. Developing its new smartphones wouldn't have been possible without the R&D know-how it got via that deal, according to Aymar de Lencquesaing, the head of Acer's Smart Handheld Business Group.

The first set of devices will be based on the existing version of Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system. Included is, for example, the M900, which comes equipped with a QWERTY keyboard, a 3.8-inch screen, and a fingerprint scanner for authentication. It also has HSDPA (High-Speed Download Packet Access) support, built-in GPS (Global Positioning System), and a 5-megapixel camera.

For users who aren't fond of QWERTY keyboards there is the F900, which also comes with 3.8-inch screen. It has a 3.2-megapixel camera, and you also get faster uploads using HSUPA (High-Speed Uplink Packet Access) and support for Wi-Fi.

Both phones will start shipping at the end of March or the beginning of April, according to Acer. Pricing will be announced at the time of launch.

The company is also working on a second set of smartphones that will be based on Windows Mobile 6.5, which was also announced on Monday, and come out by the end of the year.

De Lencquesaing also dropped hints about Acer working on smartphones based other operating systems than Windows Mobile, including Android, but didn't provide any details.

Acer's goal is to become one of the top five smart phone vendors, which means it would at least have to displace Sharp from the fifth spot and sell about 1.3 million units per quarter, according to third quarter sales statistics from Gartner.

Norton Online Family Safety Service Launches

2009-02-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

Symantec has announced the public beta launch of Norton Online Family, a new Internet safety service that's compatible with both the Mac and PC.

Norton Online Family provides a way for parents to monitor their kids' online behavior and encourages communication, according to Symantec. It does so by letting kids know when Norton Online Family is active, and it encourages parents to talk with their kids about online safety and Internet usage.

Parents create an account on the Norton Online Family Web site then download "Norton Safety Minder," an application that goes onto each child's computer. The service, in conjunction with the software, then tracks each child's Internet usage in real-time.

Parents can track what kids are searching for online, and provides listings that show step-by-step where each search leads. Norton Online family can filter out extra URL's from particularly media-heavy Web sites, and is compatible with most social networking sites, to help parents gauge where their children are logging in and displaying name and age. Parents can also activate a time management feature that limits each child by imposing a "curfew."

In related news, Symantec has formed the Norton Online Family Advisory Council, comprising educators, pediatric specialists and others. They'll help test the beta and will provide feedback on issues relevant to the service's continued development.

Vodafone to Sell Second HTC Google Phone

2009-02-17T07:59:00.000-08:00

High Tech Computer (HTC) unveiled its second Google Android-based smartphone, the HTC Magic, with mobile service provider Vodafone on Tuesday.

The new smartphone will soon battle its predecessor, the T-Mobile G1 (also called the HTC Dream) in Europe. Vodafone plans to launch the HTC Magic in the U.K., Spain, Germany, France and Italy and several other Vodafone markets over the next few months, the company said in a statement. T-Mobile has said it would roll out the G1 in continental Europe in the first quarter of this year.

Vodafone did not provide pricing information, nor nail down a specific launch date.

HTC isn't the first company to show off an Android phone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona so far this week. Chinese handset maker Huawei revealed its first Android-based smartphone on Monday. The device, which resembles an iPhone, will be available in the third quarter of this year.

The HTC Magic will launch much sooner than Huawei's device. HTC has a jump on most other smartphone developers when it comes to Android because the company worked closely with Google to make the first smartphone based on the new OS and software, the G1.

The new Android smartphone shares several similarities with the G1, judging by the specifications.

The two handsets sport 3.2-inch touchscreens with 320x480 resolution. They both have 3.2-megapixel digital cameras and both handle many of the same wireless technologies, including Wi-Fi, GPS (Global Positioning System) and 3G (third-generation) signals via WCDMA (Wideband CDMA) as well as high speed data via HSPA (High Speed Packet Access). The also both use track balls and enter buttons as means of navigation.

The HTC Magic differs mainly in its sleeker design and lack of a QWERTY keypad.

The device is smaller and lighter than the G1 despite the same size screen, at 113 millimeters by 55mm, compared to the G1's 117.7mm by 55.7mm. The HTC Magic is thinner at 13.65mm versus 17.1mm thick for the G1, likely due to the lack of the keypad. The Magic is also lighter at 118.5 grams (4.18 ounces) with the battery, compared to 158 grams (5.6 ounces) for the G1.

The HTC Magic will be available in white in the U.K., Spain and France, black in Germany and both colors in Italy, Vodafone said.

Toshiba to Acquire Fujitsu's Hard-disk Drive Business

2009-02-17T07:58:00.000-08:00

Toshiba and Fujitsu have signed a provisional agreement under which Toshiba will acquire Fujitsu's loss-making hard-disk drive business.

A value for the deal, which is expected to close during the April to June quarter, was not disclosed.

As a first step towards the acquisition Fujitsu plans to bring its hard-disk drive operations together in a single company in which Toshiba will acquire an 80 percent stake. Fujitsu will hold the remaining 20 percent stake for an unspecified length of time after which it will become a wholly-owned unit of Toshiba, the two said in a statement.

Toshiba already has a hard-disk drive business although it's not focused in the same area as Fujitsu. Toshiba's drives are targeted at laptop PCs, mobile devices, consumer electronics and automotive applications while Fujitsu aims its products primarily at the enterprise space. It has a roughly 25 percent share of that market, according to IDC.

Through the acquisition Toshiba said it intends to enter the market for server and data storage system applications.

The deal will also mean Toshiba will build-up its solid-state disk (SSD) business.

SSDs are hard-disk drive-like devices that store data on flash memory, of which Toshiba is a leading producer, instead of a revolving magnetic disc. The drives have several advantages over HDDs although are more expensive, which has led to limited use.

Around 10.1 million SSDs were shipped last year, according to an estimate from IDC, and the market is set for big growth over the next few years as performance improves and they get cheaper. In 2012 IDC expects SSD shipments to hit 89.3 million units.

The deal covers Fujitsu's HDD design, development, manufacturing, sales and other related functions carried out by the company except its hard-disk head production and media business. Fujitsu will sell its hard-drive media business to Japan's Showa Denko and plans to closedown its head production operations.

Fujitsu's hard drive operations have been on the block for several months and at one point local media reports said Western Digital was close to acquiring the business.

Nokia Will Ship N97 Loaded With Skype Calling Software

2009-02-17T07:57:00.000-08:00

Skype is developing a VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) software client for Nokia's top-of-the-range N97 smartphone, executives of both companies said Tuesday.

Nokia will load the application onto phones before they ship. It will be integrated into the phone's address book, making it as easy to place a call to a contact's Skype username as to their regular phone number, said Skype Chief Operating Officer Scott Durchslag.

The Skype application will allow users to make voice calls, send instant messages and also to select it as a widget so they can see which of their friends are online, all the time, said Jose-Luis Martinez, Nokia's Vice President for Nseries phones. It will use Wi-Fi or cellular connections, as available.

The N97 runs Nokia's S60 software platform, but the application under development is specific to the N97 and will not initially be available for other S60 phones, Durchslag said.

Skype is still just designing the user interface, and the application code hasn't been written, said Durchslag. He expects to have something ready to demonstrate by June, with the final application ready for release some time in the third quarter.

That makes it likely that Skype will be missing from the first batch of N97 phones. Those will be in stores in June, Nokia Executive Vice President Kai Öistämö said at a Nokia event on Monday.

Including an application for a service like Skype is a good fit with Nokia's design philosophy for the N97.

"What makes it our flagship is the tight integration with services," Öistämö said, pointing to the way the applications on the phone work with Nokia's online navigation, entertainment and e-mail tools.

Skype has already developed applications for other mobile phones. Two are distributed exclusively by 3G (third generation) mobile network operator Three, under the 3 Skypephone brand. A third, the INQ1, is also sold through Three but its developer Inq Mobile hopes to find other operators interested in selling it this year.

On Monday, Skype announced an update to its Windows Mobile application. Version 2.5 is now final, after months in beta, while a new beta version, 3.0, is available with two new features: file transfer, and the ability to send SMS (Short Message Service) text messages at Skype rates abroad or while roaming.

In addition to Windows Mobile version, the forthcoming N97 application and the dedicated Skype phones, mobile Skype is also available as a "lite" version for Android phones and about 100 other Java-enabled mobile phones from LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. The lite version, still in beta testing, offers only basic Skype features including voice calling, instant messaging and presence notification, and won't work over Wi-Fi connections, making a flat-rate data service indispensable.

For the full featured application on the N97, "We are starting at the high end," said Durchslag, "but you will see it in the mid-tier. Below that it's hard to deliver a good quality experience," he said.

Nevertheless, when it comes to extending Skype calling to low-end phones, "Time is on our side. Processing power will have to move down market," he said.

How-To: Use Your iPhone as a Wireless Laptop Modem

2009-02-17T07:47:00.000-08:00

I travel a lot. And if you’re a geek like me, you can’t go a full day sans internet access without experiencing some severe withdrawal symptoms. Luckily, my iPhone, with all its WiFi and 3G goodness, has been instrumental in feeding my addiction while on the road. But though Apple’s smartphone provides the best mobile browsing experience out there, the small screen and touch controls still don’t compare to the pixel real estate and tactile qwerty speed of a laptop. Not to mention such luxuries as Flash compatibility, page caching, and tabbed browsing.

So the next time you’re stranded without an open WiFi network (but your 3G signal is going strong), you’ll be glad you installed Addition’s iPhoneModem 2 (free to try, full license is $9.99). Unfortunately, Apple has apparently deemed the app to be in conflict with its App Store Terms and Conditions, so it is only available for jailbroken phones via Cydia. Here’s a quick guide:

1) Jailbreak your iPhone.
Download and install QuickPwn, an easy-to-use jailbreaking application for Windows and Mac (the latest version works with iPhone OS 2.2.1). Run the software and follow the onscreen instruction very carefully!

2) Install iPhoneModem by Addition.
QuickPwn installs an app on your phone called Cydia, which is essentially the App Store for apps that were rejected from the official App Store (or, for whatever reason, the developer chose not to release through Apple). Run Cydia, search for iPhoneModem by Addition and install it. Keep in mind you can only delete Cydia installed apps via Cydia’s Manage-Sources function. Now download and install the helper app on your laptop and you’re almost ready to go.

3)Set up the network.
Run the helper app and hit Connect. The helper app sets up an ad hoc wireless network that can be accessed via iPhone. The default network it creates is called “iPhoneModem” and does not have a password (you can change this in the Preferences of the helper app). Now open up your iPhone’s Settings and tap WiFi. Make sure WiFi is turned on and select the network “iPhoneModem” (or whatever you called it). Type the password if you assigned one. Open up the Modem iPhone app and everything else will configure automatically. After a few moments the helper app and the iPhone app will confirm that a connection has been established and you can browse away with all the comforts of your laptop!

Shortcomings:
While 3G seems plenty fast on a phone, it feels a little slow on a laptop. Also, most major web browsers work but not all are supported. In addition, a lot of other internet applications aren’t supported, but for all intents and purposes, you should be able to browse just fine.

*Note: If you haven’t already discovered, jailbreaking your iPhone opens up a world of possibilities, including themes and apps that aren’t allowed in the App Store. While it technically voids the warranty, you can easily return your device to its original state with the “Restore” feature in iTunes, wiping all traces of the jailbreak hack.

Sony Unveils "Smarter" Cyber-shot Cameras

2009-02-17T07:46:00.000-08:00

After unveiling a handful of new Cyber-shot point-and-shoot cameras at CES earlier this year, Sony today further bulked up its camera line with six more additions to the Cyber-shot line. The new T-, W-, S-, and H-series cameras are not yet available, but will be showcased at the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) tradeshow at the beginning of March.

Although the new cameras span from lower-end pocket cams to touchscreen cameras to a bulkier, high-zoom model, most of them have one thing in common: An intelligent auto mode. According to Sony, the new intelligent auto mode is enabled by default, and the cameras will optimize the scene mode, facial recognition, lighting settings, and image stabilization accordingly.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T900 and Cyber-shot DSC-T90

The 12-megapixel Cyber-shot DSC-T900 will offer a whopping 3.5-inch-diagonal LCD touchscreen, optical image stabilization, and the aforementioned intelligent auto mode. In addition to automatic shot optimization, the new T-series cameras also recognize and tag faces in the images, and on-camera images can be automatically sorted depending upon who's in the shot. Other key features include 720p HD movie mode with HDMI-out and a stereo mic, in-camera photo-editing features, ISO equivalencies of up to 3200, and a range of color options (black, silver, red, and bronze). The T900 will be available in March for $380.

The other addition to the T series is the Cyber-shot DSC-T90, which has almost identical specs but a slightly smaller 3-inch-diagonal LCD touchscreen and no stereo mic for its 720p HD movie mode. The T90 will be available in April for $300 in five colors: black, silver, blue, pink, and brown.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H20

New to Sony's high-zoom H series is the Cyber-shot DSC-H20, a bulkier 10-megapixel camera with a 10x optical zoom. However, it only offers a 38mm film equivalent on the wide-angle end. Making up for that somewhat is its HD movie mode, which shoots 720p clips and offers optical zoom while taking video. A 3-inch LCD screen, intelligent auto mode and face recognition, in-camera editing apps, and ISO equivalencies up to 3200 round out the H20's specs. It will be available starting in April for $280.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W290 and Cyber-shot DSC-W230

Two new cameras are also being added to the mid-range W series of Cyber-shots. The 12-megapixel Cyber-shot W290 offers the new intelligent auto and face-recognition features, optical image stabilization, 720p HD movie mode, a 5x optical zoom that starts at 28mm on the wide-angle end, and a 3-inch LCD screen. It will be available in April for $250 in black, silver, blue, and bronze.

The slightly lower-end DSC-W230 has similar specs, but lacks the wide-angle lens (4x optical zoom starting at 30mm) and doesn't shoot HD video (only standard-definition MPEG1 clips). The W230 hit stores in April for $200 in four colors: black, silver, red, and blue.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-S980

The lowest-end of the new product is the only new Cyber-shot that doesn't offer the intelligent auto functions. The 12-megapixel Cyber-shot DSC-S980 has a 2.7-inch LCD, a 4x optical zoom starting at 33mm, and digital-only image stabilization. It comes in at just $150, available in April.

Intel Looks to Bring HD Video to Handheld Gadgets

2009-02-10T05:07:00.000-08:00

Intel researchers are trying to create small, integrated chips that will be able to run high-definition 1080p video on portable devices, though it could take them five to eight years to do so, a senior Intel engineer said Monday.

One of the main issues the researchers have to overcome is that of power leakage in processors, said Shekhar Borkar [CQ], an Intel fellow, during an interview Monday. Intel engineers are trying to reduce that power leakage while also scaling graphics performance on chips to bring richer multimedia content to smartphones and other portable devices.

Intel aims to boost graphics performance by using an on-chip accelerator that will allow multiple streams of graphics data to be processed simultaneously, using a technique called SIMD, or Single Instruction, Multiple Data. Rendering high-definition video is best done using SIMD techniques, Borkar said.

SIMD is already used in some graphics processors and CPUs. For example, Intel used SIMD with the MMX extensions it introduced for its Pentium processor in the 1990s, which allowed that chip to better handle video on desktops.

However, chip circuits that enable SIMD acceleration have high power leakage and don't scale down very well to low voltages, Borkar said. As video gets more popular on handheld devices, with the arrival of applications like mobile TV, engineers need to come up with new ways to manage power.

At the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, Intel is presenting a paper about a SIMD accelerator that scales smoothly to ultra-low voltages and has circuits that are up to 8 times more energy efficient than what exists today. The technology could find its way into mobile chips such as Intel's Atom processor in five to eight years, Borkar said.

"There's a lot of recent interest in how to reduce power consumption of SIMD operations so that we can take this technology and use it for really low-power graphics," he said.

Circuits that do SIMD processing today draw 1.1 to 1.2 volts, but Intel thinks it can come up with a design that will offer equal performance and draw only about 300 millivolts, Borkar said.

He hopes to apply the technology to server chips as well, to bring greater power efficiency to high-performance computing.

In some ways Intel is just now getting its feet wet in the market for small portable devices. Last year it introduced its Menlow platform for what it calls mobile Internet devices, which are somewhere between a sub notebook and a cell phone. Handset makers adopting Menlow chips have expressed concerns about their poor battery life, however. The Menlow platform has a set of components, including the low-power processor code-named Silverthorne and the Poulsbo chipset.

Intel hopes to fix Menlow's ills with the Moorestown platform, which will consume up to 10 times less power and is due for release in late 2009 or 2010, according to the company.

IBM, Juniper Join in Cloud Strategy

2009-02-10T05:06:00.000-08:00

IBM and Juniper on Monday provided a sneak peek at technology that lets enterprise IT managers easily reallocate computing resources between a private and a public cloud.

Using cloud management software from IBM's Tivoli division and a Juniper network, the companies demonstrated a drag-and-drop interface for managing a hybrid cloud infrastructure. It was the first time IBM had shown off technology for shifting work within a hybrid setup, which the company believes will be the dominant form of cloud architecture. IBM was set to announce the capability on Tuesday, along with several other new cloud-related offerings.

Cloud computing, along with virtualization, can give IT departments more flexibility by letting them separate applications or data from particular sites and equipment. Enterprises are beginning to explore public cloud services, in particular, partly as a way to avoid some investments in fixed assets, according to Nemertes Research analyst Andreas Antonopoulos.

At its Silicon Valley Research Center in San Jose, California, on Monday an IBM executive demonstrated how the IBM Cloud Management Console, which already could be used to control a private cloud, can now control a remote cloud as well. The console displayed virtual machines as small boxes color-coded to show whether they were being used and what for. Identifying one application as less critical than another, he dragged several boxes from the private cloud to a public one. Then, with computing resources freed up on the private cloud, he allocated the empty boxes to the more critical function in order to meet the IT department's service-level agreement for it.

IBM will be unveiling that capability and others to selected customers alongside partner Juniper Networks on Tuesday. The company has tapped in to Juniper APIs (application programming interfaces) for networks that better serve the needs of hybrid cloud computing, executives of the companies said. Among other things, Juniper technology will help to allow easier remote management of clouds over long-distance MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) networks. Enterprises won't need a single-vendor Juniper network to take advantage of the partners' technology, however, because Juniper uses standards such as MPLS, they said.

The demonstration took place in the data center of the Silicon Valley facility, which also serves as one of nine Cloud Labs around the world where IBM can construct proof-of-concept systems for customers interested in cloud computing. Those customers could be either enterprises exploring private or hybrid clouds, or service providers that want to build their own public clouds as a business, said Jay Subrahmonia, director of IBM Cloud Labs.

Monday's demonstration did not include moving data between public and private clouds, but that could be a future direction, Subrahmonia said.

IBM was set to unveil a wide variety of cloud offerings on Tuesday, including the following:

- The Service Management Center for Cloud Computing, a set of products that IBM's clients can use to build and deliver cloud services. At its center are Tivoli Provisioning Manager 7.1 and Tivoli Service Automation Manager, designed to automate cloud deployment and management. The Service Management Center will include at least nine different products this year.

- IBM Rational AppScan 7.8, which helps enterprises ensure that the Web services they publish into a cloud are secure and comply with regulations and company policies. Rational AppScan OnDemand allows continuous monitoring of those services.

- IBM Design and Implementation for Cloud Test Environments, which lets customers build a cloud inside their own environments for testing. It can save as much as 20 percent through quicker provisioning, IBM said.

- Tivoli Storage as a Service, providing Tivoli data protection technologies on an online, pay-as-you-go basis. It will be offered through IBM's Business Continuity & Resiliency Services cloud beginning later this year.

Like IBM, Antonopoulos of Nemertes Research believes almost all enterprises that use cloud computing will take a hybrid approach. IT infrastructure is like an investment portfolio, which shouldn't be dominated by one type of asset and has to be tailored to each organization's needs, he said. In addition, enterprises need to consider not just the ongoing cost of going to a third-party cloud service, such as subscriptions and bandwidth, but the cost of migrating to the service and later moving on to another approach, he said.

"Anything you do in IT is temporary," Antonopoulos said.

Managing the different pieces of a cloud infrastructure is one of the major stumbling blocks to adopting the technology, so there is room for better solutions such as what IBM is constructing, Antonopoulos said. The companies that come to Nemertes for consultation are looking for seamless continuity between public and private clouds, but today they see the line between those as not very permeable, he said.

IBM is one of the main vendors that Nemertes clients are exploring for cloud technology, along with Amazon.com and Sun Microsystems, Antonopoulos said. On Tuesday, IBM is set to announce beauty supply company Elizabeth Arden, life-science data management vendor Indigo BioSystems, financial software and services company Nexxera and the U.S. Golf Association as cloud computing customers.

Sega Chops 560 Jobs, Nixes 110 "Amusement Facilities"

2009-02-10T05:04:00.002-08:00

Sega hasn't responded swiftly enough to turbulent business conditions, says the company, so they're reducing "fixed cost" and axing upwards of 560 jobs.

Ouch.

Company revenues were reportedly down across the board, resulting in a revised fiscal forecast and losses of over $235 million when things wrap next month.

Before Sega gets to what it's calling "voluntary redundancies across [their] workforce," they plan to close 110 of their least profitable amusement facilities, aka "arcades." After that, they'll dip heavily into their 3,000-plus employee pool and slash nearly 20 percent.

Voluntary reductions? Probably severance packages, though in this climate, that's no doubt cold comfort to the one-fifth soon to be unemployed.

Commensurate with those cuts, Sega's shrinking R&D by 20 points and consolidating its titles in development.

No word on which titles those cuts could affect, but games currently in development include:

The House of the Dead: OVERKILL (Wii)
Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection (PS3, 360)
Empire: Total War (PC)
MadWorld (Wii)
OutRun Online Arcade (360, PS3)
Sonic and the Black Knight (Wii)
BLEACH: Dark Souls (DS)
Stormrise (PS3, PC, 360)
Phantasy Star Portable (PSP)
Virtual Tennis 2009 (PS3, PC, 360)
The Conduit (Wii)
Let's Tap (Wii)

Matt Peckham misses both his Saturn and Dreamcast. You can reminisce with him at twitter.com/game_on.

Tata Sets up Cisco Technology Lab in India

2009-02-10T05:04:00.001-08:00

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India's largest outsourcer, has set up a Cisco Technology Lab, that will focus on developing network-based data center technologies, test frameworks, and train and certify employees on Cisco Systems data center technologies.

The lab will also allow Cisco and TCS to illustrate proofs of concepts, and IT and networking methodologies for client-specific business processes, TCS said on Tuesday.

The lab is an offshoot of an agreement announced Tuesday by the two companies. Under the agreement, TCS will set up a technology practice around Cisco's data center networking and security technologies.

A number of technology companies have announced partnerships in India, to take advantage of the services delivery capability of large Indian outsourcers, and also get access to customers. Microsoft, for example, announced last month that it was working with Infosys Technologies, India's second largest outsourcer, to help manufacturers manage their increasingly complex global supply chains.

Cisco has announced previously similar go-to-market partnerships with other Indian outsourcers, including Wipro and Satyam Computer Services.

The alliance between Cisco and TCS will initially focus on India, as well as common enterprise customers in the U.S. and the U.K. in the banking and financial services, telecom, government, and small and medium business segments of the market.

Google's PowerMeter Lets You Know If the Lights Are on

2009-02-10T04:59:00.000-08:00

Google is testing software that will let consumers get detailed information on how much electricity they're using, which could help households reduce consumption by as much as 15 percent, the company said Monday.

The software, Google PowerMeter, integrates into the company's iGoogle platform, where users create a customized page with lightweight Web-based applications. The PowerMeter is designed to show a granular, real-time view of electricity-consuming devices.

Although just a prototype now, consumers will eventually be able to opt in to use it, and no personal information will be shared between Google and utilities, the company said. The electricity data will be stored securely, and users will be able to tell their utility to stop sending data to the PowerMeter, Google said.

Most consumers don't have much data or context regarding their electricity consumption, according to Ed Lu of Google's engineering team.

Google's PowerMeter takes data from so-called "smart meters," or advanced electricity meters and other electricity management devices. About 40 million smart meters are in use worldwide, with that number expected to rise to 100 million in the next few years, Lu said.

U.S. President Barack Obama's economy stimulus plan includes investments to put up to 40 million smart meters in U.S. homes.

Google takes data from a home's smart meter and displays it in a graph. It can show the current day's electricity consumption compared to the day before, but the graph can be expanded to get a historical view of peaks and troughs in electricity usage, Google said.

Google also plans to release APIs (application programming interfaces) for PowerMeter that would let other software developers build applications around it.

Google is making a strong push for agreements with utilities on how to standardize the data that's available from smart meters. In a position paper dated Monday sent to California's Public Utility Commission, Google said that "the data from the smart meter needs to be available to the consumer in real-time and in a non-proprietary format."

California has been pushing ahead with Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) plans, which call for new meters that show real-time data well as pricing information to consumers.

So far, Google is letting its own employees test PowerMeter. The insights gained include at least two revelations about the electricity used to make toast and the inefficiency of 20-year-old refrigerators.

"One morning I noticed that my energy consumption was higher than normal," wrote Kirsten, a Google program manager, who didn't give her last name. "I went into the kitchen and found that the dial on our toaster oven was stuck and had been on all night.

"It was already burning and the once white exterior was now brown. If I hadn't seen my energy consumption and known where to look, my apartment could have been toast," she wrote.

Microsoft reveals 'My Phone' backup, sync service

2009-02-10T04:57:00.000-08:00

Just hours after Microsoft Corp. accidentally launched, then yanked, a Web site promoting its new "My Phone" backup and sync service, the company restored the site and posted more information about the free service.

Late Friday, Microsoft restored the My Phone site, which said the service is "coming soon." In a separate announcement posted to several Web sites, the company said that more information about the invite-only beta would be given out at the GSMA World Mobile Congress, which opens Feb. 16 in Barcelona, Spain.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is slated to give a keynote speech at the trade show on Feb. 17.

Earlier, Engadget Mobile had reported that the My Phone site was live at the Getskybox.com domain. Later, Microsoft acknowledged the screwup. "Today, Microsoft's My Phone Web site went live prior to its scheduled debut," the company said, several sites reported. Currently, Getskybox.com -- a reference to the "SkyBox" code name of the service -- shunted users to the My Phone site.

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According to the information now posted to the site, users of My Phone will be able to back up contacts, calendar appointments, text messages, photos and other information online. They will also be able to share those photos with others, update the information from a computer using a Web-based interface and use the stored data to restore a phone or transfer it to a new device.

Microsoft said it would give each user 200MB of storage space, but it warned that only phones powered by Windows Mobile 6 or later would be compatible with the service. In fact, it hedged. "Most phones that run the Windows Mobile 6 operating system are compatible with My Phone service," said the service's site.

Although not strictly billed as a phone-to-PC sync service, My Phone will synchronize Windows Live contacts -- assuming Windows Live has been installed on the phone -- with those on the Windows Live Web site. However, My Phone will not sync contacts, e-mail messages or to-do tasks with an Exchange mail server. Phone data will be backed up to the remote servers automatically once per day, said Microsoft, although users can manually trigger a backup at any time.

My Phone is a potential competitor to Apple Inc.'s MobileMe, which debuted last July but got off to a very rocky start. However, MobileMe costs $99 annually, while My Phone will be free, said Microsoft.

MobileMe offers considerably more storage space -- 20GB -- and synchronizes e-mail, contacts and tasks between not only Apple's iPhone and a PC or Mac, but also multiple computers.

Review: Apple's iWork '09 gets online sharing, 'evolutionary' updates

2009-02-10T04:55:00.000-08:00

The last time Apple updated its iWork productivity suite, it included a number of revolutionary advances over previous versions -- especially the inclusion of the Numbers spreadsheet application. By contrast, this year's move to iWork '09, unveiled at last month's Macworld Expo, feels much more evolutionary than revolutionary. All three applications in the suite -- the Pages word processor, Numbers, and Keynote, Apple's presentation app -- received notable updates, but they tended to fine-tune and complement the existing feature set rather than introduce radical changes.

While the updates may not wow current iWork users, each application got some worthy changes, easily justifying the $79 price tag on iWork '09 -- or the $49 charge if you're buying it along with a new Mac. One interesting note: The updates are largely application-specific, unlike the iWork '08 release, which included general interface updates across all three apps.

iWork '09's template browser makes it easy to choose from a variety of document templates.
Click to view larger image

One major addition to the suite is iWork.com, a Web-based collaboration tool that allows users to share documents created in any one of the three iWork applications. iWork.com allows multiple users to view and comment on documents through a slick Web interface and download shared documents in iWork, Microsoft Office or PDF formats. For now, iWork.com is available for free, as Apple says it's in public beta testing. Eventually, though, it will be a paid service.

Another update across all three applications is the template browser, which got several new templates. Like previous iWork releases and the iWeb application included in Apple's iLife suite, all three applications offer users a wide range of document templates. The browser for choosing a template when creating a new document has now been tweaked to allow easy viewing of all pages in multipage templates by simply moving the cursor over the template thumbnail -- much like events in iPhoto can quickly display multiple photos.

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As with past releases, the available templates are striking and cover a variety of home and business projects, offering new users excellent starting points. Numbers, for example, includes several spreadsheet templates for purposes users might not even think about, such as tracking their diets or workouts, creating a home inventory or even building a math quiz. Third-party templates that extend the features built in by Apple are also available, and users can create and save their own.

As with last year's iWork, however, most of templates have sample data included, making them more like demo files than actual templates. Some might see that as helpful; I tend to find it a little frustrating if I'm creating a new project or document.

HP says its netbooks will likely run three versions of Windows 7

2009-02-10T04:53:00.000-08:00

In a vote of confidence for Windows 7's suitability for use on netbook PCs, Hewlett-Packard Co. said it will likely offer at least three different editions of the upcoming operating system on future models of its Mini netbooks.

That includes the Professional and Home Premium editions, which Microsoft Corp. last week said will be the two primary versions of Windows 7, and the low-end Starter edition, which will limit users to running three applications at a time.

Kyle Thornton, category manager for business notebook PCs at HP, said in an interview late last week that the vendor also has been testing the beta version of Windows 7 Ultimate — an edition aimed at gamers and PC enthusiasts — on the Mini netbook line.

Windows 7 is being built on the same code base as Windows Vista, prompting some fears that the new operating system may prove to be too bulky to run well on modestly powered netbooks. But despite such concerns, "we see it running very well on the [Minis], even with Aero turned on," Thornton said, referring to the compute-intensive graphical user interface offered in both Vista and Windows 7.

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While Microsoft will focus its marketing of Windows 7 on the Professional edition for corporate users and Home Premium for consumers, it will continue to offer a total of six flavors — the same as with Vista. That, the company said, is necessary to meet the needs of PC makers as well as users.

As part of last week's announcement, Microsoft confirmed that there will be no special "netbook SKU" of Windows 7. Instead, PC makers will be allowed to install the Starter edition, formerly consigned to developing countries only, on netbooks and other low-end PCs for sale in markets worldwide. Microsoft officials expect, though, that the majority of netbooks will actually ship with Windows 7 Home Premium.

HP is even more ambitious. Besides the three editions of Windows 7 that it plans to support, the vendor hopes that it will be able to continue to pre-install both Windows XP Professional and Vista Business on its business-oriented netbooks even after the new operating system ships, Thornton said. (Vista Business is the product-line equivalent of the planned Windows 7 Professional edition.)

In the Mini 2140 system that it introduced last month, HP offers three operating systems for business users: XP Pro, Vista Business and Novell Inc.'s SUSE Enterprise Linux. No other netbook maker "supports business operating systems because, frankly, they are not being supported by Intel or Microsoft at all," Thornton claimed. "We went out on a limb to put XP Pro and Vista Business on the 2140 and make sure it runs fine."

Mac clone maker wins legal round against Apple

2009-02-10T04:52:00.000-08:00

A federal judge last week ruled that Psystar Corp. can continue its countersuit against Apple Inc., giving the Mac clone maker a rare win in its seven-month-old battle with Apple.

He also hinted that if Psystar proves its allegations, others may then be free to sell computers with Mac OS X already installed.

In an order signed on Friday, U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup gave Psystar the go-ahead to amend its lawsuit against Apple. According to Alsup, Psystar may change that countersuit, which originally accused Apple of breaking antitrust laws, to instead ague that Apple has stretched copyright laws by tying the Mac operating system to its hardware.

Alsup had tossed Psystar's antitrust charges in November 2008 but left the door open to a modified complaint. Psystar took advantage of the opportunity and filed a revised lawsuit in mid-December. Apple, however, had hoped to quash Psystar's revision, saying that the Miami-based company "attempts to repackage its dismissed antitrust allegations under the guise of copyright misuse."

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On Friday, Alsup said that Psystar could continue to press its once-dismissed case. "Psystar may well have a legitimate interest in establishing misuse [of copyright] independent of Apple's claims against it -- for example, to clarify the risks it confronts by marketing the products at issue in this case or others it may wish to develop," Alsup said in his ruling.

Apple started the legal wrangling in July when it said Psystar broke copyright and software-licensing laws by selling Intel-based computers with Mac OS X 10.5 preinstalled. Psystar has been selling machines equipped with Apple's operating system since April 2008.

Alsup also said that if Psystar proves that Apple abused copyright laws, some of Apple's charges against the company would be moot. He also seemed to say that that others would then be free to follow in Psystar's footsteps. "Moreover, if established, misuse would bar enforcement (for the period of misuse) not only as to defendants who are actually party to the challenged license but also as to potential defendants not themselves injured by the misuse who may have similar interests," said Alsup in his ruling.

The judge did not name the "potential defendants," but in previous filings, Apple has claimed that Psystar was not acting alone. "Persons other than Psystar are involved in Psystar's unlawful and improper activities described in this amended complaint," said Apple in a November filing. At the time, Apple only referred to those individuals or corporations as John Does 1 through 10.

Apple said it would reveal the names when it uncovered them.

Alsup also acknowledged Apple's argument that it had the right to decide how its software was licensed and used, but said that that would have to be decided as the case plays out. He did reject Psystar's attempt to include state unfair-competition charges in its countersuit, however.

Psystar has a week to submit its altered counterclaims, after which Apple must answer within 20 days. Alsup also told the two parties to get to work. "Both sides should be taking discovery and preparing themselves for trial and/or summary judgment," the judge concluded.

The case is currently scheduled to begin trial on Nov. 9.

Antivirus firm confirms hackers breached site

2009-02-10T04:51:00.000-08:00

Kaspersky Lab, a Moscow-based security company, admitted today that a database containing customer information had been exposed for almost 11 days and that it only learned of the breach when Romanian hackers told the firm about it last Saturday.

"This is not good for any company, especially for a company dealing with security," said Roel Schouwenberg, a Kaspersky senior antivirus researcher, in a telephone conference call today. "This should not have happened."

According to Schouwenberg, no customer data was accessed. "No real data has been accessed, and no data was revealed," he said.

The hackers, who are presumed to be Romanian, went public early Saturday in a blog post. There, they claimed that after launching a SQL injection attack on Kaspersky's U.S. support site, they were able to access a customer database that included e-mail addresses and software activation codes.

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Schouwenberg confirmed that the database was hacked via a SQL injection attack, but he reiterated that only the database's table labels had been accessed by the hackers, not the data itself. "A more advanced hacker could have gotten access to the information," Schouwenberg acknowledged, "including activation codes for the product and e-mail addresses. But that didn't happen."

A pool of approximately 2,500 users' e-mail addresses and some 25,000 activation codes were at risk, he said.

Schouwenberg blamed a combination of vulnerable code crafted by an unnamed third-party vendor and poor code review by Kaspersky. "We could have done a bit more to protect ourselves," he said. He also acknowledged that both internal and external monitoring of the company's Web properties had not caught the error. "A piece of the [support] site did not receive the usual scrutiny," said Schouwenberg.

The revamped support site, part of the company's U.S. operations, had been relaunched Jan. 28, leaving the database open to attack from that time until 12:15 p.m. (EST) Saturday, when Kaspersky took the new site offline and swapped in the old version.

Kaspersky has hired Next Generation Security Software Ltd.'s David Litchfield, one of the world's experts on SQL injection attacks and database security, to do an independent audit of the company's systems. Schouwenberg said Kaspersky would make public the results of Litchfield's report, which is expected shortly.

"Something went wrong with our internal code-reviewing process," said Schouwenberg. "Obviously, we are not happy about that." Kaspersky is evaluating that process, he added, and the company "will be making it stricter than it was. We need to do a much better job to prevent this from happening again."

SQL injection attacks have become a major problem for Web sites, which at times have been compromised by such exploits in huge numbers. Last year, for example, more than half a million pages were hacked by a widespread campaign that compromised, among others, sites belonging to the United Nations.

Other high-profile sites that have been victimized by SQL injection attack include Microsoft's U.K.-based site.

Motorola to rely on Android to revive phone sales

2009-02-04T06:41:00.000-08:00

Motorola Inc. today said its mobile phone revenues fell by 51% in the fourth quarter of 2008, and said it plans to improve phone sales in 2009 by developing fewer new handsets, but with a focus on smartphones that run the Android operating system.

The focus on Android will give Motorola a chance to capitalize on handsets that integrate social networking functionality, which is expected to sell well in the market, Motorola Co-CEO Sanjay Jha said in a conference call this morning.

By the same token, the Android news is not good for Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Mobile operating system. Motorola plans to build handsets in 2010 that will run Windows Mobile 7 when it becomes available, bypassing Windows Mobile 6, which is available now, Jha said. Last year, Jha criticized the Windows Mobile operating system for deficiencies in user functionality, but today he made it clear how Motorola intends to use, or not use, various Microsoft products.

The fourth-quarter earnings announcement did not surprise analysts, since Motorola last year began laying off 7,000 workers to lower costs, with 1,000 already let go, Motorola officials said.

However, the financial report was grim, with the company reporting a $3.6 billion quarterly loss, or $1.57 cents a share. For the mobile phone division, which is expected to be spun off in 2010 or later, revenue fell by 51% to $2.35 billion for the quarter compared to a year earlier.

Motorola also said it is suspending payment of dividends until further notice. It also announced that Chief Financial Officer Paul Liska had resigned.

In general, Jha said Motorola will make fewer launches of new mobile phones in 2009, with a greater focus on mid- and high-tier phones. Analysts have said a big part of the Motorola losses were because of flatness in sales of low-end phones, partly because of the poor global economy and the poor performance of mobile phone sales. The only bright spot has been in smartphone sales.

Jha gave some broad outlines of how Motorola will use Android, which is based on the Linux operating system and was developed with Google Inc. and the Open Handset Alliance. Because Android already has thousands of developers and won't require Motorola to build an operating system from the ground up, Motorola will be able to deliver a "differentiated" version in what promises to be a competitive market for both smartphones in general and Android phones, Jha said.

Also, Motorola teams have had years of familiarity with Linux Java, which will help in working with Android, Jha said. Motorola engineers are already working with Google developers to create a "tight hardware and software integration," he said. Jha estimated that up to 40% of development staffers at Motorola are devoted to smartphones, and noted that with prior successes like the MotoRazr phone, "we have world-class design capabilities."

Asus introduces Eee PC with 9.5-hour battery life

2009-02-04T06:40:00.001-08:00

Online stores are taking advance orders for Asustek Computer Inc.'s new Eee PC 1000HE netbook, which offers up to nine and a half hours of battery life and features Intel's latest mobile processor.

The laptop includes a six-cell "Super Hybrid Engine" battery pack. Depending on usage, the battery pack offers a choice of adjustable performance and power consumption modes, according to Amazon.com, which is taking pre-orders for the netbook.

The laptop uses the Intel Atom N280 processor, which draws about 2.5 watts of power, according to Amazon. Intel hasn't officially announced or talked about the processor yet.

Batteries in netbooks now on the market can run for up to four hours depending on display and wireless usage, said Richard Shim, an analyst at IDC. The claim of nine and a half hours on the 1000HE Eee PC blows away past claims of netbook battery life, he said.

"I'd have to see this thing to believe it," Shim said.

The extended battery life could help stimulate netbook demand, said David Daoud, another IDC analyst.

Weighing 3.2 lbs. with the battery pack, the netbook includes a 10-in. screen, 1GB of memory and a 160GB hard drive. It also includes 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi capabilities and Bluetooth wireless networking.

The laptop uses Windows XP and users get 10GB of free online storage. Retail sites didn't list models of the netbook with Linux.

The new netbook is priced at $399 on the Asus Web site, but Amazon.com offered it for $374. Asus officials could not be reached immediately for information about shipping dates.

The low-cost laptop industry took off when Asus introduced the Eee PC in 2007. The netbook is the poster child of a laptop category that now includes offerings from top vendors such as Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Acer and Lenovo. Shipments of netbooks totaled 10 million in 2008 and will likely double this year, according to an IDC study.

IBM to build massive supercomputer for U.S. government

2009-02-04T06:38:00.002-08:00

The U.S. government has hired IBM to build a supercomputer with more power than all the supercomputers on the Top500 supercomputer list combined.

It's an ambitious claim by IBM in a business where jumbo-size claims are the norm. The planned Sequoia system, capable of 20 petaflops, will be used by the U.S. Department of Energy in its nuclear stockpile research. The fastest systems today can only reach 1 petaflop, a remarkable achievement in its own right that was met only last year.

It "is the biggest leap of computing capability ever delivered to the lab," said Mark Seager, assistant department head for advanced technology at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., where the system will be housed. It's expected to be up and running in 2012.

IBM is actually building two supercomputers under this contract. The first one, to be delivered by midyear, is called Dawn and will operate at around 500 teraflops. Researchers will use Dawn to help prepare for the larger system.

Sequoia will use approximately 1.6 million processing cores, all IBM Power chips, running Linux, which dominates high-performance computing at this scale. IBM is still developing a 45-nanometer chip for the system and may produce something with eight or 16 cores -- or more -- for it. Although the final chip configuration has yet to be determined, the system will have 1.6TB of memory and be housed in 96 "refrigerator-size" racks.

The cost of the system wasn't disclosed.

The supercomputer is also helping to drive a massive power upgrade at Lawrence Livermore, which is increasing the amount of electricity available for all its computing systems from 12.5 megawatts to 30 megawatts. To achieve the upgrade, it will run more power lines to its facility. Sequoia alone is expected to use about 6 megawatts, according to Seager.

The world's first computer to break the teraflop barrier was built at Sandia National Laboratories in 1996. A teraflop equals a trillion floating points a second; a petaflop is 1,000 trillion (one quadrillion) sustained floating-point operations per second.

It takes government funding to build systems of this scale and size, but that also means that the U.S. is paying for much of the problem-solving it takes to scale across more than a million cores. "This is what's so good about it," said Herb Schultz, manager of deep computing at IBM. "They [the national lab] end up proving that you can get codes to scale that high."

In effect, by solving those problems, the national lab's work will pave the way for broader adoption of massive systems that could improve weather research, forecasts, tornado tracking, and work on a variety of other research problems. Large systems such as Sequoia help researchers reduce uncertainty and improve precision in simulations that can, for instance, predict tornado paths. The more compute power available, the more fine tuned and accurate the simulation.

The major problem in running a system of this scale is "the applications -- porting the applications and scaling them up is a critical problem we are facing," said Seager.

There are two petaflop systems in the U.S., IBM's Roadrunner at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which passed the petaflop barrier last May, and Cray Inc.'s XT Jaguar at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

IBM plans to build Sequoia at its Rochester, Minn., plant.

Microsoft to offer XP-to-Windows-7 upgrades

2009-02-04T06:38:00.001-08:00

Microsoft Corp. today confirmed that it will sell what it calls "upgrades" for Windows 7 to users running the aged Windows XP operating system.

Those users, however will have to do a "clean" installation of Windows 7, meaning that all data on the machine will be lost.

"Regarding XP, customers can purchase upgrade media and an upgrade license to move from Windows XP to Windows 7," a company spokeswoman said in an e-mail this morning. "However, they will need to do a clean installation of Windows 7."

In a follow-up reply to questions, the spokeswoman fleshed out what Microsoft means by upgrade. "The 'upgrade' part is referring to the license," she said. "You will be able to get the discounted 'upgrade' license, but it will include full bits."

That's how David Smith, an analyst at Gartner Inc., interpreted "upgrade" in Microsoft's description of what it would offer XP owners. "They're talking about the upgrade price," he said, pointing out that most software vendors use the term upgrade to designate a lower-priced version aimed at existing customers.

Although Microsoft today spelled out the six planned versions of Windows 7, it declined to provide pricing for them, or for the XP upgrade licenses.

Typically, an operating system upgrade offers users the choice between an in-place migration of the machine -- including installed applications and all data -- and a fresh installation, which overwrites the hard drive's contents. When Microsoft launched Windows Vista in January 2007, for example, it offered those upgrade paths to people then running XP .

Smith and other analysts applauded Microsoft's decision to not provide in-place upgrades from XP to Windows 7. "I'm not a big fan of them," said Smith. "They're tough enough from one version to the next, and from two versions [behind], it would be pretty challenging, technically."

Michael Gartenberg, formerly an analyst at JupiterResearch and now a vice president of mobile strategy with JupiterMedia, agreed. "For most end users, it will probably mean that they end up with a more reliable installation," he said.

Microsoft benefits, too. "It makes life a lot easier for Microsoft by not having to support an XP to Windows 7 transition," said Gartenberg, who is a Computerworld.com columnist. "It means that it's something they can get out the door earlier."

Microsoft has been aggressively pushing Windows 7's timetable. Just two weeks after it launched the first -- and in the end, the only -- public beta of the new operating system, the head of Windows development said the company is moving directly to a "release candidate" version of the operating system.

But the process of upgrading a PC from Windows XP to Windows 7 won't be easy, Gartenberg predicted. "It's a double-edged sword. For many consumers who may be looking to go directly from XP to Windows 7, the idea of doing a clean install, backing up their applications, backing up their data, can lead to a lot of hassles," he said.

"Considering that there's a lot of XP out there, one has to wonder why Microsoft is taking this approach," Gartenberg added. "It's not going to be the simplicity of sticking a disc in the drive and upgrading. We'll have to see if that affects the upgrade market."

Microsoft said it was working on ways to help Windows XP users make the move, but it did not get more specific. "Microsoft plans to have other tools and ways to help people get through that process, but we don't have full details on that at this time," a company spokesman said today.

Microsoft: Six versions of Windows 7 for sake of PC makers, users

2009-02-04T06:36:00.000-08:00

While it plans to focus on marketing two versions of Windows 7, Microsoft Corp. will offer six editions of its next operating system to better satisfy PC makers and end users, an executive said Tuesday.

"We did a lot of research and talked to a lot of [hardware] partners and customers," Mike Ybarra, general manager for Windows, told Computerworld following the versions announcement today.

"Our biggest challenge is that we have over 1 billion customers," Ybarra said. "It's hard to satisfy all of them [with a single version]. There are vocal customers who want every feature, and more regular consumers who say 'I want a version that can grow with me.'"

Microsoft said today that it will aim Windows 7 Home Premium at the majority of consumers and Windows 7 Professional at businesses. That harks back to Windows XP, which had two main SKUs: Home and Professional.

However, Microsoft will maintain all of the four other versions it offered with Vista, including the controversial Home Basic, the Starter Edition that was until now restricted to developing countries, Enterprise and Ultimate. That "SKU proliferation" confused many consumers and corporate customers.

Meanwhile, Apple Inc. releases a single version of Mac OS X with every new release. It does have far fewer users than Windows, with some estimates claiming between 30 million to 50 million users worldwide today.

Matt Rosoff, an analyst at the independent firm Directions on Microsoft, said that keeping the number of versions high is all part of Microsoft's attempt to segment the market and "maintain the average-price-per-unit of Windows sales in developed countries to counteract the effects of price pressure in developing countries, where most growth is happening."

Rosoff thinks Microsoft's rejiggered lineup is "simpler" for consumers, but remains too complicated for businesses, which will have to "check the feature list carefully" in order to choose between Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate.

Microsoft did consider cutting Ultimate, a pricy, fully loaded version that in Windows Vista was aimed at gamers and enthusiasts.

"We're keeping it because a lot of top [PC makers] wanted it in order to let them differentiate their own hardware," Ybarra said.

Windows 7 Ultimate won't have any unique multimedia features, but it will share the same advanced networking and security features as Windows 7 Enterprise, which is available to large corporations through volume licensing, Ybarra said.

Rosoff expects Ultimate to be embraced by businesses rather than enthusiasts, because they will seek to avoid locking themselves into a multiyear license agreement as is required by the Enterprise version.

Rather than cutting Home Basic altogether, Microsoft chose to sell it only in developing markets, where very cheap PCs are in demand, Ybarra said. "[PC makers] need to hit multiple price points: good, better and best," he said.

Alcatel-Lucent Posts Loss

2009-02-04T06:35:00.000-08:00

Losses at Alcatel-Lucent widened for the fourth quarter of 2008 as the economic outlook forced the company to write down the value of more assets.

Sales for the quarter were also down, by 5.4 percent from a year earlier to €4.95 billion (US$6.98 billion as of Dec. 31, the last day of the period reported) -- although that was still a little better than analysts had expected.

The telecom equipment maker reported a loss for the quarter of €3.87 billion, including goodwill impairment charges of €3.91 billion. In the fourth quarter of 2007 it reported a loss of €2.55 billion, including impairment charges of €2.52 billion.

The write-downs related to activities including CDMA (code division multiple access) and optical communications equipment, and were made necessary by a drastic deterioration of the global economic climate, which became considerably more challenging in the latter part of the year, Alcatel-Lucent said.

Alcatel-Lucent's services segment was able to post fourth-quarter revenue growth of 6.4 percent year on year, but other parts of the company saw a drop in sales for the fourth quarter.

Wireless and fixed access were problem areas in the carrier space, but lower sales here were partially offset by the strong performance of other carrier segments, including IP routing, submarine and next-generation networks, Alcatel-Lucent said.

Just like its competitors, Alcatel-Lucent is working to cut costs, aiming to reduce them by €750 million annually by the end of 2009. In December it announced a plan to reduce the number of managers by around 1,000 and the number of contractors by around 5,000.

However, the future continues to look bleak in the telecom sector: Alcatel-Lucent expects the market to be down by between 8 percent and 12 percent at constant currency rates in 2009.

Paris Appeals Court Confirms No IPhone Exclusive for Orange

2009-02-04T06:34:00.002-08:00

Mobile phone operator Orange may not have exclusive rights to distribute Apple's iPhone in France, the Paris Court of Appeals confirmed Wednesday, upholding a ruling made by the national competition council in December.

Apple launched the iPhone in the U.S. with an exclusive distribution deal with AT&T, a sales model it later replicated for the European launch with O2 in the U.K., T-Mobile in Germany and Orange in France.

By offering the operators exclusive rights to such a sought-after phone, Apple was able to influence the conditions under which the phones were sold, including the type of airtime contract sold with it. That level of control was not to the taste of rival operators, who issued legal challenges in France and, ultimately unsuccessfully, in Germany.

In France, Orange also offered the iPhone without an airtime contract, for use on any mobile network -- but at a much higher price than it sold it with an airtime contract.

For rival operator Bouygues Telecom that was not enough, and it filed suit with the national competition council, demanding the right to sell the iPhone directly. The council ruled in Bouygues Telecom's favor in December, but Apple and Orange filed suit with the Paris Court of Appeals to contest the ruling.

The court rejected their appeals with a 19-page judgment on Wednesday, a decision Bouygues Telecom hailed as a significant advance for consumers. Bouygues Telecom said it would allow them to freely choose their phone and their operator according to the best deals available.

Unfortunately for Bouygues Telecom, the competition council's decisision came too late for the important Christmas sales season. The company is still negotiating with Apple the terms under which it will sell the iPhone, it said Wednesday, and it plans to launch the phone as soon as a deal is finalized.

Along with France's other mobile network operator, SFR, Bouygues Telecom offers interested customers the opportunity to sign up to a mailing list for more information when the iPhone becomes available. Both networks welcome customers who have bought a phone directly from Orange and unlocked it for use on other networks.

Neither Apple nor Orange responded to repeated requests for comment on the appeal court's ruling, or on their future plans to distribute the iPhone in France.

Perhaps realizing that exclusive deals were making it more enemies than friends among mobile operators, Apple changed strategy with its third wave of launches, choosing to sell the iPhone 3G through multiple operators in countries including Australia, India and Italy.

Citrix Improves XenDesktop Administration, User Experience

2009-02-04T06:34:00.001-08:00

Citrix is adding features to cut the cost of desktop virtualization and improve the user experience in the new version of its XenDesktop platform, it said on Wednesday.

In XenDesktop 3, Citrix is introducing a new way to deliver desktops. Using the Desktop Streaming feature companies will be able to stream the bits needed to execute the operating system from a server to the endpoint over their LAN.

So, for example, power users can take advantage of the processing power on the desktop, but the IT department can still manage everything centrally in the data center, according to Calvin Hsu, director of product marketing at Citrix.

"This works best if you either have a fairly high-powered thin client or a number of standardized PCs at the endpoint," he said.

When using Desktop Streaming, companies should aim for as little hardware differentiation as possible, because when you stream the desktop image it actually has driver information and hardware configuration information in it, according to Hsu.

"Fewer variables means more users can leverage a single image of that desktop," said Hsu.

The setup also means that you need fewer servers in the datacenter, because the desktop is executed on the endpoint and not on the server.

Desktop Streaming will be part of the Advanced, Enterprise and Platinum Editions of XenDesktop 3, which will start shipping by the end of February. The three versions cost US$195, $295 and $395 per concurrent user, repectively. There will be two versions without Desktop Streaming: Standard, at $75 per concurrent user, and Express, which is free.

In XenDesktop 3 Citrix has also improved the single-server scalability for companies that still want to execute desktops on the server. Citrix can now run twice as many virtual desktops on each server. "You can run 50 to 55 desktops per single server, using a dual quad-core type of configuration," said Hsu.

On the administration side Citrix has integrated profile management, using technology it acquired from Sepago last year. Portable Profile Manager can be used to build desktops that feel personal to the user, but are based on standardized components.

"It makes the personalization more reliable and streamlines the profile itself," said Hsu.

In a bid to further widen the number of users that can use desktop virtualization Citrix is also adding multimedia capabilities to XenDesktop. Rather than rendering the multimedia, the server pushes the compressed data stream to the endpoint and then the endpoint renders it, according to Hsu.

"Most thin clients today will have media players built in to it, but effectively you just need the proper codec on the endpoint," he said.

Improving the user experience is key if desktop virtualization is to take off. "There is very little chance of virtual desktops going mainstream, and being adopted in a broad way, unless you have that user experience right," said Hsu.

SAP Launches Business Suite 7

2009-02-04T06:33:00.001-08:00

SAP launched Business Suite 7 on Wednesday, pitching the software as a more flexible and cost-effective option amid lean economic times.

The new suite includes more than 150 new "functional innovations" that span the gamut from areas like CRM (customer relationship management) and SCM (supply chain management) to industry-specific applications. It also continues SAP's emerging "enhancement package" strategy, which allows users to add functionality they want without the pain of a full upgrade.

Business Suite 7 is a major watershed for SAP, as it aligns the vendor's various modules for the first time on a single underlying platform, according Forrester Research analyst Ray Wang.

SAP "had to" do this, Wang said.

"People have had this perception that it's this one integrated system, but the reality is the [system integrators] have been tying all these [modules] together, making them work," he said.

SAP move is also meant to lure customers on older SAP systems, such as R/3, to adopt its NetWeaver platform, which is required for Business Suite 7, Wang added.

SAP will reveal more about the release, which also features improved user interfaces and blends in BI (business intelligence) functionality acquired through the company's acquisition of Business Objects, during an event Wednesday in New York City.

Security Intelligence

2009-01-29T04:29:00.000-08:00

Symantec has established some of the most comprehensive sources of Internet threat data in the world. The Symantec Global Intelligence Network encompasses worldwide security intelligence data gathered from a wide range of sources, including more than 40,000 sensors monitoring networks in more than 180 countries through Symantec products and services such as Symantec DeepSight™ Threat Management System and Symantec Managed Security Services, and from other third-party sources.

Symantec gathers malicious code reports from more than 120 million client, server, and gateway systems that have deployed its antivirus product, and also maintains one of the world’s most comprehensive vulnerability databases, currently consisting of more than 25,000 recorded vulnerabilities (spanning more than two decades) affecting more than 55,000 technologies from more than 8,000 vendors. Symantec also operates the BugTraq mailing list, one of the most popular forums for the disclosure and discussion of vulnerabilities on the Internet, which has approximately 50,000 direct subscribers who contribute, receive, and discuss vulnerability research on a daily basis.

As well, the Symantec Probe Network, a system of more than 2 million decoy accounts in more than 30 countries, attracts email from around the world to gauge global spam and phishing activity. Symantec also gathers phishing information through the Symantec Phish Report Network, an extensive antifraud community of enterprises and consumers whose members contribute and receive fraudulent Web site addresses for alerting and filtering across a broad range of solutions.

These resources give Symantec’s analysts unparalleled sources of data with which to identify, analyze, and provide informed commentary on emerging trends in attacks, malicious code activity, phishing, and spam.

Virtualization: Smart IT Investment in a Tough Economy

2009-01-29T04:26:00.000-08:00

Given today's weakened economy, CIOs are naturally reconsidering their IT budgets, wondering if the spending priorities they set earlier in the year are still appropriate. But if the CIOs interviewed for the Goldman Sachs IT Spending Survey of July 2008 are representative, those priorities make even more sense now than they did before the recent downturn.

They identified their top three spending initiatives over the next 12 months (in order of priority) as server virtualization, server consolidation and cost cutting.

Considering the well-known advantages of data center virtualization, which arise in large part from its ability to support server consolidation and reduce operating expenses, there's certainly no reason to reprioritize that spending mix.

But CIOs who focus solely on those aspects of virtualization could still find they have the wrong investment mix after the economy emerges from its slump. That's because consolidation and cost-cutting are just the first step in the virtualization journey that leads eventually to cloud computing: a completely abstracted, highly flexible and agile IT infrastructure that can deliver any content to any device (servers, storage, applications) anytime, anywhere.

Streamlining IT Operations

That's still a ways off, but it is coming – and appropriate investments now can not only save money in the present, but also set up an organization to reap big benefits down the road with an infrastructure that's ready for the future.

"The biggest mistake CIOs are likely to make about virtualization is to think of it only in terms of getting more out of the physical infrastructure," says James Urquhart, Market Manager for Cloud Computing and Virtualization in the Data Center Solutions Group at Cisco.

The consolidation that virtualization makes possible, putting 25 to 40 servers or more on a single physical box, can help businesses make better use of physical resources.

Although that's definitely an advantage – without server virtualization, businesses must overprovision compute resources to handle peaks, operating below capacity the rest of the time – it's only a starting point.
Virtualization can dramatically simplify and streamline IT operations. "You can create a standard server in software which has been tested against the applications you typically use, so rolling out a new server is just a software installation," says Andreas Antonopoulos, an analyst at Nemertes Research. "This produces a staggering reduction in operating expenses by increasing the number of servers each administrator can handle. You free up headcount, make fewer mistakes, deal with fewer exceptions, and generally increase reliability and stability."

Network Designed for Virtualization

But Urquhart points out that realizing this gain in efficiency requires a network infrastructure optimized for virtualization.

The Cisco Nexus family of data center-class switching products aims to provide this capability "We're getting strong feedback from our customers that the Nexus switches are not only a step towards virtualization, but a big part of their strategy to reduce device count in the data center, and along with it, both capital and operating expenses."

And, in fact, says William Charnock, Vice President of Technology at the global hosting provider ThePlanet.com, that's where his company has started. "While our internal IT department is aggressively evaluating virtualization, it's not yet a big part of our business model.

"For us, the high port density of the Nexus switches gives us a highly efficient use of our bandwidth resources, flattens and simplifies our network, and cuts down our device count, all of which reduces our capital investment and cuts our operating costs."

More Services for Customers

But Charnock agrees that this is just the start of benefits ThePlanet.com expects to see from the Nexus line.

"Once we have that kind of network density and flexibility, virtualization will be much easier to accomplish when customers demand it. We'll make virtualization tools available to our traditional customers as an add-on, giving us a lower price point for our services, while we build a virtualization platform to support more complex needs."

Bill Williams, Senior IP Architect at Terremark, a leading global provider of managed IT infrastructure services, sees similar benefits from the Nexus line. "The Cisco Nexus 5000 and 7000 serve as the foundation architecture of Terremark's Data Center managed services portfolio, and will help us reduce costs while providing customers greater bandwidth and services."

Infrastructure Urquhart notes that a lot of the impetus for hosted virtualization – virtualized data center infrastructure offered by a third-party service provider – is coming from smaller companies rather than large enterprises.

Infrastructure on Demand

"There's what I call a 'barrier to exit' in the enterprise, which tends to have a huge investment in traditional data center models – not only in terms of capital, but in operational processes and even the business model. Smaller firms don't have that, and tend to be more open to hosted virtualization."[

Charnock agrees. The bulk of his company's customers are small businesses – more than 20,000 small companies, many with no more five employees.

"They come to us for infrastructure on demand, and we end up being almost a lending arm for them, offering a month-to-month model that lets them get in easily without a huge investment," he says. "Virtualization is just more of the same, in some sense."

But, he notes, there's still a barrier, in terms of trust. "Customers like the idea of the 'locked cage,' and they're still wary of sharing resources, despite the price advantage it might offer." As well, in some cases, regulatory compliance forbids the kind of resource sharing that comes with virtualization.

Low Cost, High Quality

Charnock expects those barriers to fall, and says that for ThePlanet.com, virtualization is a necessary technology, one that the company will adopt due to both customer demand and business issues.

"It's a perfect fit with our fundamental business model: very low-cost, high-quality services for customers that can't afford the kind of infrastructure we offer," he says.

And he points out that such services are precisely what victims of the down economy who've lost their jobs may need if they jump into entrepreneurial mode. "Month-to-month infrastructure rental lets entrepreneurs get started proving their big idea, and it's our foot in the door when they succeed. Virtualization will make it easier for us to work with 'the next YouTube' and grow with them – that's the real bottom line."

Dave Trowbridge is a freelance writer based in Boulder Creek, CA.

Cisco Tapping the Network to Help with Environmental Efforts

2009-01-29T04:22:00.002-08:00

Long viewed as a societal burden for corporations, environmental concerns are now proving a surprising catalyst to a host of both obvious and unexpected business benefits.

Companies that have made substantial commitments to reducing their environmental impact are discovering new ways of cutting costs and improving operations. And for many companies, especially technology-focused ones such as Cisco Systems, environmental initiatives throughout the world are creating potentially huge and diverse markets for new products to help improve the energy efficiency of everything from buildings and data centers to automobiles and the electrical grid itself.

With this in mind, Cisco is now focusing on ways to use networking technologies to speed such efforts to help its customers improve both their businesses and the environment. In its first major product aimed at this goal, the company announced the development of Cisco EnergyWise, a technology that will help businesses put a stake through the heart of "vampire power," the energy drawn by many electrical devices even when they are not in use.

EnergyWise, a free software upgrade for Cisco's Catalyst line of network switches, will make it possible for businesses to monitor and control the energy consumption of many kinds of networking devices, including IP phones, video cameras, and wireless access points. By combining software-based policy management tools with EnergyWise, companies can automatically turn off or reduce power to their digital devices.

Cisco will also extend EnergyWise to curtail energy usage of other types of products like personal computers and printers. The company says it will eventually make EnergyWise capable of controlling energy uptake by other devices throughout a building, including elevators, heating systems, and lighting.

As the world's leading networking equipment maker, Cisco has hundreds of millions of products connected to business communications systems throughout the world. In general, more than one billion devices link to all types of corporate and home networks. That number is expected to increase to more than five billion by 2012, making such technologies as EnergyWise an important aid for energy conservation efforts, Cisco executives say.

While the energy used by data centers and communications networks will rapidly increase to keep pace with all the new devices, experts have calculated that new information technology and networking advances like EnergyWise could reduce worldwide pollution by five times more than what such technologies would generate.

Saving with Green

Neal Elliott, associate director of research at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, says new technologies like EnergyWise can help businesses tap into long-ignored opportunities for cost reductions. Waste by definition is expensive, he says. Certainly, volatile energy prices are now underscoring this approach.

"Energy is a big piece of the cost pie that many companies have overlooked," Elliott says. "For the past 50 years corporations have focused on worker productivity as the way to reduce costs. But now they are realizing there's a lot more potential in reducing their energy consumption. This is clearly no longer a tree-hugger issue. It's a key to business success."

Cisco would agree. Less than a year after making a commitment to substantially reduce the environmental impact of its operations, the company is finding just how beneficial "being green" can be for a business.

Last June Cisco - working in partnership with leading government agencies and environmental groups - launched a four-year effort to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent.

The company has already knocked 10 percent off its business travel by using virtual meeting networking tools such as WebEx online conferencing software and its high-end video meeting product, Cisco TelePresence (27 percent of Cisco's direct greenhouse gas emissions are from business travel).

By working with the Environmental Defense Fund, Cisco also identified a simple way to cut $24 million over four years from energy consumption in its labs.

Rick Hutley, vice president of the global innovations practice in Cisco's Internet Business Solutions Group, says benefits from green efforts can also extend well beyond cost cutting. "Green equals efficiency. And efficiency means good business." he says. "It should be an 'ah-ha' moment for executives that not only can they afford to go green, they can't afford not to."

By being greener, for example, a company can create products that use less material and therefore are less expensive to make, giving a company a competitive price advantage. In other cases, corporations that find alternative ways to conduct meetings or organize their workforce can boost productivity from regaining hours previously lost to business travel, Hutley says.

Corporate Environmental Leadership

But beyond good economic sense, the world is depending on major corporations to lead a new era of environmental stewardship, experts say. As the primary controllers of resource usage, collectively corporations are perhaps the most important players on the environmental stage.

"Governmental regulation is important, but the reality is we won't successfully address climate change if corporations don't become proactive," says Elizabeth Sturcken, a managing director at the Environmental Defense Fund.

But in his work with the world's largest businesses, Hutley says he has found that only "a handful have decided to make the kind of commitment that is necessary to gain the strategic benefits of environmental initiatives."

But Sturcken says the situation seems to be changing. "Our phone is ringing off the hook from companies that want to know how to get started."

Susan Wickwire, the director of voluntary corporate climate programs for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, says big businesses are taking much more interest in the EPA's various "green" programs. Last year, for example, the number of participants in its Climate Leaders initiative increased 50 percent. Climate Leaders helps major corporations properly analyze their climate change emissions and set aggressive reduction goals. It now has 250 participating companies.

"We saw a real spike in 2008," Wickwire says. "Once companies seriously look into this issue, they are realizing just how good green can be."

Charles Waltner is a freelance writer in Piedmont, Calif.

Former IBM exec gets green light to work for Apple

2009-01-29T04:22:00.001-08:00

Mark Papermaster, the former IBM exec who was blocked by a federal court from working at Apple last year, will start his new job April 24 -- six months after he left IBM, according to terms of a settlement made public today.

As part of the agreement, Papermaster, a 26-year veteran of IBM who resigned in October to take a senior position at Apple, must swear at two different times this year that he has not disclosed or used any IBM trade secrets.

Papermaster was barred from working at Apple in early November 2008 -- just days after he took a job running the company's iPod and iPhone engineering group -- when a federal judge ruled in favor of his former employer. IBM claimed that a noncompetition agreement Papermaster signed in 2006 prevented him from working for rivals for a year after leaving the company.

A week, later, Papermaster countersued IBM, arguing that the noncompetition agreement was unenforceable.

In its statement today, IBM couched the agreement as a win, stressing that Papermaster would not be allowed to work for Apple until a six-month period has passed since he left. "IBM and Mr. Papermaster have now agreed on a resolution of the lawsuit under which Mr. Papermaster may not begin employment with Apple until April 24, 2009, six months after leaving IBM, and will remain subject thereafter to all of his contractual and other legal duties to IBM, including the obligation not to use or disclose IBM's confidential information," the company said.

For its part, Apple said that Papermaster will take his spot as senior vice president of devices hardware engineering in April, and that he will report to CEO Steve Jobs.

Jobs, however, is on medical leave until late June. In his stead, Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook is in charge of the day-to-day operations at Apple.

Papermaster will take the position left open by the departure of Tony Fadell, a senior vice president who has been credited with jump-starting the company's iPod business. Fadell remains with Apple as an adviser to Jobs, at an annual salary of $300,000.

Twice after his start date, Papermaster will be required to sign a declaration in which he swears under penalty of perjury that he has not disclosed any confidential IBM information, nor intends to. The first such declaration must be given to IBM in the first half of July, the second in the first half of October.

The legal wrangling between IBM and Papermaster revealed some of Apple's recruiting process. In papers filed with U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth Karas, Papermaster said Apple had approached him in January 2008 and, after talking with him about an unspecified position, offered him a position developing computer hardware. He declined the offer.

Last September, Apple again contacted Papermaster, which led to more meetings with Jobs and others in early October. "The job at Apple is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," his lawyers said as they worked to counter the eventual injunction.

IBM had argued that Papermaster was hired at least in part because of his expertise in microprocessor design and said that he knew of "highly confidential IBM trade secrets" that would "irreparably harm" his former company if he was allowed to work for Apple.

Papermaster will take over the engineering of two of Apple's three revenue pillars. In the quarter that ended Dec. 31, 2008, Apple sold 22.7 million iPods and 4.4 million iPhones. Together the two devices contributed 45% of the revenue Apple earned in the last quarter.

Intel to Detal Eight-core Xeon Processor

2009-01-29T04:19:00.001-08:00

Intel plans to detail an eight-core Xeon processor at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco next month, offering an early look at what appears to be the company's first eight-core chip.

Details of the Xeon processor that will be discussed during the Feb. 9 presentation are scarce. The ISSCC program only reveals that Intel executives will discuss an eight-core, 16-thread Xeon processor manufactured with a 45-nanometer process.

Intel declined to comment on the Xeon processor that will be detailed during the presentation. "We are presenting 16 papers at ISSCC, but don't have anything further to share at this point," said Nick Jacobs, a company spokesman in Singapore.

The timing of the presentation suggests the eight-core Xeon processor is likely to be the Nehalem EP processor, an upcoming chip that is designed for dual-socket servers and workstations. This segment of the Xeon line is due for a refresh, and the Nehalem EP processor is scheduled to be released during early 2009.

Like other Nehalem chips, the Nehalem EP chips will include an integrated memory controller and use Intel's Quick Path Interconnect (QPI), which replaces the front-side bus and allows more data to flow between the processors and other components in the computer, speeding up the computer's overall performance.

Sony Sees Q3 Sales Drop, but Reports a Small Profit

2009-01-29T04:18:00.000-08:00

Sony's sales during the last three months of 2008 dropped by 25 percent due to the slowing world economy and strengthening Japanese yen, but the company still managed to keep its head above water thanks to an exceptional gain from foreign exchange.

The company recorded a fiscal third-quarter net profit of ¥10.4 billion (US$115 million), down 95 percent compared to the last three months of 2007 and its worst third quarter profit in at least ten years. Sales were ¥2.2 trillion, which is comparable to the level of sales reported by Sony in the same period during 2004.

The stronger yen hurt Sony's business and contributed to an ¥18 billion operating loss. However, the company managed to turn an overall profit thanks largely to ¥80 billion it earned from hedging against the currency swing.

Sony's core electronics business lost money during the quarter on the back of a 29 percent drop in sales in the sector. Some of Sony's best-known products including its CyberShot digital cameras, Handycam video cameras and Vaio PCs saw a "significant" drop in sales. Sharply lower profits were recorded for CyberShot cameras, Vaio PCs and Bravia televisions.

The one bright point was Blu-ray Disc players, which sold more during the quarter, although sales were low during the previous year because of the format battle raging in the sector. Sony also said Bravia TV sales were up in Europe.

In its games business, Sony saw sales sink 32 percent and profits were all-but-eliminated to ¥400 million.

During the quarter, which is a key sales period because of the Christmas selling period in western countries, unit sales of the flagship PlayStation 3 dropped 9 percent to 4.5 million and PlayStation Portable sales were down 12 percent at 5.1 million units. PlayStation 3 software sales jumped 57 percent to 40.8 million units while PSP software sales were off 15 percent at 15.5 million.

Sony and other Japanese electronics companies have been dealt a double whammy in recent months. Not only are sales falling in major economies as a result of the poor economic conditions but the Japanese yen has jumped in value against most currencies by a considerable amount.

The rising value of the yen exacerbates other problems faced by the company. Goods produced in Japan become more expensive when priced in foreign currencies. Sony would typically raise prices overseas when this happens, but given the weak economic environment that is difficult to do.

On top of these challenges, the revenue earned overseas is worth less when brought back to Japan. For example, when measured on a local currency basis, Sony's electronics sector sales dropped 14 percent while those of in the games business fell 18 percent, but when converted into yen, the drops became 29 percent and 32 percent, respectively, because the currency has strengthened.

Last week the company revised its financial forecasts and sales forecasts for key products for its current financial year, which ends in March.

It cut predicted sales by 14 percent to ¥7.7 trillion and said net income will drop from an expected profit of ¥150 billion to a loss of the same amount. It will be Sony's first annual loss in 14 years.

Sony said it expects to sell 15 million Bravia TVs this year, down 1 million on its previous forecast; CyberShot digital camera sales are predicted to be 21.5 million, a drop of 2.5 million on its last forecast and Vaio PC sales expectations have been reduced by a million units to 5.8 million. In the games sector Sony cut its PlayStation Portable sales forecast from 16 million to 15 million but left its PlayStation 3 target untouched at 10 million.

Nokia Outsources Desktop Management to India's HCL

2009-01-29T04:17:00.002-08:00

Nokia has outsourced desktop management and help desk functions in 76 countries to Indian outsourcer HCL Technologies.

HCL announced on Thursday that the handset maker has signed a five-year contract for an undisclosed sum.

The outsourcer has set up a new office in Helsinki, Finland, to deliver near-shore services to Nokia, in addition to delivering services from centers in Poland, China, the U.S. and India.

The contract includes multilingual helpdesk services in 13 languages, global account management, workstation packaging, creation and maintenance, workstation security management, and on-site support services delivered by partners, HCL said.

Indian outsourcers have typically not been able to get desktop management contracts because they do not have a global presence, and rely on local partners at each location, said Siddharth Pai, a partner at outsourcing consultancy firm Technology Partners International (TPI) in Houston.

"A key factor in this relationship will be how much control HCL can exercise over its local partners," Pai said.

The Helsinki center will have 100 staff and will help HCL offer near-shore delivery of services to its other customers in the Nordic and Baltic regions, the company said.

Some Indian outsourcers like HCL have set up facilities in the U.S. and Europe to offer customers a mix of services delivered from locations close to the customer, and from offshore locations like India.

HCL manages over 650,000 desktops under its remote infrastructure management program.

Toshiba's Fuel-cell Charger Is Coming This Quarter

2009-01-29T04:17:00.001-08:00

Toshiba is set to deliver on its promise to commercialize direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) technology during the current quarter.

Outlining business development plans in Tokyo on Thursday the company confirmed that it would launch a DMFC-based battery charger before the end of March. It is also aiming to commercialize DMFC packs for cell phones and personal computers sometime in the year from April.

DMFCs produce electricity from a reaction between methanol, water and air. The only by-products are a small amount of water vapor and carbon dioxide, so DMFCs are often seen as a greener source of energy than traditional batteries. Another advantage is that they can be replenished with a new cartridge of methanol in seconds.

Toshiba and other Japanese competitors have been working on fuel cells for several years. Like the other companies, Toshiba has constantly issued and then missed commercialization schedules, but this time it looks like things are for real.

At the Ceatec show in Japan in September it showed a prototype fuel-cell charged cell phone and said at the time it would commercialize a DMFC product before the end of the financial year. However since then it's been quiet on the issue and the only talk about fuel cells at the recent International Consumer Electronic Show in the U.S. was of future prototypes.

However, with Thursday's confirmation it appears a fuel cell charger is coming within the next two months. Toshiba wouldn't reveal more details of the product and whether it would be a dedicated model for a certain product, like a cell phone, or if it would be a general battery charger.

Nokia Phones Get Better Camera, Faster Internet Access

2009-01-29T04:16:00.000-08:00

Nokia has launched three new mid- and low-tier phones, continuing to push more advanced features down the price curve.

The 6303 Classic and 6700 Classic both follow in the foot steps of the 6300 Classic, according to Nokia.

The 6700 Classic has a 5-megapixel camera with an LED (Light Emitting Diode) flash, AGPS (Assisted Global Positioning System) navigation with Nokia Maps software, and a MicroSD memory card slot. It can also download data at 10Mbps or upload it at 2Mbps using HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) on compatible 3G (third generation) mobile networks, according to specifications supplied by Nokia. It will cost €235 (US$310) before tax and operator subsidy. Its predecessor the 6300 Classic -- which cost €250 at the time of its launch in November 2006 -- lacked 3G support and its camera had a resolution of 2 megapixels.

The 6303 Classic is a cheaper alternative with fewer improvements. It will cost €135 before tax and subsidies and has a MicroSD memory card slot, a 3.5mm audio jack and a 3.2-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash, but there is no support for fast Internet access or GPS.

One thing that hasn't changed is the display resolution: It's still 320 x 240 pixels for all three phones, although the display has grown by 0.2 inches.

The cheapest of the newcomers is the Nokia 2700 Classic, which will cost €65 before tax and subsidies. It has a 2-megapixel camera and support for GPRS . It too has a 3.5mm audio jack and the ability to store up to 2GB of data via its memory card slot.

Nokia has no plans to sell the three phones in the U.S., but said they will ship in most other parts of the world during the second quarter.

These may not be headline-grabbing phones but they are important, and Nokia will sell millions and millions of them, according to Geoff Blaber, analyst at CCS Insight.

Phones like these are Nokia's bread and butter, and they show how it can use its scale to produce phones with specifications and price that the competition will have a hard time matching, he said.

However, they don't change the fact that Nokia still need to improve its high-end portfolio, he said. The mobile phone market is becoming increasingly polarized around cheap entry-level phones and high-end smartphones, so Nokia needs to maintain its market-leading position in the first space -- which, for example, the 2700 Classic will help it do -- but at the same time improve its high-end portfolio, according to Blaber.

AT&T Settles Suit Over Acquisition

2009-01-18T10:04:00.000-08:00

AT&T will pay more than US$2 million to settle a civil dispute related to its 2007 acquisition of wireless provider Dobson Communications.

In a statement released this week, the U.S. Department of Justice said AT&T had failed to comply with two court orders mandating that the carrier divest from its wireless telecom assets and businesses in two areas of Kentucky and one area of Oklahoma. According to the DOJ, those court orders required that AT&T "take all steps necessary to ensure that the divested businesses were operated independently of AT&T" and that AT&T not exert any influence over their management. AT&T was forced to divest from these assets as a condition for being allowed to acquire Dobson.

The DOJ alleges that AT&T did not relinquish the confidential customer account information held by its divested businesses and that some of AT&T's employees used the customer information to lure those customers away from the divested business and toward AT&T.

To settle the suit, AT&T will pay more than $2 million, which the DOJ says will cover the cost of its investigation.

AT&T acquired Dobson in June 2007 for a total of $2.8 billion, gaining approximately 1.7 million new customers over a span of 17 states. The two companies had been linked since 1990 when Dobson started offering AT&T its roaming services.

Cisco Unified Communications 500 Series for Small Business: Overview

2009-01-18T10:03:00.001-08:00

Rarely do so many capabilities get wrapped up in one box.

Cisco Unified Communications 500 Series for Small Business combines voice, data, video, security, and more into one easy-to-manage solution.

Cisco Unified Communications 500 Series for Small Business supports:

Voice: Use advanced communications capabilities including telephone call processing voicemail, automated attendant, and conferencing functions to respond to customers faster and save money on long-distance charges
Video: Conduct face-to-face meetings using optional video conferencing capabilities
Wireless: Help employees be more productive and collaborate better through access to applications and information from anywhere they work
Productivity: Use with existing desktop applications such as calendar, e-mail, and customer relationship management programs
Wireless:Diminish business risks associated with viruses and other security threats

Get an advanced phone system that expands as your business grows and changes, without a lot of capital expense.

Explore a Related Solution for Your Business

LG to Sign $340M Solar Wafer Deal With Norway's REC

2009-01-18T10:01:00.000-08:00

South Korea's LG Electronics will sign a five-year deal this week to buy silicon wafers for solar panels from Norway's REC Wafer, it said Sunday.

The contract, which will be signed on Thursday in Seoul, is worth at least US$340 million and supply will begin in limited quantities next year. Supply will increase over the contract period from 2010 to 2014.

LG Electronics has been building its solar panel and module business since June 2008 when it acquired the solar operations of sister-company LG Chem.

In October it announced plans to convert a dormant PDP (plasma display panel) production line at its factory in Gumi, South Korea, with two solar cell production lines. Both new lines will be able to produce 120 megawatts of solar modules per year. The first is expected to begin operations in the first quarter of 2010 and the second a year later.

The deal with REC Wafer will provide LG with the crystalline silicon wafers it requires to make solar cells.

Late last year LG ended tie-up talks with Germany's Conergy that would have seen the companies form a joint-venture solar energy company around Conergy's existing production site in Frankfurt. LG blamed the poor global economy for the change in plans.

Does Intel's Atom Threaten Celeron Sibling?

2009-01-18T09:58:00.000-08:00

As sales of Intel's Atom processor heat up, could it endanger the market for the company's other low-cost chip, the Celeron?

After all, Atom-based netbooks were a big item at CES last week, and even desktops based on the low-cost, low-power chip are starting to appear.

Concerns that Atom sales could undercut the Celeron go back at least to last summer, when a Cnet article reported on concerns about "the challenge Atom presents for Intel." The new chip, according to two analysts not named in the article, "potentially cannibalizes a market that the longstanding -- and higher-performance -- Celeron processor has thrived in." Intel CEO Paul Otellini responded that "We do not see (Atom) replacing Celeron."

But lower sales all around for Intel make the question more urgent today. The chip maker released its fourth quarter report of a 90 percent drop in earnings last week, after earlier warning of reduced revenue forecasts. Net profit was US$234 million for the quarter ended Dec. 27, compared to $2.27 billion in last year's fourth quarter.Â

Technology Business Research analyst John Spooner told the Industry Standard that while he expects the Atom to eat some Celeron market share, it won't be huge. "I don't think you're going to see a huge double-digit drop in Celeron sales, at least not right away."

The two processors attract significantly different markets. While the Atom appeals to "customers that only care about basic Internet access...and the rock-bottom lowest PC cost," the Celeron offers a full computing experience. "I'm not sure [that many] users will give up that performance for what amounts to $100."

According to Spooner, the Celeron has more to fear from AMD's Yukon chip, recently renamed the Athlon Neo. "They're basically offering a lower-cost notebook chip" competitive in ability to the Celeron.

"People are looking for cheap computers these days. And if cheap is what sells, that's what vendors will have to offer."

The PC World Challenge: 72 Hours of Windows 7!

2009-01-18T09:57:00.000-08:00

The Challenge

Switch from Windows Vista to Windows 7 completely. No going back to work with compatible programs. No jumping ship if a driver keeps you away from your Warhammer Online character. No tears. Windows 7 is your new home for 72 hours, starting from your initial download of the software.

The Spoiler

Microsoft doesn't know how to manage digital downloads. Nor does Microsoft know how to title its own applications--this isn't Windows 7, not by any means. It's Windows Vista SP2.

The Tribulation

Having completed my 72 hours in Windows 7 land, I'm going to adopt the same mindset and cap the writing of this post at one hour's length. Having seen no less than 40 different articles about Windows 7 over the past three days (if not three months), I'm not about to bore you with a list of the 89 most important features Windows 7 brings to the table. What I am going to chat about is what the actual process of jumping to Windows 7 is like. What happens? How do the new features of Windows 7 affect the general usage patterns of an operating system? What's the speed like? Why would I buy this to replace Vista?

I'll start with a cursory note that this article was actually supposed to run Monday morning--the whole concept of "72 hours in Windows 7 Land" being a fun little weekend activity that I would write up and post for all the people who gave up on downloading the beta on its horrible Friday release. About that. Seeing as Microsoft has no idea what "busy servers" entails, and apparently refuses to release its beta clients across a peer-to-peer distribution method a la Blizzard game patches, I waited. And waited. And waited, until I finally acquired a copy of Windows 7 well into Saturday afternoon. Leading the charge into the digital future, that's Microsoft.

Ahem.

I fired up Windows 7 on a drive I had pre-partitioned in preparation for the event. On one half sat a fresh installation of Windows Vista featuring all the latest updates and drivers I could get my hands on. On the other would sit Windows 7, as I wanted to compare the two's initial performance before installing a ton of my typical junk on either. I fired up my Windows 7 ISO and let 'er rip.

The Installation

Installing Windows 7 (x64) brought a tear to my eye, for I do love nostalgia and this installation routine is virtually a carbon-copy of Windows Vista's. Save for the addition of a new setup screen for establishing a Homegroup--Windows 7's answer to network file-sharing--there's nothing dramatic about the installation in the slightest. Compared to Windows XP, both Vista and 7's installation procedure (side note: I hope this never becomes the nickname for the operating system) are a godsend. But I'd love to see a more streamlined installation: Perhaps a way to set all the options you need to set up-front, so you can just sit back and let the 24:01-minute process do it's thing. I love making customized slipstream OS installation discs for this very fact. Convenience, Microsoft. Convenience!

Both installation processes forced two resets on my computer. And for those keeping score at home, the Vista installation took all of three minutes, twenty-six seconds less time than the Windows 7 installation. That's not a lot minute-wise, but it's still 16 percent more time than its predecessor. I'm also running a pretty souped-up PC--a stock-clocked Intel QX9650 running at 3.0GHz, four gigabytes of RAM, a speedy Western Digital terabyte hard drive, and an ATI Radeon HD 4850 video card. I can only imagine how long Windows 7 might take for a machine of less prowess.

Getting Started

A nice touch of Windows 7 is that it installed with more drivers configured than its predecessor. My Windows Vista installation came with five unknown devices attached, requiring me to find and install drivers for the video card and Ethernet drivers for the motherboard in particular. Windows 7 set itself to the highest resolution my monitor supports using what appeared to be Microsoft-friendly ATI drivers. My Internet connection "worked" immediately, allowing me to fetch whatever I needed without having to first find the CD that came with my motherboard. Nice.

(Ethernet woes aside, I like how Windows 7 now gives you a "files processed per second" time instead of a "Megabytes of speed" value.)

Further inspection of the Ethernet drivers revealed that these were less than stable for my system. I had horrific problems trying to make multiple connections to either the Internet or my network devices. The operating system froze up every time I tried to grab more than one batch of files from my NAS, download files from the NAS and Steam at once, or generally do anything but surf the Web. Frustrated, I went back to the my motherboard's CD drivers and that seemed to fix the problem just fine. This now-stable OS was ready to get used!

Next: Touching Windows 7 for the Very First Time!

Apple's Mac: 25 years and still going strong

2009-01-18T09:56:00.000-08:00

The Mac at 25/Latest stories

Opinion: The top 10 standout Macs of the past 25 years
Launched in January 1984, the first Apple Mac opened the door for a computer revolution that led to the PowerBook, the iMac and even the iPhone. Columnist Michael DeAgonia chooses the 10 Mac models that made the biggest splash. (Don't miss the image gallery!)

In the beginning: The making of the Mac
Just how did the first Apple Macintosh computer come to be? The course of events that led to the Mac as we know it was convoluted, the result of luck or coincidence as much as planning. Here's the story.

The Mac at 25: Successes and regrets, Apple's had a few
In these heady days when Apple seems to be gaining ground in a number of places and ways, it's important to remember that everything that followed from the first Mac was not a given. Here's a look at five successes and five mistakes Apple made during the past 25 years.

Opinion: Mac advertising masterpieces and missteps
The Macintosh turns 25 this year, and that means Mac advertising does, too. Apple has tried lots of different ways over the years to get us to buy its flagship product. Here are some highs and lows.

Timeline: Milestones in the Mac's history
Take a trip down memory lane as we revisit the Mac's highs, lows and in-betweens from 1978 to today.

Opinion: What will Macs be like in 25 years?
Columnist Seth Weintraub pulls out his crystal ball to predict the future of the Mac -- including whether we'll have Macs at all in 2034.

Apple hardware from the iBook G3 to the iPhone 3G

Review: The new MacBook Air, now with extra SSD goodness Apple's first unibody laptop gets a revamp, and now offers a 128GB solid-state drive that's mighty fast.

The iPhone: Two reviews, one conclusion -- it's a glimpse of the future Two early adopters weigh in on Apple's new iPhone and reach the same conclusion: It's beyond cool. But where's the 3G?

Apple's new MacBook: What price beauty? You can get a new MacBook in any color you want, as long as it's either black or white.

A hands-on look at the new MacBook Pro Apple's first Intel-based laptop is out, and the newly renamed MacBook Pro delivers on the Intel promise.

It's official: Apple shifting to Intel chips Apple surprises its users by announcing that in 2006, it'll be moving to Intel processors.

Apple unveils low-end Power Mac, updates Xserve RAID and iBooks Apple's new entry-level Power Mac has a lone 1.8-GHz G5 processor and sells for $1,499. And the new bottom line iBook has a 1.2-GHz G4.

Apple launches faster Power Mac G5; no Powerbook G5 'anytime soon' The fatest Power Mac G5 configuration available now tops out at 2.5 GHz.

PowerBook 12 vs. iBook: What's a Mac fan to do? After Apple plopped a G4 processor into the iBook line-up, the distinction between its consumer professional models blurred.

Obama plans to keep his BlackBerry

2009-01-18T09:54:00.000-08:00

President-elect Barack Obama told CNN today he planned to "hang onto" his beloved BlackBerry, but did not explain how he would overcome legal and security concerns.

The revelation came in an interview with CNN's John King in which Obama said, "I think we're going to be able to beat this back."

"I think we're going to be able to hang onto one of these. My working assumption, and this is not new, is that anything I write on an e-mail could end up being on CNN," Obama said.

"So I make sure to think before I press 'send'," he said.

Obama did not tell CNN how he would overcome the major hurdles to keeping his BlackBerry, including the requirement to keep a record of every White House communication.

The major concern about using a BlackBerry as president stems mostly from using it for outbound e-mail, several analysts have told Computerworld.

But the president-elect, who will take office next week, said his favorite smartphone was an important tool for him to keep in touch.

"It's just one tool among a number of tools that I'm trying to use, to break out of the bubble, to make sure that people can still reach me," he told CNN.

"If I'm doing something stupid, somebody in Chicago can send me an e-mail and say, 'What are you doing?'

"I want to be able to have voices, other than the people who are immediately working for me, be able to reach out and send me a message about what's happening in America."

The security question was inadvertantly highlighted on Friday as Obama's BlackBerry tumbled from his belt as he exited his limousine and got onto his plane in Washington D.C., AFP reported.

The report said a Secret Service agent hurried to pick up the pieces, gathering the BlackBerry and its battery off the tarmac.

Elgan: Palm and Sony out-Apple Apple

2009-01-12T14:57:00.001-08:00

One of the great industry dramas that occurs each year is the concurrence of Macworld and the International CES event.

As Apple invades the consumer electronics space and cell phone market -- and as CES replaces Comdex as the "everything" show -- the contrasting style and substance of Macworld and CES provide a dramatic glimpse into who's up, who's down and who's who in consumer technology.

Macworld slaughtered CES in 2007 with Steve Jobs' shock-and-awe iPhone rollout. In 2008, Macworld killed again with MacBook Air, more iPhone goodness and a lot of bragging about the general ascendance, elegance, awesomeness and unstoppability of Apple in consumer electronics.

But this year, Macworld landed with a thud. News preceding the show sucked the wind out of the normal enthusiasm. What's a Macworld keynote without Steve Jobs? What's a Macworld without Apple?

Still, the Mac Faithful proved hopeful, predicting stunning new innovations for Macworld 2009.

Before the show, the Applesphere buzzed with chatter about an impending "iPhone Pro" or "iPhone Elite" upgrade. The wonderful improvement would, according to this vision, include a physical keyboard that wouldn't reduce the size of iPhone's huge touch screen. It would fold or slide out. Some also hoped for a better camera, new user interface innovations and other iGoodies.

The other major fanboy expectation was that, finally, Apple would enter (and, natch, dominate) the thriving netbook market. Nobody expected a boring mini-MacBook, but instead a revolutionary new form factor that would demonstrate, once again, that Apple is smarter than everyone else.

Surprisingly, an "iPhone Elite" and a "MacBook Nano" were both announced. But not at Macworld and not by Apple. They were unveiled at CES by Palm and Sony -- two industry laggards written off as pathetic has-beens.

Palm Pre

Palm helped make the dreams of iPhone fans a reality with the Palm Pre, which has all the expected trimmings of a modern smart phone: GPS, Wi-Fi, QWERTY keyboard, 3G, stereo Bluetooth, 3-megapixel camera, accelerometer, etc.

Faithful to the Faithful's vision for the iPhone, the Palm Pre is a full-screen, multitouch phone with a slide-out physical keyboard.

The Pre's webOS operating system is something altogether unique, innovative and unexpected. While the UI lacks iPhone's severe minimalism, it trumps the iPhone in raw inventiveness. With multitasking built around the organizing metaphor of "activity cards," it's fundamentally different from any other device ever sold.

It even has a unique inductive charger (you set it on top of its base rather than plugging anything in or inserting the phone into a cradle). Doesn't that sound like something Apple would have announced?

The Palm Pre is the second true MPG (multitouch, physics and gestures) consumer product ever to ship (the iPhone was first). But the Pre's webOS adds some new gestures, such as the ability to get rid of stuff by flicking it off screen.

While many expected Apple to announce something like this, nobody expected Palm to do so. Palm caught the industry and the pundits by surprise.

Intel's Atom chip grows up, moves out of netbooks

2009-01-12T14:55:00.000-08:00

Several PC vendors at the International CES in Las Vegas this week showed off laptops based on Intel Corp.'s Atom Z-series processors that were originally designed to run small handheld computers.

For example, Sony Electronics Inc. unveiled the P Series mini-laptop based on the 1.33-GHz Atom Z520 processor. The mini-laptop, priced at $900, has an 8-in. widescreen display, 2GB of RAM, a 60GB hard drive, a built-in GPS and 3G modem, as well as Wi-Fi and other features packed inside a sleek 680-gram package that's just 2 centimeters thick.

To date, Atom processors have mostly run netbook computers, but Sony executives noted that the new P series offers far more capabilities than a typical netbook system. Michael Abary, senior vice president of product marketing at Sony Electronics, cited the mini-laptop's the GPS and 3G support as features that set it apart.

"It's definitely more than a netbook, it's a full-featured PC," he said.

Micro-Star International Co. showed off another good looking laptop based on a Z-series processor at CES. The X320 bears a strong resemblance to Apple Inc.'s MacBook Air, but will be cheaper and significantly less powerful, the company said. Packing a 1.33-GHz Atom Z520, the X320 has a 13.4-in. screen, 2GB of RAM and -- at 1.8 centimeters thick -- the 1.3 kilogram laptop is slimmer than Sony's P series.

The look of the Micro-Star and Apple machines may be similar, but the 1.6-GHz or 1.86-GHz Core 2 Duo with 8MB of cache inside the MacBook Air easily outpaces the Atom, which has just 512KB of cache. On the other hand, expect the X320 to cost a fraction of the MacBook Air's 1,800 price tag.

Other laptops based on the Atom Z-series on display at CES include two new models from Asustek, including one with a 512GB solid-state drive.

Bill Calder, a spokesman for Intel, said that though the Atom chip didn't target the laptop market, it certainly can be used in larger devices.

Nonetheless, widespread use of Atom chips in larger systems could hurt Intel financially. Atom processors are less expensive than Intel's other processors, and can represent a smaller percentage of the total component cost of a laptop.

Therefore, Intel executives would rather see users with Core 2 Duo-based laptops as their main computers instead of a netbook.

Intel has done a good job of locking down the specifications of machines based on the newer Atom N270 processor, limiting manufacturers to screen sizes of 10 inches and less and capping the amount of RAM in each system at 1GB. The aim was to segment the laptop market into low-end netbooks based on Atom and larger, more powerful laptops based on the Core 2 Duo, preventing netbook sales from eating into sales of mainstream laptops.

New Palm Pre won't work with old apps

2009-01-12T14:54:00.001-08:00

LAS VEGAS -- The new Palm Pre, which runs on the new Web OS operating system, will not work with older applications supported on the Palm Treo and other smart phones, a Palm Inc. official confirmed.

"We're not emulating [applications from] the old Palm OS, but will allow third-party emulation," said Pam Deziel, vice president of product management, in an interview Friday at the International CES trade show. "We're figuring on having developers do great applications."

The fact that existing applications, even games, found on older Palm products will not work with the Palm Pre without third-party involvement shows how important the new Web OS for Palm is going to be. Palm has said the Web OS is expected to guide its application and device development for the next decade.

While Palm observers and analysts had been eager for a new operating system from Palm for years, some were concerned that not supporting existing applications might be going too far. "I wasn't expecting this much," said Kris Keilhack, an associate editor for Palm Infocenter and a Treo and Palm device user for 13 years. "This is really the paradigm shift you hear about."

Deziel also said Palm will be setting up an online store similar to Apple Inc.'s App Store for users to find applications for the Pre. The company also plans to make generally available a software developer's kit for building applications at some point "close" to the time of the public shipment of the phone, which will be before July.

The Palm Pre is slated to be available from Sprint in the first half of this year.

Deziel also offered more details about the phone's functions. The Web OS itself is based on Linux, with the software on top built in-house by Palm engineers, she said. Developers familiar with CSS, Java and HTML will be able to easily build applications for it, she said. The first version of the phone has applications developed by about two-dozen third-party developers, Deziel said.

In a 20-minute demonstration, Deziel showed some of the hand gestures that manipulate the touch screen. She explained that common tasks, such as calling up an e-mail or a text field to contact a close worker or friend, will be accomplished with one touch, not several as required with some devices.

The touch screen on the Pre doesn't come with a virtual keyboard as the iPhone and other smart phones do, so users must rely instead on Pre's slide-out QWERTY keyboard. However, Deziel said a third-party developer could build a virtual keyboard application for users who wanted it.

Microsoft ditches Windows 7 beta download limit

2009-01-12T14:52:00.000-08:00

Microsoft Corp. on Saturday ditched the download limit on Windows 7 beta, saying that users will be able to grab the preview through Jan. 24 -- even if the total exceeds the 2.5 million cap it had set earlier.

The company also apologized for the stalled servers that prevented users from obtaining the operating system preview on Friday, the day the public beta was originally slated to launch.

"I know many of you have had issues with the Windows 7 beta site over the last 24 hours," company spokesman Brandon LeBlanc acknowledged in a posting to Microsoft's Windows 7 blog late Saturday. "We apologize for the inconvenience that it caused some of you."

Rather than cap the number of beta activation keys at 2.5 million -- the original plan to limit the test pool -- Microsoft will instead make Windows 7 available for two weeks, though Jan. 24, said LeBlanc. If fewer than 2.5 million people request and receive activation keys during that time, Microsoft will continue to offer the beta until the limit is reached.

"However, the more likely scenario is that we will surpass 2.5 million downloads, and so the beta downloads will be stopped after the 24th," wrote Kevin Remdes, a Microsoft-employed IT evangelist, on his blog Sunday.

The move came after Microsoft fumbled the Windows 7 public beta launch on Friday. At midday, it postponed the beta, citing "very heavy traffic" and saying it needed to beef up its servers and bandwidth to meet demand. Earlier in the day, Microsoft's main page and other URLs had been brought to their knees by users eager to download the preview. Hours later, when a link to the download was added to a page dedicated to IT professionals, users saw only messages such as "Server is too busy," and, "This site is currently experiencing technical difficulties, please check back in the next business day" when they tried to grab the file.

Microsoft restarted the beta launch Saturday, posting links to the download on its main Windows 7 page.

Computerworld had no difficulty on Monday morning reaching the download page, receiving activation keys or initiating downloads of the 32- and 64-bit versions of the new operating system.

After Jan. 24, users will still probably be able to download the beta because Microsoft rarely removes previews from its servers, instead relying on activation-key limits to restrict the number of testers. People who grab the beta after Microsoft stops delivering keys can install the operating system, then run it under Microsoft's usual 30-day trial policy. By using the same "slmgr -rearm" command that gained notoriety after Windows Vista's debut, they can extend that trial period to a total of 120 days.

Microsoft's decision to put a time limit on Windows 7 beta's availability mimics its practice more than two years ago, when it launched Windows Vista Beta 2. That beta, launched June 7, 2006, was available for just over three weeks, through June 30.

Open networks remain a distant nirvana for mobile users

2009-01-12T14:50:00.000-08:00

The push for open wireless networks that can accommodate all manner of mobile devices and applications grabbed a lot of headlines last year. But true mobile openness remains a distant, and perhaps unachievable, nirvana.

For now, mobile users aren't appreciably better off from an openness standpoint than they were at the start of 2008. And that likely won't change for years to come, according to Jack Gold, an analyst at J.Gold Associates LLC in Northboro, Mass. " 'Open' still has a long way to go," Gold said.

The dim assessment by Gold and other mobile-industry analysts comes despite recent moves by Google Inc., the Federal Communications Commission and other organizations aimed at making it possible to run any application on any device on any network.

While that level of openness may never be reached, the FCC did set aside part of the 700-MHz wireless spectrum for open network access as part of an auction that was completed last March. Google was instrumental in lobbying for the inclusion of the open-access rules in the auction process.

In addition, Google last year pushed forward its Android mobile software platform through the Open Handset Alliance, which released an open-source version of the Android code in October. And last month, the alliance added 14 members, including network operators Softbank Mobile Corp. and Vodafone Group PLC and handset makers such as Toshiba Corp. and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB. That increased the alliance's membership to 47 companies.

Also, the first Android-based cell phone, the T-Mobile G1, was jointly introduced in September by Google, T-Mobile USA Inc. and hardware maker HTC Corp. Even before the G1's debut and the open-sourcing of Android, other vendors reacted. For example, Nokia Corp. in June announced plans to make its Symbian mobile operating system an open and royalty-free platform.

Despite such forward momentum, open is still a relative term in the mobile market. One paradox of Google's openness campaign is that even the G1 is locked to T-Mobile USA's network. Similarly, the iPhone is locked to AT&T Inc.'s mobile network in the U.S., and Research In Motion Ltd.'s new BlackBerry Storm works only on the Verizon Wireless network.

A Cluttered Market

Meanwhile, software developers still have to separately design their applications to run on as many as six major mobile operating systems, with Windows Mobile and Palm OS also in the mix. For example, as attractive as Apple Inc.'s iPhone App Store is, the applications available there won't work on other phones unless they're specifically written for those devices as well.

Google Widened Lead in Search in December

2009-01-12T14:49:00.000-08:00

Google expanded its usage share in the U.S. search-engine market last month when it handled a whopping 72.1 percent of all queries, up from 65.9 percent in December 2007, Hitwise said Monday.

The other three main search engines all lost share. Yahoo came in a very distant second with 17.8 percent, down from 20.9 percent in December 2007. Microsoft was third with 5.6 percent, down from 7 percent, while Ask.com ranked fourth with 3.4 percent, down from 4.1 percent.

For the entire year, Google nabbed 69.5 percent of all U.S. search queries, followed by Yahoo with 19.2 percent, Microsoft with almost 5.9 percent and Ask.com with 3.2 percent.

Google's unparalleled popularity among search-engine users translates directly into a dominant position in search advertising, the largest segment of online advertising.

According to an IDC study published in December, search advertising accounted for 51 percent of all U.S. online advertising spending in 2008's third quarter. Google nabbed 54 percent of search-ad spending in the third quarter in the U.S., followed by Yahoo with 12.6 percent, according to IDC.

Google finished the third quarter with a 35 percent share of total U.S. online ad spending, followed by Yahoo with 14 percent, according to IDC.

WiFinder: Better Than iPhone's Wi-Fi Finder, But Far From Perfect

2009-01-12T14:47:00.000-08:00

Let's face it... the iPhone's built-in Wi-Fi finder is inadequate, listing only a few of the strongest networks in range. That's where WiFinder comes in. This free utility is excellent at detecting as many Wi-Fi hotspots can be found.

There are a few things that don't work quite right, though, and these make WiFinder difficult to recommend. The first thing is that the automatic rescan feature doesn't always clear out hot spots from the list as you move away from them. The second thing is that when connecting to an open hotspot, the utility will say "connected" even if it never succeeds in actually connecting to it. The last thing is that WiFinder is unable to connect to security-based hotspots, even if you know the key.

There are several other Wi-Fi finders in the App Store. It's likely that one of the other apps, perhaps a paid app, won't have all these little issues plaguing it.

Microsoft to push IE8 via Automatic Update, issues blocking tool

2009-01-08T04:20:00.000-08:00

Microsoft Corp. yesterday posted a tool kit to block the upcoming Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) from downloading and installing automatically when it is officially released later this year.

If the company uses a timeline similar to its previous Web browser, the tool kit's release means that Microsoft is likely to deliver IE8 within the next three months.

In an entry to a company blog, an IE program manager said that Microsoft would push IE8 to users via its Windows Update and Microsoft Update services when the browser is finished. The blocker modifies each PC's Windows registry.

"We've done a lot of work in IE8 to maintain compatibility with sites designed for Internet Explorer 7 -- for example, compatibility view and the compatibility meta tag," said Jane Maliouta, the IE program manager. "However, we know many IT organizations will still want to test the browser before it is deployed."

The tool kit offers two components: an executable blocker script that creates a new key in the Windows registry to stymie automatic downloading and installation, and a group policy template that can be imported into a company's existing policy infrastructure.

The blocking tool kit has no expiration date, Maliouta said, and it can't prevent users from manually updating their machines by grabbing IE8 from Microsoft's download site. Nor will the tool kit bar the final IE8 from systems that have been running a beta or "release candidate" version, Maliouta added.

As it did more than two years ago when it released IE7, Microsoft plans to distribute IE8 using its Automatic Update mechanism. The browser will be listed as a "High Priority" update in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, and "Important" in Windows Vista and Server 2008. The blocking tool, however, downgrades IE8 to an optional download.

Taking another page from IE7, the new browser will also offer users who do receive IE8 through Automatic Update the option of rejecting or delaying the installation before it actually begins. Users will see a splash screen before IE8 installs that gives them three choices: "Ask me later," "Install" and "Don't Install." Users who pick the first option will be offered IE8 the next time that the PC conducts an update scan.

But the blocker has no effect on PCs that receive updates via the usual corporate channels, such as Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) or Systems Management Server (SMS), according to an FAQ that Microsoft also posted Tuesday. "If your organization uses WSUS to manage updates, and Update Rollups are configured for automatic installation, Internet Explorer will automatically install throughout your organization," the FAQ read.

The blocking tool kit is another hint that Microsoft will soon release IE8. In July 2006, as the company was still beta testing IE7, it rolled out a blocker for that browser, saying it wanted to give companies "ample time" to deploy the tool kit before IE7 hit Automatic Updates. Microsoft delivered the final version of IE7 less than three months later, in October 2006.

If Microsoft keeps to the same timetable, it would issue IE8 around April 1.

Microsoft has not committed to a definitive release date for IE8, although last month it said a release candidate was "just around the corner."

The IE8 blocking tool kit can be downloaded from Microsoft's site.

Cisco down to business with gear for digital home

2009-01-08T04:17:00.000-08:00

LAS VEGAS -- Cisco Systems Inc. pushed further into living rooms today with new audio devices and network attached-storage products for the digital home, as well as a hosted software platform, Cisco Eos, aimed at helping media and entertainment companies create and manage online fan communities.

CEO John Chambers said at the Consumer Electronics Show that he wanted the public to understand Cisco's commitment to consumer products generally. "We are really committed to this consumer market and we're putting the power of the whole company behind it," Chambers said.

Cisco has been active in building and marketing consumer products such as Linksys Wi-Fi routers for five years, but Chambers pointed to today's announcements as examples of products that will move Cisco's revenues for consumer products from $1 billion a year to his goal of $10 billion.

Chambers also said the company will begin more active branding and marketing of its consumer products, using the Cisco brand name, over the next year. He also said the company was working to build handheld wireless devices for consumers, using internal development teams and partnering with other companies.

Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at The Yankee Group in Boston, said the consumer direction for Cisco, the leader in networking products used by businesses and service providers, was still an uphill battle.

Consumer products are still "the next frontier for Cisco ... [which] has very little name recognition with consumers," Kerravala told Computerworld.

"Most of the things Cisco sells to consumers today, the consumer use but never see," Kerrvala said. "They make Linksys routers and TV set-top boxes, so the overall awareness by consumers is low. Consumers say, 'That's the company that makes that Internet stuff.'"

However, Kerravala said Cisco could succeed in the consumer market with the "long hard work of delivering consistent products."
Cisco Eos: A platform is born

Warner Music Group was named by Cisco as the first entertainment company to use the Eos platform for sites from artists Laura Izibor and Sean Paul.

The platform includes analytics and site management tools, Cisco officials said. Eos relies on drawing consumers to recording artists and others at their own branded sites where they can meet other fans through links to YouTube and Facebook, as well as other social networking services.

Dan Scheinman, general manager of media solutions for Cisco, said the tools can be used to help companies build social networking connections in a fraction of the normal time involved. Eos is a software and a service that allows media companies to focus on their end users rather than building and maintaining their own Web platform, he said.

10 must-have free BlackBerry apps

2009-01-08T04:15:00.000-08:00

Your BlackBerry might be plenty powerful out of the box, but there are hundreds of third-party applications out there that can make the device even more useful.

Adding the apps to your BlackBerry is a breeze, because they can all be installed "over the air," either by visiting the app's site with your BlackBerry's built-in browser and downloading the file directly, or by having an e-mail sent to your BlackBerry with a direct download link.

Even better, some of the best of these apps are totally free. Here are 10 of the best free apps available for your BlackBerry.
Viigo

Viigo is a full-featured RSS feed reader that lets you read your favorite feeds and keep up with important news wherever your day takes you.
Viigo
Choose from Viigo's array of built-in feeds, or add your own.

You can add your own feeds (Viigo's auto-detect function can discover the feed address for most Web sites), but Viigo also comes well equipped with a variety of tech, politics, sports, weather and other feeds.

Preconfigured feeds also allow you to easily set up traffic alerts, stay up to date with flight information, and track packages from UPS, the U.S. Postal Service, FedEx and DHL. The new version, now in beta testing, adds support for custom search alerts and even podcasts.
Vlingo
Vlingo
The speech-recognition app Vlingo goes way beyond voice dialing.

Although recent BlackBerries support voice dialing, the speech-recognition app Vlingo goes far beyond dialing numbers from your address book.

Using only your voice, you can run Web searches ("Find post offices in Punxsutawney"), launch built-in BlackBerry applications ("Open Calendar"), compose e-mails and send text messages.

The transcriptions tend to be very good, so you don't have to worry about double-checking before sending. Vlingo takes over the application key on the side of your BlackBerry, making it easy to access even while driving.
Google Mobile
Google Mobile
Google Mobile provides easy access to Gmail, Picasa, Google Maps, Google Sync and more.

Access the entire suite of Google's mobile-friendly services in one place with Google Mobile. A single interface gives you one-stop access to Google's Gmail and Maps applications (the latter of which can integrate with your built-in GPS tool, if your BlackBerry has one).

It also includes links to Web services including search, Google News, Google Reader, Google Docs (which is read-only on mobile devices), Picasa photos, and your Google Notebook, all of which open in your BlackBerry's built-in Web browser. Google Mobile also includes the Google Sync service, which allows two-way synchronization between your BlackBerry's built-in calendar and the Web-based Google Calendar.
BBNotePad
BBNotePad
Write full-length documents with BBNotePad.

Packing a little more oomph than your BlackBerry's built-in MemoPad, BBNotePad is a plain text editor that allows you to write full-length documents or even code wherever you might be.

BBNotePad sports three text sizes for tired eyes, and it saves files as .txt files that can be opened directly on any computer, saving to either your BlackBerry's internal memory or on your removable flash card. It's very useful for sending notes and memos over Bluetooth to other handheld devices.
GridMagic Community Edition
GridMagic
GridMagic lets you create spreadsheets or run complex calculations.

Whether you need to run complex calculations or simply need to organize some information into a table, GridMagic Community Edition from the Simprit Free Software Community lets you create spreadsheets on the move.

GridMagic supports a wide range of mathematical functions, and lets you add formatting to keep everything clear and readable. Typical spreadsheet functions like freeze panes, select by row or column, and copy-and-paste are also available. Spreadsheets can be e-mailed as Excel .xls attachments via a new menu item in the BlackBerry's built-in e-mail composition screen.

Panasonic Shows off Thin Plasma TV Prototype

2009-01-08T04:14:00.002-08:00

LCD TVs aren't the only TVs that can be thin. On Wednesday, Panasonic demonstrated a plasma TV set that is one-third of an inch thin -- or 8.8 millimeters -- at the thinnest part of its profile.

The 50-inch prototype TV supports a resolution of up to 1080 lines, and can either be mounted on the wall or suspended from a ceiling.

The set also comes with support for WirelessHD, which can transmit full HD video, audio and control signals wirelessly, according to Panasonic. That means the tuner box doesn't have to be connected to the TV using wires.

But don't hold your breath for the set to show up in an electronics store near you any time soon. Plasma TVs this thin might not start shipping until 2010, at the earliest, according to Panasonic.

Like all prototype televisions, Panasonic's latest plasma set is more about showing off the company's technological prowess than anything else. For Panasonic, it's about showing the industry and consumers that plasma technology is still viable.

Among products that are a bit closer to a real launch is the Viera Z1, a one-inch thick 54-inch plasma TV set.

Like its skinnier cousin, the Viera Z1 can connect to other devices using WirelessHD. It also comes with support for Viera Cast, a feature which allows users to watch content from Internet sources such as YouTube on their regular TV.

Panasonic also announced a partnership deal with Amazon.com, which will make it possible for users to watch content downloaded from the Amazon Video On Demand service.

The Z1 will become available this summer, but no pricing has been announced.

Windows 7 Is Less of a Resource-hog Than Vista

2009-01-08T04:14:00.001-08:00

Good news: the next version of Microsoft's Windows OS appears to be less of a resource hog than Windows Vista.

Microsoft announced Wednesday that a beta version of Windows 7 will be available for the general public to download and try out on Friday. At the same time, it provided a list of the minimum system requirements it recommends for people who run the beta.

They call for a 1GHz processor (32- or 64-bit), 1GB of main memory, 16GB of available disk space, support for DX9 graphics with 128MB of memory (for the Aero interface), and a DVD-R/W drive.

Those are very similar to the recommended requirements for Windows Vista -- even though PC hardware will have advanced by as much as three years by the time the finished version of Windows 7 ships.

Microsoft noted that the Windows 7 requirements are for the beta version only and subject to change. But it has also said the beta is "feature complete," suggesting the requirements will not increase by much if the beta tests go smoothly.

Microsoft had indicated previously that one of its design goals for Windows 7 is to give it the same system requirements as for Vista.

When Vista shipped it was seen as too resource hungry for the systems some customers were trying to run it on, resulting in sluggish performance. Indeed, Microsoft had to extend the life of Windows XP for small netbook computers because system makers said Vista would barely run on those devices at all.

Microsoft has now learned its lesson for Windows 7.

"We are working very hard to provide comparable capabilities from a hardware consumption perspective -- memory and processor -- to what you saw in Windows Vista, and I think we may even be able to do a little bit better," said Bill Veghte, Microsoft's senior vice president in charge of Windows, in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show Wednesday.

"I don't want to make commitments on where we'll be at RTM (release to manufacturing, when the OS is complete), but at beta right now we look very comparable to the hardware requirements that Windows Vista had when it came out, and the hardware has moved on. I am very optimistic," he said.

Windows 7 will also be able to run on netbooks, he said.

"Doing a great job in Windows 7 around that class of devices is important and we're committed to providing support for them," Veghte said.

Microsoft's official target for the completed version of Windows 7 is early next year, although Veghte suggested the company would release the OS earlier than that if the beta tests go very smoothly.

AMD Launches Its Fastest Desktop Chips Ever

2009-01-08T04:13:00.001-08:00

In an attempt to gain an advantage in the gaming PC market, Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday launched what it called its "highest-performing CPUs" to date.

Related: Phenom II processor and desktops with the new CPUs put to the test.

Two new quad-core Phenom II processors, aimed at high-end desktop PCs, were announced by AMD at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The chips succeed the Phenom processor the company launched in 2007, and come two days after AMD announced the new Athlon Neo processor for small laptops.

The quad-core Phenom II chips run at speeds up to 3GHz and include 8MB of cache. The chips are capable of even faster clock speeds under certain circumstances. For example, AMD overclocked Phenom II processors to run at up to 4GHz on air-cooled systems, and up to 5GHz on liquid-nitrogen cooling late last year.

Dell is already offering the XPS 625 desktop based on the Phenom II, though pricing information was not immediately available. PC makers HP and Alienware will also offer Phenom II-based desktops later in the year, according to AMD.

AMD is targeting gamers and enthusiasts with the chips, which are also affordable enough for mainstream users looking for a good gaming system, the company said.

AMD's Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition processor, which runs at 3.0GHz, is priced at US$275, while the Phenom II X4 920 processor, which runs at 2.8GHz, is sold for $235.

The Phenom II CPUs are manufactured using a 45-nanometer process, which makes the chips more power efficient than earlier chips.

The new chips are part of AMD's new Dragon platform for desktops, which includes graphics chips, chipsets and CPUs for gaming and media-intensive desktops. The platform includes the ATI Radeon 4800 series graphics cards in addition to the Phenom II.

An interesting feature of the platform is a set of customized controls to boost performance of gaming PCs. Called OverDrive, these controls allow users to ratchet up performance by overclocking the CPUs, which can then be easily returned to a normal speed at the touch of a button.

The platform also includes the ATI Video Converter software, which can convert videos to play on portable entertainment devices, according to AMD.

The platform will initially support DDR2 memory, but faster DDR3 memory support may come in a few months, AMD has said. Compared to DDR2 memory, DDR3 provides a larger bandwidth for quicker data transfers between the CPU and memory in PCs. To support DDR3 memory, AMD will introduce the new AM3 socket for motherboards in the next few months.

High-end chips for gaming systems are also offered by Intel, which launched its Core i7 processor in November.

Panasonic Unveils First Portable Blu-ray Player

2009-01-08T04:12:00.000-08:00

Unless it's beaten to the punch, Panasonic's DMP-B15 looks set to be the first portable Blu-ray player available when it goes on sale this May. But it already faces some stiff competition: Its 8.9-inch WSVGA (1024 by 600 pixel) LCD screen is about the same as a good, inexpensive Netbook. But if you're not one to rip or download movies for the road, the DMP-B15 could still be worth a closer look.

It packs a three hour rechargeable battery (better hit play fast if you're a Lord of the Rings fan), plus support for BD Live (Internet-connected activities) and BonusView (picture-in-picture content on supported titles). An HDMI port allows the B15 to connect to your home theater setup as a stand-alone player, and an SD card reader makes it easy to view stored photos or HD video. Finally, an ethernet connection enables VieraCast functionality (limited access to the Internet): Amazon Video On-Demand, YouTube, Google Picasa Web photo albums, Bloomberg news, and a weather channel. No word yet on pricing.

Panasonic also used its press conference to announce another first--a Blu-ray/VHS dual player (the DMP-BD70V, pictured)--along with two new dedicated Blu-ray players: the DMP-BD60 and DMP-BD80. Here again, VieraCast support is the order of the day.

For complete coverage of the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, see our CES Topic Center.

New HP MediaSmart home servers automatically back up Macs

2009-01-02T05:22:00.000-08:00

Bowing to burgeoning sales of Macintosh computers to North American consumers, Hewlett-Packard Co. is adapting its latest MediaSmart Windows home servers to back up customers' Mac computers using the OS X's Time Machine auto-backup feature.

Time Machine was introduced in October 2007 as one of the features in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

The original MediaSmart servers were introduced a month later. Running an enhanced version of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Home Server operating system, the central administrative consoles in the MediaSmart EX470 and EX475 can perform automatic backups of photos, video files and other data stored on networked Windows XP and Vista PCs. The servers can also stream out music files to iTunes running on either Windows or Macs.

Before, backing up files from Macs was a more manual process, typically requiring users to use Time Machine or other backup software from each individual Mac. The new EX485 and EX487 models rectify that by letting users set Time Machine backups from the server consoles.

"This makes the Mac a first-class citizen," said Glenn Roberts, a product marketing manager at HP.

That could make the MediaSmarts attractive to homeowners running both Macs and PCs on their home networks, said Joyce Putscher, an analyst at In-Stat Inc. But she also said that sales of home servers such as the MediaSmart remain small and amount to a tiny slice of the total network-attached storage market.

"It's still early-adopter days," Putscher said, adding that sales could be hurt as consumers pinch pennies because of the economic downturn.

Vendors "need to get the message across [that] 'yes, we're a little more expensive than a network drive, but you're going to be glad you spent the extra money because of x, y and z,'" Putscher said.

HP is trying to do that by touting other features exclusive to the EX485 and EX487. Besides compatibility with Time Machine, the new MediaSmarts can be set to back up to Amazon.com's S3 Web-hosted storage service to provide an extra layer of data security.

Users can also set the MediaSmart servers to automatically detect and back up photos stored on networked PCs and enable those to be easily published to popular Web sites such as Google's Picasa, Facebook or Flickr, Roberts said.

While most PC vendors are taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the home server market, HP has dived in head first.

It was the first to release home servers running the Microsoft OS when it launched the MediaSmart EX470 and EX475 more than a year ago.

The EX485, with a price tag of $599, comes with 750GB of storage, and the $749 EX487 has 1.5TB. They sport relatively modest Intel Celeron 2.0-GHz 64-bit processors and 2GB of DDR2 RAM.

Those are still upgrades from the original EX470 and EX475. They were released last year with AMD's Sempron 1.8-GHz 64-bit CPUs, 512MB of RAM, and 500GB and 1TB of drive space, respectively.

HP is heavily discounting the EX470 and EX475 now, selling them for $449 and $549, respectively.

The 9 hottest skills for '09

2009-01-02T05:20:00.000-08:00

Old notion: Certain skills, such as programming, are prime for outsourcing. New order: Firms want developers and other talented staffers in-house.

By almost any measure, the U.S. economy is in its worst state since the Great Depression. Consumer spending is down, credit markets remain weak, and more than 10 million Americans are out of work.

Yet despite the grim financial picture, demand for certain types of IT skills, such as SAP, .Net and help desk/support, remains strong. And while some employers will continue to look outside their companies to find workers with expertise in these and other disciplines, some CIOs are building some of this know-how internally as hiring freezes become more common. (Read about ways to boost your pay in Computerworld's annual Salary Survey.)

Here's a look at the hottest skills, as cited by respondents to Computerworld's annual Forecast survey.
1. Programming/application development

Ask any recruiter what the single most sought-after IT skill is at the moment, and the universal response is a three-letter word: SAP.

"The little joke in our industry right now is that if you have 'SAP' on your résumé right now, you have zero unemployment," says Bruce Culbert, CEO of iSymmetry Inc., an IT consulting and recruitment firm with offices in Washington and Alpharetta, Ga.

SAP experts, particularly those who are experienced with a specific module in a certain industry, are commanding $35 to $40 per hour more on average than other types of senior technicians, says Culbert. Demand for SAP skills has remained red hot because a growing number of companies are working toward establishing global instances of the ERP system, says Jill Herrin, president of IT recruiter JDResources Inc.

But not far behind is demand for IT professionals with .Net experience, say Herrin and other observers. Some companies that relied on offshore labor to deliver .Net and C# capabilities just a few years ago found that route to be "nonproductive," says Herrin. Now they're looking to fill those jobs in-house, she says.

Rich Schappert, senior director of IT at Casey's General Stores Inc. in Ankeny, Iowa, says he has been filling the retailer's demand for .Net and SQL Server programmers for the past five years by recruiting and training local college students. The company, which operates 1,500-plus stores across the Midwest, has been moving its Cobol-based financial applications into the .Net environment to reduce its mainframe costs. "[It's also] getting tougher to find people who know Cobol," notes Schappert.

2. Help desk/technical support

Help desk and technical support skills remain in strong demand, particularly for people who offer a blend of deep technical expertise and solid customer-service abilities, says Herrin. "I have lots of customers who tell me their customer service function is broken and they need people with better communication skills," she says.

"One of the things we're seeing a demand for in this space is what we call a JOAT -- a jack-of-all-trades -- somebody who can do break/fix work and a bit of desktop support," says Katherine Spencer Lee, executive director at IT staffing firm Robert Half Technology. Demand for well-rounded technicians tends to become more acute when companies are looking to get more work done with fewer people, she says.

Windows 7 may add spice to CES

2009-01-02T05:17:00.000-08:00

Microsoft is expected to shed light on its upcoming OS

Software could overshadow gadgets at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show, with Microsoft Corp. expected to shed light on its upcoming Windows 7 operating system.

The financial meltdown may also be lingering topic as tech vendors gather to flaunt products at the show in Las Vegas, hoping to show enough glitter and sparkle to bring them better fortunes in the new year. Attendees will pore over the latest technologies, including OLED (organic light-emitting diode) TVs, netbooks, smart phones, media players and other entertainment devices.

Audiences may miss the show's perennial star, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, who gave his final CES speech last January. Instead, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will kick off the event with a keynote address on Jan. 7. He's expected to give a peek at Windows 7, which many hope will be zippier and less resource-hungry than Windows Vista.

Microsoft expects to make "significant" Windows 7 announcements, including a possible release of Windows 7 beta software. A "sneak peek" at future Microsoft Office software may also be offered.

A look at Microsoft's future software could add pep to what otherwise might turn out to be a subdued show. Attendance at CES 2009 is expected to drop as consumers and technology vendors cut spending amid the economic crisis. Hotels, which in previous years were often packed months before the show, have been offering discounted rates to fill rooms.

The Consumer Electronics Association insists that preregistration has been strong and says it's too early to call it a quiet show. Organizers expect 130,000 attendees, said CEA spokeswoman Tara Dunion.

However, that would still be a significant drop from 144,000 attendees at CES 2007.

The prospect of a reduced audience hasn't fazed companies such as Intel, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Dell from showing products in or around the show. Overall, 2,700 companies will be present at various locations, including the Las Vegas Convention Center and surrounding resorts and hotels.

A standout at CES could be netbooks, small laptops used for basic applications such as Web surfing and e-mail. The category was defined by Intel Corp.'s Atom processor and then solidified by the success of Asustek Computer Inc.'s Eee PC. The show could see an evolution of netbooks, with features such as touch screens attracting interest. Asus will likely show a touch-screen netbook, and Intel plans to show off its Convertible Classmate, a netbook with a touch screen that swivels.

Via Technologies Inc.'s elusive Nano processor may also make an appearance. Rumor has it that Samsung Electronics Co. will show its NC20 laptop based on a Nano processor.

Meanwhile, some of Intel's competitors may try to redefine how people think of netbooks by pushing more advanced capabilities. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Nvidia Corp. may talk more about boosting graphics on netbooks. Freescale Semiconductor Inc. and Qualcomm Inc. could demonstrate netbooks with more communication-savvy chips.

IE share slides record amount, ends 2008 down 10%

2009-01-02T05:16:00.000-08:00

Firefox is up 27% for the year, Safari up 42% as rivals eat into Microsoft's market.

Internet Explorer's market share plunged by a record-setting amount during December, Web metrics vendor Net Applications Inc. said today.

Microsoft Corp.'s browser lost 1.6 percentage points of its market share last month, ending December with a 68.2% share, down from November's 69.8%. Since the end of October, IE has lost 3.1 percentage points, nearly half of its total 2008 losses.

IE ended the year down 7.9 percentage points, a 10.4% decline in its share since December 2007.

Not surprisingly, the bulk of IE's December loss came from IE6's declining popularity; the older browser, which first appeared in August 2001, has long lost share to the newer IE7. However, IE7 also slipped significantly. Microsoft's newest production browser dropped 0.6 of a percentage point last month, the largest slip since its October 2006 launch.

Microsoft is currently working on IE8, and has said a "release candidate" build of the browser is "just around the corner."

For the second month running, rival browsers from Mozilla Corp., Apple Inc. and Google Inc. all gained ground at IE's expense, according to Net Applications' data, which is culled from visitors to the thousands of Web sites the company monitors for clients.

Mozilla's Firefox, which climbed above the 20% mark in November, increased its market share by another 0.6 of a percentage point to finish the year with a 21.3% share. During 2008, Firefox's market share climbed 4.5 percentage points, an increase of 27.3%.

Apple's Safari posted even more impressive gains during December. The browser, which is included with all Macs, increased its share by 0.8 of a percentage point, its largest one-month increase ever, to end the month at 7.9%. Safari's share has grown 41.9% since this time last year.

And Safari set a two-month record increase at the end of 2008. The 1.36 percentage point gain during November and December was nearly double the previous record, a 0.72 percentage point increase in September and October 2006.

Google's Chrome, which debuted in September and left beta testing in early December, also boosted its market share, ending the month above 1% for the first time.

In the last two months, Firefox and Safari have grown nearly identical amounts, gaining 1.37 and 1.36 percentage points, respectively, during November and December 2008.

As it did last month, Net Applications again argued that at least some of the decline of IE -- and the corresponding increases by Firefox, Safari and Chrome -- was due to the calendar. "The December holiday season strongly favored residential over business usage," the company said on its Web site. "This in turn increases the relative usage share of Mac, Firefox, Safari and other products that have relatively high residential usage. All December usage statistics should be read in that context."

IE Lost Share to Firefox, Safari and Chrome in December

2009-01-02T05:14:00.000-08:00

Web sites saw visitors deserting Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser in favor of Apple's Safari, Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome in December, according to Web analytics company Net Applications.

Internet Explorer was used by 68.15 percent of Web surfers monitored in December, down from 69.77 percent in November and 71.27 percent in October, according to preliminary figures published by Net Applications on its Hitslink Web site Friday. IE's share has slipped from around 75 percent since the start of 2008.

Safari, Firefox and Chrome all profited from the slide in IE's popularity.

Firefox's share rose to 21.34 percent, from 20.78 percent in November and 19.97 percent in October, while Safari's climbed to 7.93 percent, from 7.13 percent in November and 6.57 percent in October.

Google's Chrome browser topped the 1 percent mark in Net Applications' survey for the first time, with a share of 1.04 percent, up from 0.83 percent in November and 0.74 percent in October.

Opera's share remained steady at 0.71 percent.

Net Applications warned that decreased workplace use of the Internet in December may have biased its results.

"The December holiday season strongly favored residential over business usage. This in turn increases the relative usage share of Mac, Firefox, Safari and other products that have relatively high residential usage," it said.

However, Internet Explorer's market share actually declined more slowly in December than it had done in November, according to the company's figures.

Operating system statistics provided by Net Applications suggest that Macintosh owners are more faithful to the browser provided by their operating system manufacturer than are Windows users. Mac OS market share increased slightly in December to 9.63 percent, from 8.87 percent in November, mirroring the rise in Safari usage. while desktop Linux usage by Web surfers remained steady at 0.85 percent, compared with 0.83 percent in November. Windows usage dipped to 88.68 percent from 89.62 percent in November, a smaller decline than that in IE usage.

Net Applications tracks browsers visiting sites that use its traffic monitoring service, compiling data on around 160 million visitors per month, according to its site.

Intel Core i7 Desktops Dominate PC Charts

2009-01-02T05:12:00.000-08:00

Intel's new quad-core Core i7 processors were only launched in late November, but desktop systems featuring the CPUs--from the likes of Dell, Falcon Northwest, Micro Express, and others--have already made an impact on PC World's Top 10 charts.

As explained in "Getting to the Core of Intel's New Core i7 CPUs," these new processors are the company's first to be based on its long-previewed "Nehalem" architecture. The Core i7 family doesn't just mean new CPUs, they use a new chipset, a new system bus, and a new socket structure; Intel's first major technology jump since mid-2006, when Core 2 CPUs showed up on the scene.
Mainstream Desktops

Three of the six PCs to debut in our newly refreshed Top 10 Power Desktop chart boast Core i7. The Micro Express MicroFlex 92B (our Best Buy) and our fourth-ranked Dell Studio XPS use the midrange 2.93-GHz Core i7 940 CPU, which costs about $580 on its own. Though both machines are competitively priced at less than $2000 (without monitor), each returned performance results only just behind the fastest system we've seen in the category: Polywell's $3950 Poly X4800-Extreme (ranked fifth). That system's 3.2-GHz X9770 processor, 4GB of speedy DDR3-1625 RAM, and two 10,000-rpm VelociRaptor hard drives (in a RAID 0 configuration) propelled it to a WorldBench 6 result of 141. By comparison, the Micro Express (3GB of DDR3-1333 RAM) and Dell (6GB of DDR3-1066 RAM) achieved WorldBench 6 performance scores of 138 and 136, respectively. Not too shabby at all. Polywell's newer, Core i7-equipped Poly X5800i desktop currently ranks 8th on our Power Desktop chart.
Gaming Desktops

Meanwhile, the Best Buy on our new Top 5 Gaming PCs chart goes to Falcon Northwest's Mach V. Equipped with a high-end 3.2-GHz Core i7 Extreme 965 processor (about $1050 on its own) that's been overclocked to 3.8-GHz, a whopping 12GB of DDR3-1600 RAM, and two ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphic boards, the Mach V prevailed in almost every graphics test we threw at it. Even so, both the Xi MTower HAF-SLI and the Hardcore Computer Reactor (which rank second and fifth, respectively, on the chart) equaled the Mach V's record WorldBench 6 result of 163.
More On The Way

We're also in the midst of testing more Core i7 desktops. Reviews and benchmark results of systems from Gateway, Alienware, iBuyPower, CyberPower and AVA Direct will be featured on our Desktops Product Center over the next few weeks.

And just to keep things interesting, reports suggest that AMD's upcoming Phenom II CPUs--and desktops with them--could arrive as soon as early January. Like you, we're looking forward to see how they might compare.

How to Unlock your iPhone 3G

2009-01-02T05:11:00.000-08:00

The iPhone world has been clamoring for this one for awhile. And what better way to start the new year then by playing around with the Dev Team's newest creation--an official unlock for the iPhone 3G. We'll run through the basics of this wonderful little tool and show you exactly how you can jailbreak and unlock your phone. You'll be able to run as many third-party applications as you want on your device. And more importantly, you'll be able to use your iPhone on any cell phone carrier you want.

What's an Unlock?

Unlocking your phone allows you to use it on any carrier you want, not just AT&T. You'll pop out your AT&T SIM card and insert the SIM card of a different carrier. The iPhone doesn't allow you to do this normally, so a little bit of hacking is involved.

Is it safe? Will I break my iPhone?

Possibly. There's always the worry that the unlocking process will royally screw up your phone--but the only way to deal with that is to read the situations of others who have attempted the procedure before you. As long as you follow the instructions closely, you will greatly reduce your chances of bricking (screwing up) your iPhone. Beyond that, once you've unlocked your iPhone, you'll want to approach new iPhone updates with suspicion. Don't just click "update" in iTunes--wait for the various iPhone hackers to release (and safely test) new tools that will allow you to redo the same procedure on the new firmware.

Is it easy to do? Hacking an iPhone sounds difficult!

It is. It used to be difficult, but a number of one-button (or two-button) programs have emerged that greatly simplify the process of doing evil things to your iPhone. Don't worry. Even a cat could unlock an iPhone at this point.

How do I do it?

If you want a picture step-by-step, this link will walk you through the 3G unlock. But for the most part, unlocking a 3G iPhone is easy enough that we'll just need a few steps to tell you how to do it. Here we go!

1) Upgrade your iPhone to the 2.2 Firmware

This one's easy. Fire up iTunes and update your phone to the latest update, 2.2. If you've already done this, then you are one step ahead of the game. If not, you accomplish this task by clicking the "Update" button. Magic! Be sure to backup/sync your phone prior to doing so, and write down any note, programs, or settings you want to keep!

2) Pwn your Phone

Download Quickpwn. This is the application you'll use to jailbreak your phone prior to unlocking.

Connect your iPhone to your PC all USB-style and fire up Quickpwn. The program is as self-explanatory as a jailbreaking application could be. Select your phone. Select your phone's firmware (which should appear naturally, as you did the update through iTunes. If not, download it here). Install Cydia or Installer (we prefer the former). Follow the directions. Enjoy a hot cup of tea while you wait.

3) Install the application repositories

If you opted to install Cydia, fire up the application on your newly jailbroken iPhone and add the following application repository: http://apt9.yellowsn0w.com/

If you went for Installer, add this repository: http://i.yellowsn0w.com/

If you have no idea how to add a repository, fiddle around in each application's settings and options menus. It'll be there, trust us.

4) Install yellowsn0w

Use either Cydia or Installer to install yellowsn0w. Once the server finally lets you do so (it's getting hammered right now), run the application. Then turn off your iPhone. Grab a paper-clip and follow these instructions to pop out your SIM card. Slap in the SIM card from the new carrier you want to use. Turn on your iPhone. If the carrier doesn't pop up after a bit of a wait, repeat the process to remove the SIM and try doing it again.

5) Crazy Troubleshooting

Switching to T-Mobile? Turn off 3G on your iPhone settings (under Networking) before switching SIM cards.

Turn off any PINs on your SIM card before making the switch.

Make sure you're using the latest version of yellowsn0w. It should update in the Cydia/Installer menus automatically, but you can always make sure that the available version matches the newly released version by hitting up the official Dev Team blog.

We'll be monitoring the 3G unlock all day, and we'll let you know if we come across anything else! And you can always leave comments about the success / destruction of your iPhone 3G below.

Fake antivirus peddlers helped by Microsoft, IRS redirect glitches

2008-12-24T06:25:00.000-08:00

Just weeks after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission shut down two companies accused of selling fake antivirus software, a new player has moved into the market, aided by glitches in the Microsoft and U.S. Internal Revenue Service Web sites.

Over the past four days the scammers have used so-called redirector links on Web sites belonging to magazines, universities and, most remarkably, the Microsoft.com and IRS.gov domains, said Gary Warner, director of research in computer forensics with the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who first reported the activity on his blog Tuesday.

Many Web sites use redirector links to take visitors away from the site, although the Web site operators try to stop them from being misused by scammers. For example, the Google URL http://www.google.com/search?q=idg&btnI=3564 uses Google's "I'm feeling lucky" feature to send Web surfers to IDG.com.

If criminals can use a redirector on a major Web site like Microsoft.com or IRS.gov, however, they can make their malicious links pop up very high in Google search results, Warner said in an interview.

"Microsoft is a super-powerful site as far as search engine weight is concerned," he said.

The bad guys have tricked search engines into returning their malicious links to tens of thousands of search terms, Warner said. They've done this by using special software to add these redirector links to "tens of thousands of blog comments, guestbook entries, and imaginary blog stories all around the Internet," Warner said in his blog posting.

You can see the results of this activity. A Google search for the term "Microsoft Office 2002 download" yields a Microsoft.com redirection link as its first result. That link had been redirecting visitors to a malicious Web site, which launched Web-based attack code against victims and tried to trick them into downloading fake antivirus software, Warner said. By Tuesday evening, Microsoft had fixed the problem, so the Microsoft.com link that pops up in the google search results was no longer taking surfers to the malicious Web site.

The IRS has now addressed the issue too, but about 20 other sites remain a problem Warner said.

The fake antivirus software, also called "scareware," installs a keylogger on the victim's computer, presumably to steal login names and passwords, and also launches fake warning popups on every Web page that the victim visits telling him he needs to buy antivirus software, called System Security. The price for the fake product? A believable-sounding $51.45.

The FTC estimates that 1 million consumers were taken in by other fake antivirus products which go by names such as WinFixer, WinAntivirus, DriveCleaner, ErrorSafe and XP Antivirus. On Dec. 10 a federal court ordered two companies, Innovative Marketing and ByteHosting Internet Services, to stop promoting these products.

Warner doesn't know who is behind System Security, but he believes that the scammers behind this latest operation may be connected to the earlier scams. "It's similar enough that it's got to be somebody who has a relationship with the last group," he said.

Review: Kanguru eSATA flash drive provides blazing speedReview: Kanguru eSATA flash drive provides blazing speed

2008-12-24T06:24:00.000-08:00

Last month, Kanguru Solutions announced the first USB flash drive that also offers External Serial ATA (eSATA) connectivity. This month, OCZ Technology Inc. also announced an eSATA-enabled flash drive with up to 32GB capacity, as did Advanced Media Inc.'s Ridata-brand.

So it seems this is a trend. The question is, why? Kanguru's answer is that you can have blazing fast data transfer on your home system, then pocket the device and plug it in anywhere using the USB port. Kanguru's eFlash drive, with its eSATA 3Gbit/sec. throughput, potentially offers five to six times the speed of USB 2.0, which is 480Mbit/sec. The key word here is, potentially.

Kanguru's 32GB e-Flash drive

Dave Bresnick, senior product manager of the Kanguru e-Flash drive, said the drive would realistically offer read speeds of 75MB/sec. compared to USB 2.0's 30MB/sec. and write speeds of 25MB/sec., up from USB's 20MB/sec. He wasn't kidding.

I tested the Kanguru drive using Simpli Software's HD Tach 3.0 and by transferring 4GB of data from my hard drive. Because my ThinkPad laptop doesn't have a native eSATA port, as all but the latest computers today do not, I was forced to use a 34mm ExpressCard adapter.

Kanguru's e-Flash drive comes in a 16GB version for $84.95, with the 32GB model selling for $119.95; I tested the 32GB version. It's really not very expensive considering the capacity. The company expects to release a 64GB model in the next three months.

Kanguru's eSATA flash drive is a nice shape and size, about the same dimensions as a pack of gum, but only half as thick. It also has a sleek black finish. One cool feature is that when transferring data to or from the drive, the eSATA connector emits a red band of light and the USB side glows blue.

The one thing that immediately turned me off about the drive was the end caps covering the eSATA and USB connectors. I found them flimsy, and the eSATA cap has a lanyard protruding through it, which I guess keeps you from losing one of the caps, but also makes it somewhat awkward when trying to plug it into the laptop. Kanguru, however, assured me that they are correcting that "design flaw" and will be removing the lanyard from the cap and body and reinforcing the cap as well.

My first test of the drive involved transferring a big, ugly 4GB folder consisting of 1,653 files with 85 JPEG photos and a dozen short videos. The data transfer using the eSATA port took 10 minutes, 4 seconds; using the USB port, it took exactly 15 minutes.