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The InformationWeek August 2008 Archive « July 2008 | Main | September 2008 » |
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Wireless Connectivity On The Rails
Train passengers going to and from Beijing during the Olympics had access to wireless connectivity, thanks to systems that were installed to ensure connections even with the huge increase in usage.
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BNY Mellon Data Breach Potentially Massive
It was in May when we noted an investigation launched by the authorities in the state of Connecticut into a backup tape lost by the Bank of New York Mellon. The results of that investigation are in, and they don't look good.
Continue reading "BNY Mellon Data Breach Potentially Massive..."
Twitter, Not Rock 'N' Roll, Saved My Soul
I'm getting lots of questions about whether Twitter and other microblogging sites can and should be used in the enterprise, to which I say, "Can you afford not to?"
Continue reading "Twitter, Not Rock 'N' Roll, Saved My Soul..."
BlackBerry Bold Delayed Again?
Arg. If you believe the Boy Genius Report, it looks like the BlackBerry Bold will be delayed again in the United States until Oct. 2. If true, this is truly disappointing news.
Continue reading "BlackBerry Bold Delayed Again?..."
Storage Acquisitions
Brocade's purchase of Foundry Networks seems like a smart move, but technology acquisitions in general and storage acquisitions in specific never seem to pay off well. OK, never is a bit extreme, but it does seem rare and failure here hurts everyone. It distracts the buying company, often ruins the software from the bought company, and leaves users hanging in the balance.
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Review: Verizon's V CAST With Rhapsody Music Service
I've spent the last few weeks taking Verizon Wireless's V CAST With Rhapsody music download service for a spin. It has some really great features and some really annoying features. Find out if the pros outweigh the cons.
Continue reading "Review: Verizon's V CAST With Rhapsody Music Service..."
Report: TXTRS SND 95.4B SMS MSGS IN 2008
Thumbs of people the world over are getting some serious action. That action comes in the form of pecking out text messages on their cell phones. So far, 2008 is on pace to smash last year's numbers by a mile. Some of the figures being touted by VeriSign are just staggering. It sent more than 52 billion messages in the second quarter, up more than 20% from the first quarter for a total of 95.4 billion messages. People sure have a lot to say.
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Busy Week For E-Discovery
Three new product releases aimed at the electronic discovery market close out the last week of summer.
Continue reading "Busy Week For E-Discovery..."
Open Source Culture Needs To Be Security Culture, Too
How to react to the news that an earlier flaw in Debian's random-number generator has been used to fuel an honest-to-Linus exploit, especially after yesterday's post? Welcome to the tip of the iceberg.
Continue reading "Open Source Culture Needs To Be Security Culture, Too..."
Content Management Help For Law Firms
Lawyers need a little love from content management systems, too, and the recent product and partnership announcements from Open Text and Interwoven should fit the bill nicely.
Continue reading "Content Management Help For Law Firms..."
BlackBerry Wins Versus Windows Mobile For Google Apps Mail
After a flawed experience with one of the first Windows Mobile-based Motorola Q's, Microsoft outfitted me with a Samsung SCH-i760 smartphone which, from an industrial design perspective, is one of the best designs for a smartphone I've ever experienced (more on that in a second). Unfortunately, integrating WinMobile 6.0's version of Outlook with Google Apps-based Gmail was so problematic that I gave up in favor of a company-furnished BlackBerry. BlackBerrys are rumored to work well with Gmail. But is that really the case and why doesn't stuff like this just work? It's an interop nightmare.
Continue reading "BlackBerry Wins Versus Windows Mobile For Google Apps Mail..."
Digital Video Provided Security For Olympics
Security was a high priority at the Olympics, as well as for the mass transportation systems that got thousands of people to and from the Games and related events. Beijing Metro, which operates the subway system in Beijing, deployed video security technology from Nice Systems to help enhance security at more than 20 stations of the city's subway system.
Continue reading "Digital Video Provided Security For Olympics..."
Obama Nomination Spotlights 'Net Nation
We are all Internet Americans now. OK, Barack Obama actually didn't say that in his nomination-acceptance speech Thursday night. But he could have, because the great thing about this campaign is that you don't have to watch TV or consume the news when it's pushed down to you by big media. You can learn about the candidates when you want, how you want (for example, Obama's speech can be viewed here). All the more reason that it's incumbent upon you to exercise your duty as a voter.
Continue reading "Obama Nomination Spotlights 'Net Nation..."
Acquia Expands Its Commercial Drupal Private Beta
It appears that Acquia, the startup focused on releasing a commercial version of open source content management system Drupal, is moving briskly toward a full launch. Its private beta program has kicked into high gear this week with a new batch of invitations being given out at both Drupalcon Szeged and by TechCrunch. Going forward, Acquia plans to dole out about 100 new invitations a week.
Continue reading "Acquia Expands Its Commercial Drupal Private Beta..."
Comcast Orders Extra-Large Customer Caps
Yesterday, DSL Reports broke the news that Comcast is planning to implement a 250-GB monthly bandwidth limit, starting in October. All I can say is that it's about time.
Continue reading "Comcast Orders Extra-Large Customer Caps..."
No Blueprint Yet For Private Clouds
Many people don't like the concept of "private clouds," including my colleague John Foley and Sam Johnston ("The case against 'private clouds' "), since by definition cloud computing involves letting people plug into shared IT services in data centers that aren't their own. As oxymorons go, though, private cloud computing doesn't strike me as particularly egregious: I would probably rank it halfway between 'green data center' and 'business intelligence' on my own (admittedly moronic) oxymoron scale.
Continue reading "No Blueprint Yet For Private Clouds..."
Breaking News: Google Announces Android Market, Tackles Apple
Today Google announced its competitor to the iPhone Apps Store, the Android Market. The market will be a place where content developers can publish applications for Android phones, and Android users can go to discover and download them to their devices. Booyah!
Continue reading "Breaking News: Google Announces Android Market, Tackles Apple..."
Open Source Code Auditing By Design, Not Happenstance
If there's any one thing you hear said consistently about open source, it's the security benefits. My take: given how much we depend on software, we need to stop assuming open source = secure, and take steps to make sure that happens. Here's one idea how.
Continue reading "Open Source Code Auditing By Design, Not Happenstance..."
First Three Official Android Apps Outted?
The Android Guys are at it again. Someone clued them into what could be the first three applications that will be pre-loaded on phones running the Android platform. Unsurprisingly, all three were among the top 50 applications in the Android Developers Challenge.
Continue reading "First Three Official Android Apps Outted?..."
Steve Jobs Is Alive
If you're a subscriber to Bloomberg newswire, you may have been worried about the status of Apple's CEO as the news company inadvertently published an incomplete obituary Wednesday afternoon. It quickly retracted the story, but it's still morbidly interesting to give it a read.
Continue reading "Steve Jobs Is Alive..."
Wells Fargo CIO: No Budget Cuts Yet
Agreeing that the banking industry "is challenged from a financial perspective," the San Francisco firm's tech chief says demand for IT services is growing and the IT group sees itself as an equal partner within the organization -- and more than that.
Continue reading "Wells Fargo CIO: No Budget Cuts Yet..."
IBM Spends $300 Million For 13 New DR Sites
With the biggest investment in disaster recovery and business continuity infrastructure since SunGard bought Comdisco's Availability Solutions business unit for $825 million in 2001, IBM has declared its intention to be a disaster recovery service provider worldwide. It is building 13 new "Business Resilience Centers" to expand its services beyond the mainframe-based services it is known for.
Continue reading "IBM Spends $300 Million For 13 New DR Sites..."
Google Toying With The Idea Of Letting Users Mess With Search Results
This one is sort of a head-scratcher. According to a report, Google is working on a new function that would allow users to change the ranking of search results, comment on them, and possibly even delete them. Couldn't that negate their usefulness? Not if you believe Google.
Continue reading "Google Toying With The Idea Of Letting Users Mess With Search Results..."
Biden's Record Is Inconsistent On Cyber-Rights Issues
Joe Biden has a mixed record on privacy and Internet civil liberties issues. He often votes with the FBI and media companies against consumers and citizens. He sponsored legislation designed to make it illegal to circumvent copy-protection -- even on content and devices you legally own. He also sought to weaken encryption, and introduce a bill like the controversial PATRIOT Act long before 9/11. But in other areas he's defended privacy and cyber-rights.
Continue reading "Biden's Record Is Inconsistent On Cyber-Rights Issues ..."
The Touchscreen BlackBerry Storm Emerges
The BlackBerry Bold may have been released up in Canada last week, but it's the Storm that is really set to rock the smartphone boat. RIM's touchscreen darling is headed to Verizon Wireless in the very near future as a global device.
Continue reading "The Touchscreen BlackBerry Storm Emerges ..."
Web Application Hacks: Upping The Arms Race
It doesn't seem that long ago since Web applications attacks supplanted network and worm attacks. But they have, and now the attackers are finding ways to obfuscate these attacks. It's an ever-evolving arms race. And we have an updated Top 10 Web site vulnerabilities list.
Continue reading "Web Application Hacks: Upping The Arms Race ..."
Micosoft's SQL Strategy For Massive Data Sets
Cloud computing service providers like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo are all hard at work on a new generation of parallel data processing tools that will make it easier for each company to store and analyze enormous data sets such as search logs and click streams.
Continue reading "Micosoft's SQL Strategy For Massive Data Sets..."
Using A Wiki In Your Enterprise
Although it seems that they've have gained more traction and attention over the past few years, growing a successful wiki in most organizations is still often a grassroots effort, driven by dedicated technologists and content providers.
Continue reading "Using A Wiki In Your Enterprise..."
Don't Tell Quantum Tape Is Dead
Because it has just shipped the 20,000th unit of its midrange Scalar i500 tape library. Even with disk-based solutions, including Quantum's own DXi line, taking most of the mindshare for backup destinations, the fact that Quantum could sell 20,000 Scalar i500s in two and a half years is proof there's still some life in old-fashioned tape.
Continue reading "Don't Tell Quantum Tape Is Dead..."
Google Adds Suggestions To Search Queries
Google has been busy cooking up some new stuff in its labs of late. It is currently rolling out a new suggestion feature that will automatically suggest search queries as you begin to type in the search box.
Continue reading "Google Adds Suggestions To Search Queries..."
Keep IT In Touch With The Company Culture
It takes about 30 to 60 days to drill a new natural gas well. That helps explain why CIO Cathy Tompkins avoids pitching 18-month IT projects to her fellow business leaders at Chesapeake Energy, a fast-growing, fast-paced producer of natural gas. And it's an example of how IT needs to be tuned into and share the same culture as the company it's part of.
Continue reading "Keep IT In Touch With The Company Culture..."
Cisco Buys PostPath, Targets MS Exchange
Cisco today announced that it's acquiring PostPath, a vendor that makes a messaging and collaboration server, for $215 million. It's a shot across Microsoft's bow.
Continue reading "Cisco Buys PostPath, Targets MS Exchange..."
Linux Foundation's Collaboration Summit: Get It Together
The Linux Foundation sees no reason to sit still. This October in New York City, right on my doorstep practically, they're hosting the End User Collaboration Summit, a way to "give end users the opportunity to learn about upcoming developments in Linux and ensure they are maximizing their investment." Count me in.
Continue reading "Linux Foundation's Collaboration Summit: Get It Together..."
Thoughts On The Palm Treo Pro
While the Palm Treo name used to put large smiles on a mobile professional's face, it has fallen off a steep cliff in the recent history. But the company is hoping to reverse that trend with the stylish and powerful Treo Pro. I've spent about a week with the handset, and share my thoughts in this post.
Continue reading "Thoughts On The Palm Treo Pro..."
European Network Operator Admits To Slowing 3G Speeds
Wired recently reported that the 3G iPhone's poor speeds are the fault of the network operators, not the device itself. In France, at least, this is very true. French wireless network operator Orange has admitted that it is slowing down the surfing speeds of mobile phones on its 3G network.
Continue reading "European Network Operator Admits To Slowing 3G Speeds..."
Cloud Storage Migrations
Finishing up the migration series, let's talk about how you would migrate out of a storage cloud. With public storage clouds in particular, this can be a critical issue. These services are all in their infancy. What if you pick the wrong one, how can you get your data back?
Continue reading "Cloud Storage Migrations ..."
Cost Of An Official Unlocked 3G iPhone: $1,649
If you want to buy an officially unlocked 3G iPhone, be prepared to dig deep. Really deep. Wireless Imports, a wireless retail Web site that specializes in selling unlocked phones, is charging up to a whopping $1,649 for the 3G iPhone.
Continue reading "Cost Of An Official Unlocked 3G iPhone: $1,649..."
NBC Gets Network Help From Cisco
Olympics broadcaster NBC used IP video technology from Cisco Systems to deliver its coverage of the Games to multiple platforms.
Continue reading "NBC Gets Network Help From Cisco..."
Security Breach: More Laws Needed. Let's Add Health Care
Earlier this week, colleague Thomas Claburn covered the unfortunate trend that the tally of data breaches this year already has surpassed all breaches recorded for the entire year in 2007. This isn't entirely bad news, as I'll explain.
Continue reading "Security Breach: More Laws Needed. Let's Add Health Care..."
Yahoo Shareholders Lose All Hope
At the end of January, Yahoo stock closed at $19.18 a share. Then came Microsoft's amorously generous $31 offer, later upped to something around $33, that still wasn't enough for Yahoo. Here we are seven months later, and Yahoo has dropped below its price before Microsoft made its proposal.
Continue reading "Yahoo Shareholders Lose All Hope..."
Finding Out If SharePoint Is Right For Your Organization
With a quickly growing market share and a broad set of functionality, SharePoint has become one of Microsoft's most recent success stories. For almost any organization considering an investment in an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platform, SharePoint is probably somewhere on the short list. But like anything else, one size does not fit all, and SharePoint isn't a silver bullet to meet every organization's needs. So how do you find out if it will meet yours?
Continue reading "Finding Out If SharePoint Is Right For Your Organization..."
Apple Censors Digital Comic
Apple has banned a digital comic called Murderdrome, from Infurious Comics, from its iTunes Store, to the consternation of the comic's creator and fans.
Continue reading "Apple Censors Digital Comic..."
REST Vs. SOAP, Round 2
Damien Katz, who created the innovative document-oriented database CouchDB, recently stirred up a hornet's nest of controversy among RESTful software enthusiasts with his post entitled "REST, I just don't get it."
Continue reading "REST Vs. SOAP, Round 2..."
Any Extra Change Jingling In Your Pocket Lately?
Tech salaries inched up recently after slumping earlier this year, according to a new wage report from an IT services and staffing firm. Could this the beginning of an upward trend or just a blip?
Continue reading "Any Extra Change Jingling In Your Pocket Lately?..."
Radio New Zealand Goes Open With Ogg
Over at Groklaw.net, there's an interview with Richard Hulse of Radio New Zealand, talking about his decision to begin offering some of that station's Internet-based audio in the nonproprietary Ogg Vorbis format. It's a veritable case study in both the etiquette and ethics of adopting open standards.
Continue reading "Radio New Zealand Goes Open With Ogg..."
'Mad Men' Characters Get Twitter Accounts
Characters on the prime-time soap opera Mad Men are getting accounts at Twitter, where they post in-character comments about the goings-on at the hard-drinking, hard-smoking, sexed-up Sterling Cooper ad agency. However, the characters are at war with Twitter management, who are suspending accounts for copyright violations.
Continue reading "'Mad Men' Characters Get Twitter Accounts ..."
Engineering Drawings, TV Spot Of The G1 Android Phone Surface
The Android Guys have dug up some juicy gems about the Google G1 Android phone. First, they find some engineering drawings of the device, and then they stumble upon a TV advertisement for it. This is some good stuff.
Continue reading "Engineering Drawings, TV Spot Of The G1 Android Phone Surface..."
What To Expect From Airline Internet Services
As in-flight Internet services start to take off, air travelers have lots of questions about them. For example, when the bandwidth hog in 19C starts to download gargantuan files, how will that affect service quality for everyone else on the plane? Aircell CEO Jack Blumenstein, whose Gogo service already is on some American Airlines flights, tackled this question and others in an hour-long discussion yesterday.
Continue reading "What To Expect From Airline Internet Services..."
Nokia Knocks Out Two More N Series Multimedia Phones
Nokia is finally making good on its promise to deliver some exciting handsets to the North American market. The newly announced N85, N79, and N96 NAM are focused on users on this side of the pond, and deliver powerful multimedia and connectivity features.
Continue reading "Nokia Knocks Out Two More N Series Multimedia Phones..."
Google Explains Why It Nixed Bluetooth And GChat From Android SDK
Last week, Google offered up a new version of the Android SDK. The new version added a lot of great stuff, but also subtracted support for a few elements. Those elements were Bluetooth and GChat. Google felt the need to explain itself. Here's what it had to say.
Continue reading "Google Explains Why It Nixed Bluetooth And GChat From Android SDK..."
Zoho Share Simplifies Document Sharing
Zoho, a provider of hosted productivity applications, last week introduced Zoho Share. Zoho Share addresses a long-standing user community pet peeve by bringing the documents and files created across Zoho's online applications into one interface which can be shared with other users, and, longer-term, within an organization.
Continue reading "Zoho Share Simplifies Document Sharing..."
Making iPhone 3G Games Better
Since the launch of the iPhone 3G and Apple's App Store, it's clear that video games are going to be a big part of its appeal. With a touch screen, strong graphics, accelerometers, and a quick and easy distribution channel, the handset is sure to battle with Nintendo and Sony for portable gamers, right? Not quite. But, an upcoming accessory may give it a fighting chance.
Continue reading "Making iPhone 3G Games Better..."
Google And YouTube Need More Transparent Takedown Procedures
The removal of content from the Internet needs more safeguards. Right now, it's just too easy to make unsubstantiated claims that lead online services providers to block lawful content.
Continue reading "Google And YouTube Need More Transparent Takedown Procedures..."
Getting A Perspective On Man In Middle Attacks
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have proposed a system whereby you can ensure that when you attach to a server that uses SSH or a self-signed digital certificate and you haven't verified the authenticity of the host identity beforehand, you aren't subject to a man in the middle attack.
Continue reading "Getting A Perspective On Man In Middle Attacks..."
Newark Airport Gets Free Samsung Mobile Phone Charging Stations
You know you've been there. Killing time before a flight, you realize your phone has no juice left. Not only do you have to get through a flight, but you may have to make calls when you land. Finding unoccupied power outlets in airports is a tricky business that requires luck and cunning. Samsung believes in making its own luck, and has installed 50 phone charging stations in New Jersey's Newark Liberty International Airport.
Continue reading "Newark Airport Gets Free Samsung Mobile Phone Charging Stations..."
Elfiq Networks A Good Option For SMEs Needing WAN Link Management
Ever heard of Elfiq Networks? If you're in the market for a WAN load-balancing device, you might want to add the LB line of products to your shortlist. The LB line is moving big-ticket capabilities down to fit into the budgets of many SMEs.
Continue reading "Elfiq Networks A Good Option For SMEs Needing WAN Link Management ..."
Best Western Disputes Depth Of Suspected Breach
Dispute the depth of the breach is an understatement. A Best Western spokeswoman just issued a statement to InformationWeek stating that the breach, so far, has only been confirmed to involve 13 guests at a single hotel.
Continue reading "Best Western Disputes Depth Of Suspected Breach ..."
How Not To Violate The GPL: An Easy Guide
It's never nice to know that you've been violating the GPL in some form. Far better, instead, to know how to not violate the GPL in the first place -- which is the premise behind the Software Freedom Law Center's new guide to same, "A Practical Guide to GPL Compliance".
Continue reading "How Not To Violate The GPL: An Easy Guide..."
Verizon Wireless Decides Visual Voicemail Is Worth $3 Per Month
The iPhone from Apple and AT&T was the first to really offer visual voice mail to the masses. iPhone users can use this more modern voice mail system at no extra cost. Verizon Wireless announced a new version of its LG Voyager device today. If you want to add visual voice mail service to it, you're going to have to pay an additional $3 per month.
Continue reading "Verizon Wireless Decides Visual Voicemail Is Worth $3 Per Month..."
Google Sets Up Mobile Election Web Site
With 10 weeks to go before the election, the amount of news coverage surrounding John McCain and Barack Obama is set to skyrocket (as if it hadn't already). In order to help you parse through all the chatter, Google has set up a special Web site where mobile phone users can find the latest headlines.
Continue reading "Google Sets Up Mobile Election Web Site..."
New Records For IT
The Beijing Olympic Games are over, and much of the attention is focused on the accomplishments of the athletes from around the world, who broke more than 40 world records and more than 130 Olympic records.
Continue reading "New Records For IT..."
Migration Relief
In my last entry on migration migraines we discussed the challenges of moving from one primary storage provider to another and went through a few solutions. One of the best methods to make migrations easier is to keep the amount of data on primary storage at a minimum, but what do you do about archives that will grow to petabytes in size?
Continue reading "Migration Relief ..."
Heart Scare Prompts Health Care IT Crusade
It's amazing how one ignores important stuff until it gets personal. But following my 80-year-old mom's cardiac scare over the weekend, now I'm surfing over to HP and Intel to learn about their major efforts to connect world-class computing to health care, and I'm a new-found advocate for getting every American's medical records into electronic form, so doctors know your history no matter where you run into trouble. So here's what happened with my mom.
Continue reading "Heart Scare Prompts Health Care IT Crusade..."
Old Media Gets The Scoop On Obama's VP Pick
When I woke up Saturday morning, I found a text message waiting on my iPhone from the Barack Obama campaign, informing me that the candidate named Joe Biden as running mate. But I already knew that, because I'd already gotten the news the night before -- from newspapers. Old-fashioned journalism -- wordslingers working contacts inside the Obama campaign -- leaked the story in advance of your new-fangled text messaging. Score one for the old school.
Continue reading "Old Media Gets The Scoop On Obama's VP Pick ..."
Seinfeld Does Windows Vista
It seems like Microsoft really is getting serious about raising sales for Vista. The Wall Street Journal says the company has hired comedian Jerry Seinfeld as one of the faces for a $300 million ad campaign. The core slogan for the campaign is supposedly "Windows, Not Walls."
Continue reading "Seinfeld Does Windows Vista..."
UPDATE: Best Western Refutes (Some) Claims Of Hacker Compromise
Shortly after our post, Best Western Hotel Chain Pwned, which is based on the story that appeared here, Best Western e-mailed us a response that raises more questions than it answers. That statement, which is available here, refutes some of the claims surrounding its breach, but certainly not all. Here's a deconstruction:
Continue reading "UPDATE: Best Western Refutes (Some) Claims Of Hacker Compromise..."
Revinetix Adds 'File-Level Deduplication' To Backup Appliances
Disk-to-disk backup appliance vendor Revinetix updated the RevOS software on its dedicated backup appliances to store just a single copy of a file or e-mail message across multiple locations and backup sessions. Their PR folks then sent out a press release saying they were adding data deduplication. The semanticist in me says "That's not deduplication, that's single-instance storage." I reserve the term deduplication for processes that reduce duplicate data contained in similar, not just identical, files or other objects.
Continue reading "Revinetix Adds 'File-Level Deduplication' To Backup Appliances..."
Best Western Hotel Chain Pwned
According to news reports that started to surface over the weekend, Best Western, one of the world's largest hotel chains -- if not the largest -- is investigating a breach that purportedly has placed millions of its guests' data at-risk, and in the hands of Russian mobsters.
Continue reading "Best Western Hotel Chain Pwned..."
The Linkup Online Backup Goes Belly Up -- Lessons?
After a history of poor service and multiple cases of lost user data, the online backup vendor known as MediaMax and, finally, The Linkup went belly up this month, leaving users in the lurch. More important, how can you avoid losing your data when, or if, a storage service provider fails?
Continue reading "The Linkup Online Backup Goes Belly Up -- Lessons?..."
Radio Implants And GPS To Thwart Kidnappers? Don't Think So
In the face of rising kidnappings in Mexico, a number of more affluent Mexicans are opting to have minute radio transmitters implanted under their skin so they can, presumably, be located by the authorities if they're ever kidnapped. This is a bad idea.
Continue reading "Radio Implants And GPS To Thwart Kidnappers? Don't Think So..."
Content Management Acronym Soup
I was recently (justly) taken to task for assuming that readers of this blog would know what the acronyms in the content management space mean. Not just what the three- and four-letter acronyms we throw around stand for, but also what technologies and processes they actually represent. The funny thing is that even within the content management community, there isn't always agreement. So here's an attempt to try to demystify things a bit.
Continue reading "Content Management Acronym Soup..."
Google's Lively Unloved
So Google's Lively isn't so lively. According to The Economist, "Hardly anyone is using Lively."
Continue reading "Google's Lively Unloved..."
Opera Says Mobile Web Use Grew 16% In June
In its latest "State of the Mobile Web" report, Opera Software details how things shaped up in the month of July. The number of page views jumped, though the mobile Web site rankings remained mostly unchanged in the U.S.
Continue reading "Opera Says Mobile Web Use Grew 16% In June..."
Helio Is Officially Folded Into Virgin Mobile USA
Today marked the official end of yet another MVNO. Virgin Mobile USA has closed its acquisition of Helio. Helio made waves as an MVNO, providing innovative handsets and services at good prices. Can Virgin Mobile keep the Helio spirit alive?
Continue reading "Helio Is Officially Folded Into Virgin Mobile USA..."
Open Source You Can Use, August '08 Edition
It's high time for another roundup of open source software you can use, the close-of-August-2008 version. This time around: chatting, publishing, and content management.
Continue reading "Open Source You Can Use, August '08 Edition..."
Untrusted SSL Certificates Indicate A Failure
An unknown certificate is a failure in SSL/TLS, and that's how it should be. Ever since Firefox 3 came out, the way it presents SSL-enabled Web sites with self-signed certificates has been called scary and hurtful. Untrusted self-signed certificates should be scary because untrusted self-signed certificates are a failure in SSL/TLS, and a failure in your authentication and encryption mechanism should be treated as serious. Encryption with unknown parties is useless.
Continue reading "Untrusted SSL Certificates Indicate A Failure..."
Five Reasons Why Airplane Internet Services Will Take Off
As American, Delta, and other airlines begin to roll out in-flight Internet services, I'm hearing a lot of doubts about whether they'll stick. And many people are ticked off that airlines have the audacity to charge passengers $12.95 for the service. But for all you naysayers, I have some answers for you on why I think broadband in the sky is here to stay.
Continue reading "Five Reasons Why Airplane Internet Services Will Take Off..."
Google Offers Up Gears Geolocation API To Make Web Sites Location Aware
Google thinks it would be valuable to have any Web site you visit -- whether on your phone or PC -- know where you are. This way, you could receive information that is relevant to your location. A new API from Google will let Web site developers do this, without the use of GPS.
Continue reading "Google Offers Up Gears Geolocation API To Make Web Sites Location Aware..."
Migration Migraines
Moving data between tiers of storage has gotten easier as a result of global file systems and simplified archive software, but upgrading to a new platform ... that is just plain ugly.
Continue reading "Migration Migraines ..."
Getting The Information Out
Olympics IT infrastructure provider Atos Origin has created two key systems to support operations at the Games: the Games Management Systems (GMS), covered earlier this week, and the Information Diffusion Systems (IDS).
Continue reading "Getting The Information Out..."
Aging Computers Are Microsoft's Challenge
A recurring theme in this year's Olympics is older athletes who are still at the top of their sport. Swimmer Dara Torres and gymnast Oksana Chusovitina are the most successful examples. High performance in aging athletes is something to celebrate, but Microsoft can't be happy about the high performance of aging PCs.
Continue reading "Aging Computers Are Microsoft's Challenge..."
Xerox Works To Bring Document Management To The Masses
Xerox this week announced a new addition to its DocuShare family of content and document management products. With DocuShare Express, small to medium-sized businesses can get a solid, reasonably priced system to manage information and content, all while integrating easily with existing Xerox hardware using the new Extensible Interface Platform (EIP) connector.
Continue reading "Xerox Works To Bring Document Management To The Masses..."
Intel Spinning Atom Processor Into Big 'Little' Market
I've always been highly skeptical of Intel's attempt to carve out a new market niche for Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs). The big question for me: What are these things? They're too big to be smartphones but too small to live like full-function laptops. However, after yesterday's big launch (re-re-launch, if you ask me) of Intel's Atom processor, I'm becoming convinced that MIDs may have a future.
Continue reading "Intel Spinning Atom Processor Into Big 'Little' Market..."
Intel Research And Development: 40 Years Over The Rainbow
In the 1983 film The Right Stuff, the phrase "No bucks, no Buck Rogers" is used to describe what makes rockets go up, namely funding. In an Aug. 21, 2008, Intel Developer Forum Keynote "Crossing the Chasm between Humans and Machines" in San Francisco, Intel CTO Justin Rattner talked about how Intel Research and Development funding is helping bring some decidedly futuristic gadgets out of Intel labs and into peoples' lives.
Continue reading "Intel Research And Development: 40 Years Over The Rainbow ..."
Novell, Re: Microsoft: "We Still Compete"
Much to the chagrin of some, Microsoft continues to snap up certificates from Novell that can be redeemed for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server support. So what's the source of the consternation? Is it the mere fact that Novell is "colluding" with Microsoft?
Continue reading "Novell, Re: Microsoft: "We Still Compete"..."
Google: You Have No Privacy, Part 2
Google is taking more heat for alleged privacy violations stemming from its Street Views service, this time in Sonoma County, Calif. In this instance, a Google Street Views driver went through a gate, past a "No Trespassing" sign, and past a watchdog to take his images. Think your private road is going to stop Google's prying eyes? Think again.
Continue reading "Google: You Have No Privacy, Part 2..."
Air Blog A Go Go
There are lots of things I've wanted to do aboard a flight. Blogging wasn't really on that list. But here I am, $12.95 lighter, 36,000 feet above the earth, American Airlines Flight 34, Thursday, Aug. 21, heading from L.A. to New York. Blogging. And that's not all!
Continue reading "Air Blog A Go Go..."
FEMA Phones Get Hacked
If you are going to hack a phone system, do you really want to hack DHS? That's what happened this weekend when someone made hundreds of illegal calls from a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Private Branch Exchange (PBX) to the Middle East and Asia. It appears that it was the usual culprits of poor change control and misconfigurations that left FEMA's digital doors open.
Continue reading "FEMA Phones Get Hacked..."
Photo Of TechWeb's Fritz Nelson Joining The Mile-High Club
My colleague Fritz Nelson is currently on American Airlines' Wi-Fi-equipped flight 34 from Los Angeles to JFK Airport in New York and he and I are video chatting via AOL Instant Messenger (screen shot below). I'm not sure what would happen if everyone on the flight did the same thing, but right now, there's pretty much no latency to the video.
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Woman Sues Apple Over 3G iPhone Reception Issues
I am tempted to make all sorts of witty, snarky comments about this, but I'll try to stick to the facts. An Alabama woman has sued Apple, stating that the 3G iPhone -- which she can't use in her home because of the 3G reception issues -- doesn't live up to Apple's claims of "twice as fast." The lawsuit could go class action.
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Early Thoughts On The Palm Treo Pro Not Flattering
Despite the all-new hardware and major improvements in style, the new Palm Treo Pro isn't getting analysts and tech writers hot and bothered. Some are calling it "underwhelming", "a flotation device," and a "stopgap". Ouch.
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Avaya Plus Tandberg?
In what is probably the first really interesting consolidation rumor I've heard in a long time, there are reports that Silver Lake, the private equity firm that owns Avaya, has approached Tandberg about acquiring that video-focused vendor.
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Please, Not The 'Mother's Basement' Joke Again
After reading how a John McCain staff blogger insulted Dungeons & Dragons enthusiasts with a reference to living in their mothers' basements, I'd like to make a plea to mainstream America. This is on behalf of nerds everywhere: Will you please get some new jokes about us?
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SharePoint Adds Improved Faceted Search And SQL 2008 Support
The past week or so has seen the release of a few enhancements and tools of interest to the SharePoint community -- improvements to faceted search, support for SQL 2008, and a third-party tool to help calculate SharePoint's total cost of ownership.
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The Security And Privacy Of Healthcare Data
Despite the aim of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act to bolster the security and privacy of patient information, a majority of health-care providers believe more should -- and can -- be done. And a newly formed consortium of industry leaders plans to do something about it.
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Peek-A-Boo Look At Intel’s Atom Processor
In an Intel Developer Forum session titled "Splitting The Atom: A Peek Into The Intel Atom Processor" on Wednesday in San Francisco, Intel Fellow Dr. Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar and Belliappa Kuttanna, the chief architect of Intel's Atom processor, discussed the technological hurdles Intel overcame in the Atom.
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Intel Nehalem Processors--The Next Generation
Before a standing-room-only session at the Intel Developer Forum on Tuesday in San Francisco, soft-spoken Intel Fellow Rajesh Kumar did a high-level walk-through of Intel's next-generation core microarchitecture (Nehalem) processors in a presentation titled "Screaming Performance, Efficient Power."
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A Handset Strictly For E-Mail
Would you pay $100 for a handheld gadget that can only check e-mail? I thought about that question as I saw the thin, QWERTY-board sporting device from startup Peek. I'm still struggling to think of a reason for this thing to exist.
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Report: BlackBerry Bold Being Delayed For 3G Reception Issues, Too
A Citigroup analyst who has used the BlackBerry Bold smartphone reports that the forthcoming device from Research In Motion is suffering the same 3G reception woes that the 3G iPhone is.
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Google Docs Competitor Zoho Adds Support For Macros In Spreadsheet Software
I am not a big user of spreadsheets, nor do I use a lot of macros. But I am sure this is good news for someone out there. Zoho Sheet can now record and play back Visual Basic macros. It's the only cloud-based spreadsheet that can do that. In fact, the only other spreadsheet that can do that is Microsoft Excel. Google, are you going to ante up?
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Hacker Group Taking 'Do Unto Others' To Extremes
Not even hackers are safe from hackers anymore.
Over the past few months, a group calling itself the "Great Council of Internet Superheros" has been targeting well-known white-hat hacker members of the security community, whose identities we won't mention. These prominent security pros are living in fear of the same thing as corporate America and everyday citizens: having their personal information stolen and exposed.
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More T-Mobile 3G Market Launches Revealed
Earlier this year, T-Mobile belatedly began rolling out its 3G network in 1,700-MHz spectrum it won from the FCC AWS auction several years ago. It launched with much fanfare in NYC back in May. T-Mobile plans to add a host of cities to its 3G-covered ranks by the end of the year. Here is a list of the latest getting that high-speed mobile goodness.
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Sneak Peek: New PCI DSS Rules
Updates to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) have been released by the PCI Security Standards Council. The updates, hopefully, will bring some clarity to a number of areas which retailers, merchants, and auditors say are foggy.
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The Linux Foundation: Who Should Join The Gang?
Now that Canonical has added its name to the roll call of companies on board with the Linux Foundation, a question comes to mind: Is the foundation becoming the thing that "separates the men from the boys" in the Linux world? It may well be, and that wouldn't be bad news.
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Apple Promises 3G iPhone Problems Will Be Fixed In September
Apple CEO Steve Jobs responded to a perturbed iPhone owner via e-mail recently. In the e-mail, he said that Apple is aware of the 3G iPhone's problems, and will fix them with the next software update, due in September.
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Tier 4, The End Of The Trail Of Tiers
Tier 4 once was the simplest of all tiers -- it was just tape. The advent of disk-to-disk backup, which has helped most backup strategies, actually has made the tier itself more complex. I also can take a stand that, in some ways, the introduction of disk has made the process of backup itself more complex.
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Managing Processes At The Games
Atos Origin, the provider of IT infrastructure services and technology for the Beijing Games, designed and built two main classes of systems to run these Games: Games Management Systems (GMS) and Information Diffusion Systems (IDS). We'll explore GMS today and look at IDS next.
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As Google Android SDK Hits Street, Android Security Team Braces
It's been a big week for the Android phone platform. Most important, the Federal Communications Commission gave the all clear to the first Android-powered handset, which will be built by High Tech Computer and is currently expected to be called the Dream. Additionally, Google released an updated version of its SDK.
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CIOs On Cloud Computing
The recent rash of outages at Amazon, Citrix, and Google were a warning sign to CIOs contemplating the move to cloud computing, but service availability is just one of the things to worry about. Privacy, data security, and vendor lock-in are on their watch list, too.
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Mobile Wallets Are Coming
Despite some recent troubles with mobile phones in its home market, Japanese government officials said Tuesday they will aggressively push its mobile technology abroad.
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Atlassian's Confluence 2.9 Wiki Offers MS Office, SharePoint Integration
Enterprise wiki software developer Atlassian Software delivered Confluence version 2.9 this week, managing to make an easy-to-use product even easier by supporting integration with Microsoft Office and SharePoint. Add to that a handful of enhancements and nearly 150 enhancements and bug fixes, and you've got yourself an upgrade worthy of note.
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Securing A (Networked) Apple OS X 10.5 Install
Despite Apple's laggard attitude toward patching the underbelly of its flagship OS X software; the ability for attackers to crack the OS in seconds; or even the capability of security researchers to dedicate an entire month to Mac OS security flaws, you really can attain a reasonable level of security on a Mac. You just need to know how.
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Google Updates Android SDK, Shows Off Brand New User Interface
Google provided a new version of the Android software developer kit to developers. The nearly-final mobile operating system gives us a much better idea of what Android phones will look like once they are available. It does still need some more time in the oven to cook, though.
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Copyright Ruling For Open Source: Good And Bad News?
The other week, the open source community enthusiastically welcomed a court ruling that set a strong precedence for open source licensing. Not everyone was enthusiastic, though. Among the cautionary dissenters is Michael P. Bennett, partner, Wildman Harrold (Chicago). To Michael, it's a two-edged sword that can harm as much as it can help.
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Palm Accidentally Outs The Treo Pro. Again.
Whether or not it was fully intentional or official, the Palm Treo Pro made another appearance this morning, this time on TheNewsMarket.com. The source for the story was accredited to Palm, but it has since been pulled. Palm, first you accidentally leak details on your own site, and then through a media organization. What gives?
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What Gadgets Help You Get In Shape?
If you're looking to get in shape, there's no shortage of gadgets you can spend your money on, including a $220 wrist-top computer, a sensor for your shoe, or a Wii Fit.
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Startup Aims To Make The Workplace, And The World, Smarter
Austhink Software of Australia has developed an application that it says can help employees not just work smarter, but become smarter. This isn't your typical business intelligence app, but intelligence software that applies "brain mapping" to the goal of better decision making.
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iPhone Firmware Update 2.0.2 Did Diddly-Squat For Me
Late yesterday, Apple pushed out a second update for the iPhone's firmware. The new version, 2.0.2, offers more of Apple's famous (and nebulous) "bug fixes." I am sad to report, after downloading and installing it, my iPhone's bugs have not been fixed.
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Revealing The Laughably Low-Tech Video Set-Up At 'The Daily Show'
As technologists, we're prone to fall in love with the latest new technology. We think we require the most powerful PCs, the fastest networks, and the smartest smartphones to get our jobs done. But The Daily Show reminds us that we can achieve excellence even when our tools are woefully out-of-date.
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Taiwan Wants To Force XP Out Of Retirement
I like XP, I really do. It's got a lot of life in it, and runs on systems where Vista can't even fit. But Taiwan's announcement of an antitrust investigation into Microsoft's retirement of XP is just crazy.
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Kentico Offers Free Version Of Its ASP.NET-Powered CMS
Kentico Software has announced that it's trying something different with the latest version of its flagship content management system software, Kentico CMS for ASP.NET. It's giving it away.
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Microsoft Snags Another Security Researcher
There was a time when it seemed Microsoft viewed security researchers as the enemy, and a big public relations problem. They were the troublemakers who poked holes in Microsoft's operating systems, browser, and desktop software. And they published exploits that helped to automate attacks. Today, Microsoft announced that it hired one of them.
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Are White Spaces The Mobile Internet's White Knight?
If you believe Google, white spaces represent the last hope for the future of the mobile Internet. I don't think the issue is as clear-cut as Google would have us believe. As the FCC nears a vote on the issue, Google and other heavy hitters are weighing in.
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Fixing Broken Usability In Free Software
How often do you hear the old canard that someone's done a great job of talking about a problem but doesn't have a solution? I hate that, too. Matthew Paul Thomas wrote an article about why free software often has lousy usability -- and what to do about it.
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Samsung Makes 'Eco' Mobile Phone Out Of Corn
We Americans love our corn. The documentary film King Corn shows just how much, by tracking the grain in our pork, beef, bread, soda, chicken, french fries, even spaghetti sauce. Some day, even our pockets may be full of kernals, now that Samsung has developed an "eco-phone" made from a corn-based bio-plastic.
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The Death Of Storage Hardware
My former boss, who is still a mentor today, had a saying: "Success in life is the elimination of variables." Words to live by and words that the storage community must have heard. The biggest variable they deal with when installing a solution into their environment is the variable of, well, their environment.
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Google Begins Testing Ads In Mobile YouTube Videos
Google has been working hard to get a mobile version of YouTube onto as many handsets as possible over the past year or so. If you thought you were going to be able to watch those videos on your phone without having to watch advertisements, think again.
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FCC Approval Adds Fire To HTC Dream Android Phone Hoopla
Over the weekend, the Federal Communications Commission approved a new phone from HTC called the Dream. HTC has indicated that Dream will be the name of its Android-powered smartphone. The most interesting part of the FCC documents show that the phone supports T-Mobile's 1,700-MHz AWS 3G network.
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Microsoft For Corporate Telephony?
There's been a lot of buzz over at No Jitter about the most recent Gartner report in the area of IP telephony/Unified Communications, in which Gartner gave a spot in its coveted Magic Quadrant to Microsoft. What drove the commentary was the fact that Microsoft made the Magic Quadrant for Corporate Telephony, an area in which most observers have seen Microsoft coming up short, at least relative to the incumbent vendors, in terms of feature/function.
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PDAs Help Visitors Navigate Beijing
Some people at the Beijing Olympics, including officials, foreign dignitaries, and the guests of major sponsors, are using modified PDAs to help them navigate the crowded streets of Beijing.
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Common-Sense Cybersecurity Recommendations For Our Next President
Our next president is going to have a big job securing our nation's IT against criminals and foreign enemies. Our data networks are an important part of the national infrastructure -- and therefore tempting military targets -- along with traditional infrastructure such as dams, power plants, factories, and hospitals. Security expert Bruce Schneier has some short, sensible advice for what the next president will need to do.
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Another Look At Live Search Cashback
In technology news, there's plenty of first-day analysis but not so much follow-up. Soon after Microsoft announced Live Search Cashback there was plenty of coverage, including my own. After a couple of months of using the service, I think it's already losing its gloss.
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Microsoft Blue Hat Fall '08: Security Researchers Want To Hack You
If you think the future of hacking may be things like Web applications, social networks, or even infiltrating "The Cloud," you might want to look in a mirror. Sure, all of those things will be targeted, but one of the next frontiers for exploration will be hacking the mind.
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Bigfoot DNA Evidence 'Inconclusive', Researchers Claim
The so-called "DNA evidence" that was supposed to prove the existence of the legendary beast Bigfoot turned out to be mixed with that of a possum, according to researchers who studied the genetic material.
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Usability Is More Than A Good Site Map
Having spent many an hour agonizing over the minute details of designing and tweaking site maps for various projects, I found Jared M. Spool's recent piece The Site Map: An Information Architecture Cop-Out, particularly interesting.
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Oh, Tier 3...
Remember about five years or so ago when life was simple? We had fast SCSI and Fibre Channel drives for data and we had tape for backup. Seemed perfect. Then came the ATA-based drives, and you were told to move your older data to them and start sending backups to disk. Then powering the data center and storage in particular became a problem; another use for ATA, put them in stand-by mode, spin them down, put them to sleep, and then eventually turn them off. As is usually the case, the hardware is ahead of the software and there's limited automation to leverage all of this, so what's a user to do?
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Help Wanted: CIO Job Opportunity
Looking for a CIO job? I just happen to know of one in Austin, Texas, where the CIO recently left for, shall we say, "personal reasons."
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Oracle WebLogic App Server and OC4J: One Is 'Strategic' And One Isn't
Earlier this week, Oracle released an upgrade to the WebLogic application server that the company acquired in its $8.5 billion merger with one-time rival BEA Systems four months ago.
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New Tech Lets You Buy A Round Of Drinks With Your Phone
I think we've reached the pinnacle of innovation with this latest service, announced by Buzzd and its partners. Simply go to BuyYourFriendADrink.com and send your friends an alcoholic beverage from wherever you happen to be. I don't know about you, but I think now we can all put our feet up and relax.
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Circuit Court Offers New Understanding Of Open Source
I have watched various court cases that involve bitter disputes within the computer industry and wondered how the courts could keep up. Each time it seemed to me that the basic issues had moved beyond the understanding of the court. The cases seemed to come down to who produced the more authoritative expert opinion. Then the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals comes along and demonstrates a comprehension of open source code.
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Cisco Releases Security Advisory On WebEx Client ActiveX Control
According to Cisco, the WebEx Meeting Manager client software includes atucfobj.dll, a DLL that allows meeting participants to view Unicode fonts. This library contains a buffer overflow vulnerability that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on your system. Your WebEx provider must patch its servers in order for you to be protected. Read on to find out how to check.
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5 Years Later - Lessons From The Blackout?
Yesterday was the 5th anniversary of the biggest electrical blackout in North American history. Some 50,000,000 people from Ohio to D.C. to Ontario (Canada, not California) were without power for up to four days. The mainstream media is covering the big picture and lessons the power industry can learn to make the grid more resistant to trees knocking down power lines. I wanted to take the opportunity to address the questions this event raises for IT.
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Next-Generation Palm Treo Sighted
Palm accidentally uploaded a presentation about the Palm Treo 850 -- aka Treo Pro -- to a public Palm Web site, where it was spotted by bloggers and posted just about everywhere. It is probably the best looking Treo ever. But is that really saying all that much?
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Commercial Apps For Consumer Linux: D.O.A.?
One thing I didn't talk much about in my recent feature article about the future of Linux was whether consumers will be paying for Linux apps in four years. Truth is, I don't think most of them will -- if even any at all.
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Managing A Telecom Workforce
During the Olympics, China Netcom (CNC) Beijing, the city's largest fixed-line voice and data communications provider, must ensure that some seven million Olympics customers -- athletes, coaches, officials, staff and spectators -- have reliable voice, broadband, video transmission, and Internet service.
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T-Mobile USA And HTC To Offer First Android Phone
HTC will launch the first commercially available smartphone running the Android platform on T-Mobile USA's network, according to a new report. It will be available by Christmas, and maybe as early as October. This is not a big surprise.
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Personal Finance Software Suffering From Deflation
Microsoft's announcement that its Money product will no longer be sold at retail marks another step in the decline and fall of PC-based personal finance software. We shouldn't let this occasion go unnoticed; married geeks everywhere used the "We can use it to balance the checkbook" excuse to justify their first PC.
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SpringCM 4.4 Adds Robust Records Management Capabilities
SpringCM this week announced the addition of records management capabilities to its enterprise content management platform. Adding this to the already-solid foundation of its document management and workflow/process automation capabilities makes SpringCM version 4.4 one of a very few systems offering this level of functionality in a fully hosted, software-as-a-service model.
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SMS As A Reminder
I don't know about you, but I've frequently been out and about when I remembered something I needed to do later. It could be as mundane as returning a movie or remembering to pick up the dry cleaning, but if I can't write it down, it may be lost in the wind. But the reminder service Kwiry can help you stay on top of your tasks with your cell phone.
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Energy-Efficient Ethernet In The Data Center
In much the same way that hot-rod idling wreaks havoc with your car's fuel economy, running your Ethernet links at full throttle can ruin your data center's energy efficiency -- that's the simple idea behind the Energy Efficient Ethernet initiative.
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MBTA: Legally Shackling Security Researchers Rarely Works
As many security and technology followers know, three MIT students had planned on presenting their findings on a number of vulnerabilities they found in the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's CharlieTicket and CharlieCard payment cards at last week's Defcon conference. That was, until a gag order was put in place to keep them quiet. Today, a federal judge in Boston let the temporary restraining order stand. And so this Saga of Stupidity continues.
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Detecting Counterfeit Cisco Equipment
Why is Cisco equipment counterfeited? Because, according to an FBI presentation, Cisco has market share.
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A Better Way Than SOA?
Here in the summer of $4-a-gallon gas, it's serious business to liken something to a honkin' SUV. Yet that's how we portray service-oriented architectures in the illustration on the cover of InformationWeek magazine this week. We're raising the question about development methods that people are asking about SUVs: Do I need, and can I afford, all that horsepower?
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Sources: Apple To Fix 3G iPhone Reception Problems
According to the Interwebs, I am not the only person having serious reception issues with my 3G iPhone. Reports are coming in from all around the globe decrying the device's inability to find and hold onto a 3G signal. A new report suggests Apple will be offering a software fix as soon as next month.
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AT&T Blocks Employees From Accessing Tech Blog
This is classic. According to The Boy Genius himself, AT&T has blocked the majority of its employees from viewing the Boy Genius Report Web site. The BGR is a blog that's known to get the inside scoop on lots of mobile devices, especially BlackBerrys. The Boy Genius decided to respond to AT&T in kind. Updated!
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Copyright And Open Licensing: Not Mutually Exclusive
Yesterday the open source world got handed a major victory in the courts -- or, rather, given another brick for its growing wall of legal defense. The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the use of content under a properly worded open license is still protected by copyright law.
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Facebook Most Popular Social Net, But Why?
If you're like me, you're of two minds about Facebook. On the one hand, you enjoy dipping in to add "friends" you might not know all that well, upload pictures few will see, and post status updates ("getting ready for the weekend, yo") the world is waiting for with baited breath. At the same time, I can't help but wonder, where the heck is this timewaster in search of a business purpose headed?
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Google: Virus Attacks Skyrocketed In July
Google's Postini operation keeps a watchful eye on all the malevolent code and viruses that transit the Internet. Last month, it saw e-mail virus attacks surge, with 10 million nasty e-mails sent on July 24th alone.
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Digital Campaigning Won't Put Obama In The White House
Barack Obama is active on social networks. He swaps e-mail with a Hollywood starlet. He's planning to announce his VP choice over SMS. But this election isn't going to be decided on the Internet. Old media, especially television, will deliver the messages that win the election.
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Efficient Servers Equal Efficient Data Centers
In a commentary on Forbes.com earlier this week titled: "Servers: Why Thrifty Isn't Nifty," Kenneth Brill, executive director of the Uptime Institute, made an alarming statement:
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Movable Type 4.2 Delivers Speed, Security, And Social Networking
After whetting appetites with five release candidates, Movable Type 4.2 was released today with a pile of new features and enhancements that make the payoff well worth the anticipation.
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Apple Now Worth More Than Google
At the close of the stock market on Wednesday, Apple's value as a company surpassed Google's. Apple's market capitalization reached $158.84 billion; Google's settled at $157.23 billion.
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How Is Google's Android Shaping Up?
Ever since Google's Android was announced, we've been itching to see a handset running it. Can this first phone -- which will almost certainly be dubbed a GPhone by the press -- possibly live up to the hype?
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Tier Matching
Tiered storage can be difficult to manage and one of the challenges to its acceptance is the amount of effort it takes to move data between those tiers. We've written about several methods to move data between tiers in previous blogs, but in some cases the decision isn't that complicated.
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NBC Online Olympics Video Player Shuts Out Linux, Some Macs
To see fantastic online video of the Olympics, go to NBCOlympics.com. But you'd better be on a PC or newer Mac and have Silverlight 2 onboard, because NBC and Microsoft have shut out some Mac and Linux users.
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Wanna Be A Kernel Guy? Here's How
Contributing code to the Linux kernel probably seems about as easy as, say, reading the entire Buddhist canon in its original Pali. Now there's a how-to guide, written in plain English, about how exactly to go about being a "kernel guy."
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Big Challenges In Small IT Shops
You think you've got problems stretching your multimillion (or multibillion) dollar IT budget? How hard do you think it is to stretch a multi-thousand-dollar IT budget? That's what many IT leaders in smaller organizations are faced with. At InformationWeek, we write a lot about issues faced by CIOs at large companies. But IT managers in small- and medium-sized businesses face huge challenges, too.
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Obama's VP Announcement Generates No Spam, So Far
Sen. Barack Obama will likely become the first presidential candidate to announce his pick for vice president via text message. The Obama campaign announced over the weekend that supporters could sign up to receive e-mail or text messages "the moment Barack makes his decision."
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As Google Goes Down, Private Clouds Go Up
I've already made the point that there's no such thing as "private clouds." It's an oxymoron because cloud computing, by definition, happens when people plug into IT services offered from data centers that aren’t their own and that are shared by others. That said, cloud architectures will indeed be popular in corporate data centers, even if we disagree on what you call them.
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IT Security At The Games
Given the high profile of the Olympic Games, it's no surprise that organizers of IT at the Beijing Olympics have made information security one of their highest priorities.
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Securing Virtualization, Or Is That Virtualizing Security?
One of the big topics at last week's Black Hat and Defcon security confabs was virtualization security, but few speakers talked about what is really important: how we approach virtualizing security, and how virtualization itself changes the way we approach information security. All of that changed when I was trampled over by The Four Horsemen Of the Virtualization Security Apocalypse.
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Mitigating The Risks Of ECM Implementations
The technical decisions behind what enterprise content management (ECM) system to use are only a fraction of the equation in a full implementation. With so many good platforms to choose from, some of the most critical decisions -- and biggest risks -- within an organization have nothing to do with technology.
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Expectation Inflation
One way IT organizations are dealing with the weak economy is by postponing new hires. Does that mean IT projects are not being completed, expectations not being met? Or are current IT employees being asked to pick up the load? Let me guess.
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Patch Discipline, VMware, August 12th
Our Virtualization Lab VMware hosts were at 3.5 Update 2, while the ESX hosts in our Syracuse lab were still at a base 3.5 build. Guess who's in better shape this evening?
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VMware License Enforcement Bug Causes Chaos
This morning VMware infrastructure users worldwide discovered that VMware's update 2 for ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 decided that their ESX licenses had expired when they attempted to start up virtual machines or use Infrastructure's Vmotion or DRS to move a VM from one ESX host to another. To put it bluntly, VMware customers had their VMware product stop working because VMware doesn't trust them and the copy protection code VMware built into its product did way more harm than any good it would ever do.
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Sorry, The Internets Are Broken Today
This past month has not been great for cloud computing, and yesterday was no exception. First, I try to visit Microsoft's MSDN forums to follow up on a question, and found that they were "down for maintenance" most of the day. Then, GMail has a two-hour outage in the afternoon.
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Mobile Voice Searching With Yahoo
Using your cell phone for searching can be a godsend when it's done right, and the prospect of using voice to search really intrigues me. It's not that it's incredibly hard to bring up a mobile version of Google, but, if done correctly, voice searches can be the lazy man's best friend.
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Defective By Design, Or Just Dimwitted?
My friend has a PC running XP -- old, but not so old that he can't watch DVDs on it, something he does pretty regularly. He uses the FOSS application VLC to watch DVDs and typically has no trouble with it. That is, until he tried to play Shoot 'Em Up. No dice.
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VM Management For The Masses
Traditional enterprise management tools are targeted, at, well, enterprises. Empirum from Matrix42 is looking to shake that model up, targeting shops with 500 to 5,000 devices at a reasonable price point.
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Current Obsession With Kindle Sales Data Misses The Big Picture (For Amazon)
Discussions regarding the success (or lack thereof) of Amazon's Kindle on blog and news sites has reached a fever pitch over the last couple of days. Most of the discussion feeds off an estimate from CitiGroup analyst Mark Mahaney that Amazon would sell 378,000 units this year, reaching 4.4 million (a $1B business) by 2010. The predictions are revisions of Mahaney's estimates from earlier this year; revisions that TechCrunch's Mike Arrington may have provoked. Most of the discussion, bordering controversy, missed the big picture, if you ask me.
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Why Intel's Nehalem Is Important
Everybody's all atwitter about Intel's branding move, which will see its new Nehalem -- that's the code name --- desktop processors hit the market with a "Core i7" identifier. Can you keep this naming stuff straight? I certainly can't. Nope, what's important isn't the branding -- it's the technology inside Intel's upcoming, 45-nm processor family. Here's the deal.
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Retailers Opt To Roll Their Own Power
Cutting back on electricity use can trim a company's power bills only to a point. To really make a dent, businesses are beginning to generate their own juice to supplement what they buy off the grid.
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DNS Forgeries Enable Attacks On Secure Web Sites
There seems to be a lot of confusion about the relationship between DNS and SSL. Even a slip of the virtual pen, a mistake I recently made, only adds to the problem. The recent DNS forgery issue that Kaminsky talked about in his Black Hat session doesn't break SSL in any way. However, DNS forgeries enable attacks which subvert poorly written applications that use SSL to encrypt data between a client and a server.
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Salon's New Model: Bloggers Paying Each Other
The left-leaning online magazine Salon.com has had a lot of interesting ideas over the years, but its latest -- a plan to create a blogging community called Open Salon that allows readers to pay their favorite posters by "tipping" them -- has the potential to become a huge hit or fall completely flat.
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Asigra Sues Robobak - Can't We All Get Along
Apparently there's some bad blood between Toronto-based Asigra and Robobak, based in Atlanta, as Asigra has filed suit against Robobak claiming that Robobak maliciously made false statements about Asigra and its products. While I'll stipulate that the releases did tweak Asigra's nose, I'm disappointed to see our Canadian cousins adopting the lawsuit.
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Spock Co-Founder Finds Vertical Search Engines 'Fascinating'
"Nowhere am I so desperately needed as among a shipload of illogical humans." --Spock in "I, Mudd." The same can be said of the search engine market these days, which is why Jay Bhatti, co-founder of Spock, loves his company's business model.
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Oops, Gmail And Google Apps Did It Again (Malfunctioned)
Reinforcing the notion that August 2008 may be the month that the cloud went down, GMail (which had problems just last week) is apparently having problems again. Upon my attempt to send an email, the Gmail part of Google Apps responded with "Oops.... the system encountered a problem (#796)." Then, in the below screenshot, you can see the error message that I got when I attempted to access my Gmail through the Gmail link in Google Apps' navigation bar.
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Google Conflagration View
A Google Maps Street View driver has captured a house on fire while snapping photos on Eagle Point Drive in Sherwood, Ark.
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Tiered Storage Redefined
In the never-ending world of tiered storage, it really breaks down into two types of storage; transactional (active) and passive storage. For obvious reasons these two worlds overlap, but it is surprising how many levels of granularity there are within these tiers. Gone are the days of three tiers. There are more tiers of storage than ever, so it's helpful to see where we are.
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OK, I Take It Back. Maybe It's The Month The Cloud Went Down
OK, my apologies. Last week, between parts of Google's Gmail and Google Apps services going down and Citrix's GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar experiencing failures as well, I wondered whether it was the week that the cloud went down. Apparently, the cloud is still sputtering this week, this time with the lights going out at LinkedIn.
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Obama To Announce VP Through Text
With the presidential election less than three months away, the missing piece of the puzzle is who will be the vice presidential nominees. Barack Obama recently said he'll be announcing his nominee in a way that might make some say OMG!
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Defcon/Black Hat: Social Network Security = Fail!
Social networks such as LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, and microblogging sites such as Twitter are all fertile grounds for both social engineering and technical attacks. It can get even nastier when you combine the two. Too bad we haven't learned anything about secure coding practices and proper authentication in the past 20 years or so.
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A Semi-Painless OpenOffice.org 3 Beta Test
Beta-testing is an inherently messy business, made all the messier if you have to install a beta on a production system. With a new beta of OpenOffice.org 3 in the wild, I wanted to dive in and try it, and found a nearly perfect way to do that without much effort.
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Why Is There No VSS For Linux?
Introduced with Windows Server 2003, the volume shadow copy service (VSS) has vastly improved the lives of those of us whose lot in life includes backing up Windows machines. By providing a standard mechanism for creating and managing snapshots, VSS lets backup applications get data-consistent backups of complex data stores like Active Directory and Exchange or Oracle databases. Why isn't there an equivalent for Linux?
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Beijing Goes Broadband
Perhaps more than any other Olympics, the Beijing Games are a broadband extravaganza, with scads of multimedia applications supporting different aspects of the events in China. This Olympics is using HDTV for live broadcasting for the first time in Olympics history, according to China Netcom, the official fixed-telecom service partner. And the Games are featuring high-bandwidth technology such as telepresence.
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Defcon 16 Kicks Off In Controversy
Would you expect the 16th annual hackfest to begin any other way? Whether it's the arrest of security researchers, or the outted undercover TV producer of years gone by, Black Hat's sister security and hacking conference, Defcon, always causes a stir. This year, it was the press conference that wasn't to be.
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Microsoft Ads I'd Like To See
Lately, Microsoft has been trying to bolster Vista sales by pulling tricks such as presenting Vista as a mythical new OS. There's a big difference between an abstract feature demonstrated by an expert and that same feature used in real life at home or work. Experienced users won't be suckered by that approach, which is why I'd like to see Microsoft make an entirely different pitch.
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To My Son On The Occasion Of His 10th Birthday
Sitting in my cramped, the flight-attendants-are-only-rude and there's no free food besides, American Airlines flight back from LA on Friday, it struck me that turning 10 nowadays -- and Happy Birthday, son; we'll have cake tomorrow -- doesn't involve the same kind of technological coming of age I experienced nearly 20 (OK, 40) years ago. Nope; you young'un's today have gained MySpace, but have lost something intangible in the process. Like, maybe, the thrill of living amid fascinating times, in a world where the future possibilities seemed endless.
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CLI Management From An iPhone
Not that you’d want to, but if you needed to... basic SSH clients are out for iPhone 2.0
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AppChecker: No More Linux Cross-Platform Blues?
Writing a Linux app that works on multiple breeds of Linux typically hasn't been a snap. It's about time something was done, and now there's a tool to address that issue: the Linux Foundation's AppChecker.
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Intel's Awful Code Names
Apple's relationship with Intel has done wonderful things for both companies. When Apple's engineers were managing the complicated transition from PowerPC chips to Intel silicon, Intel engineers were there to help. No doubt computer buyers are better off for this intermingling of talent.
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Reducing Data Center Energy Consumption
For many years, energy efficiency has had a low priority in many IT shops, Jack Pouchet, director of energy initiatives at Emerson Network Power, told a crowded LinuxWorld Expo session titled "A Road Map for Reducing Energy Consumption in the Data Center." The top priority in most IT shops is delivering on service-level agreements, following by issues like performance (providing adequate compute capacity), reliability (redundancy at all steps), and security.
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Getting Started With: WordPress
WordPress has emerged as one of the most popular blogging and content management platforms available, and for good reason: it's simple to set up, yet powerful and flexible to use. The fact that it's free and open source doesn't hurt a bit, either.
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Americans Divided On In-Flight Calls
There's a new study by the U.S. Department of Transportation that finds America is divided on whether to allow cell phone calls during flights. Not surprisingly, there is a vast difference in opinion depending on the age of the person you're asking.
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SMB Archiving
Data retention and archiving aren't just for large enterprises. Small to medium-sized businesses need to be concerned about e-mail retention, data retention, and data archiving. I know the first response is, "We are not a public company, we don't have to worry about that." You might be right, but the need to retain and store e-mails and other forms of data goes well beyond being a public company. While I won't go into all the reasons why, here are some simple ones:
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Did You Really Not Know DNS Problems Are Bad?
Up until Matasano mistakenly let the cat out of the bag about the DNS forgery attack that Dan Kaminsky found, lots of experts were downplaying the problem as old and known. Once the details were released, those same folks agreed, that yes, the problem Kaminsky found was that bad. Since Kaminsky gave his presentation about the DNS vulnerability (along with two blog posts explaining Why So Serious and a Summary), a lot of noise is being made about the impacts.
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CIO Compensation Continues To Rise
That's as part of the continuing increase in management compensation, according to recruiting and placement firm ExecuNet. Market forces like globalization and the retiring baby-boomer bulge are keeping executive talent in demand, which is a good thing for job offers and pay hikes. But is the CIO the only IT job category benefiting?
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Top 10 Technology Startups
InformationWeek recently invited our readers to vote for their favorite technology startups, and the results are in. The leaders represent a cross section of technologies that are interesting to IT pros, much of it software and appliances that run in data centers, including four commercial open source products. Next, the startups face a bigger test--a handful have been invited to make their business pitch in front of our panel of CIO judges.
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iPhone Apps Store Round Up: I Am Rich Gets The Boot, So Does PhoneSaber
Apple decided that an application that costs $1,000 and does nothing is not good. It yanked the application, but not before eight dimwits paid for it! Also gone, however, is my favorite, useless application from the Apps Store: The PhoneSaber.
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Guess Which Phone Was The Best Selling Phone In July...
I am sure you already know which phone was the best-selling model in the month of July. What's more interesting is to see where the other handset makers enter into the mix. Samsung, Motorola, and Research In Motion are notably absent from the top 10.
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The Week The Cloud Went Down? First GMail, Then Citrix's GoToMeeting
The upside of being the 800-pound gorilla of cloud computing (Google) is that every time cloud computing gets good press, you get mentioned and you get a tad more traction and credit for being one of the "cloud computers." The downside is that when part of your cloud computer goes down like a part of Gmail and Google Apps did on Wednesday of this week (Aug. 6), everyone is quick to pile on. But Google wasn't the only cloud provider with problems this week.
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Google Takes Your Mobile Phone To The Olympics
Just in time for today's opening ceremonies, Google has unfurled a new mobile search tool to help track down Olympics results quickly from your mobile phone. It also set up a mobile Web site specifically so followers of the games can peruse results and events at leisure. Let the Games begin!
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Staging The Green Olympics
Many businesses and government agencies around the world are trying to do their part to contribute to environmental sustainability. So it should come as no surprise that the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) has dubbed the 2008 Summer Games, which open today, the "Green Olympics."
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Black Hat: French Reporters Ejected From The Conference, Accused Of Hacking Fellow Journalists
After being accused of sniffing the network traffic in the pressroom at the Black Hat security conference, three French reporters were given their walking papers by conference organizers. If you can't feel safe accessing the Internet at a hacker's conference, where can you feel safe?
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Internet Provides Laugh Track For Presidential Campaign Silliness
This summer's presidential campaign is shaping up to be remarkably frivolous, and the Internet is providing the laugh track. While America deals with two wars and the possibility of a third, soaring gas prices, and a wobbly economy, the candidates and their supporters argue about flummery: Tire gauges, Paris Hilton, junk food, and biblical prophecy.
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The Open Source Licensing Implosion
I read Bob Sutor's words about an impending implosion in both open source licenses and standards-setting bodies, and found myself nodding: It's not just that there are "too many open source licenses," but that the consequences for blithely creating new ones are finally becoming concrete.
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Black Hat: The Microsoft Exploitability Index: More Vulnerability Madness
On Tuesday, Microsoft introduced the "The Microsoft Exploitability Index." The software maker hopes this index will help companies more effectively prioritize the patches they need to deploy. I don't believe it will. And it may even make the vulnerability madness that exists today even more maddening.
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Consistently Delivering High-Value Content
We're all painfully aware that making high-quality, relevant content easy to find on your site can be a challenge. Ultimately, consistently delivering high-value content takes a mix of high- and low-tech approaches.
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Cloudtroversy: Dell's Application For 'Cloud Computing' Looks Sunk
"Missed it by that much." That's probably what the lawyers at Dell are saying now that the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office appears to be revisiting Dell's application for a trademark on the term "Cloud Computing." Had it been one of the poster children for cloud computing like salesforce.com, Google, RightNow, NetSuite, or eBay, the application might not have been so dubious. But a gear maker like Dell? According to Computerworld...
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Black Hat Disputes Charles Edge Talk Even Submitted
Last week we covered two incidents surrounding Apple's (non) participation at this year's Black Hat conference. Apparently, the first was a potential talk pulled for consideration because Apple just doesn't like its engineers explaining anything about how they handle software security. The other, Black Hat contends, was never even submitted.
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Gmail, Google Apps Go Dark For Users
Turns out Nick Saber wasn't alone this week in losing access to his Google accounts. According to reports, an unknown number of users had trouble accessing Gmail and Google Apps. Many were prevented from getting into their accounts for up to 15 hours.
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RIM Kicks 'KickStart' Name To The Curb
You know that clamshell BlackBerry that everyone on the Internet is fawning over, the KickStart? Well, turns out RIM didn't care for the name too much, and has re-christened the device as the Pearl 8220.
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PacketTrap Challenges CA And IBM
PacketTrap, a network management startup with about 40,000 users, is coming out with a new platform that CEO Steve Goodman says will compete with CA Unicenter and IBM Tivoli. You read that right: little PacketTrap versus the two behemoths of systems and network management. Goodman may be crazy, but he's not stupid.
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3 Ways To Turn A Prius Into A Plug-In
Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are the darlings of auto shows, forward-thinking consumers, bloggers, and the gang at Google. Unfortunately, you can't stroll into Crazy Larry's PHEV Hut and drive one off the lot today. The quickest way to plug in is to order a Prius conversion kit from an after-market supplier.
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Apple MobileMe Memo Shows Jobs Grown Soft
Props to Ars Technica for posting Steve Jobs's MobileMe mea culpa. (Hey, blogging = pointing + attitude + the occasional brilliant original post.) So here's my take: However bad Apple's MobileMe mess was -- and it was a disaster -- Apple at its worst is still far better than most companies at their best.
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Hacker Claims Apple Can Spy On iPhone Users, Disable Apps Remotely
Apple may have opened up the iPhone to third-party applications, but it is keeping a very close eye on those apps. According to hacker Jonathan Zdziarski, the iPhone can "phone home" to tell Apple what apps are installed, and if Apple doesn't like what it sees on your iPhone, it can kill the offending application. Updated!
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Microsoft Starts Taking (Expensive) Surface Orders
Own a business? Have $12,500 handy? Get your own Microsoft Surface table-top computer now. On Wednesday, Microsoft posted an order form online for its multitouch computer.
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Google Gets Raked Over The Coals At Black Hat
Robert "RSnake" Hansen, CEO of SecTheory, and Tom Stracener, senior security analyst at Cenzic, had some harsh words for Google at their Black Hat presentation, "Xploiting Google Gadgets."
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Black Hat: DNS Researcher Flaw Much Bigger Than Thought
While it may be hard to fathom, considering the extraordinary amount of coverage and speculation that swirled about Dan Kaminsky's DNS vulnerability announcement, Kaminsky today said that the flaw is much more serious than previously speculated.
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For A Smaller Microsoft Office, A Machete Won't Do
This week's announcement that Microsoft is creating a basic software line may be more than a response to open-source software; perhaps it's just the cover story. Microsoft was still fighting the feature battle when the anti-bloat war broke out, and that's left them with products that aren't a good fit for economical hardware.
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Cloud Computing And The Data Center Of The Future
"Cloud computing is the evolution and convergence of many seemingly independent computing trends," Sam Charrington, VP of product management and marketing at Appistry, told a standing-room only LinuxWorld Expo session today. A laundry list of these trends includes commoditization, Internet delivery, virtualization, grid computing, SOA, data center automation, SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, DaaS, utility computing, distributed computing, Web 2.0, IT outsourcing, and storage.
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Virtualization, SOA, And Cloud Computing At 2008 LinuxWorld Expo
Virtualization was the first topic of the morning on Tuesday at the Executive Summit, an exclusive one-day conference for senior IT professionals at the 2008 LinuxWorld Conference in San Francisco.
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Hands-Free Laws A Goldmine For Bluetooth Makers
Last month, California and Washington enacted hands-free laws, requiring drivers to use devices such as Bluetooth headsets when driving. The result? Not so surprising. Sales of Bluetooth accessories skyrocketed, much to the glee of companies such as Parrot and Jawbone.
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Blurring The Lines Between Blogging And Content Management
I've read a few interesting pieces lately discussing how platforms traditionally associated with blogging are morphing into content management systems. It's a natural extension, really, with many organizations that run simple sites wanting to provide both blog-like newsfeeds as well as static content pages.
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ChaCha Guides Have Their Say, Loudly
In case you haven't read the ton of comments on the story I wrote yesterday on the mobile search service ChaCha, I am giving them some added prominence here.
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What Is Short Stroking And Why Should You Care?
As the major storage vendors start rolling out the Solid State Disk solutions, you're going to hear a term that you may not have heard for a while, if ever; short stroking. Short stroking a drive is a method to format a drive so that only the outer sectors of the disk platter are used to store data. This practice is done in I/O-intensive environments to increase performance.
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How Long Do CIOs Last?
It’s not for nothing CIO has been said to stand for "career is over" -- the tenure at the top of the tech pecking order has been notoriously short. However, according to our Tomorrow’s CIO analytics report, more than half of tech chiefs (53%) say they've been in their jobs five years or more. Does this signal a new age of job security for CIOs?
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Does Brain Drain Hurt More In Health Care IT?
In the years to come, many IT shops will be dealing with the brain drain of retiring baby boomers who know all the minute inner workings of technology and the business. But are the generational talent challenges faced by health care CIOs any different? A new report from CSC says yes.
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BlackBerry Bold Has Launched
Research In Motion's highly anticipated BlackBerry Bold has officially gone on sale. Where can you get the company's new flagship phone? It's currently only available in Chile.
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Google Temporarily Wrecks Man's Life (Sort Of)
You should pity poor Nick Saber. The president of CrossTech Media returned to his desk on Monday after taking lunch to find himself completely locked out of all of his Google services -- even though he pays Google to use Google Apps. It brought his business to a halt.
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The CCIE Is No Longer The Holy Grail
In the 2008 IT Skills and Salary report released by TechRepublic and Global Knowledge, the Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert now ranks 5th on the list of most valuable certifications to hold. So if you have the experience, and money is your motivator, consider PMI's Project Management Professional certification (PMP).
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Social Factors -- Not Technology -- Limit Videoconferencing
Despite dramatic improvements in quality and affordability and spiraling cost of business travel, most companies still don't use videoconferencing. That's because even the most significant technological improvements can't address the powerful emotional and psychological factors that make many people uncomfortable with videoconferencing.
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iPhone Round Up: 2.0.1 Firmware Problems And The $1000 App
Seems Apple's "bug fixes" have created some new bugs. Users who've updated to iPhone firmware 2.0.1 are reporting various new troubles. Then there's the story of the application for the iPhone that costs $1,000 and does absolutely nothing.
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Ensuring Uptime At The Games
Business continuity is a hot topic in the corporate world, and it's certainly on the minds of those running IT at the Olympics. If systems go down or network outages occur, failure to have suitable contingencies could spell big trouble for Games organizers.
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GM And Tesla Motors, An Electric Combo?
GM's staggering $15 billion loss in the second quarter is the kind of event that may send the automaker into the arms of Ford to make "sweet, sweet engine collaboration love."
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Who's Paying For Open Source And Why
So who's buying licenses for open source applications? Enterprises, from the look of it -- which would explain why most of the for-pay editions of FOSS applications are branded as the "enterprise" edition. But there's more.
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Xyleme Releases Version 3.2 Of Its Learning Content Management System
Xyleme last week announced the release of Xyleme LCMS 3.2, its flagship learning content management system. This update includes more than a dozen new features and is intended to improve ease-of-use for both content creators and end users.
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Black Hat 2008, First Day Sessions
I've been in Las Vegas for a couple of days now, meeting with some old friends in the information security community, and making a few new ones. This year, the annual Black Hat confab will be serving interesting talks on the security implications of virtualization, social networks, and Web 2.0. Should make a good conference that will highlight some of the big security concerns going forward.
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SunGard Offers Virtual DR Serivice
Ever since its 2001 acquisition of Comdisco Availability Services SunGard has been the dominant player in the disaster recovery business offering a wide array of services, all based on physical hardware. Now, through partnerships wit VMWare and Double-Take, they're entering the twenty first century with a disaster recovery solution using virtual servers at the DR site to receive host based replication data.
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Not Just Free -- Really, Really Free
How free does Linux need to be? As free as possible, or so goes the philosophy behind a number of Linux distributions that strip out everything that isn't wholly untethered by IP restrictions.
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Delta Airlines To Offer Wi-Fi On All Flights
The pie-in-the-sky dream of having Internet access while on a plane just moved one step closer to reality. Delta Air Lines announced that by mid-2009, it will offer Wi-Fi-based Internet access on all of its domestic U.S. flights. I bet flight attendants never imagined they'd need IT training.
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Rich Internet Apps: On The Road To Must-Have
The relentless pressure of the Web goes like this: One year something's a cutting-edge feature on Google or Amazon, the next people expect it on their 401(k) site, and soon employees wonder why it isn't on the company intranet. IT leaders should know that the use of rich Internet applications are well into that cycle now, with 44% of companies using them, our most recent research finds.
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Amazon Invests In Cloud Specialist Elastra
Elastra, a fast-moving startup I've written about twice in recent weeks, has just closed $12 million in Series B funding from investors including Amazon.com. Elastra's Cloud Server can be used to develop and manage applications in Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud. The company is developing a version of its software for VMware-based "private clouds" in corporate data centers.
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Google's DoubleClick To Tackle Microsoft's Silverlight And The Olympics
Microsoft's Silverlight player is about to get a boost in advertising power from Google. Using its DoubleClick ad servers, Google can now push advertising into Silverlight videos, and NBC Universal will be using it to power its online 2008 Olympics coverage.
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Adobe: Fake Flash Player Downloads Could Have Malicious Payload
A heads up to all IT people (and users) regarding the downloading of Adobe's Flash Player (or, what users think might be Adobe's Flash Player). Adobe has issued a warning regarding comments being posted to social networking sites that contain hyperlinks to imposter updates for the company's popular Flash Player plug-in.
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iPhone App Store Proves The Smartphone Is The Computer
Paging Scott McNealy: Here's an update to your famous aphorism. It's not about the network anymore. (Well, OK, it is, but don't let facts get in the way of a good blog post.) The new, Web 2.0 truth is this: The smartphone is the computer. Apple put its foot in the door with its iPhone App Store, and now Verizon and all the cell phone operating system makers are joining in the mad rush to make a converged device (formerly called a smartphone) which will soon edge out the laptop.
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Apple Releases iPhone Firmware 2.0.1 To 'Fix Bugs'
Early in the evening on Aug. 4, Apple released a firmware update for the iPhone. The new version -- 2.0.1 -- was issued to fix bugs. Does it fix anything, and did it add any new functionality?
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Squarespace Ups The Ante For Hosted Web Publishing Platforms
Competition in the hosted blog arena has ratcheted higher in the last couple of weeks, with the launch of the latest version of Squarespace's Web publishing platform. Squarespace Version 5 has generated excitement and good word of mouth, and ups the ante with its mix of simple administration and robust functionality.
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Google Tests Human-Powered Translation
Google is testing a new human-powered translation service under the name Google Translation Center.
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Enterprise Solid State Disk - Where Are We?
It seems like everyone is jumping into SSD (Solid State Disk) today. EMC, Sun, Hitachi, HP, and others have all made announcements about adopting SSD. As I discussed in an earlier entry, the numbers certainly make good conversation pieces, but where are we in terms of market adoption?
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Mark Cuban: Internet Video Not Good Enough
Mark Cuban made his fortunes with Internet radio. He's making his noise about Internet video, taking swipes in his blog at YouTube, the Internet as a delivery medium, NBC, and anyone doing HD on the Internet.
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Google Admits To Blogger Snafu, Restores Blogs Marked As Spam
Late last week, a system bug marked numerous blogs -- even legitimate ones -- as spam. Blogger's servers then sent the publishers of those blogs nasty-grams telling them to stop spamming and suspended the activity on those blogs. Google quickly issued a mea culpa and worked over the weekend to get it fixed.
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Why Google And Microsoft Are Building Data Centers In Iowa
In deciding to locate new data centers in Iowa, Google and Microsoft are benefiting from incentives offered for years to manufacturing companies like John Deere, which has 10 manufacturing plants in the state. It turns out that, in addition to plentiful land and affordable electricity, the Hawkeye state gives hefty tax breaks.
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Hacking Nukes
It's rare that I read something in a press release that I agree with, let alone find frightening, but this release from Lumeta scared the heebe geebees out of me.
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When Is A Data Center Success Story Not A Success Story?
When a state auditor's report blasts the project, and politicians start playing football. Oregon's data center consolidation project is a cautionary tale about either a lack of careful project management or carefully managing expectations -- probably both.
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Want Caller ID With Super Powers? Try Privus Mobile
If you screen your calls -- and never answer an unknown number -- then this product is for you. Privus Mobile gives certain smartphones X-ray vision when it comes to caller ID and tells you exactly who's calling, even if the number isn't stored in your phone's contact list.
Continue reading "Want Caller ID With Super Powers? Try Privus Mobile..."
When Is A Data Center Success Story Not A Success Story?
When a state auditor's report blasts the project, and politicians start playing football. Oregon's data center consolidation project is a cautionary tale about either a lack of careful project management or carefully managing expectations -- probably both.
Continue reading "When Is A Data Center Success Story Not A Success Story?..."
Consolidation Among UC Vendors
Last week's deal for Siemens Enterprise (SEN) solved the vendor's immediate problem of reassuring its customer base that the brand and products would go on, be supported, and form the basis of future strategic activities. That was really Job 1 for SEN last week; now we have to see where it invests and what approach it takes to the North American market. Meanwhile, there remains the question of the environment among UC/enterprise communications vendors.
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An iPhone Nano Before Christmas?
Looks like the hot rumor going around the Web is that Steve Jobs and company are planning a smaller, cheaper version of the iPhone before the holiday season. Of course, this isn't the first time this idea has come up, but a report from the Daily Mail said this time it's real.
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Video: Kaspersky, Number 3 With A Bullet, Launches Internet Security 2009
You could call Kaspersky Lab the biggest PC security vendor you're not quite sure you've heard of. I took my video camera along for a sit-down with Kaspersky; the folks there told me about the new flagship products launching Monday -- Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 and Anti-Virus 2009 –- as well as how they rose to No. 3 in the market, after Symantec and Trend Micro.
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Microsoft's Word To Investors About Open Source
Microsoft's annual 10-K filing with the SEC has a few lines in it about open source as a competitor that has raised more than a few eyebrows. I'm scarcely surprised, especially since it highlights Microsoft's schizoid behavior over open source.
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3G iPhone Burns User
Talk about a hot product. One 3G iPhone user fell asleep with his 3G iPhone in his pocket. He awoke with his leg in extreme pain. It appears that the phone became so hot in his pocket that it burned his leg. Ouch.
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IT Arrives At The Beijing Airport
The technology supporting the Beijing Olympics goes beyond the actual sports venues and support areas. The Beijing Capital International Airport (BCIA), at which hundreds of thousands of athletes, officials, spectators, and media are arriving or will arrive in the coming days, has received an IT makeover as part of the preparation for the big event.
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Hyperic Adds Xen Support
After two years of collaboration with the XenSource/Citrix team, the latest version of Hyperic's HQ management suite enters Xen space.
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Homeland Security: All Your Laptops Are Belong To Us
The gropers at the Department of Homeland Security, not content with patting you down and rummaging through your underwear, now say that they can confiscate electronics brought into the United States for any reason, anytime, and share the devices and their contents with anybody.
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SiteMeter Fiasco Shows Developer Disregard For Internet Explorer
Friday night was full of late-night fireworks as Web sites and blogs using SiteMeter delivered an "Operation aborted" dialog box to every Internet Explorer user on every page. The problem was finally fixed on Saturday morning, but by then there were a whole lot of angry (former?) SiteMeter users.
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FileVault Is Flawed; And Apple’s Not Talk’n
A security researcher hoping to discuss an undisclosed Apple flaw at next week's annual Black Hat conference in Las Vegas pulls his talk. Then, Apple suddenly jumps ship on a planned security panel to be conducted by its engineers. These incidents expose Apple's being a laggard in its approach to IT security.
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Sepaton Puts Money Where Its Deduping Mouth Is
When I describe data deduplication to users for the first time, the first two questions they ask always are, "Is this for real?," sometimes rephrased as "You're kidding me, right?," followed quickly with "What kind of deduplication ratios can I expect?"
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AT&T Extends iPhone Exclusivity?
If you were waiting for the iPhone to be available on a carrier besides AT&T -- officially, that is -- be prepared to wait a bit longer. According to a report in USA Today, Apple's exclusive agreement has been extended a year.
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Disk-Based Archive - Ready For Prime Time
The drumbeat is being heard. A recent survey commissioned by Permabit Technology generated some interesting results. While almost every answer creates interesting blog material, the stats that jumped out at me were that almost 25% of those surveyed are managing more than 100 TB of primary storage and that 43% of those surveyed were paying $25 to $40-plus per gigabyte for that primary storage. These stats make it quite clear -- you can't afford not to archive data.
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Interwoven's Third Quarter Gets Off To A Good Start
July was a good month for Interwoven as it posted strong Q2 profits, acquired an e-discovery vendor, was selected as the content management system for the largest municipally owned energy company in the country, and received accolades from Gartner.
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Omnisio (Google's Latest Buy) Could Go Where No Twitterer Has Gone
This week's big news that the YouTube folks at Google acquired Omnisio is a pleasant reminder that there's plenty of room for innovation in the Net video space. InformationWeek's parent company TechWeb runs a lot of events (Web 2.0, Interop, Enterprise 2.0, etc.) and when we first heard of the Omnisio buy, we gave it a look-see given two very event-relevant features: First, the ability to integrate slide shows with video. Second, the way a community (e.g., event attendees watching a presentation) can drop comments into talk-bubbles at any time and virtually anywhere in the user interface. After my colleague Alex Dunne started an internal Omnisio thread, I responded with this mini-review:
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Who Has The Better Gig: CIO Or IT Architect?
John Soat has blogged a few times here about whether the next CIO should come from inside or outside the company . But what if no insider wants the job? Seriously. It seems like the hottest role these days is IT architect -- nice paycheck, the thrill of strategy-level tech work, and not nearly so many arrows in the back.
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FCC Spanks Comcast With A Wet Newspaper
Kevin Martin added another brick to his legacy today, with the FCC's ruling against Comcast in the net neutrality dispute. And I use "brick" in the basketball sense, as in a comically misguided shot on goal.
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Linux Standards Base 4: Herding Cats?
Is any attempt to standardize Linux akin to herding cats, especially given the proliferation of distributions and packages? Jim Zemlin doesn't think so, and has been trying to do something about it via the Linux Standards Base.
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Motorola (Finally!) Admits It Is Working On Touch Screen Phone
In a recent interview, Motorola CEO Greg Brown said that the company will release a slew of new handsets in the second half of the year, including a touch-based device to compete with the iPhone. About time, or too little too late?
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GM's $15.5 Billion Loss Pushes Volt, Electric Vehicles To Front Burner
The financial news from GM Friday is much worse than expected. The $15 billion second-quarter loss could send the automaker into a crippling skid -- unless GM rededicates itself to getting its plug-in hybrid cars to market -- fast.
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ChaCha Offers Alternative Version Of Mobile Search, Complete With Personal Mobile Assistant
Remember that old college helpline you used to use to settle bets? You'd call, and they'd look up the answer to some inane question while you waited. ChaCha is the 21st century version of that, but it adds a personal assistant to facilitate mobile purchases and other services that one-ups Google.
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The Company Behind The Technology
So what makes Atos Origin, the Paris-based IT services company that's serving as the "Worldwide IT Partner of the Olympic Games," worthy of such a role? For one thing, Atos Origin has done this sort of thing before.
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Apple Puts The Kibosh On Tethering Application For The iPhone
Yesterday, a $10 application from Nullriver appeared in the iPhone Apps Store that allowed you to use the iPhone to access the Internet via 3G and share that connection through its Wi-Fi radio. It didn't last long, however, before the powers that be at Apple squashed the application. Update! Apple un-kiboshed the app!
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Appliance Deploys OS To Remote PCs. Vista, Anyone?
KACE, a startup that makes systems management appliances, has come out with a virtual appliance for pushing operating systems to remote offices. But KACE doesn't expect the product to be used much for Windows Vista rollouts. Its data shows Vista demand waning.
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Advice To Hasbro On The Scrabulous Kerfuffle
Let's do a little thought experiment for the benefit of Hasbro, the company which owns Scrabble and is trying unsuccessfully to kill Scrabulous. Let's argue the proposition that corporations should ignore most copyright violators, attempt to negotiate a settlement with the most outrageous few, and never, ever, sic the lawyers on pirates. Don't fight piracy. Try to make it work for you instead.
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How To Stop Firefox From Blocking Google Reader Popups
I just found a solution to a problem that was driving me crazy for months, and I'm passing it along now for my fellow sufferers. Firefox was blocking popups in Google Reader, even though I explicitly told Reader to allow popups for the entire domain Google.com. Turns out this isn't a bug (as the programmer joke goes), it's a feature. Read on for the fix.
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