CIO Today

Is Waze Worth a Billion Dollar Bidding War?

Fri, 24 May 2013 13:47:26 -0500

There's a bidding war going on over a crowd-sourced map application provider. Or so the rumor mill says. Credible sources are pointing to a competition between Google and Facebook for Waze.

Businessweek is driving part of the clamor with its headline, "Google Said to Consider Buying Waze Presaging Bidding War." Three Businessweek reporters teamed on the story, which suggests the company could fetch more than $1 billion.

A bit about Waze: It's a fast-growing community-based traffic and navigation app. Drivers use it to share real-time traffic and road info with the goal of saving gas, money and time during daily commutes.

Keeping It Away from Apple

Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, told us Waze would become an asset to any of the major mapping competitors.

"Ironically, Google probably needs it least of all the would-be acquirers," Sterling said. "However, it's probably thinking of bidding to keep Waze away from Facebook or Apple."

Apple needs mapping technology and has been the subject of rumors over mapping technology acquisitions. Apple took heat for a less-than-Apple-like experience with its initial Maps product and even saw some executive shakeup when then-iOS chief Scott Forstall reportedly refused to sign an official apology letter to customers for the poor navigation and quality.

What About Waze?

Waze could not immediately be reached for comment, nor could Google or Facebook. But Waze is making waves on its own. The company earlier this week won a 2013 Webby Award for Best Connected Product.

Here's how it works: After typing in a destination address, users just drive with the app open on their phone to passively contribute traffic and other road data, but they can also take a more active role by sharing road reports on accidents, police traps, or any other hazards along the way, helping to give other users in the area a...

Iranian Hackers Reported Targeting U.S. Energy Systems

Fri, 24 May 2013 10:47:52 -0500

For all the talk about China and the Syrian Electronic Army, it seems there's another threat to U.S. cyber interests: Iran. Iranian-based hackers have ramped up a cyber campaign against U.S. corporations, especially energy companies, according to news reports.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Iranian hackers were able to gain access to control-system software that could allow them to manipulate oil or gas pipelines. The paper quoted one former official who said the hackers got "far enough to worry people."

Gerry Cauley, chief executive of the North American Electric Reliability Corp., a non-profit agency that oversees and ensures the reliability of bulk power systems in the region, told the Reuters Cybersecurity Summit that computer viruses have been found in the power grid that could be used to deliver malicious software to damage plants.

Hard to Patch

Tom Cross, director of security research at Lancope, told us industrial control systems such as those used to control oil and gas pipelines are more interconnected with public networks like the Internet than most people realize.

"It is also difficult to fix security flaws with these systems because they aren't designed to be patched and restarted frequently. In the era of state-sponsored computer attack activity, it is not surprising to hear reports of these systems being targeted," he said.

"It is extremely important that operators of industrial control networks monitor those networks with systems that can identify anomalous activity that might be associated with an attack. Because of the relatively homogenous nature of network activity on many control systems networks, anomaly detection can be a powerful tool in an environment where other kinds of security approaches fall flat."

Running Out of Time

LogRhythm CTO Chris Petersen told us he is not surprised by the attacks. That's because cybersecurity experts have been warning of such threats for years. In fact,...

Paging R2-D2 to the Hospital ICU

Sat, 25 May 2013 09:33:13 -0500

Examining patients, clad in white and sporting a stethoscope, the doctor is in. As always, questions and banter mix. Except this doctor is, well, a robot.

In a suburb outside Sacramento, Mercy San Juan Medical Center is home to a new family of robots. Doctors can make remote visits to patients via PCs or iPads running the robots.

The latest hospital robots, dubbed RP-VITA, come from Roomba vacuum cleaner maker iRobot and InTouch Health. Like R2-D2 in Star Wars, they can roam about on their own, guided by sensors and software that maps locations to avoid collisions. Doctors can also navigate them around ICUs and other facilities.

RP-VITA stands more than 5 feet tall and has what looks like a large tablet computer for a head. Doctors can appear on the screen much like a video chat and use front-facing lenses to zero in on patients.

California hospitals are leading the way at putting them in play in what is shaping up to be a new era of hospital robotics in an increasingly connected digital world.

Doctors and patients are fans of the robots. What's not to like when a specialist can examine and talk with a patient by robot within minutes of arrival at the hospital in an emergency?

Robots are changing the medical industry and hospitals forever, in what many say is a technology overhaul that addresses shortages of staff and improvements in the level of service for patients, especially for hospitals farther from experts.

"This is changing the landscape of medicine and leveling the playing field of treatment" says Alan Shatzel, a neurologist and the medical director at Mercy Telehealth Network.

Swapping Old Tech for New

Doctors tethered to pagers -- yes, they still use them -- for 24-hour on-call shifts can now do that entirely on robots. What this means is that a doctor can...

Google Buys Company that Makes Wind-Power Drones

Thu, 23 May 2013 16:14:41 -0500

The company that started in 1995 with a small search engine called BackRub and is now one of the world's leading tech giants is branching out into a technology few people spend much time thinking about, though it could one day have huge implications: harvesting energy from the sky through floating drones packing wind turbines.

Google is in the process of acquiring the start-up Makani Power, based in Alameda, Calif.,which was founded in 2006 by Corwin Hardham, Don Montague and Saul Griffith. Initial funding came from Google as part of its Renewable Energy is Cheaper Than Coal program, which Google started in 2007 but gave up on in 2011, while continuing to advocate for greener power in other ways.

Accelerated Work

Makani announced the Google deal on its Web site Thursday, shortly after the story broke via Bloomberg News. The amount of the deal was not disclosed as of Thursday afternoon.

"This formalizes a long and productive relationship between our two companies and will provide Makani with the resources to accelerate our work to make wind energy cost-competitive with fossil fuels," the company told Web visitors. "The timing couldn't be better, as we completed the first ever autonomous all-modes flight with our Wing 7 prototype last week."

Makani hopes the power generated from its flying turbines will eventually travel down tethers and contribute to the nation's electric grid without any greenhouse gas emission byproducts.

The unmanned aircraft hover between 800 and 1,950 feet, where the wind is stronger and more consistent, according to Makani, and the company is developng a 600-kilowatt airborne wind turbine (AWT) which it says will produce power more cheaply than conventional wind or solar sources. The work has been supported by the federal government.

"Makani could not have reached this point without the support of the US Department of Energy's...

Kim Dotcom Claims Patent for Two-Factor Authentication

Thu, 23 May 2013 14:26:46 -0500

Two-factor authentication has become a popular way to heighten log-on security, used by many Internet companies and financial institutions. Now, controversial Megaupload Web site owner Kim Dotcom says he owns the patent for the process.

In a tweet on Thursday, Dotcom wrote that "Google, Facebook, Twitter, Citibank, etc., offer Two-Step-Authentication. Massive IP infringement by U.S. companies. My innovation. My patent."

About a half-hour after the "massive IP infringement" message, Dotcom tweeted: "Google, Facebook, Twitter, I ask you for help. We are all in the same DMCA boat. Use my patent for free. But please help funding my defense." None of the named companies have commented on his tweets. DMCA refers to the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which Megaupload has been accused of violating.

Eighteen Cars

Dotcom's legal issues stem from his arrest by U.S. federal agencies in January at his New Zealand mansion for illegally serving copyright-protected material through his Megaupload Web site. Eighteen luxury cars and what were reportedly millions of dollars in artwork and electronics were seized by authorities. When arrested, police said, he was inside one of six safe rooms in the mansion, holding a weapon that appeared to be a sawed-off shotgun.

He contends that the legal costs of fighting copyright infringement charges will be more than $50 million. A hearing is set for late summer on a request from U.S. authorities for his extradition. In early March, the New Zealand Court of Appeal ruled that the U.S. did not have to show all of its evidence against Dotcom in order to obtain his extradition, but could simply present a summary.

The patent Dotcom referred to, US6078908, was filed in 1998 and published in June 2000. Entitled "Method for authorizing in data transmission systems," it lists the inventor as Kim Schmitz, the original name of the German native, who...

Newest HP PCs Aim for Flexibility, Mobility

Thu, 23 May 2013 13:53:08 -0500

Hewlett-Packard is hoping its latest all-in-one PC innovations will make its competitors envious. The new HP Envy Rove20 is the company's first mobile all-in-one PC, complete with a built in battery and touch technology.

HP also announced new consumer notebooks, all-in-one PCs and printers that promise consumers more flexibility in how they access and share information. In two words, it's all about mobility and flexibility in a modern world of work.

"Customers are looking for mobility and flexibility in their computing devices to give families new ways to bring generations together," said Ron Coughlin, senior vice president and general manager of Consumer PCs and Consumer Solutions at HP. Coughlin went on to say that HP is evolving to meet customers' needs with its latest offerings.

Inspiring a New Market

The HP Envy Rove20 transforms from an upright to a horizontal machine that works for tabletop entertainment. Multi-touch technology allows multiple users to interact with games, including Electronic Arts' Monopoly, Fingertapps JigsWar Puzzle and Fingertapps Musical Instruments, at the same time.

Users can also view multimedia content on the 20-inch, 1,600x900 IPS LED panel. That translates to wide viewing angles. The device also boasts built-in Beats Audio and a fourth-generation Intel Core processor, Intel HD graphics and 10-point touch. The HP Envy Rove20 will be available in July, with pricing not yet announced.

"HP is going after or trying to inspire a new market for large, touch-enabled systems," Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, told us. "The target markets include family gaming and entertainment, and other group experiences such as business presentations that would profit from a bigger format. HP isn't the first vendor to try this -- Dell launched its XPS18 early this year."

Catering to Mobile Consumers

To that end, HP also announced the Pavilion 20 TouchSmart All-in-One PC and the HP Pavilion 23 TouchSmart...

Viva Movil! Buy a Phone from J.Lo

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:17:52 -0500

Latina pop sensation and entrepreneur Jennifer Lopez is trying to do something her ex-boyfriend P. Diddy couldn't -- launch a successful Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO). She is teaming with Verizon Wireless on a new 4G LTE network and wireless service dubbed Viva Movil by Jennifer Lopez.

Verizon and Lopez announced the new venture at the CTIA Wireless Conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday afternoon. Lopez built the brand in partnership with Brightstar Corp. and Moorehead Communications.

The retail stores aren't targeting Latin America. Stores will open in U.S areas with high Latino populations, though, like Miami, New York and Los Angeles, in the weeks ahead. J.Lo will begin with a strong lineup, including the iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S IV and BlackBerry devices. Retail stores -- and a Facebook app featuring the star -- will be bilingual.

"As modern Latinos we do things differently, including how we shop for mobile devices," Lopez said in a CTIA press conference announcing the partnership. "Latinos love social networks and we're super active online."

No Rock-Star Guarantees

Roger Entner, a wireless analyst at Recon Analytics, told us succeeding with an MVNO is a tough business proposition.

"Even being a rock star doesn't ensure certain success. But she has picked good business partners in Verizon and Brightstar and in Moorehead Communications -- and she put money behind it," Entner said, noting Lopez's equity stake in the project. "She won't be able to change the pricing structure."

That means whether consumers go to a Verizon store or a Viva Movil store, success comes down to service. Whether or not consumers will flock to J.Lo's stores simply because she's "Jenny from the 'hood," Entner said, remains to be seen.

Will J.Lo's Risk Pay Off?

Many companies have launched MVNOs. Most have failed. Some have succeeded. Entner points to Tracphone, the leading prepaid...

Samsung Sells 10 Million Galaxy S IVs -- Four Every Second

Thu, 23 May 2013 10:35:24 -0500

Samsung's new Galaxy S IV smartphone is off to a strong start. On Thursday, the South Korean manufacturer announced that global sales for the device have exceeded 10 million units in one month, making it the best selling Android device yet. The company noted that the S IV, which went on sale in late April, is now selling at a rate of four units per second.

By comparison, the Galaxy S III took 50 days after its 2012 launch to hit 10 million, which made it the fastest selling Android phone at the time. The S II needed five months and the Galaxy S seven months to achieve the same milestone. One catch: the sales figures announced Thursday are to retailers and wireless operators, not directly to consumers, meaning that it's not yet clear how many are left unsold in inventory.

Also by comparison, Apple's iPhone 5 sold more than 5 million units in its first weekend of sales, to consumers.

Color Versions

Samsung said it will be offering color versions of the S IV, which currently is only available in black and white. Blue and red versions will be available by this summer, purple and brown in the fall. The S IV is currently being sold in 100 countries, which the company will be increasing to 154.

Some analysts have suggested that the current pace of sales for the S IV is the right one for Samsung, since component shortages may affect supply if demand increases much more. The launch of HTC's One was recently hampered by supply issues caused by a lack of sufficient component availability.

IDC's Ramon Llamas said that the numbers "were not unexpected." He described 10 million as "a good milestone for them," for which the company should be congratulated, but noted that it's "more important to see how they...

Hewlett-Packard's Profits Fall But Outlook, Stock Rise

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:36:35 -0500

Hewlett-Packard is still scrambling to meet the growing demand for more versatile and less expensive mobile devices as a slump in its personal computer sales deepens, but the company's cost-cutting measures and focus on more profitable areas of technology appear to be easing the pain.

The conflicting signs of further deterioration and potential recovery emerged in Hewlett-Packard Co.'s latest quarterly report released Wednesday.

Even as HP's revenue declined at the fastest rate yet in a nearly two-year slump, the company delivered fiscal second-quarter earnings that topped the estimates of both its own management and the analysts who influence investor perceptions.

"The results were better than feared," said Edward Jones analyst Bill Kreher.

HP provided Wall Street with another encouraging sign by predicting its earnings for the current quarter will top analyst projections. The Palo Alto, Calif., company also raised its earnings forecast for the full year, another sign that management is confident that HP's profits won't fall as dramatically as many investors feared while the PC market crumbles.

"You can feel the turnaround taking hold at HP," CEO Meg Whitman told analysts during a Wednesday conference call.

Investors evidently saw enough progress to believe HP is finally heading in the right direction. The company's stock soared $2.84, or more than 13 percent, to $24.07 in extended trading. If the shares move similarly in Thursday's regular session, it would be the biggest one-day percentage gain in HP's stock in more than four years. Even so, HP's stock would remain nearly 50 percent below where it stood just three years ago.

Since then, consumers and corporate customers have been gravitating toward smartphones and tablet computers equipped with touch screens and voice recognition technology. As these mobile devices add more features and grow increasingly powerful, their prices are falling, too, making them even more attractive compared with the laptop...

Lenovo Sales Soar Amid PC Industry Slump

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:35:10 -0500

Computer maker Lenovo Group said Thursday its latest quarterly profit rose 90 percent as sales of smartphones and mobile computing technology expanded.

Lenovo said it earned $127 million, or 1.22 cents per share, in the three months ending March 31. Revenue rose 4 percent over a year earlier to $7.8 billion.

Lenovo ranks a close second behind Hewlett-Packard Co. as the biggest maker of personal computer makers but growth in that market has slowed as consumers shift to mobile Web surfing on smartphones and tablets.

Lenovo said sales of desktop and laptop PCs both declined 2 percent to $2.4 billion and $4.2 billion, respectively, but still made up a combined 83 percent of its business.

Sales of smartphones and other mobile Internet and "digital home" products rose 74 percent to $736 million, accounting for 9 percent of revenue.

"We will focus our investments on the fast-growing tablet, smartphone and enterprise hardware areas, while working to enhance the profitability of our core PC business," said chairman Yang Yuanqing.

For its full fiscal year ending March 31, Lenovo's profit rose 34 percent to $635 million on a 15 percent rise in sales to a record $34 billion.

Lenovo, with headquarters in Beijing and in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, entered the wireless Internet market in 2010. It has launched smartphones and Web-linked tablet computers to compete with Apple Inc. and South Korea's Samsung Electronics Corp.

The company said quarterly sales in North America, traditionally a weak area for Lenovo, rose 13 percent over a year earlier to $1.2 billion, accounting for 15 percent of the global total. It said its market share rose 1.8 percentage points to 9.3 percent.

In its home China market, quarterly sales rose 8 percent to $3.1 billion and revenue for mobile Internet products rose 74 percent.

Docs with Data: Money Drives Electronic Medical Records

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:33:03 -0500

More than half of doctors' offices and 80% of hospitals that provide Medicare or Medicaid will have electronic health records by the end of the year, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Wednesday.

"We have reached a tipping point in adoption of electronic health records," said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and they "are critical to modernizing our health care system."

The announcement comes as a key part of the 2010 health care law: Doctors with data can better track errors and prevent future problems. The government can track organizations for quality, as the law requires. Electronic records allow each of a patient's doctors to see what tests have been performed and what medications have been administered, which could stop duplicated prescriptions and procedures and bad drug interactions.

About 17% of physicians used electronic records in 2008, but now 50% "have demonstrated meaningful use and received an incentive payment," according to HHS. About 9% of hospitals had electronic records in 2008, but HHS found that 80% have now demonstrated use.

The federal government gave health providers grants to buy technology as part of the Recovery Act in 2009 but also required that they show "meaningful use" to get incentive payments. They are now in the stage in which they must show they can store data and track it, report quality measures and begin to engage patients electronically, among other things.

"In four years, they've made more progress than in the previous 20 years," said Farzad Mostashari, national coordinator for health information technology at HHS.

Incentive money has encouraged use of the records, he said.

But providers also understood that to move away from fee-for-service payment programs and toward team-based health care, they needed to be able to share information easily.

Medicare also began charging penalties for people readmitted to hospitals for certain conditions, such as heart attacks...

Google Adds Conversational Search to Chrome

Wed, 22 May 2013 14:16:37 -0500

If you like chatting with Siri, sending voice texts while driving or telling your Xbox when to pause or rewind a DVD, you're going to enjoy the upgrade to Google's Chrome browser. The new system, which was previewed at Google's I/O developer's conference on May 15 and went live Wednesday, allows users to search for topics conversationally, by asking questions rather than stating keywords, much like Apple's Siri personal assistant for the iPhone.

Google also announced a stable update for its Android mobile operating system which allows entering topics in the omnibox, or address bar, instead of only in the search window on Google. The Android update also allows the toolbar to disappear while you scan results.

In addition, Google is giving Apple's Siri a run for her money by introducing voice search for the iOS version of Chrome, available "soon," that will allow voice searches on that browser for iPhones and iPads. (Siri will be available for iPads with the iOS 6 update.)

The Future Is Now

The update for the Chrome browser is another step toward the kind of interaction with machines seen in science fiction, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Trek, in which humans have conversations with computers and keyboards and mice are essentially obsolete.

The feature is available for version 27 of Chrome, which can be downloaded from Google.com or upgraded from an older version, provided your operating system is compatible.

Searches are activated by clicking a red microphone icon on the search page and speaking. At the I/O keynote, as seen on YouTube, Google's Johanna Wright demonstrated that Chrome not only understood her query and provided pictures of the Santa Cruz, Calif., boardwalk at her request, with a polite verbal response, but understood in a follow-up question "how far is it from here?" that she was...

Attention GIFers, It's Pronounced 'Jif'

Wed, 22 May 2013 13:42:26 -0500

Many of us have apparently been saying it wrong for years. This week, the inventor of the GIF image format revealed that the correct pronunciation of the popular image format is "Jif."

Anyone who has been involved in interactive media production has encountered meetings where both the hard "g" and soft "g" pronunciation of the term were bandied about to describe the image format. The name itself can describe a single image or a GIF animation sequence of separate images. Its original innovation was supporting 8 bits per pixel to indicate up to 256 colors, from a 24-bit color space, thus presenting a lot of color choices in a small file size.

At the Webby Awards on Tuesday night in New York City, the creator of the Graphics Interchange Format, Steve Wilhite, accepted a lifetime achievement award. Award winners at the Webbies are limited to acceptance speeches of no more than five words.

CompuServe's CompuShow

Accompanied by the dramatic set-up music from the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, otherwise known as Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra, five words were displayed on the screen over the podium where Wilhite was standing to accept his award: "It's pronounced 'JIF' not 'GIF.' "

Internet historians have pointed out that the pioneering CompuServe network had an early graphics display program called CompuShow. That software included the Graphics Interchange Format, or GIF, which the documentation said was officially spec'd in 1987 and was "pronounced 'JIF'." Additionally, in 1997 a brief e-mail answer from CompuShow creator Bob Berry was published in the Internet news group alt.ascii-art. Answering a query from someone who wanted the matter settled once and for all, Berry replied that "GIF has always been pronounced 'jif,' since it was first released in 1987."

Some observers have noted that, for some unknown reason, Mac users have preferred to use the...

New Nvidia Chip Boosts Citrix Graphics for Remote Workers

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:36:50 -0500

Nvidia is working with Citrix to implement its latest Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) to improve the user experience for mobile workers who use Citrix enterprise desktop virtualization. Specifically, the Nvidia Grid vGPU can now be integrated into Citrix XenDesktop 7.

The new Nvidia Grid vGPU technology targets a challenge that has grown in recent years alongside the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend.

Citrix points out that more employees who use their own notebooks and portable devices for work are relying on desktop virtualization technologies for anytime-access to computing resources. But they can't always tap into the graphic-intensive apps they need.

That's because, until now, virtualization technologies have only been used to offer employees access to standard enterprise applications. Performance and portability constraints have made it difficult to use some of the more graphics-intensive apps, like building information management (BIM), product-lifecycle management (PLM), and video-photo editing.

The Hosted-Shared Desktop

"With Nvidia Grid vGPU, even the most intensive graphics applications can be delivered by XenDesktop 7," said Bob Schultz, vice president and general manager of Desktops and Applications Group at Citrix. "Now businesses can provide their users with the performance that they expect and need for engineering, design, and video applications, while centrally securing and managing valuable intellectual property and sensitive information."

With the introduction of new HDX GPU sharing and deep compression techniques in XenDesktop 7, Nvidia and Citrix said their customers can start taking advantage of the hosted-shared form of desktop virtualization to deliver graphics-intensive applications. Using the Microsoft Windows Server RDSH and XenDesktop 7 platform makes it possible to share GPUs across multiple user sessions.

The companies also pointed to another benefit of combining Citrix XenServer and Nvidia GRID vGPU technology -- allowing customers to share GPUs across multiple virtual machines. With this capability, businesses can address a broader set of...

Security Alert: Beware of Tiffany Trojan on the Attack

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:24:36 -0500

Malware writers are using a luxury name to hack into your computer. Security watchdog Sophos is reporting that e-mails coming from a Tiffany.com address and carrying the attachment copy.zip are looking to install a malicious Trojan horse on your PC.

"This may be a deliberate ploy on the part of the criminals behind the attack to tempt more people into opening the attachment," Graham Cluley, senior security analyst at Sophos, wrote in a blog post. "Of course, it's child's play to forge e-mail header information, and there is no suggestion that the messages were really sent by Tiffany's," the high-end jeweler known for its little blue gift boxes tied smartly with white ribbon.

"If anything," Cluley said, the folks at Tiffany's "are also victims of this campaign."

Check Your Zipper

We asked Richard Westmoreland, a security analyst at security-as-a-service provider SilverSky, to chime in on the latest Trojan to make headlines. He explained that most successful e-mail Trojans now hide their malicious payload within zip files and depend on social engineering to get the end user to execute it.

"Companies can't block zip file attachments because it would impact legitimate business, however, e-mail filtering with virus scanning should still be able to inspect the contents of unencrypted zip files," Westmoreland said.

"It is important to scan for viruses both at the e-mail gateway and on the users' workstations, but equally important to remind employees not to open files they were not already expecting. In situations where antivirus does not yet have signatures for the payload and an employee still mistakenly opens the file, the workstation will likely start exhibiting suspicious behavior and the compromise could be detected by a SOC that is monitoring that network."

Copy Cat Social Engineers

Westmoreland's colleague Evan Keiser, also a security analyst with SilverSky, told us the Tiffany & Co. Trojan is...