CIO Today

Opera Mini 5 Released for Android-Powered Smartphones

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:28:52 -0500

Opera Software launched an Android version of the company's Opera Mini 5 mobile browser Thursday that promises to significantly improve page loading and speed on compatible smartphones. The beta release continues the company's campaign to increase the visibility of its browser on a global basis.

Opera Mini 5 works in tandem with Opera's servers to compress web-page content up to 90 percent before the data is sent to mobile phones, noted Opera Vice President Dag Olav Norem. "Opera Mini will give Android users fast and cost-efficient access to their favorite web sites and services," he said.

A Desktop-Like Experience

Opera Mini 5 now includes popular browser features from the company's platform for desktop PCs and notebooks, such as speed dial, tabbed browsing, password management, and bookmarks. The goal is to enable the platform to deliver a desktop-like web-browsing experience on mobile handsets, the company said.

Tabbed browsing enables several web sites to be viewed at the same time while easily jumping from one to another, while the speed-dial feature provides one-click access to favorite web pages. Additionally, bookmarks and speed-dial settings can now be synchronized between the user's mobile phone and a notebook or desktop PC.

To eliminate the need for horizontal panning on small mobile screens, the browser's mobile view intelligently reformats web pages into a single column. Users also can switch to a landscape mode to view a wider swath of web-page content.

The default size of text from selected web sites can be optimized from within the browser to make it even easier to view content on small screens. Moreover, users can adjust the default zoom level from 60 percent to 200 percent.

Additionally, Android users equipped with touchscreen handsets will be able to navigate content using the mobile platform's new zooming and kinetic scrolling features. And favorite web sites can now...

Sony Targets Nintendo's Wii with PS3 Move Controller

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:43:41 -0500

Move over, Wii. On Wednesday, Sony Computer Entertainment announced that its PlayStation 3 Move motion-based controller will launch in the fall. The controller has been discussed by Sony for some time, and was initially expected to be released this spring.

Reportedly, the delay gives third-party developers more time to create game titles using Move's capabilities. Sony said 36 developers and publishers are supporting the platform, and it expects more than 20 Move-related games to be released in its 2010 fiscal year.

'Unlike Anything on the Market'

The success of Nintendo's Wii video-game console has been built, in part, on its unique motion-sensing controller, allowing multiple players to bowl, wield a tennis racket, and other interactions. Sony is touting its new controller as "offering a motion-based, high-definition gaming experience unlike anything on the market."

Accompanying Move's launch will be the Move sub-controller, which enables what Sony described as "intuitive navigation of in-game characters and objects," and the Eye camera to detect precise movement, angle and position.

Sony said the three components provide a level of accuracy that, by implication, Nintendo's Wii does not. The controller has a three-axis gyroscope, a three-axis accelerometer, a terrestrial magnetic field sensor, and a color-changing sphere that the camera can track. More than one blogger has described the device as looking like a toy flashlight with a colored ball on top.

The company said this "unmatched" resolution of movement allows the PS3 to track fast as well as subtle movement. A user can swing a tennis racket as with the Wii, but can also paint with a virtual brush.

Feedback -- such as different colors on the controller's sphere or rumble -- responds to the game action. Transmission to the console is via Bluetooth, and power is supplied by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. The controller kit is expected to sell for under...

CA Expands Cloud Services with $350M Nimsoft Purchase

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:13:36 -0500

IT software behemoth CA has acquired yet another company as it moves to provide its emerging enterprise customers and managed-service providers with cloud-computing support. CA acquired Redwood City, Calif.-based Nimsoft, its fourth acquisition in the cloud-computing space, in a cash purchase valued at $350 million, CA announced Wednesday.

Nimsoft, a provider of monitoring systems used in data centers, is the fourth company that CA, formerly Computer Associates, has acquired in the past nine months. CA plans to integrate Nimsoft's assets into its cloud products and solutions business.

The acquisition, expected to close by March 31, will enable CA to tap into Nimsoft's more than 300 managed-service customers such as Hitachi, Barclays Capital, and Amway and its emerging enterprise customers (with revenues between $300 million and $2 billion).

Perfect Marriage or Bad Move

Nimsoft's reporting and monitoring technology has been used in public cloud services such as Google Apps for Business, Amazon Web Services, and Salesforce.com. Its technology has also been used in internal applications and in both physical and virtual server environments.

CA's new acquisition is only one piece to its larger cloud-computing puzzle. CA acquired Cassatt, NetQoS and Oblicore, and last month announced plans to acquire 3Tera.

While Nimsoft attracted a solid customer base, it was having difficulties keeping up with the fast-moving market. Nimsoft hired both engineers and salespeople, but not fast enough, according to CEO Gary Read.

"We were already hiring additional salespeople and engineers as fast as we could, but there is a natural limit to how rapidly you can scale a business without breaking those things that are important to us, customer satisfaction being the top of the list," Read said.

When he was approached by CA, Read said, he was hesitant to begin any talks. That changed once CA told Nimsoft executives that the company was committed...

Marketplace for Google Apps Targets Microsoft Office

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:54:27 -0500

With its mind in the clouds and an eye on rival Microsoft, Google on Tuesday launched an online application store for third-party programs that can be integrated with its online Google Apps office suite, with a single log-in and Google's universal navigation. The programs can sync with Gmail and Google's calendar, and use document-sharing features.

With 25 million application users and services for two million businesses, Google clearly hopes to reduce Microsoft's dominance in business-productivity software. Some 50 companies are offering applications in the initial Google Apps Marketplace inventory.

Early Arrivals

A random sampling on the marketplace Wednesday included EZAsset, a business asset-management tool; Manymoon for social productivity, project management, and task management; Fresh Books, a billing and bookkeeping utility; and eFax, an Internet fax service.

Google reportedly charges developers $100 for a listing, then takes 20 percent of sales.

The marketplace is intended for companies with their own domain, and Google Apps membership is required. A premier membership is $50, with an unlimited number of users per account. To lure customers away from the competition, the marketplace offers a tutorial on importing data from Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes.

Suite Deal

The Mountain View, Calif.-based Google previously had a solutions marketplace offering add-ons for programs. But Google Apps Marketplace will allow the company to generate revenue while also driving more interest in its online suite.

Google has increasingly battled for turf with Microsoft, recently introducing the Chrome operating system to challenge the dominant Windows. The software giant has taken the fight to Google's front door with its Bing search engine, which it hopes will soon be the default search window on Apple's iPhone.

Microsoft has announced cloud partnerships with Hewlett-Packard and Chunghwa Telecom and has other cloud projects in the works. The HP deal is a three-year, $250 million project to integrate Microsoft programs and HP hardware.

Cloud-computing...

Bing Bangs Out More Market Share at Yahoo's Expense

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:47:59 -0500

The search-engine wars are alive and well -- and Bing is the beneficiary again. Microsoft's so-called decision engine grabbed 11.5 percent of the U.S. search market in February, according to comScore.

Although that's only a slight increase over January, when Bing boasted 11.3 percent of the search market, it's an incremental improvement Microsoft is glad to see for its less-than-a-year-old engine.

But it's not all good news for Microsoft, if it cares anything about its newly approved partner's standings. Yahoo's bleeding led to Bing's gains. Yahoo's U.S. search market share dipped from 17 percent in January to 16.8 percent in February, comScore reported.

Bad for Bing?

Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, parsed the data. He noted that Bing continues to grow its user base, although it seems to have slowed a bit. Meanwhile, Google is unaffected.

"Those feeling the competitive pinch of Bing appear to be Microsoft partner Yahoo and the two smaller major search providers, Ask and AOL. The irony of Bing's success, partly at Yahoo's expense, is that Microsoft hasn't seen any growth in the combined share of Bing and Yahoo, which has remained largely flat," Sterling said. "The Yahoo search slide has now been going on roughly a year, and it has to be a matter of concern to the company. However, it's not immediately clear what they can do to arrest it."

Jeffries & Co. analyst Youssef Squali also noted the shifting fortunes between Bing and Yahoo. In a research note dated March 10, Squali noted how Bing has added 350 basis points of growth since its June 2009 launch. Meanwhile, Yahoo has shed about 330 basis points since May 2009.

"While the share losses have been exacerbated by the ongoing rollover of tool-bar partnerships (with HP and Adobe), we continue to believe that it is critical for Yahoo to...

Apple's App Store Terms Are Stiff, But Does Anyone Care?

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:46:08 -0500

Apple tightly controls not only the approval of third-party applications for its App Store but also its developers. Apple's developer agreement says "Public statements regarding this agreement, its terms and conditions, or the relationship of the parties" require Apple's written approval.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation made the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement public. EFF obtained the agreement via a Freedom of Information Act request to NASA, which recently released an app for the iPhone.

As Apple readies its iPad for release -- at the same time a rash of competing tablets are expected -- the question of how much control Apple should have over developers is "particularly relevant," EFF Senior Counsel Fred von Lohmann said. He detailed several "troubling highlights."

Restrictions, Restrictions

Developers are banned from speaking about the terms of the agreement, even though the terms aren't defined as trade secrets. Apple imposes a gag order on developers apart from any trade-secret issues.

By using Apple's software development kit, developers agree to distribute their creations only through Apple's App Store. Apple can reject an application for any reason, even if it meets all the formal requirements set up by Apple.

Thus developers can sink hundreds of hours of development time into an app, have it rejected by Apple, and have no choice but to toss that work out. "So if you use the SDK and your app is rejected by Apple, you're prohibited from distributing it through competing app stores like�Cydia�or�Rock Your Phone," von Lohmann said.

The EFF also complained that Apple bans reverse engineering -- "including the kinds of reverse engineering for interoperability that courts have recognized as a fair use under copyright law." Apple even outlaws "enabl(ing) others" to reverse-engineer the SDK or iPhone OS.

The SDK also appears to include a complete ban on tinkering with any Apple products -- not just jailbreaking...

Google Maps Gives Biking Directions, But No Mobile App Yet

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:43:15 -0500

Google Maps unveiled the addition of biking directions Wednesday at the National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C. The new beta offering is being launched in partnership with the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy -- a nonprofit organization that has already built a database for locating more than 1,600 rail trails and connecting corridors available for free public use.

Google Maps now includes data on bike lanes and recommended streets for 150 cities across the United States, noted Shannon Guymon, product manager for Google Maps. "Bikers all over the country now will be able to explore new trails or find specific directions in their local community with just a few clicks of their mouse," he said.

Customized Routes

Guymon noted that biking has been the most requested addition for Google Maps. "If you're one of the 57 million Americans who ride a bike, mapping your daily commute, exploring new trails, and planning recreational rides just became a little bit easier," he wrote in a blog.

Currently Google Maps only provides step-by-step bicycling directions on desktop PCs and notebooks, though the company said a mobile version of the service is also in the works. To get started, simply enter a start point and destination and select Bicycling from the drop-down menu.

"You will receive a route that is optimized for cycling, taking advantage of bike trails, bike lanes, and bike-friendly streets and avoiding hilly terrain whenever possible," Guymon explained.

The proposed route for the ride is presented on top of the city map as a blue line overlay. Bikers can further customize the route to include nearby sites by clicking on the blue line and dragging it to include a local landmark. "Just like Google pioneered with driving directions, you can click and drag your route to customize it as you'd like," Guymon observed.

Google Maps also will estimate the amount...

MySpace Revamp Aims To Reverse User Exodus

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:34:43 -0500

MySpace is attempting to bring back old users and attract new ones with a complete revamp of the social network. The plans to change come after the social network has lost market share against its rivals.

Once considered the household name for social-networking web sites, MySpace lost its top position in the market once Facebook began to attract new users at high rate.

Expected changes include a cleanup of the cluttered layout and faster page loads. The bigger changes include a focus on music. These features will be made available in the next few months, according to MySpace, with users able to share music playlists with other users.

MySpace executives have been talking about the changes in recent weeks. The revamp is because MySpace "really wanted to show the crowd how MySpace is thinking different about the advertiser experience," said MySpace's Nada Stirratt, chief revenue officer, in a post.

Focusing on Youth

This lets MySpace hone in on a core user base of music-oriented fans and young people seeking self-expression, according to Ray Valdes, a Gartner analyst.

MySpace's focus on a younger audiences makes sense since adults favor Facebook, according to recent data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. A total of 73 percent of all adults 18 and older who use social-networking sites have a Facebook account. Seventy-one percent of those adults are between the ages of 18-29.

"These changes are welcome and necessary, but by themselves cannot reverse powerful market trends," Valdes said.

But many observers question if these changes will be enough to attract new users. In January, MySpace had 119 million unique visitors, a 7.4 percent decrease from the same month in 2009, according to ComScore, a provider of online traffic reports. MySpace executives, however, expect that number to grow to 200 million or 300 million. While the number...

Buying a Windows 7 Computer: Know Your Needs

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:12:50 -0500

Now that Windows 7 is widely viewed as a worthwhile upgrade, many are looking at buying a new computer that will take advantage of Microsoft's new operating system. What you look for in a new machine, though, should depend in part on what your primary tasks will be. Read on for some answers.

Q: I'm interested in buying a new desktop to run Windows 7. I'll be using it to edit photographs, video, and for doing general chores. What components should I focus on?

A: Photography and video editing are two of the more demanding tasks that people use their computers for these days, so a beefier machine will be in order.

First of all, you might want to consider installing the 64-bit version of Windows 7. It's good to know which version you intend to install before you buy a machine because that knowledge will help you determine how much memory (RAM) you might want.

The 32-bit version of Windows 7 can access up to 4 GB of memory. Today, though -- especially when editing multiple large photographs while running several other applications -- more than 4 GB of RAM are helpful, and only the 64-bit version of Windows 7 will allow that.

There's really no machine made today that is "too powerful" for photo and video editing, so you should start by looking at higher-end systems.

An Intel Core i5 or i7-based machine would be preferable to a Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad. The latter two processors are on the way out, The i5 and i7 processors eliminate a significant bottleneck of older chip designs -- namely the so-called "front side bus," a pathway between the processor and other components in the PC.

The chips also can automatically "overclock" themselves, meaning they can deliver more performance when required. Intel's i7 chips are more...

LifeLock To Pay $12M To Settle False Claims Case

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:15:03 -0500

LifeLock Inc. -- an identity theft protection company that backed its guarantees by putting its CEO's social security number on the side of its trucks -- will pay $12 million to settle claims it misrepresented its services, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

LifeLock will pay $11 million to the FTC to cover the cost of customer refunds, and another $1 million to the attorneys general of 35 states, the agency said. The FTC said LifeLock made false claims about its ability to prevent identity theft, as the services provide no protection against misuse of existing accounts, which is the most common type of identity theft, or medical or employment identity theft.

The agency described the agreement as one of the largest FTC-state coordinated settlements on record.

In a telephone interview, LifeLock CEO Todd Davis said the company was not acknowledging any wrongdoing. He said all of the company's current advertising and infrastructure have been cleared by the FTC.

The FTC said LifeLock overstated its ability to prevent new account fraud, which accounts for about one out of every six identity thefts. The Tempe, Ariz., company responds to suspected identity theft by placing fraud alerts on accounts, but the FTC said those alerts do not provide absolute protection and they can be foiled by identity thieves.

"There's still nothing that can stop all identity theft," Davis said. "We still have that same position. No one can stop all identity theft."

The agency said LifeLock misrepresented its own data security procedures. The company allegedly deceived customers in its ads by saying all its data was electronically encrypted and that highly secure procedures are used to protect the confidentiality of its customers. The FTC said claims that only authorized LifeLock employees would have access to customer information, and then only on a "need to know" basis, were also...

Patches Highlight Problems in Maintaining Older Software

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:51:32 -0500

Microsoft on Tuesday released two security bulletins to fix eight bugs in its Windows and Microsoft Office software. Both bulletins are rated important, but analysts said many of the vulnerabilities could potentially be more severe if exploited.

Joshua Talbot, security intelligence manager at Symantec Security Response, is concerned that in many enterprise environments, Windows XP is still common, and these vulnerabilities are more serious on XP and older systems.

"Since Windows 7, Microsoft has seemed to downgrade file-based vulnerabilities," Talbot said. "In the past, I think many of the vulnerabilities patched this month could have been rated critical, but with protections like DEP and ASLR, these types of vulnerabilities are less of an issue for Windows 7."

A Patch Roller Coaster

Andrew Storms, director of Security operations for nCircle, said IT security teams have been on a Microsoft roller coaster so far in 2010 in regards to bulletins. He pointed to January, which produced two bulletins, including the out-of-band emergency release for Internet Explorer. That was followed by a monster patch of 13 bulletins in February. March will go down in history as a light Patch Tuesday with only two important bulletins.

"Unfortunately, this was the first patch for the newer, safer Office 2007 file format. File-format attacks continue to be a favorite attack vector for earlier versions of Office, especially 2003," Storms said. "Since releasing Office 2007 three years ago, Microsoft hasn't had to patch a single bug in this file format, something I'm sure they are pretty proud of. IT security teams everywhere will be keeping their fingers crossed, hoping that this isn't the beginning of a new streak of vulnerabilities in Office."

For the second time in three months, Microsoft has also issued a warning about a new IE zero-day bug. Like the IE zero-day bug from January that got a lot of...

Web Standards Group Gets a New Leader

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:17:45 -0500

A former executive with IBM and other tech companies has been named the new CEO of an organization in charge of coordinating the technical specifications behind the World Wide Web.

The Web's inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, is remaining the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, and Jeffrey Jaffe, 55, will work under him as its CEO. Jaffe replaces Steve Bratt, 53, who left the position in mid-2009 to run a Web foundation also started by Berners-Lee.

Jaffe brings both business and technical expertise. He has been vice president of technology at IBM Corp. and most recently chief technology officer at Novell Inc. He also was an executive at Bell Labs.

"Just as the Web is constantly growing and changing, so is the community around it and so is the consortium," Berners-Lee said in a statement. "Jeff's broad experience gives him a deep understanding of many different types of organizations, which will be invaluable in managing W3C's evolution."

The consortium, known as W3C, writes the technical rules designed to ensure that Web pages can work using different software, different computers and different languages. For example, it created guidelines on how to format Web pages so that they work more easily with software designed for the blind. It also crafts the basic commands for HTML, the Web's main programming language.

W3C's members include such leading tech companies as Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. and institutions such as universities and the Library of Congress. Its main offices are in Cambridge, Mass., Tokyo and the Sophia Antipolis science and tech center near Nice, France.

IBM Develops Earth-Friendly Plastic

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:01:32 -0500

When you recycle a plastic bottle, it doesn't necessarily become another plastic bottle.

Because of limitations in recycling technology, a common type of plastic used in water bottles and food containers weakens so much when it's recycled that it can't be used again for the same purpose. Some small amount of the plastic might make it into another bottle, but more often than not, it instead becomes synthetic carpet or clothing and can't easily be recycled a second time. So when those products are used up, they end up in landfills.

Researchers from IBM Corp. and Stanford University believe they have developed a way to significantly improve the quality of recycled plastic and strip away those limitations.

A new recycling method the researchers are announcing Tuesday involves a way to break the plastic down so that it can be reused again and again in the same form. It is an advancement that could intrigue beverage companies and help cut the environmental damage from making plastic from scratch.

The innovation is a new family of catalysts that can reduce polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic to its basic building blocks, while retaining its original properties and making it "ridiculously economical" to build it back up again, said Bob Allen, senior manager of chemistry and functional materials for IBM's Almaden research center in Silicon Valley.

The project is in the laboratory on a small scale. Researchers are planning a bigger pilot at the King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology, home to Saudi Arabia's national laboratories. Allen said the technology could be commercially available within five years if the pilot goes well.

A critical question will be the price of the technology.

Andrew Williamson, a director with the venture capital firm Physic Ventures who has seen IBM's research, said it could help solve one of the biggest challenges facing food...