Debbie Anguiano

Linux, Windows or both? Doesn't matter to virtual desktop vendor, Ulteo

2010-02-22T17:05:00.001-08:00

Ulteo is poised to offer commercial support for its free virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) software, which the open-source startup says will cost companies a fraction of established offerings from Citrix Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and VMware Inc., while offering, in some cases, more choice in platforms. Neither the Microsoft nor the Citrix app can deliver Linux apps, according to Koehrlen. The Paris-based company has already released a second version of its Open Virtual Desktop software, which lets companies host Windows and Linux apps on the same server and then stream them to remote desktop or laptop PCs. The software has been downloaded by tens of thousands of users, mostly IT managers who have been testing OVD as a less expensive, more flexible substitute for Microsoft's Terminal Services or Citrix's XenApp (formerly MetaFrame Server), according to CEO Thierry Koehrlen. VMware's technology, like Ulteo's, can support either OS, he said.

Ulteo hasn't finalized prices for its enterprise support plan, though Koehrlen said it "will be very cheap compared to Citrix or VMware. Dual OS support is something cost-conscious IT managers are seeking, Koehrlen said, since it enables them to reserve pricier Windows for power users, and then offer free Linux to the rest. "We have several dozen users who are using OVD today to manage several hundred users each in production, and are itching to go into the thousands," Koehrlen said in a phone interview. We want it to be a no-brainer in terms of cost compared to the big guys." Ulteo was co-founded by Gael Duval, founder of Mandrake Linux (now Mandriva) , and Koehrlen, who co-founded Intalio, which makes an open-source business process management software. Though called Open Virtual Desktop, Koehrlen said the current version of the software is neither true desktop nor application virtualization. It is small - 10 employees - though Koehrlen said that development and testing is aided by hundreds of contributors.

Rather, Open Virtual Desktop's "session virtualization" technology rides on top of simple streaming technology such as Terminal Services to paint the screens of users with Java-enabled Web browsers running on their clients, said Koehrlen. Companies won't start adopting application virtualization en masse until they start planning their upgrades from Windows XP to Windows 7 , he said. Applications can be hosted at Amazon's EC2. Ulteo is working on offering true application virtualization , but Koehrlen said it's not urgent. Eric Lai covers Windows and Linux, desktop applications, databases and business intelligence for Computerworld . Follow Eric on Twitter at @ericylai , send e-mail to elai@computerworld.com or subscribe to Eric's RSS feed . Read more about virtualization in Computerworld's Virtualization Knowledge Center.

Scientists, IT Community Await Exascale Computers

2010-02-17T08:00:00.001-08:00

The race is on to develop a new generation of far more powerful supercomputers that could help solve some of the world's most vexing problems. Scientists also expect exascale systems to help them come up with processes for creating biofuels from weeds rather than corn. Exascale supercomputers, expected to appear by 2018, could, for example, play a significant role in efforts to combat climate change or develop ultra-long-life batteries for powering automobiles. Much of the work at various national labs to design and develop the new systems is funded by corporations that hope their IT operations can take advantage of the new technologies.

The need for exascale systems, and the difficulties developers face in trying to boost hardware performance without soaking up excessive megawatts of power, was widely discussed among many of the estimated 11,000 people who gathered last month in Portland, Ore., for the SC09 supercomputing conference. "There are serious exascale-class problems that just cannot be solved in any reasonable amount of time with the computers that we have today," said Buddy Bland, project director at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn. For example, the next generation of supercomputers could be used to solve big programming problems and allow for the development of a new generation of scientific and business applications. The world's fastest supercomputer today, a Cray XT5 system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory that's known as Jaguar, has a peak performance of 2.3 petaflops. The total capacity of the latest Top500 list of the most powerful supercomputers , released at SC09, was 27.6 petaflops, up from 22.6 petaflops in the previous list, released in June. A petaflop is a quadrillion, or 1,000 trillion, sustained floating-point operations per second.

One exaflop is 1,000 times faster than a petaflop - performing 1 quintillion, or 1 million trillion calculations per second. "We think exascale is a 100 million-core kind of enterprise," said Dave Turek, vice president of deep computing at IBM. In mid-2008, IBM's Roadrunner supercomputer - a hybrid system that runs both AMD's Opteron processors and Cell chips designed by IBM, Toshiba Corp. and Sony Corp. - was the first to achieve petaflop speeds. These future systems must use less memory per core and more memory bandwidth. Now the U.S. Department of Energy has started making plans to build an exascale system that's 1,000 times more powerful than Jaguar. Systems running 100 million cores will face continuous core failures, and the tools for dealing with them will have to be rethought "in a dramatic kind of way," said Turek. Addison Snell, CEO of InterSect360 Research, expects general-purpose exascale systems to come out of the supercomputer research efforts, though he predicts that "special-purpose [systems] will probably come first." Stephen Lawson of the IDG News Service contributed to this story.

Sharing Data Securely to Foster Product Development

2010-02-11T22:09:00.001-08:00

Boston Scientific wants to tear down barriers that prevent product developers from accessing the research that went into its successful medical devices so that they can create new products faster. It's a classic corporate data privacy problem. "The more info you give knowledge workers, the more effective they can be in creating a lot of value for the company," says Boris Evelson, a principal analyst at Forrester. "This creates disclosure risks-that someone's going to walk away with the data and give it to a competitor." To read more on this topic, see: Security Breaches: Three Tools for Preventing Data Loss and Sustainable Innovation at Boston Scientific. But making data too easily accessible could open the way to theft of information potentially worth millions or billions of dollars.

This tension compels the $8 billion company to seek out software that allows the broader engineering community to share knowledge while managing access to product development data, says Jude Currier, cardiovascular knowledge management and innovation practices lead at Boston Scientific. That is, regularly monitor who's accessing what and adjust permissions as business conditions change. Active security is the way to address this problem, Currier says. Open but Protected Keeping the pipeline of new stents, pacemakers and catheters fresh is especially important because heart-related items account for 80 percent of Boston Scientific's sales. Boston Scientific had inherited regulatory problems from acquisitions it made during that time.

Over the past few years engineers have been focused on quality system improvements, Currier says. Now that those situations are addressed, the company is ready to reinvigorate internal innovation, he says. Before, Boston Scientific's product developers worked in silos with limited access to research by colleagues on different product lines. Boston Scientific is piloting Invention Machine's Goldfire software, which, Currier says, provides the right mix of openness and security for data. Information was so locked down that even if scientists found something useful from a past project, they often didn't have access to it. "We're changing that," Currier says. It combines internal company data with information from public sources, such as federal government databases.

Goldfire makes an automated workflow out of such tasks as analyzing markets and milking a company's intellectual property. Researchers can use the software to find connections among different sources, for instance by highlighting similar ideas. The goal is to have any engineer access any other's research. "The people in trenches can't wait for [that] day to arrive," he says. Engineers can use such analysis to get ideas for new products and begin to study their feasibility. Although the goal is more openness, not all data stays open forever. He adds that since installing Goldfire, patent applications are up compared to similar engineering groups that do not use the Goldfire tool. "We have had to educate [people] that we aren't throwing security out the window [but] making valuable knowledge available to the organization," he says.

For example, as a project gets closer to the patent application stage, access to the data about it is clipped to fewer people, Currier says. Senior Editor Kim S. Nash can be reached at knash@cio.com. Follow me on Twitter @knash99. Follow everything from CIO Magazine @CIOMagazine. Do you Tweet?

Apple customer collates 27-in. iMac display problems

2010-02-06T13:00:00.001-08:00

A large number of problems with new iMacs, especially the top-of-the-line 27-in. model, has prompted one user to create a site that tallies issues ranging from cracked screens to flickering displays. Core i7-based iMac arrived with a broken screen. Canadian Web designer Scott Pronych created the Apple iMac (Fall 2009) Issues site to track the problems, in part because his new 27-in. By digging through Apple's support forum, Pronych identified 343 different users who had reported problems with their new machines.

On Apple's support forum, customers have reported receiving iMac displays with shattered glass, most of the time in the lower left corner of the screen. Cracked screens have garnered the most attention from bloggers and the media. The bulk of the cracked-screen problems have been reported by people who purchased a new iMac equipped with Intel's Core i7 quad-core processor . Apple unveiled the quad-core iMacs, along with revamped dual-core models in both 21.5- and 27-in sizes, on Oct. 20 as part of a broad product refresh that also debuted a redesigned MacBook and a new Mac mini-based server. Screen will go completely black for a second and then come back on. The cracked screen issue was actually low on the list, with just 54 incidents out of the 343, or 16%. The most widespread problem was a screen that flickered, "tore" or just went black: 179 cases, or 52% of the total. "That shocked me, too," said Pronych today. "But the thread is huge." The support thread Pronych referred to had more than 1,000 individual messages as of early Monday, with a view count of over 144,000, easily the most read of those on the iMac forum discussing problems. "I have been experiencing some problems with the all new iMac 27-inch display," said Jan Sampermans , who kicked off the thread on Oct. 27. "Screen distortion/flicker somewhere random in the screen (feels like it is more in the lower part) that looks like a horizontal bar of about 2-3inches just popping in and out of the screen.

Sometimes 2-3 times in a row." Although many users who reported the flickering said Apple had exchanged their iMacs, some noted that they had gone through as many as three machines before getting a defect-free system. In the first place, the best reason why I wanted iMac 27-in is the screen, so without this, why the **** would I spend money on this?" Kim was eventually given a third iMac, but that one sported shattered glass. Others complained about the solutions Apple support had suggested, or said they had run into roadblocks. "[The second] iMac had dust underneath the glass and a dead pixel," said Minsoo Kim Sunday on the "New iMac 27inch screen flickering/tearing/shutoff" thread. "Since it was a cluster of dust, I had a valid reason for it to be swapped and again, drove 40 minutes to the Apple Store. "There, the genius told me that without saying sorry for any inconvenience I may [have] had, 'Apple will not exchange any further iMac for minor screen problem like this.' I was shocked. Pronych, however, remained a loyal Mac user. "I got a replacement, and it's worked fine," he said. "I haven't encountered any of the other problems people have been reporting." The flickering display problem is not limited to the quad-core iMacs; of the 179 total cases Pronych documented, 94 involve dual-core iMacs, while 85 involve an i5- or i7-powered iMac. iMac have been posted on Apple's support forum. More than 81% of all the problems he cited, however, were for the 27-in. model; relatively few reports of issues with the smaller 21.5-in.

According to Pronych's analysis, more-recent iMac production runs have not exhibited as many problems as the Week 46 and Week 47 batches. Customers can log their problem with Pronych's Web site by filling out an online form . Apple did not respond to a request for comment on the iMac issues that Pronych collated.

eEye scans for vulnerabilities, compliance problems

2010-01-31T22:05:00.001-08:00

EEye Digital Security today unveiled a compliance and security management tool that can be used to ensure endpoint computers meet vulnerability-assessment standards required by various industry regulations. Security management compliance and the cloud |View this product in a slideshow The Retina CS Compliance and Security vulnerability-management tool can generate reports to indicate whether corporate assets are in conformance with compliance initiatives including the Payment Card Industry (PCI) data security rules; healthcare's Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA); Gramm-Leach-Bliley for the financial industry; and the federal government's Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) guidelines. Retina CA Compliance and Security leverages eEye's Retina Network Security Scanner and Blink Endpoint Protection to perform vulnerability scanning and centralize reporting via the compliance and security management console that Haber says was written in the Adobe Flex technology rather than simple HTML. Retina CS Compliance and Security is being offered in three forms: on-premises software, as a managed service, and an appliance option. Morey Haber, vice president of business development at eEye, says Retina CS Compliance and Security will also add support for the federal Security Content Automated Protocol specifications by early next year. "This is workflow-oriented with vulnerability scans, and we're creating vulnerability reports that are business-oriented based on compliance practices," Haber says.

Software pricing starts at $10,000 for 256 IP addresses, and the managed service starts at $7,548. These options are available today. The cost for the hardware appliance, which will be available by early next year, hasn't been released.

You've got questions, Aardvark Mobile has answers

2010-01-26T13:00:00.001-08:00

Aardvark has taken a different tack with search. And now the people behind Aardvark are bringing that same approach to the iPhone and iPod touch. The online service figures it's sometimes more productive to ask a question of an actual person-usually someone from within your social network-rather than brave the vagaries of a search engine and its sometimes irrelevant answers. Aardvark Mobile actually arrived in the App Store nearly a week ago.

Aardvark Mobile tackles the same problem as the Aardvark Web site-dealing with subjective searches where two people might type in the same keywords but be searching for two completely different things. "Search engines by design struggle with these types of queries," Aardvark CEO Max Ventilla said. But developer Vark.com waited until Tuesday to take the wraps off the mobile version of its social question-and-answer service. What Aardvark does is tap into your social networks and contacts on Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and elsewhere to track down answers to questions that might otherwise flummox a search engine-things like "Where's a good place to eat in this neighborhood?" or "Where should I stay when I visit London?" With Aadvark's Web service, you'd send a message through your IM client to Aardvark; the service then figures out who in your network (and in their extended network) might be able to answer the question and asks them on your behalf. The majority of questions are answered in less than five minutes. Ventilla says that 90 percent of the questions asked via Aardvark get answered.

The iPhone version of Aardvark works much the same way. The service pings people for an answer, and sends you a push notification when there's a reply. Instead of an IM, you type a message directly into the app, tag it with the appropriate categories, and send it off to Aardvark. In previewing the app, I asked a question about affordable hotels in Central London-two responses came back within about three minutes from other Aardvark users. If you shake your mobile device when you're on the Answer tab, Aardvark Mobile looks up any unanswered questions that you may be able to provide a response for (while also producing a very alarming aardvark-like noise). "We think Aardvark is particularly well-suited to mobile, and especially the iPhone given how rich that platform is to develop for," Ventilla said.

In addition to push notifications, Aardvark Mobile also taps into the iPhone's built-in location features to automatically detect your location-a feature that can help when you're asking about local hotspots. You don't have to already be using Aardvark's online service to take advantage of the mobile app. Aardvark Mobile requires the iPhone OS 3.0. The free Aardvark Mobile app lets you set up a profile on your iPhone or iPod touch; Facebook Connect integration helps you instantly build up a network of friends who are also using the service.

Windows Marketplace reveals fragmentation

2010-01-21T03:05:00.001-08:00

Microsoft is making its Windows Marketplace for Mobile available to phones running older versions of its mobile software, although not all of the apps may be available to all Windows Mobile users. The Marketplace was initially only accessible by users of Microsoft's most recent software, Windows Mobile 6.5. It also said that the store now has 800 apps, triple the number available at the launch of the store in October. On Monday, Microsoft said users of phones running Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 can now shop for and download apps from its Marketplace. But not all of those are available to everyone.

The discrepancy between the total number of apps and the number of apps in the online store demonstrates the downside to a business model like Microsoft's, with an OS that can be used on different kinds of phones. Microsoft's Web site that lets anyone browse through the Marketplace has just 376 applications. "People may not see all of them on the Marketplace website or smartphone catalogue, either because of regional access or because certain apps have specific device requirements such as GPS, screen sizes, etc.," Todd Brix, senior director of mobile services and platform product management for Microsoft, said in an e-mailed statement. The model allows end-users the luxury of choosing the phone design they prefer, but it comes with limitations in interoperability. The Android Market has 12,000 apps and so far doesn't seem to have significant issues with application interoperability. However, Google's Android operating system is also running on phones with different form factors.

Apple is on the other end of the spectrum, because it makes both the software and the hardware and also runs the app store. Microsoft says there are more than 18,000 commercial applications available for Windows Mobile. That vertical integration is at least part of the reason that there are now 100,000 applications in the iPhone App Store. Developers of those apps must submit them in order for them to appear in the new Marketplace. Otherwise, they are only available through third-party sites. "Windows Marketplace for Mobile will not aggregate all available applications, but rather provide customers with a single source for purchasing quality tested applications backed by a money back guarantee," Microsoft said in a statement.

Detailing contingency planning

2010-01-15T18:00:00.001-08:00

On Oct. 27, 2009, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) Computer Security Division (CSD) published Special Publication (SP) 800-34 Revision (Rev) 1, "DRAFT Contingency Planning Guide for Federal Information Systems" and requested comments from readers by Jan. 6, 2010. The official announcement described the SP as follows: SP 800-34 Revision 1 is intended to help organizations by providing instructions, recommendations, and considerations for federal information system contingency planning. The guide defines a seven-step contingency planning process that an organization may apply to develop and maintain a viable contingency planning program for their information systems. Contingency planning refers to interim measures to recover information system services after a disruption. The guide also presents three sample formats for developing an information system contingency plan based on low, moderate, or high impact level, as defined by Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 199, Standards for Security Categorization of Federal Information and Information Systems.

Authors Marianne Swanson, Pauline Bowen, Amy Wohl Phillips, Dean Gallup, and David Lynes include two of the six authors of the June 2002 original version of SP 800-34 (Swanson, Wohl, Lucinda Pope, Tim Grance, Joan Hash and Ray Thomas) and have, as usual for NIST ITL CSD, done a superb job of preparing a framework that lays out a sound basis for business continuity planning (BCP). The 150-page SP begins with an introduction presenting the purpose, scope and audience for 800-34 Rev 1. Page 13 of the PDF file describes the purpose as providing "guidelines to individuals responsible for preparing and maintaining information system contingency plans (ISCP). The document discusses essential contingency plan elements and processes, highlights specific considerations and concerns associated with contingency planning for various types of information system platforms, and provides examples to assist readers in developing their own ISCPs." This document explicitly excludes discussion of disaster recovery. Despite the inclusion of "for Federal Information Systems" in the title, SP 800-34 Rev 1 has a great deal of value for all information assurance and business continuity specialists. The scope is defined as "recommended guidelines for federal organizations"(p 14) and the audience is "managers within federal organizations and those individuals responsible for information systems or security at system and operational levels. Indeed, the authors write, "The concepts presented in this document are specific to government systems, but may be used by private and commercial organizations, including contractor systems." They then list a wide range of specific job titles of people likely to find the document useful, including IT managers, CIOs, systems engineers, and system architects. It is also written to assist emergency management personnel who coordinate facility-level contingencies with supporting information system contingency planning activities."(p 15) However, references to Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) in no way prevents the guidelines from serving organizations outside the U.S. federal government.

The authors describe the structure of the document clearly as follows (p16): • Section 2, Background, provides background information about contingency planning, including the purpose of various security and emergency management-related plans, their relationships to ISCPs, and how the plans are integrated into an organization's overall resilience strategy by implementing the six steps of the Risk Management Framework (RMF)…. • Section 3, Information System Contingency Planning Process, details the fundamental planning principles necessary for developing an effective contingency capability. This section presents contingency planning guidelines for all elements of the planning cycle, including business impact analysis, alternate site selection, and recovery strategies. The principles outlined in this section are applicable to all information systems. The section also discusses the development of contingency plan teams and the roles and responsibilities commonly assigned to personnel during plan activation. • Section 4, Information System Contingency Plan Development, breaks down the activities necessary to document the contingency strategy and develop the ISCP. Maintaining, testing, training, and exercising the contingency plan are also discussed in this section. • Section 5, Technical Contingency Planning Considerations, describes contingency planning concerns specific to the information systems listed in Section 1.3, Scope. The nine appendices provide practical templates and checklists of great utility in BCP. There is so much valuable information here that is offered in a structured, clear presentation that every IA professional concerned with BCP should read – and, I hope, comment on – this draft publication.

This section helps contingency planners identify, select, and implement the appropriate technical contingency measures for their given systems.

Apple leaves Chamber of Commerce, citing green policies

2010-01-09T21:00:00.001-08:00

Don't look for any Apple executives at the next U.S. Chamber of Commerce mixer wearing any of those "Hello, My Name is..." stickers. The trade group has been a very vocal opponent of current legislative efforts to reduce greenhouse gasses Apple's resignation comes in the wake of comments last week from Chamber of Commerce president Thomas J. Donohue who said that his group supported federal legislation to reduce carbon emissions but criticized a bill passed by the House of Representatives this summer "because it is neither comprehensive nor international, and it falls short on moving renewable and alternative technologies into the marketplace and enabling our transition to a lower carbon future." That was apparently the final straw for Apple, which has made a strong push to reduce the environmental impact of its products in recent years. The computer maker has resigned its membership in the business trade organization, citing opposition to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's stance on greenhouse gasses. In a letter to Donohue, Catherine A. Novelli, the company's vice president of worldwide government affairs wrote: As a company we are working hard to reduce our own greenhouse gas emissions by relying on renewable energy at our facilities and designing more energy-efficient products for our customers. ... For those companies who cannot or will not do the same, Apple supports regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and it is frustrating to find the Chamber at odds with us in this effort.

The Washington Post reports that three other companies have pulled out of the group because of its climate policy-Pacific Gas and Electric, PNM Resources, and Exelon. Apple's not the only company to part ways with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over this issue. A fourth company, Nike, resigned from the Chamber of Commerce board, but remains a member. [Hat Tip: SFGate.com's Bottom Line blog]

Acresso who? Macrovision spinoff changes name, again

2010-01-01T11:00:00.001-08:00

Under a legal threat from another software firm with a similar name, Acresso Software Inc. is changing its name to Flexera Software after just 19 months. Acresso sells software such as software its installation utility, InstallShield, and software license manager, FLEXnet, to software vendors and enterprises. The company will officially announce the change next Tuesday, but had already notified partners and customers on Thursday.

It was spun out of Macrovision Corp. after the unit was acquired by venture capital firm Thoma Brava Cressley in April 2008. Macrovision retained the digital rights management (DRM) apps for which it is best-known. Acresso, which the company said was derived from the Latin word "Cresco" for "to grow, increase" faced a "challenge" on its name from ERP software maker Agresso Software , said Randy Littleson, senior vice-president of marketing for Acresso. "Our executive team decided that there were better ways to invest our time and money, and that we didn't need this distraction," Littleson said. "The action we're taking will let us avoid a potential lawsuit." Acresso did not immediately return an e-mailed request for comment. It changed its company name in July to Rovi Corporation. Acresso was founded in 1980 and has annual revenue of about $475 million. That dwarfs Acresso, which has 375 employees and annual revenues of $115 million.

It also has 3,500 employees at 16 offices globally. Flexera will be the fourth name in five years facing long-time users of InstallShield, which was bought by Macrovision in 2004. Perhaps predictably, early public reaction to the new name tended towards the sarcastic. "As if the makers of InstallShield hadn't already done enough damage to their brand, let's just go change names yet again!" wrote Christopher Painter, an InstallShield consultant, on his blog yesterday. "Acresso Software is becoming Flexera Software for no apparent reason. Littleson said the company considered changing its name to Installshield, being that it is its best-known product, but ultimately came to the conclusion that it didn't represent the breadth of its application stable. Go ahead. #ScrambleMyBrands," another tweet said. He dismissed the notion, brought up by some bloggers , that the new name will cause legal trouble or just confusion with a solar and wind power company Flexera. "We're quite aware of it.

We think this is very different, compared to when it was two software companies." That's one of the reasons why it's Flexera Software," he said. "How similar are we to an energy company?

Quick actions help financial firm avoid security disaster

2009-12-26T22:05:00.001-08:00

While most of the IT world has been spared a devastating security attack like Blaster and Sasser for the last few years, the damage wrought by all manner lesser-known computer viruses continues to inflict corporate pain. 10 of the Worst Moments in Network Security History For example, New York City-based investment firm Maxim Group, faced a security ordeal this year when a virus outbreak pummeled the company's Windows-based desktop computers and servers. "On early April 15th, a few people called to say they were having problems with their computers," relates John Michaels, CTO there in describing how the investment firm's IT staff started to get an inkling that morning that something was terribly wrong. "After looking into it, we knew something bad was happening, affecting all our users, and my servers." Malware was disabling applications by corrupting .exe files so they wouldn't open once they were closed, while also making thousands of connections to servers, saturating the network. "It damaged all the .exe files by corrupting them," says Michaels. "People were logging on and getting a blank screen." The virus was altering the registry of the computers. Maxim Group didn't have a centralized antivirus product in place, having allowed various groups to go their own way with differing products. In response, Maxim Group told the approximately 325 computer users not to shut down the computers while Michaels and his team contacted vendors for assistance. The decision to change that practice was made on the spot.

It wasn't easy. "Symantec took about three days to identify what the variant of the virus was," Michaels says. "They said they had never seen a variant of this." The virus was finally identified as a variant on "Sality," an older virus that strikes at .exe and now also will install a backdoor and Trojan. "We asked Symantec, are we the only ones telling you about this? Antimalware vendor Symantec was called in to set up a centralized antivirus server, while also attempting to analyze what the malware was and advise on clean-up. And they said 'We have 3 million infected.'"Cleaning up more than 300 virus-riddled PCs was a huge headache. In the course of beating back Sality, Michaels says he also contacted another vendor, Cymtec Systems, whose product he had demoed, to install the security vendor's Sentry gateway, which monitors traffic and bandwidth usage, enforcing Web site policies and blocking antimalware. Symantec advised total re-imaging of the computers, which Maxim Group undertook, a process that consumed several weeks.

The reason for the Sentry gateway is to prevent employees from going to "Web sites they probably shouldn't," especially as Web surfing raises the risks of malware infection, Michaels says. To this day, Michaels says he's not sure how the Sality variant got into Maxim Group's network to explode in that April 15 outbreak. "Maybe it was a Web site or a USB device, I don't know," Michaels says. But the virus outbreak also showed there was communication from the infected PCs to what might be a botnet. "They were connecting to rogue Internet sites," Michaels says, saying Sentry would help monitor for that kind of activity in the future. But on that day things changed in terms of the investment firm deciding to enforce stricter Internet usage policies. "Before this episode, we allowed social network sites, but we don't now," Michaels says. And are the old Blaster and Sasser worms that struck with such devastation over half a decade ago gone? Social networking sites are gaining a reputation as places where malware gets distributed, and if there's no clear business reason for using them, they're put off limits.

Unfortunately not, says the "Top Cyber Security Risks" report released this week by SANS Institute in collaboration with TippingPoint and Qualys. The report — which examined six months of data related to 6,000 organizations using intrusion-prevention gear and 100 million vulnerability-assessment scans on 9 million computers to get a picture of various attack types — notes "Sasser and Blaster, the infamous worms of 2003 and 2004, continue to infect many networks."

More Mac bundles for the masses

2009-12-21T13:00:00.001-08:00

Deeply-discounted bundles have turned the difficult process of selling Mac shareware into a viral, timed event with plenty of pomp and circumstance. Two bundles have just crept up on the horizon, both of which offer an impressive variety of applications at a price calculated for an impulse buy. It's kind of like injecting the abilities of Billy Mays and Vince Offer into a package that's easier on the eyes and ears.

First, there's TheMacSale 2, brought to you by MacZOT, a vendor who is no stranger to these kinds of deals. But why buy all this software for a song when you can get a song with it? Up for grabs in this bundle is CrossOver Games, Picturesque, HoudahGeo, MacJournal, Morph Age Regular, Opacity Express, Searchlight, Vinoteka, Stone iMaginator and Stor. Yes, you also get "The Mac Sale - The Song!" with these ten applications, all for $50. Then there's TheMacBundles, which is brought to you by Steve Becker of MacEase software. If you order in the next seven days, you'll get BlogAssist, too. In this package, you can get iPhoto Library Manager, MYStuff, MyTunesRSS, PDFClerk Pro, Simon, Spyder, WebPrint Plus, Yum and Yummy FTP. Order in the next 21 days and they'll throw in A-Dock X and FolderGlance at no extra cost.

That's 12 apps in all for $50. Whoa there, Mr. Pitchman. Bundles have become a great opportunity for lesser-known Mac applications to get exposure. You may be asking yourself, "what's with all of these bundles?" That's a very good question. How many of the above apps did you know about before you read this? Given how prevalent these bundles have become, however, I'm worried that the community isn't finding new software through other channels.

Personally, I can only name five; I've tried three of them. Case in point, I've seen many folks abuzz on Twitter over a bundle that's being given away for free, but I don't see those people looking for more Mac software on MacUpdate and VersionTracker. Nonetheless, in giving out cheap licenses to use their software, there's often a little more incentive for users to try out the software than there would be in the usual timed-trial mode that much of Mac shareware uses. Instead, many of them are waiting for another bundle before they invest in more Mac shareware. Ideally, this translates into better word of mouth and free publicity for many months and years to come.

The scourge of complexity

2009-12-16T03:05:00.001-08:00

While the definition of cloud computing is at best a bit fuzzy, the goal of cloud computing is extremely clear. As will be explained in this newsletter, complexity is the enemy of cloud computing. 11 cloud computing companies to watch In a recent article, Geir Ramleth the CIO of Bechtel stated that he benchmarked his organization against some Internet-based companies. That goal is to make a significant improvement in the cost effective, elastic provisioning of IT services. According to that article, "Bechtel operates 230 applications, and it runs 3.5 versions per application.

When you look at Salesforce.com, not only are they running one application, but they are running one version and they are only running it in one location," Ramleth says. That means it maintains approximately 800 applications at any given time. We don't see how Bechtel or any other IT organization will be able to fundamentally reduce cost and become more agile if it continues to offer a highly complex set of services. If his organization wants to make a change to some component of the IT infrastructure that supports one of the 230 applications they operate, they have to devote additional time to quality assurance to test how the change impacts each version of the application. In the example that Ramleth gave, his organization will incur significant extra cost in part because it has to allocate resources to support on average 3.5 versions of each application. Bechtel is not the only IT organization that supports a complex environment.

We believe that any IT organization that is serious about cloud computing has to get serious about simplifying the services that it provides. Many IT organizations utilize multiple WAN providers, develop a lot of custom applications, perform extensive customization of third-party applications, and have multiple systems for functions such as enterprise resource planning or supply chain management. What do you think? Is any effort being made to simplify that environment? Do you work in a highly complex IT environment?

Write to us and let us know. If you have a few minutes to fill out the survey, it will help us to cut through the hype and understand what IT organizations are actually doing relative to cloud computing. Also, we are performing a survey to help identify the concrete steps that IT organizations are taking to implement cloud computing.

Infosys revenue, profits slide in tough market

2009-12-10T18:00:00.001-08:00

Infosys Technologies, India's second largest outsourcer, reported a decline in revenue and profit in U.S. dollar terms for the quarter ended September 30, as clients continued to hold back IT spending, and negotiated lower prices. Profits were also down by 0.9 percent to $317 million. The company has also forecast declining revenue for the quarter ahead, and for the fiscal year ending March 31. Infosys said on Friday that its revenue was US$ 1.15 billion for the quarter ended September 30, down by 5.1 percent over revenue in the same quarter last year. The results were however better than was forecast by the company in July.

Revenue for the fiscal year is expected to be in the range of $4.6 billion and $4.62 billion, down by 1.0 to 1.3 percent from a year ago. Revenue is forecast to be in the range of $1.15 billion and $1.16 billion for the quarter ending December 31, which is a year-on-year decline of between 0.5 to 1.4 percent. The decline is smaller than the 3.1 to 4.6 percent decline the company forecast in July. Infosys did a little better in the quarter in Indian Rupees, partly because of currency fluctuations. The company's results for the quarter are in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The effects of the recession on outsourcing still lingered in the third quarter, said Siddharth Pai, a partner at outsourcing consultancy firm Technology Partners International (TPI). Besides, the third quarter has traditionally been the weakest quarter in the year for outsourcing deals, he added. Revenue grew by 3.1 percent in the quarter from a year ago, while profit grew 7.5 percent.

Staff addition was down dramatically from 5,927 additions a year ago. The company added 35 clients and 1,548 new staff in the quarter. The company had 105,453 employees as on September 30, 2009. The National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), a trade body of Indian outsourcers, said in July that India's revenue from outsourcing services to clients abroad will grow by about 4 to 7 percent in the Indian fiscal year to March 31, 2010. In the fiscal year to March 31, 2009, the revenue grew by 16.3 percent to $46.3 billion, according to Nasscom estimates. There will be a lot of pent-up demand for Indian outsourcers in the next two quarters, but growth in revenue will not reach the about 30 percent Indian outsourcers had before the recession, he said. An improvement in business is expected in the fourth quarter, Pai said.

Companies that were considering outsourcing to India have already done so, and new business will be incremental, he added.

Cisco lays out why it might let Tandberg go free

2009-12-05T08:03:00.001-08:00

Cisco Systems may be laying the groundwork for dropping its US$3 billion offer for videoconferencing vendor Tandberg despite the emphasis it has placed on video as the future of communications. On Oct. 1, Cisco announced an agreement to buy Tandberg for 153.5 Norwegian Kroner per share, approximately the price of the company's shares at that time. In a blog post on Monday, Cisco Chief Strategy Officer Ned Hooper responded to reports that the deal might fall through by emphasizing the risks and costs involved and saying the purchase would have to make financial sense in the end. "The bottom line is that Cisco will always act with fiscal prudence," Hooper wrote. The offer was recommended unanimously by Tandberg's board of directors but still requires approval by 90 percent of the company's shareholders by Nov. 9. But shareholders representing 24 percent of Tandberg's shares reportedly don't plan to accept the deal.

Last week, reports citing unnamed sources said Cisco would drop the offer rather than raise it. They think Tandberg can succeed on its own but are open to a higher offer from Cisco or another suitor, according to reports last month. That might come as a shock to the industry after Cisco increasingly emphasized the importance of video to its networking and its business over the past three years. But in his blog entry, Hooper said the potential rewards of the deal have received more attention than the risks and costs. The company has expanded its Telepresence line of high-definition videoconferencing systems, developed automated video editing and output software, and acquired set-top box maker Scientific-Atlanta in 2006 (US$7 billion) and mini-camcorder maker Pure Digital Technologies earlier this year ($590 million). Cisco has said Tandberg's gear would be integrated into its overall collaboration portfolio. Those include the challenges of Cisco's first acquisition of a European public company, the complexity of integrating Tandberg's Norwegian and U.K. operations, and currency exchange expenses that have added about $100 million to the overall cost of the deal, he wrote.

But by laying out the potential downsides of the deal while emphasizing fiscal responsibility, Hooper may have been preparing a way to back out if the deal doesn't win shareholder approval by the deadline, or showing the objectors that a fatter offer won't be forthcoming. "We believe the time is right for Cisco and Tandberg to come together," Hooper wrote. "(H)owever, no acquisition should be pursued or completed if it runs counter to the broader principles of prudence and financial fairness." Hooper said the deal was a good one and called Cisco's offer a premium of more than 38 percent over Tandberg's share price before July 15, when reports of a possible transaction first surfaced.

IBM aims at Google, Microsoft with new Webmail

2009-11-29T23:00:00.001-08:00

IBM has launched LotusLive iNotes, an on-demand e-mail, calendaring and contact management system meant to compete with the likes of Gmail and Microsoft Exchange, the company said Friday. IBM is aiming the software at large enterprises that want to migrate an on-premise e-mail system to SaaS (software as a service), particularly for users who aren't tied to a desk, such as retail workers. Pricing starts at US$3 per user per month, undercutting Google Apps Premier Edition, which costs $50 per user per year. It is also hoping to win business from smaller companies interested in on-demand software but with concerns about security and service outages, such as those suffered by Gmail in recent months.

While alluding to Google's service outages, Poulley acknowledged that no company can guarantee 100 percent uptime for on-demand applications. LotusLive iNotes is based on technology IBM purchased from the Hong Kong company Outblaze. "What we brought to Outblaze and to the marketplace is what you'd expect from IBM in terms of security, reliability and privacy," said Sean Poulley, vice president of online collaboration. But IBM has a long-standing track record of running "the world's mission-critical systems," he said. Overall, the main point of interest in IBM's announcement is price, said Gartner analyst Matt Cain. "Outblaze always sold low-cost mailboxes and that's what this is," he said. "Google's long been in it, Microsoft's long been in it. IBM will also have an opportunity to win customers from Microsoft who aren't ready to migrate to the upcoming Exchange 2010 release, given the headaches and investments involved, Poulley said. Now IBM's in it." However, that's not to say IBM's brand on the software isn't of some value, Cain added. ."From an enterprise perspective, you'd rather buy e-mail from IBM than a company called Outblaze." It's unlikely that IBM's pricing strategy will cause competitors to lower fees for their offerings, according to Cain.

For one thing, Microsoft already has a $2 per month Exchange Online option called "Deskless Worker," Cain noted.

Ellison mocks Salesforce.com's 'itty bitty' application

2009-11-24T13:05:00.001-08:00

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison mocked on-demand CRM (customer relationship management) vendor Salesforce.com during a shareholder meeting Wednesday, saying its "itty bitty" application depends on Oracle's products. "We think Salesforce.com has got terrific underlying technology," he said in response to a question from a shareholder about Salesforce.com and the competitive pressures posed by the cloud-computing model. "In fact, everything they run is on an Oracle database. But they don't stop there. We think the Oracle database is fabulous cloud technology. On top of the Oracle database they build their applications using - what is it?

Oh, my God." Ellison's comments follow reports that Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff will be speaking at Oracle's OpenWorld conference during an "executive solution session." Salesforce is also a sponsor of OpenWorld this year. Oracle middleware. His appearance seemed surprising to some observers, given the history between the two companies. Indeed, Ellison's scathingly sarcastic remarks on Wednesday made it sound like the companies' rivalry has not dimmed at all. "Let's look at their technology," he said. "They buy computers. Ellison was an early investor in Salesforce.com and once sat on its board, but left after a falling out with Benioff. They rent a room.

They buy electricity and plug it in. Uh, they put the computers in the room. They then buy an Oracle database to run on those computers and then they buy Oracle middleware to build their applications. A Salesforce.com spokesman wouldn't directly address Ellison's comments, but pointed to the company's successes. "Customers are moving towards cloud computing and away from traditional software," said Bruce Francis, vice president of corporate strategy, via e-mail. "We have more than 63,000 customers experiencing success in the cloud. Oh, excuse me, and then they build this little itty-bitty application for salesforce automation. ... Most of the technology at Salesforce.com is ours." In addition, a long list of companies have "chucked" Salesforce.com's software and replaced it with Oracle's on-demand CRM software, Ellison claimed. And, as we reported in August, the number of customers grew 32% in Q2."

3Com: one of the longest running shows in networking

2009-11-19T02:00:00.001-08:00

Now consumed by HP in a $2.7 billion deal announced Wednesday, 3Com has a long and varied history, summarized here. 1979 – 3Com is founded, and it turns out that Bob Metcalfe, the father of Ethernet, is the father of 3Com, too. He stepped down as CEO in 2001, but he remains chairman. 1994 – The company buys switch maker Synernetics, remote-access server maker Centrum Communications and ATM vendor NiceCom. 1995 – 3Com buys hub and switch vendor ChipCom for $775 million. 1997 – The company spends $7.3 billion to buy U.S. Robotics, the maker of modems and Palm handhelds. 2000 – 3Com gets out of the large enterprise switching market and spins off Palm as a separate entity. 2003 – The company creates a joint venture with Huawei – H-3C - in an effort to get back into large enterprise switching. He holds the post of CEO for three years. 1981 – The company ships its first product, an Ethernet adapter. 1984 – Its initial public offering yields $10 million in stock revenue. 1986 – The company relies on sales of NICs, servers and its network operating system 3+ for most of its sales. 1988 – 3Com ships 3+Open, the first network operating system based on Microsoft's LAN Manager. 1987 – The company buys Bridge Communications, maker of multi-protocol bridges. 1990 – Facing stiff competition from Microsoft and Novell, 3Com gets out of the network operating system business. 1990 – Eric Benhomou is named president and CEO of the company.

The headquarters moves from Santa Clara to Marlborough, Mass. 2004 – 3Com buys IPS maker Tipping Point for $430 million. 2006 – 3Com buys out the H-3C joint venture for $882 million. 2007 – Bain Capital agrees to buy the company with help from Huawei for $2.2 billion, but federal regulators block the deal. 3Com spins out Tipping Point as a separate publicly held business. 2008 – Robert Mao is named CEO and sets up shop in China where H-3C claims dominance. 2009 – 3Com takes another run at the U.S. large enterprise market. The company agrees to be bought by HP for $2.7 billion.

Apple introduces its first home server

2009-11-13T16:04:00.001-08:00

Among the retooling of the more prominent iMac and MacBook lines earlier Tuesday, Apple quietly introduced its first small-scale server, a $999 box based on the Mac mini that one analyst called the only significant announcement of today. Apple installs the server edition of Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, which costs $499 when sold separately. "This is the one interesting thing about today's announcements," argued Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research. "It's perfect for a very small business or a classroom, but it will make a sweet home server as well." Apple did not pitch the Mac mini-based server as at-home hardware - instead, it touted the new system as "perfect for any small business or group" - but Gottheil sees it as the company's first move into a potentially broader market. "This wouldn't be bad in the house," he said. "It has a bunch of USB ports, 4GB of memory, it can connect to a home wireless network, and decent if not great graphics." The $999 Mac mini is equipped with a 2.53GHz Intel Core Duo processor, an Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics chipset - the same as used in the entry-level MacBook and the three least-expensive MacBook Pro models - five USB 2.0 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet connection and single FireWire 800 port. Dubbed the "Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server," the new device is essentially a $799 Mac mini with two 500GB hard drives squeezed into the petite case, compared to the one 320GB drive in the stand-alone mini.

Apple yanked the optical drive from the Mac mini to fit the second hard drive in the case, a potential problem unless users pop for the $99 external SuperDrive. Even though Gottheil trumpeted the Mac mini as a potential rival to Windows in the home server market, he realized that the biggest audience was very-small-to-small businesses. "This is significant," he said. "This says Apple is going to put a real toe-hold in really small business. And unlike the Time Capsule, Apple's backup and wireless device, the Mac mini lacks a built-in router. It's a 'My First Server' device, a 'My First Pony,' for small offices that want to get serious about backup and hosting their own e-mail." Its other selling point, said Gottheil, is the unlimited user allowance that comes with Snow Leopard Server. "You can have as many users as you want connected to this," Gottheil said. "You can't get that from Microsoft for this price." Microsoft has been selling a version of its Windows operating system specially crafted for home servers since 2007; it's working on a Windows 7-compatible edition of Windows Home Server, but has delayed the release of that upgrade, citing the need for additional testing . The Windows 7-ready upgrade is now set to ship before the end of the year. The Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server is available now on Apple's online store, and will ship within 24 hours of ordering.

Windows Home Server supports a maximum of 10 users.

Space agency wants volunteers to fly to Mars. Sort of.

2009-11-08T07:00:00.001-08:00

The European Space Agency wants volunteers to take the 520-day trip to Mars. Starting in 2010, an international crew of six will simulate a 520-day round-trip to Mars, including a 30-day stay on the Martian surface. Well ok, a simulated version of the red planet voyage but you would get to go to Moscow and pretend you were on a spaceship. The 'mission' is part of the Mars500 program being conducted by ESA and Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) to study human psychological, medical and physical capabilities and limitations in space through fundamental and operational research.

For the surface exploration, half of the crew will move to the facility's Martian simulation module and the hatch to the rest of the facility will be closed, ESA stated. NetworkWorld Extra: 10 NASA space technologies that may never see the cosmosTop 10 cool satellite projects The crew will follow a program designed to simulate a 250-day journey to Mars, a 30-day surface exploration phase and 240 days travelling back to Earth. The reason for such research? When contemplating missions beyond Low Earth Orbit, such as to the Moon and Mars, daily crew life and operational capabilities may be affected by the hazardous space environment, the need for full autonomy and resourcefulness, the isolation, the interaction with fellow crewmembers and other aspects, the ESA stated. When preparing for long-duration space missions beyond the six month range currently undertaken by Expedition crews on the International Space Station (ISS), medical and psychological aspects become an issue of major importance. Potential Mars explorers should be 20-50 years old, motivated, in good health and no taller than 6ft.

Candidates must have a background and work experience in medicine, biology, life support systems engineering, computer engineering, electronic engineering or mechanical engineering, the ESA stated. They should speak one of the working languages: English and Russian. Except for weightlessness and radiation, the simulations will be as close to a real Mars mission as possible including: • The crew will live and work in a facility in Moscow, which has been specifically designed for the needs of these simulations. Additionally, private communication to family and friends will be limited comparable to a spaceflight situation.• During work time the crew will conduct scientific experiments, perform physical exercise, as well as tasks related to maintenance of the facility, life support system control and maintenance, sanitary and hygienic procedures Selection will be based on education, professional experience, medical fitness and social habits. The facility comprises a medical module: it will accommodate up to 2 crewmembers in case of illness, and has equipment for routine medical and laboratory investigations; living quarters with 6 individual compartments; a kitchen-dining room, living room and a toilet; a Mars landing module, which will only be used during the 30 day Mars orbiting phase and; a storage module containing food supplies, an experimental greenhouse, sauna and gym.• Nutrition and hygiene of the crewmembers will be comparable to that on-board the ISS, i.e. food will be predefined and carefully rationed, there will be no shower, smoking and consumption of alcoholic beverages will not be allowed.• The crew will largely be autonomous, which will be expressed in independent decision-making, control of the environmental situation and of consumable resources, to name a few.• A signal passage delay of up to 20 minutes one-way during communication of the crew and the ground-based control center will be gradually built in with the aim of simulating a real interplanetary mission. Following an initial assessment, potential candidates will have to submit results from medical tests and will then be invited for interview, to be screened in a process similar to that used in astronaut selection.

You have to be a citizen of ESA Member States meaning: Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Spain, France, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Norway, The Netherlands, Sweden and Canada. The kicker?

Real estate firm plans mobile management upgrade

2009-11-02T21:06:00.001-08:00

BoxTone Inc. today announced its BlackBerry management tools are being extended to a variety of smartphones, including the iPhone, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile devices and smartphones using ActiveSync. One real estate services company using Boxtone version 4, Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) in Chicago, plans to migrate to version 5 in two months, said Joe Ryan, senior vice president of IT operations in the Americas for JLL, in an e-mail. The new version, Boxtone 5.0, will start at $35 per user , according to BoxTone officials.

Ryan said the new version will help JLL monitor and manage ActiveSync devices, and could provide self-service features to help remote users activate and provide some basic management of devices on their own. He didn't say what devices using ActiveSync might be under BoxTone management. Ryan said JLL has invested in BoxTone to improve the user experience for about 4,000 workers using BlackBerry devices. BoxTone helps IT workers know when a problem with server software develops even before most users notice the problem and call with complaints, Ryan said. BoxTone "definitely saves us some money," he said, by reducing the number of trouble tickets that users create and by helping to spot users not using their BlackBerry devices so JLL can reclaim the BlackBerry Enterprise Server licenses to save money. If a wireless carrier is having network problems, the IT department can notify the users early. "We have had cases where an entire region of the country was down for one carrier, and we can e-mail users in that area, letting them know their carrier is having issues," he said.

Ryan called the BoxTone software "more of the Cadillac" version of tools he reviewed, which included Conceivium and BesMon, which is built into the BES server.

DEMO: Enroute wants to be Salesforce.com of postage

2009-10-28T14:00:00.001-07:00

">Enroute Systems Corp. today launched a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application that its CEO claims will save companies up to 30% off their shipping bills while getting their packages delivered just as fast. Enroute's product, ShipIt!, offers real-time pricing and delivery time information on half-a-dozen shipping vendors, from the big companies to unknown regional shippers that are often cheaper and faster, McCall said. In an attempt to reduce time and complexity, many companies ship packages using one or two favored vendors, such as the U.S. Postal Service, UPS or Federal Express, using next-day-air as a standard, said Enroute founder and CEO Keith McCall. Its dashboard can also let shippers broaden their options to, for example, ground shipping, which is just as fast and cheaper than next-day-air for destinations less than 200 miles away, McCall said.

ShipIt is targeted at U.S. companies that spend more than $100,000 a year on shipping. ShipIt also crunches and presents statistics to help users figure out if their shipping vendor is imposing undue delivery surcharges after the fact for things like overweight packages and incorrect addresses. "Surcharges can kill you," said McCall, who started Enroute last year after leaving his job as CTO of Exchange service provider Azaleos Corp., McCall's ambition is no less than to "become the Salesforce.com of the transportation management industry," he said. Those include Internet retailers and many law firms. Enroute, which is based in Bellevue, Wash., already claims a number of customers, including Seattle-area e-commerce retailers such as Cutter&Buck and Zumiez. But ShipIt can make sense for even eBay Power Sellers due to Enroute's friendly startup cost (It charges 10 cents to a dollar per package, and claims it can shave $1 to $3 off the average $12 per-parcel shipping fee). That, claimed McCall, is far cheaper than incumbent client apps offered by companies such as Kewill or Pitney Bowes. Enroute has received a total of $1.25 million in venture funding.

The software is hosted on Amazon.com's EC2, with a separate data center to provide redundancy.

From Sidekick to Gmail: A short history of cloud computing outages

2009-10-22T09:05:00.001-07:00

This past week's Microsoft-T-Mobile-Sidekick data loss mess is the latest in a string of high profile cloud computing outages that have grabbed headlines over the past couple of years. Here's a short history of cloud computing SNAFUs: Microsoft Danger outage: Contacts, calendar entries, photographs and other personal information of T-Mobile Sidekick users looks to be lost for good following a service disruption at Sidekick provider Danger, a Microsoft subsidiary. Inevitably, the coverage of the initial outage (as well as cloud security breaches) is followed by explanations of why the outage happened (human error, network equipment, hackers, etc.) and analysis stories pointing out the pitfalls of putting your faith in the cloud.

The amount of data and number of users affected wasn't disclosed by Microsoft or T-Mobile, but Sidekick support forums were buzzing with pleas from users looking for tips on how to restore their devices or get their data back. Various explanations have been served up by the vendor, from routing errors to server maintenance issues. Google Gmail fails…again: When Google's Gmail faltered on Sept. 24, it wasn't down for more than a couple of hours, but it was the second outage during the month and the latest in a disturbing string of outages for Google's cloud-based offerings, including Google search, Google News and Google Apps over the past 18 months. Some have come to Google's defense, saying that even though the company has had its share of outages, we are talking about mainly free services (you get what you pay for, in other words). Twitter goes down…and yes, that's news: While Twitter had been keeping its Fail Whale in hiding more often than not, a big Twitter outage that lasted throughout the morning and into early afternoon in early August had social networking types fuming. eBay's PayPal crashes: The PayPal online payments system failed a couple of times in August, leaving millions of customers unable to complete transactions. A denial-of-service attack was blamed for the problem.

A network hardware issue was fingered as the culprit for the outage, which lasted for between 1 and 4.5 hours, depending on how you look at it. Rackspace pays up: Rackspace was forced to pay out between $2.5 million and $3.5 million in service credits to customers in the wake of a power outage that hit its Dallas data center in late June. It cost PayPal millions of dollars in lost business; it's unclear how much it cost merchants. Rackspace, which offers a variety of hosting and cloud services for enterprise customers, suffered power generator failures on June 29 that caused customer servers to go down for part of the day. This was only a test release of Azure, so observers noted that this obviously wasn't as big a deal as a production service outage. More disruptions followed and Rackspace kept customers up to date via its blog. Windows Azure test release goes down: Early adopters of Microsoft's cloud-computing network Windows Azure suffered an overnight outage over a weekend in mid-March during which their applications being hosted on the network weren't available.

Separately, Microsoft also suffered a Hotmail messaging system outage in March. Salesforce.com kicks off the Year of the Cloud Outage: As CIO.com's Thomas Wailgum reported in January, Salesforce.com suffered a service disruption for about an hour on Jan. 6 due to a core network device failing because of memory allocation errors. IDG News Service contributed to this story. Amazon S3 storage service knocked out: We actually have to go back to summer of 2008 to find coverage of the last major Amazon S3 cloud network outage, which lasted for 7 to 8 hours and followed another outage earlier last year caused by too many authentication requests.

iTunes gains Automatically Add to iTunes feature

2009-10-17T00:00:00.001-07:00

One of the often requested features for iTunes has been the ability to set a folder for it to watch, automatically adding any items you drop in that folder to its library. In typical Apple fashion, it's not exactly what people were asking for, but Apple's interpretation of what they want. In iTunes 9, Apple has quietly added this feature, although I wouldn't blame you for not having noticed its existence. When you install iTunes 9, it automatically creates an Automatically Add to iTunes folder in your ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music folder (or under ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media if you created a new library after installing iTunes 9). When you put an iTunes-compatible media file in this folder, it will, as the name suggests, be added to iTunes automatically.

Whenever you drop any file into that folder, it's instantly added to iTunes if the application is running. In my limited testing, I've found that it pretty much works as advertised. If not, it gets added the next time iTunes is launched. And if you ever delete or rename the Automatically Add to iTunes folder, iTunes simply creates a new one for you the next time it is launched. It even looks for files in subfolders you create and adds them to the library as well.

However, it does have a lot of caveats. You can be pretty assured that if the video was downloaded from the Internet, it will not be supported by iTunes. For one thing, iTunes's list of supported formats, especially in the video department, is comically short. In such a case, iTunes will move it to a Not Added subfolder within the Automatically Add to iTunes folder. Still, there are other problems.

But that's to be expected because iTunes has never exactly supported a host of media formats. When users asked for an option to direct iTunes to a folder, they really wanted an option to direct iTunes to any folder. So if you have a huge collection of media in your Movies folder or on an external hard disk drive containing files that you'd like to automatically add to iTunes, you'll still have to move them to that particular folder. What Apple has done, on the other hand, is created a pre-designated folder for the task and not given an option to change it to any other location. What's the point, then?

Well, you say, we can just use the Automatically Add to iTunes folder as our primary movies folder, then-maybe even move it to a location of our choosing, and leave behind an alias to take its place. You can just drag and drop them onto the iTunes icon in the Dock and be done with it. Wouldn't that work? Not only does iTunes not accept anything added to that folder if you move it, but the presence of the alias prevents iTunes from creating a new version of the folder either. Not so much.

And when iTunes does add media files from the Automatically Add to iTunes folder, it moves them into its media folder and organizes them as it normally would, even if you have the option to do so disabled under iTunes's advanced preferences. The only possible use I can see if for you to set it as the default download location for media files you purchase/download off the Internet, so that they can automatically be added to iTunes without your having to do so (and even there, Apple has recommended you don't use it for incomplete files). I hope Apple rethinks this and gives users the freedom to use any folder they want and makes iTunes stop moving the media files around if the user doesn't want it to. It also deletes any subfolders you create within that folder (although that's a logical conclusion, given that they're useless if the media files you put in them never stay there). In short, I don't think the feature is very useful in the form Apple chose to implement it. It's still a (very small) step in the right direction though.

Amazon.com to pay $150,000 to settle suit challenging take-back of 1984

2009-10-11T14:04:00.001-07:00

Amazon.com Inc. has agreed to pay $150,000 to settle a federal lawsuit brought by a Michigan high school student and an California academic whose electronic copies of George Orwell's novel, 1984 were deleted from their Kindle devices in mid-July. On July 16, Amazon had removed the novels 1984 and Animal Farm from its Kindle e-book store, as well as from users' digital lockers and Kindle e-book readers after learning that they had been placed in the store by a third party that didn't have the rights to the books. Michael Aschenbrener, the attorney for student Justin Gawronski, 17, and Tony Bruguier, said the two men are donating the settlement monies to charity. "Neither will receive a flat cent," he said today in a telephone interview. The Amazon move ignited a firestorm of debate about customer rights with electronic books.

Aschenbrener, like others critical of Amazon's initial move, noted the irony of deleting "1984" from users' Kindles, since the novel depicts a totalitarian state loaded with civil rights repressions. Less than a week after removing the books from users' Kindle devices, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos issued a strong public apology, calling the company's handling of illegally sold copies of the e-books "stupid [and] thoughtless." Aschenbrener said he believes Amazon learned a valuable lesson in the case, one that he hopes other digital media companies take note of. "The lesson here is that media companies have to be careful about respecting users' rights," said the attorney Michael Aschenbrener of Kamber Edelson in Chicago. "Digital books are different than traditional books, but not that different." For example, an owner of a traditional book would never consent to the sudden arrival of a bookseller at his door demanding the return of a book, he said. "If anything, other companies are hopefully not interested in going through the PR nightmare that Amazon did," the attorney said. The vast majority of the $150,000 to be paid by Amazon.com will go to charities, as stipulated in the eight-page settlement filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle on Sept. 25. The case was described on Friday as "closed" in the online court records system known as PACER. Gawronski, based in Michigan, could not be reached for comment, but had said before the settlement that he had taken notes along with "1984," but when the e-book was taken back by Amazon, the notes only pointed to locations where the text went missing, making the notes fairly useless. Aschenbrener said Bruguier, an academic based in California, has chosen not to comment on the case. Amazon had paid Gawronski $30 prior to the settlement as compensation for the loss of the book.

EMC executive takes over at storage vendor Xiotech

2009-10-06T04:00:00.001-07:00

EMC executive Alan Atkinson is taking over as CEO of Xiotech, a storage company that just secured $10 million in new financing. Glassmeyer is also general partner of Oak Investment Partners, which owns a majority stake in Xiotech. Nine data storage companies to watch Atkinson was co-founder and CEO of WysDM, a data protection vendor sold to EMC in April 2008. Atkinson remained at EMC as vice president of the company's Storage Software Group, but on Thursday was announced as Xiotech's new CEO. Xiotech said its previous CEO, Casey Powell, will remain on the board of directors and will be a "strategic advisor to Atkinson." "With his extensive knowledge of and experience with data storage, Alan Atkinson is the right leader to take Xiotech to the next level," Ed Glassmeyer of Xiotech's board of directors said in an announcement.

Atkinson's 21-year career includes positions at StorageNetworks, Goldman Sachs and AT&T Bell Laboratories. Xiotech, based in Eden Prairie, Minn., plans to use the cash to expand its Intelligent Storage Element technology with new products to be released early next year. He takes over at Xiotech just after the company announced a $10 million funding round from private investors. Xiotech says its ISE architecture is designed to provide 100% usable storage capacity, to improve efficiency but without a performance hit. Atkinson marked his first day on the job at Xiotech with a blog post. "I can honestly say, after 20+ years in the storage industry (I'm really not THAT old), I've never seen a company this size with so many talented storage folks," he wrote. "We have more patents than most companies five times our size." Follow Jon Brodkin on Twitter

Reports: Microsoft's 'Courier' tablet to compete with Apple

2009-09-29T05:05:00.001-07:00

Microsoft is working on a tablet-style computer that could compete with Apple's rumored device, and may be in the final stages of prototyping, according to multiple reports on the Internet yesterday. Other features include the ability to use either a stylus or multi-touch gestures to operate the Courier, as well as a camera embedded in the device's case. The device, which Gizmodo first reported on, has been dubbed the "Courier" and resembles a book more than a traditional tablet, as it sports dual 7-inch screens that face each other when the system is opened. Gizmodo posted a concept video demonstration of the Courier as well as several images - although not photographs - of the device on its site Tuesday.

Others have confirmed the Gizmodo account. According to Gizmodo, the Courier is in the "late prototype" stage, and is being created by Pioneer Studios, a group within Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices division, which is also responsible for the Xbox, Zune and Windows Mobile. "Courier appears to be at a stage where Microsoft is developing the user experience and showing design concepts to outside agencies," said "The Paperboy," an anonymous writer for Gizmodo. CNET's Ina Fried , for example, said sources told her the Courier is legitimate, although it's only one of several design prototypes being explored by a team led by long-time Microsoft executive J. Allard, the Entertainment & Devices group's chief technology officer. "Very interesting idea," said Allan Krans, an analyst with Technology Business Research. "It combines a lot of technology that's been proven, including the Kindle, and the touch interface of the iPhone seems to be there." Krans noted that the Courier seems to blend several past and present Microsoft technologies, including its attempts at promoting pen-style computing in the 1990s and its much newer gesture-based, tabletop "Surface." But the reason why something like the Courier makes sense now - as opposed to the aborted efforts by Microsoft to back pen computing, and this decade's lackluster Tablet PC concept - is because of the company's rival. "The iPhone really changed the way that people interacted with a device like this," said Krans today. The latest round of speculation about Apple's entry came last week, after a Taiwanese publication cited industry sources who claimed that several component suppliers are building parts for an upcoming Apple tablet computer , which will launch in February 2010. Those sources said the Apple device would sport a 9.6-in. screen - considerably less display real estate than the Courier's two 7-in. screens - and will rely on a processor created by P.A. Semi, the Santa Clara, Calif. microprocessor design company that Apple purchased over a year ago . "The Courier looks like a really nice way to do this form factor," said Krans. "It won't have the screen limitations of an iPhone, and would be larger than Apple's rumored tablet." A Microsoft spokeswoman declined to react today to the Courier reports, saying, "Microsoft makes it a practice not to comment on rumors and speculation." Apple has also been the target of talk about tablets.

MIT creates nanotube process that could shrink, speed chips

2009-09-23T20:00:00.001-07:00

Researchers at MIT have found a way to grow the carbon nanotubes that manufacturers need to build smaller, faster computer chips. A key issue that must be resolved: dealing with the tiny copper wires that connect transistors in a processor. As chipmakers like Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices inc. work endlessly to find ways to build smaller and smaller chips , they often run into a multitude of problems.

As the chips shrink in size, so do the wires, making it increasingly difficult for them to maintain the level of current needed to meet performance requirements. Using carbon nanotubes is an interesting idea." The question engineers have faced to date, he added, is "how do you do it?" Gilbert Nessim , a researcher at MIT, said that chip manufacturers have consistently run into trouble by trying to build the nanotubes on a metal surface, which is needed to ensure an electrical contact. That's where the nanotubes come into play. "When we shrink chip features, the interconnections between the transistors get smaller - just like everything else," said Jim McGregor, an analyst at In-Stat. "And when they shrink, the performance isn't the same. Efforts to build carbon nanotubes on metal can face significant problems due to the heat required in the manufacturing process. The MIT scientists used a combination of techniques to create a new process for using nanotubes.

The excess heat, for example, could cause the metals to form alloys that are not conducive to nanotube growth. The techniques included vaporizing the metals tantalum and iron, which settle in layers on a silicon wafer. The researchers also pump ethylene gas into the tube. Then they placed the coated wafer at one end of a quartz tube, which was inserted into a furnace. The gas decomposes at high temperatures and the iron on the wafer catalyzed the formation of carbon nanotubes.

Intel, long looking to create the next generation of chips, is an underwriter of the MIT research. Nessim noted that the technique is based on processes already commonly used in the semiconductor industry. which should make them eaasier - and cheaper - for manufacturers to adopt. Nessim said the semiconductor industry has been interested in finding ways to replace copper wires with nanotubes, but has been slowed by the effort to find a reasonable way to deal with the metal issues. "I hope this [research] may revise that enthusiasm to some point," he said. "At some point, they'll be stuck with copper that does not work and they'll have to find an alternative. He noted that the shift would would entail some reworking of the manufacturing process. "We won't go the way of carbon nanotubes until we've depleted current techniques," he said. "You don't go to something brand new and make a huge investment until you have to. We hope that our insights ... have eased a little bit of some fabrication issues and hope this will match the requirements that they have." Intel, in a statement responding to questions from Computerworld , said they hope such research breakthroughs can help the company switch copper wires to nanotubes by some time after 2015. McGregor suggested that a transition from copper to nanotubes could be some 15 years away.

We don't move at revolutionary steps. Replacing the transistors with nanotubes would be the next step along that line. "You won't replace the connections without looking to replace the transistors," he added. "The first step would be to replace the connections with nanotechnology. We move at evolutionary steps." But McGregor did say that he thinks replacing the copper connectors with nanotubes would just be the beginning for the technology in chipmaking. The second step is to replace the transistors." The transisto r, which acts as a switch, is the building block for the processor. It's even been called the most important invention in the 20th century.

Mac News Briefs: Vectorworks 2010 products unveiled

2009-09-18T10:04:00.001-07:00

Nemetschek North America released the 2010 versions of its Vectorworks line of design software. Building on the integration of the Parasolid 3D modeling core in version 2009, the 2010 edition adds bi-directional associativity features and an intuitive, 3-D modeling environment that features unified views and easy-to-use 3-D snapping for accurate modeling. Tuesday's announcement includes new versions of Designer, Architect, Landmark, Spotlight, Machine Design, Fundamentals, and Renderworks. Vectorworks 2010 also extends Nemetschek's relationship with Siemens PLM Software by integrating the D-Cubed 2D Dimensional Constraint Manager (2D DCM) into the software.

The major improvement in version 1.1 is the addition of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, including support for ten different languages. The VectorWorks Web site lists all of the more than 80 new features in the new 2010 version as well pricing information.-Jackie Dove OCR technology added in Prizmo update Creaceed on Tuesday announced Prizmo 1.1, an update to its image-processing application that allows people to scan documents using a digital camera. Users can save the resulting file in a number of formats, including PDF, RTF, and text, and the contents are indexable by Spotlight. An Intel Mac or PowerMac G5 with at least 64MB of VRAM is required, with 128MB of VRAM recommended. Prizmo 1.1 requires Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later, and is compatible with Mac OS X Snow Leopard. A license for Prizmo costs $40.-Dan Moren Wolfram announces webMathematica 3 Wolfram Research updated webMathematica, adding new performance and development capabilities for its technology for adding dynamic content to the Web. webMathematica 3 integrates both Mathematica 6 and 7 with the latest Web server technology, making the tool ideal for creating Web sites where users compute and visualize the results directly in their browsers.

Pricing information for webMathematica 3 is available by contacting Wolfram.-Philip Michaels Black Ink update offers bug fixes Black Ink 1.1.7, the latest version of Red Sweater Software's crossword puzzle-solving application, was released on Thursday. Other changes in webMathematica 3 include expression language and custom tags that provide a more concise way to call to Mathematica from Web pages; a queuing system that executes long-running or asynchronous computation jobs; support for Wolfram Workbench; a new configurable logging system for tracking different types of errors; the ability for users to write REST and SOAP Web services; and improvements to the kernel monitor and kernel interaction. The update fixes problems with getting puzzles from the Chronicle of Higher Education, removes the now defunct Sydney Morning Herald source, and fixes a number of bugs, including one that could cause downloads to stop working until the app was relaunched. Black Ink requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later and costs $25 for a license.-DM There are also a number of improvements to multi-character answer support.

HP adds Snow Leopard printer drivers after customer complaints

2009-09-12T13:00:00.001-07:00

Hewlett-Packard has added support for an additional 38 printer models or printer series to Snow Leopard, delivering on a promise made shortly after the release of Apple 's new operating system when angry users complained that older devices didn't work after upgrading. According to HP, 38 DeskJet, OfficeJet, and LaserJet drivers were added to those made available on Aug. 28, when Apple launched Snow Leopard . Although a list showing only the new drivers has not been published on either Apple's or HP's Web site, the complete list available on the former has been updated to include the new drivers, said Rick Spillers, a member of HP's Mac Connect team. On Thursday, Apple posted a printer driver update for Mac OS X 10.6 , aka Snow Leopard, but did not call out the specific drivers added to the 51MB driver download.

Among the newly-supported printers are the HP 910 inkjet printer, the DeskJet D1300 series, the OfficeJet 5500 series and the LaserJet M1120. Almost immediately after Apple started selling Snow Leopard, users who upgraded began griping on the company's support forum that their long-reliable printers were not being recognized by the new OS. Others became angry when an HP representative told them they should buy a new printer if a driver wasn't available for Snow Leopard. HP 1280 working!!!" crowed another user, "omarz," in a message Thursday. "I just update[d] to Snow Leopard 10.6.1 and now suddenly it was detected and it's working!" A driver for HP's PSC 1200 series was one of the 38 included in yesterday's update. After Thursday's update by Apple, several users reported on the same support forum that they were now able to use their formerly-bricked printers. "Today, I downloaded all the update software for printers and Mac [Snow Leopard], and everything now works fine," said someone identified as "AndyGump" on the same thread where users complained two weeks ago. "Incredible! HP's Spillers recommended that users update to Mac OS X 10.6.1 before applying the separate driver update. "Make sure that the printer is turned on and connected via [a] USB cable before launching Apple Software Update," said Spillers in an e-mail reply to questions. Apple built support into Snow Leopard for some printer makers' all-in-one devices, adding the functionality to the Image Capture application.

Spillers also said that there has been confusion about how owners of HP all-in-one devices - which both print and scan, and in some cases also fax, documents - get their hardware to work with Snow Leopard. "The other interesting thing I've found is trying to educate customers on the new scan interface for HP inkjet All-in-Ones that we've integrated with Snow Leopard," he said. HP has posted instructions on how to use its all-in-one printer/scanner hardware with Snow Leopard on its customer support site. Looking at the [support] forums, it seems that HP is the only print vendor really participating ... not sure I see much input from other print vendors." Snow Leopard users can manually download the HP driver update from Apple's site, or install it using the Mac's integrated update service. Spillers also took a shot at HP's rivals. "In general," he said, "HP did a great job providing full updated 10.6 drivers for almost all of our products, including LaserJets going back 10+ years.

Mac News Briefs: Default Folder X ready for Snow Leopard

2009-08-18T08:06:00.001-07:00

Add Default Folder X to the list of apps that offer support for Apple's upcoming Mac OS X 10.6 update. St. Clair Software on Monday rolled out Default Folder X 4.3, which adds full support for Snow Leopard to the file dialog enhancement utility.

Default Folder X lets you assign default folders for each application. The utility also makes recently used and favorite files and folders easily accessible, and it lets the Open and Save dialog boxes remember the last folder and file you worked with in each application.

In addition to support for Snow Leopard's 64-bit architecture, Default Folder X 4.3 also fixes a problem that could cause the utility's hierarchical menus to crash under OS X 10.6.

The 4.3 update also works with OS X 10.4 and 10.5. It reduces processor usage when displaying previews and fixes several compatibility problems. Default Folder X 4.3 also provides expert settings to resize all Open and Save dialogs to a user-specified minimum size.

The update is free for users of version 4. Default Folder X costs $35, with updates available for $15 for users who bought the utility before June 1, 2007.-Philip Michaels

Alien Skin Software bundles Photoshop plug-ins

Alien Skin Software has released the Photo Bundle suite, a collection of five plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.

The $595 collection includes Blow Up 2, for enlarging digital images; Exposure 2, which applies film grain to your images to replicate the look of Kodachrome, Polaroids, and more; Brokeh, for selectively blurring your image to create interesting focus effects; Snap Art 2, which turns digital photos into paintings or sketches; and Image Doctor 2, which offers advanced image-restoration tools.

The plug-ins support Photoshop CS3 and CS4 as well as Photoshop Elements 4.0.1 and later. If you already own one of the plug-ins included in the suite, you can purchase the Photo Bundle for $450.-Kelly Turner

Tape 2 PC converts audio cassettes to MP3

Ion Audio has released Tape 2 PC, a $135 dual-cassette player and recorder with a USB 2.0 connection. It's Mac- and PC-compatible, and includes EZ Audio Converter software that helps converts audio on the cassettes to MP3.

The peripheral plugs into your home entertainment system using RCA cables, and lets you dub copies of audio cassettes. The software includes GraceNote MusicID technology, which analyzes your recordings and adds album, artist, and song information automatically.-Peter Cohen

Akvis Sketch 9.0 conversion tool released

Akvis on Monday announced a new version of its Akvis Sketch software for converting photos into pencil and watercolor drawings that features an improved algorithm for photo-to-sketch conversions. In addition, Akvis Sketch 9.0 adds a new parameter field for edge definition and lets users manipulate the saturation of color pencil drawings.

Other additions to version 9.0 include seven presets: B&W, Sketch, WaterColor, Charcoal Low, Charcoal High, Color Pencil Low, Color Pencil High, and Pastel. Users can now import and export a list of presets.

Registered users can upgrade to Akvis Sketch 9.0 for $39. The software costs $72 and runs on OS X 10.4 and later.-PM

Microsoft Frees Linux Driver Source Code

2009-07-27T09:00:00.001-07:00

Microsoft Corp.'s unprecedented release last week of more than 20,000 lines of driver code to the Linux community could put pressure on several top suppliers of closed-source drivers to make similar moves.

Observers note that virtualization vendor VMware Inc., Wi-Fi chip maker Broadcom Corp. and graphics chip maker Nvidia Inc. still decline to offer their Linux drivers under the General Public License, a free software license widely used in the open-source community.

Doing so would allow the drivers to be included in the open-source Linux kernel, making the installation process much smoother. It would also enable developers to tinker with and fix them.

Gordon Haff, an analyst at Illuminata Inc., said he doesn't expect Microsoft's move to persuade those vendors to open their drivers.

Graphics companies like Nvidia, he said, "have been taking heat over Linux drivers for years. But they see their driver technology as just too big a part of their competitive advantage to give much."

And VMware, as "the 800-pound gorilla," doesn't have to release its code, Haff added. "The pressure is more on the Linux distributors to work with VMware than the other way around."

Officials at VMware and Nvidia didn't respond to requests for comment. In a statement, Broadcom said that it "is working with the community to make this happen over the next several months."

Tom Hanrahan, director of Microsoft's Open Source Technology Center, said in a statement that submitting the code for inclusion in the Linux kernel marks "the first time we've released code directly to the Linux community."

The drivers enable Linux virtual machines to run on top of Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization software. They are already available for enterprises in a patch and will be generally available in several months as part of the next major Linux kernel update, said Greg Kroah-Hartman, a longtime Linux developer at Novell Inc. and head of the Linux Driver Project, which works with manufacturers to submit kernel code to the open-source community.

Windows 7 ramp-up will be sharp

2009-07-08T11:00:00.001-07:00

Just more than a year after it launches, Windows 7 will account for nearly half of all the client operating systems Microsoft ships to corporate users, according to forecasts by IDC.

In 2010, Windows 7 will account for 49.5% of Windows operating systems bought by corporations, or nearly 58 million copies, says IDC. Those numbers dwarf Vista, which will account for 15% of the 2010 Windows operating systems Microsoft ships that year (18 million units).

Windows 7 advance sales have been tearing up Amazon.com's best seller list since the OS hit its pre-sale stage more than a week ago.

Windows 7 in Pictures: 10 Cool Desktop Features

To characterize how fast Vista will fade, Windows XP, Vista's predecessor, will account for nearly 35%, or nearly 41 million units, in 2010 even though the OS, which shipped at the end of 2001, will be a year into its extended support phase.

In 2011, Windows 7 will jump to nearly 75% of units shipped while Vista will slip to .5%.

IDC says that Vista will drop completely off the map in 2012, while XP will still account for 15 million units in 2012 and 8.4 million in 2013. Those units will be users who buy Windows 7 and downgrade the OS to XP via rights in their Software Assurance contracts, says Al Gillen, the IDC analyst who tabulated the Windows OS forecasts.

"What happens is Windows 7 comes along and it immediately co-ops Vista's momentum. Vista momentum pretty directly shifts over to Windows 7," says Gillen.

That Windows 7 momentum will translate in 2013 to the new OS accounting for 95% of the operating systems Microsoft sells to businesses. That percentage is up from 90% forecast for 2012.

"At some point users are going to want to move forward," says Gillen. "All you need is demand for one application designed for Windows 7 and you can no longer use XP."

Gillen says users are going to get "trapped" between two products [XP and 7], and once that happens it makes more sense to go forward not backward."

Gillen says Windows 7's XP Mode also will help the transition for users that still have XP applications.

"And for those customers that moved to Vista, it makes sense to me for them to move forward to 7 on a fairly immediate basis," he says.

Microsoft is expected to push Windows 7 to the release-to-manufacturing stage next week and have the final code ready to ship on Oct. 22. Microsoft released the first public beta of Windows 7 in January and a Release Candidate beta in May.

Follow John on Twitter.

NASA looks to launch shuttle Endeavour in July

2009-06-18T00:05:00.001-07:00

After a gaseous hydrogen leak today forced NASA to scrub the launch of the space shuttle Endeavour for the second time, the space agency said it is now looking to try again in July.

Endeavour and its seven-person crew was set to launch at 5:40 a.m. EDT today but the launch was aborted at 1:55 a.m. when the leak was detected at the shuttle's Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate. Today's leak was located in the same area as the one that forced NASA to cancel Endeavour's scheduled June 13 launch.

"We're going to step back and figure out what the problem is and go fix it," said Deputy Space Shuttle Program Manager LeRoy Cain during a briefing today. "Once we get it fixed and we're confident that we have a solution that's going to work and allow us to go fly safely, then we'll proceed forward."

To make sure its engineers have time to figure out and fix the problem, NASA pushed the next scheduled launch date back to July 11.

Astronaut Mark Polansky has been Twittering about his role in the Endeavour crew. About 2:30 a.m. EDT today he wrote, "I'm sure you all know that we postponed again It's a reminder that spaceflight is NOT routine." And then late this morning, he tweeted that the crew will be getting back into a mission training schedule on Monday.

Endeavour's crew is slated to conduct a 16-day mission to expand the Japanese laboratory housed on the International Space Station. NASA has called the operation one of its most technical missions yet - one that will call on the power of three separate robots.

The highly complex mission will include five spacewalks and the use of three robotic arms - two robots working together and one that will "walk" across the outside of the space station.

NASA is still set to launch two lunar satellites - the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite - late on Thursday afternoon. The satellites are scheduled to lift off together aboard an Atlas V rocket between 5 p.m. and 5:32 p.m.

Both satellites will be focused on sending information back to Earth to help NASA scientists determine safe landing sites and resources for a human return to the moon.

Businessman indicted on telecom bribery charges

2009-06-05T11:54:00.001-07:00

A South Korean businessman has been indicted in a U.S. court for his alleged role in a bribery conspiracy related to a US$206 million telecommunications contract with the Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES), the U.S. Department of Justice said.

Gi-Hwan Jeong, age 44, was charged Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas with conspiracy, honest services wire fraud and bribery, the DOJ said in a news release.

Between 2001 and 2006 Jeong conspired with two AAFES officials and others to commit bribery and honest services wire fraud when he agreed to make payments to the officials in the form of cash, travel and entertainment expenses in exchange for their aid in securing and maintaining a $206 million telecommunications contract for Jeong's company, Samsung Rental, the DOJ alleged.

AAFES provides goods and services worth billions of dollars to U.S. military members and their families around the world.

On April 21, Henry Lee Holloway, identified as a recipient of bribes in Jeong's superseding indictment, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia for his role in the conspiracy and for not reporting the bribes he admitted he accepted on his income tax returns. Holloway, of Hamilton, Georgia, worked as an AAFES general store manager at the Central Exchange in South Korea from 2003 through 2007.

Before Jeong's alleged payments, Holloway attempted to terminate the contract between AAFES and Samsung Rental. Holloway had argued that Samsung Rental was not fulfilling the contract, the DOJ said. After the payments, Holloway used his influence to support and expand the contractual relationship, the DOJ said.

Jeong was previously indicted on Dec. 17 solely on bribery charges and was arrested in Dallas on Nov. 19 on a criminal complaint. Jeong's trial is scheduled to begin June 24.