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Is B.Y.O.D Proving To Be A Headache?
May 29, 2012 by admin
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IT managers trying to cope with the growing bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend can expect to see an explosion in the number of smartphones and tablets used by employees in the next few years.
As a result, IT shops won’t be able to provide the security necessary to protect company data, says Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney.
“The number of devices coming in the next few years will outstrip IT’s ability to keep the enterprise secure,” he said, adding that IT workers are “going crazy” and “get into fights” over whether users should have upgrades.
To help IT cope, software vendors should create what Dulaney called “beneficial viruses” that could be embedded in corporate data carried on mobile devices. These software tools would require users to have licenses in order to access files, just as digital rights management technology does with music and video files.
Beneficial viruses would also “be smart enough” to delete the sensitive data if a device is lost or stolen, or if data winds up on an unauthorized device, Dulaney said, adding, “It’s time for the SAPs and Oracles to begin thinking about doing that, and it’s a lot harder than we think.”
Today, IT shops use mobile device management software to monitor which mobile users are authorized to access applications and whether they can access the data outside the corporate cloud.
Twitter Wants To Email You
May 23, 2012 by admin
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Twitter will begin delivering a weekly email digest to highlight for users of the micro-blogging site the tweets they are most likely to be interested in, the company stated on Monday.
The feature marks a departure for a social network that typically emphasizes real-time delivery of information.
How will Twitter determine which tweets a user may want to see? Twitter spokesman Robert Weeks said the digest will feature the tweets that the “people you’re connected to on Twitter are engaging with the most.”
From the email digest, users will be able to see the conversation about a particular tweet, follow shared links and send out their own tweets. The digest will include tweets not just from a user’s own feed but also from the feeds of people he or she follows.
Will Window 8 Tablets Launch In November?
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The first Windows 8 tablets should hit retail sometime in November and we could see a bunch of devices in different form factors.
According to CNET’s Brooke Crothers, the first wave of Windows tablets will include more than a dozen devices, but more than half of them will be hybrid designs. So, it seems Microsoft and vendors are betting on traditional keyboards to set Windows tablets apart from the competition.
The new tablets will be based on Intel’s dual-core Clover Trail Atoms, but bear in mind that Microsoft will also release Windows for ARM chips and AMD could also enter the fray with some low-voltage APUs.
Will Linux See Growth Next Year?
Canonical has said it expects Ubuntu to ship on 18 million PCs next year.
Having just launched Ubuntu 12.04, Canonical is bullish about its future, with Chris Kenyon, its VP of sales and business development forecasting that the firm’s operating system will ship on 18 million machines in 2013. According to Phoronix, Kenyon claimed that will amount to five per cent of worldwide PC shipments.
Kenyon’s prediction represents more than double the number of PCs shipped currently with Ubuntu and while that might seem optimistic the firm has been on a roll when it comes to OEM support. Prior to Canonical’s launch of Ubuntu 12.04 it announced certification for HP Proliant servers, and yesterday it revealed that it has been working with Dell on an Ubuntu image for Dell’s headline XPS 13 ultrabook.
Although Kenyon mentioned PC unit sales, it is unlikely to forecast a similar growth in servers pre-installed with Ubuntu despite the firm’s certification for some Proliant servers.
Kenyon believes that most firms buy bare metal servers and load their own tweaked images. He said, “As a point of fact the vast majority of this [Ubuntu on servers] is not sold pre-installed. […] Pre-install in the server market is just irrelevant, it is not how the market works. Even when something gets pre-installed an enterprise will wipe it because they will have their own image. [OS pre-installation] is a distraction [for servers, but] it’s a very applicable question in the client world.”
Cisco Lends A Hand In Fighting Fraud
Cisco released an API at the Interop 2012 Conference this week for its branch routers designed to enable third-party developers to write applications to beef up the security of phone calls over the router network.
The Cisco UC Gateway Services API is a Web-based programming interface that allows customers and developers access to call information over a Cisco ISR G2 router at the edge of a voice network, such as signaling and media. This information can be used to detect and help prevent malicious activity such as social engineering and identity theft scams, contact center account takeover fraud, unauthorized network and service use, and denial-of-service attacks.
Applications written to the API can then apply appropriate action to terminate, redirect or record the call.
Cisco, citing data from the Communications Fraud Control Association, says global telecom fraud losses are estimated to be $40 billion annually.
IBM Goes After Apache’s Tomcat
Java Developers looking for a mobile-friendly platform could be happy with the next release of IBM’s Websphere Application Server, which is aimed at offering a lighter, more dynamic version of the app middleware.
Shown off at the IBM Impact show in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Websphere Application Server 8.5, codenamed Liberty, has a footprint of just 50MB. This makes it small enough to run on machines such as the Raspberry Pi, according to Marie Wieck, GM for IBM Application and Infrastructure Middleware.
Updates and bug fixes can also be done on the fly with no need to take down the server, she added.
The Liberty release will be launched this quarter, and already has 6,000 beta users, according to Wieck.
John Rymer of Forrester said that the compact and dynamic nature of the new version of Websphere Application Server could make it a tempting proposition for Java developers.
“If you want to install version seven or eight, it’s a big piece of software requiring a lot of space and memory. The installation and configuration is also tricky,” he explained.
“Java developers working in the cloud and on mobile were moving towards something like Apache Tomcat. It’s very light, starts up quickly and you can add applications without having to take the system down. IBM didn’t have anything to respond to that, and that’s what Liberty is.”
For firms needing to update applications three times a year, for example, the dynamic capability of Liberty will make it a much easier process.
“If developers want to run Java on a mobile device, this is good,” Rymer added.
The new features are also backwards compatible, meaning current Websphere users will be able to take advantage of the improvements.
However, IBM could still have difficulty competing in the app server space on a standalone basis, according to Rymer.
Is Internet Explorer Making A Comeback?
May 8, 2012 by admin
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Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) in April again managed to grab more user share, the third time in the year’s first four months, to stay well above the 50% mark and remain the world’s top browser, a Web analytics company said on Tuesday.
Google’s Chrome’s share also climbed in April, said Net Applications, ending that browser’s three-month decline.
IE boosted its share by about three-tenths of a percentage point last month to average 54.1% in April. That returns IE to a mark comparable to its September 2011 share.
Since Jan.1, IE has increased its usage share by 2.2 percentage points for a 4% gain since the end of 2011. The turnaround has been IE’s largest and longest since the browser began shedding share years ago to Firefox, then later, Chrome.
Microsoft has pinned its hopes almost entirely on IE9, the 2011 edition that runs only on Windows Vista and Windows 7.
On Tuesday, Microsoft again stayed on message, highlighting the gains made by IE9 on Windows 7 — the pairing the firm has said is the only metric it cares about — but ignoring the overall IE increases this year.
LG Only Wants To Support Android
May 7, 2012 by admin
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Smartphone-maker LG Electronics has backed off manufacturing Windows Phone devices for now and will instead focus on Android phones, according to a report.
The Korea Herald reported Monday that LG, based in Seoul, South Korea, will take a step back from the Windows Phone platform, though it intends to “continue research and development efforts” on the Microsoft operating system.
LG currently makes the Optimus 7 based on Windows Phone 7 and other WP7 handsets.
LG has noted that Windows Phone 7-based devices hold less than 2% of the global smartphone market, according to multiple market analysts.
“The total unit[s] of Windows Phone sold in the global market is not a meaningful figure,” an LG spokesman told the Korea Herald.
In 2009, LG had decided to make Windows Phone its primary smartphone OS, with plans for 26 new Windows phones in 2012.
Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner, said the LG decision to cut its Windows Phone plans, at least temporarily, is likely not an absolute reversal of strategy.
He theorized that LG may be waiting for Windows Phone 8 to materialize late this year before producing more devices on the platform.
Asus Stakes Claim In Tablets Market
May 4, 2012 by admin
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Asus has won critical acclaim for its early tablets, including the quad-core Transformer Prime TF201 that was debuted last year and the new quad-core Transformer Pad TF300T that will be available in some U.S. retail stores next week.
And it continues to improve its place in the crowded market — jumping into the Top 5 list of suppliers for the first time in 2011, according to the latest research from IDC. Asus ranked fifth in tablet shipments in both the U.S. and world in 2011 with a 2.3% share of the U.S. tablet market and a 2.5% share of the worldwide market.
Apple’s iPad remained at the top of both lists.
Though Asus still lags somewhat behind the market leaders, its influence on the market is clearly on the rise and could move it further up the tablet list, analysts say.
For instance, along with launching an array of powerful higher-priced new tablets, Asus is reported to be Google’s choice to supply a low-priced $200 device said to be called Google Play. The Google tablet would run Ice Cream Sandwich and a Tegra 3 quad-core processor, reports say.
The reports suggest Google is looking to launch the new tablet at its Google I/O developer conference in late June.
Apple Faces Another Lawsuit
April 30, 2012 by admin
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Apple devices using touch technology infringe on a patent owned by the Pennsylvanian company FlatWorld Interactives, the company stated in court documents filed on last Friday. FlatWorld asked for a permanent injunction that Apple stop infringing, and for sufficient compensation for the infringements, the company’s attorneys said.
The Pennsylvanian designer of touchscreen systems for use in museum displays alleged that Apple knowingly infringed on its patent, according to documents filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said. The infringing products are said to include the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad.
FlatWorld said Apple’s infringement has been on a massive scale and has caused it irreparable harm. The company demanded a permanent injunction enjoining Apple from continued infringement plus an unspecified amount of damages to compensate for Apple’s infringement. The company is seeking a jury trial.
FlatWorld was founded in January 2007 by Slavko Milekic, a professor in cognitive science and digital design at the University of the Arts in Pennsylvania, in order to commercialize his touch screen patent, the filing said.
Milekic filed a provisional patent application on August 28, 1997, claiming priority from that date in his definitive patent application, according to the court documents. He applied for his patent on June 12, 1998 and was granted it as U.S. patent 6,920,619 on July 19 2005, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.