Albert Gonzalez, the computer hacker behind one of the largest known identity fraud cases in U.S. history, was sentenced on Thursday to 20 years in federal prison.
Gonzalez, a 28-year-old college dropout and Secret Service informant known as "soupnazi," had confessed to stealing millions of credit card and debit card numbers from major U.S. retail chains, including T.J.Maxx, BJ's Wholesale Club, and Barnes & Noble.
U.S. District Judge Patti Saris in Boston sentenced Gonzalez to the middle of expected prison sentences for charges filed in Massachusetts and New York, which ranged from 15 to 25 years.
Christina Sterling, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's office in Massachusetts, told CNET that Gonzalez will be sentenced on Friday for additional charges filed in New Jersey.
In an 11-page plea agreement (PDF) last year, Gonzalez admitted to unlawfully accessing a computer, wire fraud, identity theft, and other crimes. He agreed to forfeit a Miami condo, a 2006 BMW 330i, a Tiffany diamond ring, three Rolex watches, and more than $1.65 million in cash.
In August 2008, prosecutors accused Gonzalez, along with 10 others from the United States, Eastern Europe, and China, of breaking into retail credit card payment systems by wardriving--that is, using a laptop to detect retailers' unsecured wireless networks--and installing sniffer programs to capture data.
Gonzalez and his alleged co-conspirators sold the credit numbers, encoded the data onto magnetic stripes of blank cards, and used the new cards to withdraw tens of thousands of dollars at a time from ATMs, prosecutors said. They also allegedly concealed and laundered their proceeds by using anonymous Internet-based currencies within the United States and abroad, and by channeling money through bank accounts in Eastern Europe.
Separately, New Jersey prosecutors say Gonzalez conspired to steal credit card numbers from Heartland Payment Systems, 7-Eleven, and supermarket chain Hannaford Bros.
Gonzalez was reportedly paid $75,000 a year by the Secret Service to work as an undercover informant to guide agents through the illegal, clandestine marketplaces where credit and debit card numbers are sold.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Symantec finds China top source of malware
More malware is now coming out of China than from any other country, according to a new report from Symantec.
The United States still leads the world in the number of malware attacks sent from mail servers. Symantec's report (PDF) found U.S. mail servers responsible for distributing 36.6 percent of all global malware in March, followed by China at 17.8 percent and Romania at 16.5 percent.
Symantec captured these results by analyzing the IP addresses of sending mail servers. The company uncovered a large amount of malware from the United States in large part because many Web-based e-mail services, such as Gmail and Yahoo Mail, are hosted in the U.S.
But analyzing the source of malware based on the mail servers doesn't tell the full picture as the sender can use any Web-based e-mail account. By checking the actual sender's IP address found in the e-mail's header, Symantec found individuals in China responsible for 28.2 percent of malware, Romania for 21.1 percent, and the U.S. for 13.8 percent. Overall, the analysis discovered that most of the attacks coming from mail services in North American actually stem from other regions, including Asia, Europe, and Africa.
"When considering the true location of the sender rather than the location of the email server, fewer attacks are actually sent from North America than it would at first seem," Paul Wood, a senior analyst at Symantec's MessageLabs Intelligence, said Thursday in a statement. "A large proportion of targeted attacks are sent from legitimate webmail accounts which are located in the US and therefore, the IP address of the sending mail server is not a useful indicator of the true origin of the attack."
China, of course, has been in the news lately due to its ongoing battles with Google over search and censorship. China has also been tagged as the source of the cyberattacks launched against Google and other companies.
In its latest analysis, Symantec also discovered more malware targeted to people with specific job roles. The five leading titles hit by malware now include director, senior official, vice president, manager, and executive director. The people receiving a higher number of attacks are typically in charge of foreign trade and defense policy, especially related to Asian countries, said the report.
E-mail file attachments hiding malware continue to be a popular method of attack. The most common types of files found in such e-mails were .xls (Microsoft Excel) and .doc (Microsoft Word) documents. Along with .zip and .pdf files, these four accounted for 50 percent of the files attached to malicious messages this month.
But people should also be wary of receiving encrypted .rar files (a method of compressing files) through e-mail. Though these types of files make up only a small percent of malicious e-mail attachments, Symantec found them to be hosts for malware 96.8 percent of the time.
Overall, Symantec found that spam grew by 1.5 percentage points from February to March and now accounts for 90.7 percent of all e-mail. Viruses were discovered in 1 out of every 358 messages in March, a minor decrease from February, while phishing attacks were uncovered in 1 out of every 513 e-mails.
The United States still leads the world in the number of malware attacks sent from mail servers. Symantec's report (PDF) found U.S. mail servers responsible for distributing 36.6 percent of all global malware in March, followed by China at 17.8 percent and Romania at 16.5 percent.
Symantec captured these results by analyzing the IP addresses of sending mail servers. The company uncovered a large amount of malware from the United States in large part because many Web-based e-mail services, such as Gmail and Yahoo Mail, are hosted in the U.S.
But analyzing the source of malware based on the mail servers doesn't tell the full picture as the sender can use any Web-based e-mail account. By checking the actual sender's IP address found in the e-mail's header, Symantec found individuals in China responsible for 28.2 percent of malware, Romania for 21.1 percent, and the U.S. for 13.8 percent. Overall, the analysis discovered that most of the attacks coming from mail services in North American actually stem from other regions, including Asia, Europe, and Africa.
"When considering the true location of the sender rather than the location of the email server, fewer attacks are actually sent from North America than it would at first seem," Paul Wood, a senior analyst at Symantec's MessageLabs Intelligence, said Thursday in a statement. "A large proportion of targeted attacks are sent from legitimate webmail accounts which are located in the US and therefore, the IP address of the sending mail server is not a useful indicator of the true origin of the attack."
China, of course, has been in the news lately due to its ongoing battles with Google over search and censorship. China has also been tagged as the source of the cyberattacks launched against Google and other companies.
In its latest analysis, Symantec also discovered more malware targeted to people with specific job roles. The five leading titles hit by malware now include director, senior official, vice president, manager, and executive director. The people receiving a higher number of attacks are typically in charge of foreign trade and defense policy, especially related to Asian countries, said the report.
E-mail file attachments hiding malware continue to be a popular method of attack. The most common types of files found in such e-mails were .xls (Microsoft Excel) and .doc (Microsoft Word) documents. Along with .zip and .pdf files, these four accounted for 50 percent of the files attached to malicious messages this month.
But people should also be wary of receiving encrypted .rar files (a method of compressing files) through e-mail. Though these types of files make up only a small percent of malicious e-mail attachments, Symantec found them to be hosts for malware 96.8 percent of the time.
Overall, Symantec found that spam grew by 1.5 percentage points from February to March and now accounts for 90.7 percent of all e-mail. Viruses were discovered in 1 out of every 358 messages in March, a minor decrease from February, while phishing attacks were uncovered in 1 out of every 513 e-mails.
Office applications: Still your father's Oldsmobile
It's 2010. The Internet is pervasive and mobile. Business processes, supply chains, and financial markets are globally connected and electronically executed. There are no flying cars, but in many other ways, the future has arrived. Yet when we look at the tools and processes organizations use to create and update documents--the lifeblood for business processes--they're straight out of the 1990s playbook. The world's changed, but the office applications most in use today--our word processors, spreadsheets, and presentation programs--basically have the same priorities and follow the same strategies they did two decades ago.
Sure, today's office apps have sleeker user interfaces and more integrated functionality. I no longer know how I'd live without those little squiggly red underlines saying I'd misspelled a word, and suggesting how to spell it right. It's certainly a lot easier to create documents with embedded tables, illustrations, and animations, for example. And some of the features in the labs, such as Adobe's Content-Aware Fill, border on "indistinguishable from magic." But the way office apps are designed and commonly used? Still has 1990 written all over it.
Consider collaboration. Twenty years ago, today's "office apps" were called "personal productivity apps." We still use them in largely that way--even though documents used in a business context are almost never personal or individual in nature. Business documents are almost invariably team efforts, produced to accomplish organizational outcomes. Yet we create and manage documents individually. Once drafted, we "throw them over the wall" for others to extend or review. We e-mail the latest copies to the next person in the review chain, or put them on some shared file server or document repository. This is a recipe for the proliferation of document revisions. Often, even basic process information--what revision we're dealing with, who "owns" this revision, or who's worked on it before us--isn't really clear. Someone else starts editing or reviewing what you've written; at the same time, you think of several other things you'd like to add, or changes that need to be made. Presto! Conflicting versions. Add in a handful of authors, contributors, editors, and approvers, and the problem's exponentially worse. Features like "track changes" and "compare documents" help, but they lead to complicated documents and difficult reviews, especially if the team has more than a few members. It's even worse if the collaboration required isn't within a small cohesive work group, but cross-company.
The underlying problem is that office apps were designed to assist individuals, but are now being used for collaborative team work. The apps focus too narrowly on individuals creating content, and too little on the larger process of teams evolving content. Partially as a result, and partially by habit, we as users take a traditional sequential approach to what is at heart a parallel process.
The same "we haven't made much progress!" complaint can be lodged against automation. Document evolution is a frighteningly unautomated affair. "But! But! But...!" I hear you sputter. "How can you say that? We have publishing tools by the ton! Word, Excel, Photoshop, FrameMaker, Dreamweaver--and all the rest!"
Sure--you have a long list of tools to help you create individual pieces or kinds of content. They have feature upon feature for completing individual steps. But twenty-some-odd years of product evolution notwithstanding, there's not much automation for macro processes, such as attractively formatting documents (the way you want them formatted), for ensuring that documents contain everything they should or must (based on your company or project requirements), or for easily publishing documents to a variety of formats and destinations (especially if they need to be republished whenever they're been updated).
Numerous steps in every document's life cycle are simply considered "white space"--something the people involved need to handle manually. Office apps may provide some aides--templates and stylesheets for formatting, for example, or export tools for PDF, HTML, and other output formats. But it remains users' responsibility to apply them in an exacting and consistent way for every document handled--exactly the sort of thing people aren't good at, and which is tedious and error-prone.
Finally, a note about the scope of the problem. When I say "we" have these problems, I mean: almost everyone. I've been involved in a number of projects that were utterly dependent on, or even primarily about, creating documents. These span procurement, financial, legal, product development, operational, marketing, and publishing projects. I've worked with government agencies, law firms, large enterprises, small and medium businesses, start-ups, investors, nonprofits, and individuals across multiple continents. I've worked with organizations that have essentially unlimited resources. And yet, I have seen almost no exceptions to these large-scale gaps.
I've seen critical processes in make-or-break projects come down to frantic last-minute "fix the document!" tweedling--often because critical revisions couldn't be made in parallel, in the earlier and more leisurely project phases, and because all the critical last-minute checks and exports had to be done by hand. And then redone, when the tedium and error-proneness led to errors. I've felt the blood-pressure spike as we scrambled in the minutes before a drop-dead deadline to make a time-stamped submission or the last FedEx drop. It's amazing, but it happens regularly and to everyone. If our tools and processes regularly lead us to that unhappy place, then the tools and processes are simply broken or insufficient. They should be--nay, in a high velocity world, they must be--fixed and improved.
The good news is there is hope. While still in their early days, a new crop of tools like Google Docs, Google Wave, and Zoho, for example, make real-time collaboration a core feature, rather than an afterthought. Network-optimized versions of Microsoft Office and Oracle's "CloudOffice" seem likely to learn the same tricks before too long. Document formats, once opaque and proprietary, are evolving to use XML and other open formats, enabling automation. Finally, enterprises are increasingly focused on improving their own collaboration and business processes. All of these things give us hope; none can come too soon. Dad loved his Olds--but we deserve a sleeker ride.
Sure, today's office apps have sleeker user interfaces and more integrated functionality. I no longer know how I'd live without those little squiggly red underlines saying I'd misspelled a word, and suggesting how to spell it right. It's certainly a lot easier to create documents with embedded tables, illustrations, and animations, for example. And some of the features in the labs, such as Adobe's Content-Aware Fill, border on "indistinguishable from magic." But the way office apps are designed and commonly used? Still has 1990 written all over it.
Consider collaboration. Twenty years ago, today's "office apps" were called "personal productivity apps." We still use them in largely that way--even though documents used in a business context are almost never personal or individual in nature. Business documents are almost invariably team efforts, produced to accomplish organizational outcomes. Yet we create and manage documents individually. Once drafted, we "throw them over the wall" for others to extend or review. We e-mail the latest copies to the next person in the review chain, or put them on some shared file server or document repository. This is a recipe for the proliferation of document revisions. Often, even basic process information--what revision we're dealing with, who "owns" this revision, or who's worked on it before us--isn't really clear. Someone else starts editing or reviewing what you've written; at the same time, you think of several other things you'd like to add, or changes that need to be made. Presto! Conflicting versions. Add in a handful of authors, contributors, editors, and approvers, and the problem's exponentially worse. Features like "track changes" and "compare documents" help, but they lead to complicated documents and difficult reviews, especially if the team has more than a few members. It's even worse if the collaboration required isn't within a small cohesive work group, but cross-company.
The underlying problem is that office apps were designed to assist individuals, but are now being used for collaborative team work. The apps focus too narrowly on individuals creating content, and too little on the larger process of teams evolving content. Partially as a result, and partially by habit, we as users take a traditional sequential approach to what is at heart a parallel process.
The same "we haven't made much progress!" complaint can be lodged against automation. Document evolution is a frighteningly unautomated affair. "But! But! But...!" I hear you sputter. "How can you say that? We have publishing tools by the ton! Word, Excel, Photoshop, FrameMaker, Dreamweaver--and all the rest!"
Sure--you have a long list of tools to help you create individual pieces or kinds of content. They have feature upon feature for completing individual steps. But twenty-some-odd years of product evolution notwithstanding, there's not much automation for macro processes, such as attractively formatting documents (the way you want them formatted), for ensuring that documents contain everything they should or must (based on your company or project requirements), or for easily publishing documents to a variety of formats and destinations (especially if they need to be republished whenever they're been updated).
Numerous steps in every document's life cycle are simply considered "white space"--something the people involved need to handle manually. Office apps may provide some aides--templates and stylesheets for formatting, for example, or export tools for PDF, HTML, and other output formats. But it remains users' responsibility to apply them in an exacting and consistent way for every document handled--exactly the sort of thing people aren't good at, and which is tedious and error-prone.
Finally, a note about the scope of the problem. When I say "we" have these problems, I mean: almost everyone. I've been involved in a number of projects that were utterly dependent on, or even primarily about, creating documents. These span procurement, financial, legal, product development, operational, marketing, and publishing projects. I've worked with government agencies, law firms, large enterprises, small and medium businesses, start-ups, investors, nonprofits, and individuals across multiple continents. I've worked with organizations that have essentially unlimited resources. And yet, I have seen almost no exceptions to these large-scale gaps.
I've seen critical processes in make-or-break projects come down to frantic last-minute "fix the document!" tweedling--often because critical revisions couldn't be made in parallel, in the earlier and more leisurely project phases, and because all the critical last-minute checks and exports had to be done by hand. And then redone, when the tedium and error-proneness led to errors. I've felt the blood-pressure spike as we scrambled in the minutes before a drop-dead deadline to make a time-stamped submission or the last FedEx drop. It's amazing, but it happens regularly and to everyone. If our tools and processes regularly lead us to that unhappy place, then the tools and processes are simply broken or insufficient. They should be--nay, in a high velocity world, they must be--fixed and improved.
The good news is there is hope. While still in their early days, a new crop of tools like Google Docs, Google Wave, and Zoho, for example, make real-time collaboration a core feature, rather than an afterthought. Network-optimized versions of Microsoft Office and Oracle's "CloudOffice" seem likely to learn the same tricks before too long. Document formats, once opaque and proprietary, are evolving to use XML and other open formats, enabling automation. Finally, enterprises are increasingly focused on improving their own collaboration and business processes. All of these things give us hope; none can come too soon. Dad loved his Olds--but we deserve a sleeker ride.
Can't take care of your elderly relatives? Buy a bot
A research project in Europe is bringing together a multidisciplinary team to create a robot, wearable smart sensor system, and alarm-and-reporting system in the hopes that together they'll enable more elderly people to live independently for longer.
Researchers at the University of the West of England at Bristol (UWE) plan to work with companies such as Robosoft out of France and Smart Homes out of the Netherlands to investigate the best technologies to meet the unique needs of elderly people living alone at home.
Various oft-independent systems, such as health reporting, home alarms, voice-recognition shopping, and nutritional/medication schedules, will be linked to a single robotic platform through which appointed caregivers, relatives, and friends can better stay in touch.
"We hope that the health monitoring and the nutrition support systems will help people to track and maintain a better standard of health and activity, helping them live independently for as long as possible," says Praminda Caleb-Solly, who is leading the user experience research for UWE. "We want to know what would be acceptable to them in a personal and social context, and make sure that the technology is easy and intuitive to use."
Robosoft will deliver two Kompai-R&D robots for trials starting in May, and the researchers will work with six user groups--three in the U.K. and three in the Netherlands--who represent older people living alone in their own homes, living in residential care homes, and living at home but attending day care.
I'm no expert on the needs of the elderly, but in my own experience with my own grandparents, living alone is certainly preferred, and yet it can also be very lonely. Whether a robot provides any sort of companionship remains to be seen, but if it makes communication with loved ones easy, this feature alone could go a long way.
My 92-year-old grandmother, for instance, can only hear me long-distance with VoIP (forget cell phones), but she has no idea how to even launch Skype, let alone accept an incoming call. If we're talking baby boomers, though, let the bots come marching in
Researchers at the University of the West of England at Bristol (UWE) plan to work with companies such as Robosoft out of France and Smart Homes out of the Netherlands to investigate the best technologies to meet the unique needs of elderly people living alone at home.
Various oft-independent systems, such as health reporting, home alarms, voice-recognition shopping, and nutritional/medication schedules, will be linked to a single robotic platform through which appointed caregivers, relatives, and friends can better stay in touch.
"We hope that the health monitoring and the nutrition support systems will help people to track and maintain a better standard of health and activity, helping them live independently for as long as possible," says Praminda Caleb-Solly, who is leading the user experience research for UWE. "We want to know what would be acceptable to them in a personal and social context, and make sure that the technology is easy and intuitive to use."
Robosoft will deliver two Kompai-R&D robots for trials starting in May, and the researchers will work with six user groups--three in the U.K. and three in the Netherlands--who represent older people living alone in their own homes, living in residential care homes, and living at home but attending day care.
I'm no expert on the needs of the elderly, but in my own experience with my own grandparents, living alone is certainly preferred, and yet it can also be very lonely. Whether a robot provides any sort of companionship remains to be seen, but if it makes communication with loved ones easy, this feature alone could go a long way.
My 92-year-old grandmother, for instance, can only hear me long-distance with VoIP (forget cell phones), but she has no idea how to even launch Skype, let alone accept an incoming call. If we're talking baby boomers, though, let the bots come marching in
Microsoft confirms, dates Xbox 360 USB storage
Good news for Xbox 360 owners: Microsoft's Major Nelson has confirmed last week's reports of USB storage coming to the Xbox 360. And it's coming soon.
The software update that will make it happen is due April 6, giving gamers only a week and a half more of having to rely on Microsoft's proprietary memory cards and hard drives for system storage expansion--at least if they're happy with 32GB.
One detail that was confirmed from last week's leak--and that gamers might find disappointing--is the size limits on storage formatting are relatively quaint. As mentioned before, users can only have between 1GB and 16GB per USB storage device, and only two can be attached at once, maxing out external memory at 32GB. This also means you won't be able to re-purpose one of your old USB sticks as a memory device if they're smaller than 1GB, and that you can't utilize a large and cheap external hard disk drive as an alternative to Microsoft's existing hard drive options. Still, it's a step in the right direction for a console that will celebrate its fifth birthday this fall.
Nelson (whose real name is Larry Hryb and who is the director of programming for Xbox Live) also announced that Microsoft would soon be releasing Xbox-branded SanDisk USB sticks that come ready to be used right out of the box. Otherwise, to use the new storage feature on their own USB keys or external hard drives, gamers need to run a small formatting utility through the Xbox 360 dashboard. The SanDisk sticks are set to be released in May, though Hryb could not offer capacities or pricing.
This is, presumably, the only new feature that's going into April's system update. In the past, Microsoft has released periodic updates mid-year and near the holidays that add a handful of features. The last big one to go out was in November of last year, when Microsoft added apps for Twitter, Last.fm, and Facebook. It also completely overhauled its video store. In this case, fewer features could just be the result of the close proximity to E3, where Microsoft is set to unveil more details about its Project Natal motion-sensing technology and possibly even unveil a new iteration of the Xbox 360 hardware
The software update that will make it happen is due April 6, giving gamers only a week and a half more of having to rely on Microsoft's proprietary memory cards and hard drives for system storage expansion--at least if they're happy with 32GB.
One detail that was confirmed from last week's leak--and that gamers might find disappointing--is the size limits on storage formatting are relatively quaint. As mentioned before, users can only have between 1GB and 16GB per USB storage device, and only two can be attached at once, maxing out external memory at 32GB. This also means you won't be able to re-purpose one of your old USB sticks as a memory device if they're smaller than 1GB, and that you can't utilize a large and cheap external hard disk drive as an alternative to Microsoft's existing hard drive options. Still, it's a step in the right direction for a console that will celebrate its fifth birthday this fall.
Nelson (whose real name is Larry Hryb and who is the director of programming for Xbox Live) also announced that Microsoft would soon be releasing Xbox-branded SanDisk USB sticks that come ready to be used right out of the box. Otherwise, to use the new storage feature on their own USB keys or external hard drives, gamers need to run a small formatting utility through the Xbox 360 dashboard. The SanDisk sticks are set to be released in May, though Hryb could not offer capacities or pricing.
This is, presumably, the only new feature that's going into April's system update. In the past, Microsoft has released periodic updates mid-year and near the holidays that add a handful of features. The last big one to go out was in November of last year, when Microsoft added apps for Twitter, Last.fm, and Facebook. It also completely overhauled its video store. In this case, fewer features could just be the result of the close proximity to E3, where Microsoft is set to unveil more details about its Project Natal motion-sensing technology and possibly even unveil a new iteration of the Xbox 360 hardware
Cisco warns of 'highly critical' SIP flaw
Cisco Systems has issued a range of security advisories giving details of 11 vulnerabilities in IOS, the operating system on which many of its products run.
One of the vulnerabilities, described as "highly critical," could lead to a hacker compromising the affected system or launching a denial-of-service attack against it. The advisories, issued Wednesday, are part of Cisco's twice-yearly schedule of security updates for IOS.
The highly critical vulnerability affects IOS version 12 devices running SIP, a protocol used by many businesses to set up and tear down voice and video calls. IOS version 12 is widely deployed.
One of the vulnerabilities, described as "highly critical," could lead to a hacker compromising the affected system or launching a denial-of-service attack against it. The advisories, issued Wednesday, are part of Cisco's twice-yearly schedule of security updates for IOS.
The highly critical vulnerability affects IOS version 12 devices running SIP, a protocol used by many businesses to set up and tear down voice and video calls. IOS version 12 is widely deployed.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Microsoft Gives Devs a Glimpse of HTML 5-Friendly IE9
The newest version of Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Internet Explorer will feature full hardware acceleration and a new Javascript engine that engages multiple processor cores for faster rendering, the company has announced. The new version aso reverses the software giant's reluctance to adapt to HTML 5.
The company released a developer preview of Internet Explorer 9 at the MIX10 developer conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
Rough Draft
The preview is not a fully functioning browser, lacking crucial tidbits such as an address bar, for instance.
It's designed to give developers a feel for the core capabilities of what will eventually be released.
Microsoft isn't saying when it will come out. In a statement Wednesday, the company said it expects to release new preview versions every eight weeks until the release goes to beta, but it did not say when that might occur.
The new version will feature full hardware acceleration of graphics and text, support for HTML 5, CSS3 and a new Javascript engine that takes advantage of multicore processors.
The advances are meant to reduce limitations on Web design and development imposed by current implementations, Microsoft said. Consequently, the new browser will not work on Windows XP.
Early Praise
The advances are being well received by developers, Forrester analyst Sheri McLeish told TechNewsWorld.
"They're looking to regain a leadership role here and to really dazzle developers by really showing their commitment to HTML 5 and its potential," she said.
By moving to hardware acceleration, IE9 will enable faster rendering of animations and video, allowing developers to create beefier Web sites that software-based rendering schemes just couldn't handle, she noted.
Why It's Important
Creating a great next version of Explorer is critical for Microsoft as it attempts to build on the early success of Windows 7.
In all its incarnations, Explorer is still the most widely used browser, with a 61.6 percent market share in February, according to Net Applications. That's down from a recent peak of about 68 percent in May 2009, shortly after the current version was released. In that time, the fastest-growing browser has been Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Chrome, which now has about 5.6 percent of the market, according to Net Applications.
Maintaining or extending market share is important to Microsoft and Google, particularly, because it allows them to cross-promote other products, such as Bing for Microsoft or productivity apps for Google, McLeish said.
She said she does not anticipate the lack of XP support to have much of a detrimental effect on IE9 adoption, or Microsoft's market share.
Many enterprise customers running XP are expected to upgrade to Windows 7 as Microsoft phases out support for the older operating system, helping spur adoption of the new browser while simultaneously helping kill off IE6, which both Microsoft and many in the developer community would like to see disappear
The company released a developer preview of Internet Explorer 9 at the MIX10 developer conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
Rough Draft
The preview is not a fully functioning browser, lacking crucial tidbits such as an address bar, for instance.
It's designed to give developers a feel for the core capabilities of what will eventually be released.
Microsoft isn't saying when it will come out. In a statement Wednesday, the company said it expects to release new preview versions every eight weeks until the release goes to beta, but it did not say when that might occur.
The new version will feature full hardware acceleration of graphics and text, support for HTML 5, CSS3 and a new Javascript engine that takes advantage of multicore processors.
The advances are meant to reduce limitations on Web design and development imposed by current implementations, Microsoft said. Consequently, the new browser will not work on Windows XP.
Early Praise
The advances are being well received by developers, Forrester analyst Sheri McLeish told TechNewsWorld.
"They're looking to regain a leadership role here and to really dazzle developers by really showing their commitment to HTML 5 and its potential," she said.
By moving to hardware acceleration, IE9 will enable faster rendering of animations and video, allowing developers to create beefier Web sites that software-based rendering schemes just couldn't handle, she noted.
Why It's Important
Creating a great next version of Explorer is critical for Microsoft as it attempts to build on the early success of Windows 7.
In all its incarnations, Explorer is still the most widely used browser, with a 61.6 percent market share in February, according to Net Applications. That's down from a recent peak of about 68 percent in May 2009, shortly after the current version was released. In that time, the fastest-growing browser has been Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Chrome, which now has about 5.6 percent of the market, according to Net Applications.
Maintaining or extending market share is important to Microsoft and Google, particularly, because it allows them to cross-promote other products, such as Bing for Microsoft or productivity apps for Google, McLeish said.
She said she does not anticipate the lack of XP support to have much of a detrimental effect on IE9 adoption, or Microsoft's market share.
Many enterprise customers running XP are expected to upgrade to Windows 7 as Microsoft phases out support for the older operating system, helping spur adoption of the new browser while simultaneously helping kill off IE6, which both Microsoft and many in the developer community would like to see disappear
Microsoft's desktop future may look like a phone
Competition in the personal computer market is heating up, even as it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish just what we mean when we talk about a PC. Airline flight attendants seem to be able to discern the difference between mobile phones and personal computers in their in-flight announcements, but the vendors who make and sell them increasingly can't.
The future of the Windows desktop?
(Credit: Flora Graham/CNET UK)
It is precisely this fuzziness that offers Google and Apple a chance to get a leg up on Microsoft, but is also why Microsoft may be able to cement its lead.
Google is clear about its aims: it wants to get users into a browser as fast as possible. Why? Because the more we use the Web, the more likely it is that we'll bump into Google's revenue-generating services.
While this started as a PC initiative for Google with the Chrome OS, the Chrome browser, and other projects, Google has kicked it into hyperdrive with its increasingly popular Android mobile operating system.
Apple, for its part, is equally clear about its aims: it wants to get users into iTunes or its App Store. Why? Because for all the money it makes on hardware like Macs and the iPhone, Internet-scale revenues derive from such services that aggregate and distribute digital goods.
Apple's strategy is bidirectional: its Macs drive adoption of iPhones, and the iPhone drives sales of Macs. But mobile is what makes it hum.
Microsoft, however, has been less clear about its aims, particularly with the traditional desktop. It wants people on Windows...why? Well, because Microsoft earns a license fee for every copy of Windows sold.
This has historically been a home-run strategy, but it may be a decreasingly defensible revenue model in a world conditioned by the Web (and Google) to expect software to be free.
Neither of its primary competitors charges for the OS, which will eventually call into question Microsoft's practice of doing so.
Of course, Apple's OS X can't be easily divorced from Apple's hardware, making it arguably a much more expensive OS than Microsoft ever dreamed of selling. But Google? It's serious about giving away Microsoft's business.
Is Microsoft doomed?
Of course not. Any company with billions in profit each quarter can afford to spend its way into a winning strategy. Microsoft has already sold 90 million copies of Windows 7, suggesting that its demise will be greatly exaggerated for some time to come, especially as its market share is again on the upswing with Windows 7.
Even so, I suspect the future of Microsoft's "desktop" OS business is going the same direction as Apple's and Google's: mobile.
Mobile gives Microsoft a fresh start with lots of room to grow. It also gives it an effective way to extend its brand into others' platforms, as its Bing search growth on Apple's iPhone could signal, while simultaneously letting Microsoft experiment with new business models that don't threaten its traditional licensing-based model (as cloud computing does for its server and "desktop" businesses).
Perhaps most importantly, and this is equally true for both Google and Apple for their respective environments, mobile allows Microsoft to innovate the Windows user experience. Apple has started to extend the iPhone experience with its iPad, and I suspect we'll see Microsoft do the same with Windows Phone 7. Microsoft's consumer and enterprise customers will have little appetite for a radically changed "desktop" experience...unless they first grow accustomed to it on their phones.
For each of these three major OS vendors, the nature of the OS, and its associated business models, is changing rapidly. Mobile, however, holds the key to each company's growth, and may signal convergence on a new way of monetizing an OS: app stores, advertising, and other online services.
But all delivered on a mobile device that looks less and less like a phone and more and more like a PC...without actually being one.
The future of the Windows desktop?
(Credit: Flora Graham/CNET UK)
It is precisely this fuzziness that offers Google and Apple a chance to get a leg up on Microsoft, but is also why Microsoft may be able to cement its lead.
Google is clear about its aims: it wants to get users into a browser as fast as possible. Why? Because the more we use the Web, the more likely it is that we'll bump into Google's revenue-generating services.
While this started as a PC initiative for Google with the Chrome OS, the Chrome browser, and other projects, Google has kicked it into hyperdrive with its increasingly popular Android mobile operating system.
Apple, for its part, is equally clear about its aims: it wants to get users into iTunes or its App Store. Why? Because for all the money it makes on hardware like Macs and the iPhone, Internet-scale revenues derive from such services that aggregate and distribute digital goods.
Apple's strategy is bidirectional: its Macs drive adoption of iPhones, and the iPhone drives sales of Macs. But mobile is what makes it hum.
Microsoft, however, has been less clear about its aims, particularly with the traditional desktop. It wants people on Windows...why? Well, because Microsoft earns a license fee for every copy of Windows sold.
This has historically been a home-run strategy, but it may be a decreasingly defensible revenue model in a world conditioned by the Web (and Google) to expect software to be free.
Neither of its primary competitors charges for the OS, which will eventually call into question Microsoft's practice of doing so.
Of course, Apple's OS X can't be easily divorced from Apple's hardware, making it arguably a much more expensive OS than Microsoft ever dreamed of selling. But Google? It's serious about giving away Microsoft's business.
Is Microsoft doomed?
Of course not. Any company with billions in profit each quarter can afford to spend its way into a winning strategy. Microsoft has already sold 90 million copies of Windows 7, suggesting that its demise will be greatly exaggerated for some time to come, especially as its market share is again on the upswing with Windows 7.
Even so, I suspect the future of Microsoft's "desktop" OS business is going the same direction as Apple's and Google's: mobile.
Mobile gives Microsoft a fresh start with lots of room to grow. It also gives it an effective way to extend its brand into others' platforms, as its Bing search growth on Apple's iPhone could signal, while simultaneously letting Microsoft experiment with new business models that don't threaten its traditional licensing-based model (as cloud computing does for its server and "desktop" businesses).
Perhaps most importantly, and this is equally true for both Google and Apple for their respective environments, mobile allows Microsoft to innovate the Windows user experience. Apple has started to extend the iPhone experience with its iPad, and I suspect we'll see Microsoft do the same with Windows Phone 7. Microsoft's consumer and enterprise customers will have little appetite for a radically changed "desktop" experience...unless they first grow accustomed to it on their phones.
For each of these three major OS vendors, the nature of the OS, and its associated business models, is changing rapidly. Mobile, however, holds the key to each company's growth, and may signal convergence on a new way of monetizing an OS: app stores, advertising, and other online services.
But all delivered on a mobile device that looks less and less like a phone and more and more like a PC...without actually being one.
One pair of 3D glasses to rule them all
The good news about the 3D TVs coming out this spring and summer is that they'll come packed with two pairs of 3D lenses. The bad news? Those plastic glasses work only with the brand of TV with which they're shipped.
That means that if you buy a Panasonic 3D TV, you can't use the accompanying lenses with your neighbor's Sony 3D TV, should you want to get together to watch the World Cup in 3D this summer. That's because each TV brand has a sensor that picks up a signal from the corresponding brand of glasses.
If that seems backwards, it's because it is. But it's also the sign of a new technology that hasn't yet worked out all of its kinks. Thankfully, the burgeoning 3D industry knows that this is a shortcoming and is concocting a fix.
One company that makes 3D eyewear, XpanD, has staked its claim to be the vendor of choice for brand-agnostic 3D glasses. The company has been manufacturing 3D glasses for movie theaters in Europe and Asia for years, and it is now moving to make the glasses work for people's homes as well.
XpanD has been contracted to produce the lenses that will ship with Panasonic and Vizio's 3D sets, but the company is also aiming more broadly: to be the provider of one pair of glasses that people buy once and use everywhere. XpanD's glasses will be available for between $125 and $150, starting June 1 at retailers such as Best Buy and Sears.
"The goal of the glasses is to work with every (size of) 3D display, from laptops to cinema," said Ami Dror, XpanD's chief strategy officer.
Dror says that would include all 3D televisions using infrared to communicate between the TV and the active-shutter 3D glasses. ("Active" glasses have battery-powered shuttering to allow the eyes to see 3D images, while "passive" glasses are the polarized lenses you get at the movie theater.) All major manufacturers--such as Sony, Samsung Electronics, and Panasonic--and most 3D-capable computer monitors and laptop screens--which gamers are expected to gravitate toward--use active-shutter glasses.
Dror anticipates the glasses being for sale in theaters or in retail stores alongside 3D displays. The way he sees it, people will want the option to choose their own glasses, especially if 3D-watching parties become popular.
Besides consumers being limited in how and when they can use their 3D glasses, XpanD believes that retailers can't be expected to stock glasses from every possible manufacturer on their shelves.
"At Best Buy, they carry 15, 20 models of TVs," Dror said. "We can't expect them to carry 15 types of 3D glasses. That doesn't make sense."
The competition
Gunnar Optiks, which makes glasses that reduce eyestrain induced by staring at a computer screen all day, has also said it plans to make universal 3D glasses. It's a great idea, but it's unclear that the technology has actually been tested yet. (Until CNET Labs gives them a spin, we'll reserve judgment.) In any case, what XpanD and Gunnar Optiks are trying to do is a necessary step in the evolution, if 3D is going to move from the cinema to the couch.
"It's great that XpanD wants to be the vendor of choice for universal 3D glasses," said David Wertheimer, CEO and executive director of the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California. "But it's an easy thing to say and a harder thing to get all the people [to] work together."
That's where the Consumer Electronics Association comes in. The industry trade group is acting as referee between competing brands to agree on a standard for 3D eyewear. Representatives from TV makers, cable and broadcasting companies, eyewear manufacturers, and others together are reviewing proposals for standards and hashing out what that standard should be--and which companies will eventually make the standard glasses. Although they've been officially meeting for several months, the idea first came up last year.
"It was just evident to everybody that glasses were going to be a part of this ecosystem, and noninteroperable glasses would hamper the overall growth of the market," said Brian Markwalter, vice president of technology and standards for the CEA.
They're currently studying making active-shutter glasses the default technology, which are the most popular right now with TV makers. But there are details still to be worked out, such as the effects of competing with other infrared devices already in the living room, including TV remote controls.
Markwalter said the group meets every two weeks and that it understands the urgency, since these TVs are already seeping out into the market.
"They do feel the pressure of the marketplace," he said. "The schedule they had talked about is trying to at least have it whittled down to a basic approach by May or June. They're meeting pretty regularly, moving along as aggressively as they can. "
Until then, 3D TV watching it isn't going to be a naturally social experience, the way standard 2D TV-watching is now, at least at first, while the likes of Sony and Panasonic race to get the technology to the marketplace. But it will get there eventually, USC's Wertheimer says.
"As with any new technology, you try to get it to market, and get people to use it and start giving you feedback. All of (the manufacturers) have their own glasses and their own TVs that can only interact together. They do that to take the variables out of the equation, so they control the experience consumers have with the television," Wertheimer said. "But the natural evolution of 3D TVs over time is for them to have interoperability with the glasses."
That means that if you buy a Panasonic 3D TV, you can't use the accompanying lenses with your neighbor's Sony 3D TV, should you want to get together to watch the World Cup in 3D this summer. That's because each TV brand has a sensor that picks up a signal from the corresponding brand of glasses.
If that seems backwards, it's because it is. But it's also the sign of a new technology that hasn't yet worked out all of its kinks. Thankfully, the burgeoning 3D industry knows that this is a shortcoming and is concocting a fix.
One company that makes 3D eyewear, XpanD, has staked its claim to be the vendor of choice for brand-agnostic 3D glasses. The company has been manufacturing 3D glasses for movie theaters in Europe and Asia for years, and it is now moving to make the glasses work for people's homes as well.
XpanD has been contracted to produce the lenses that will ship with Panasonic and Vizio's 3D sets, but the company is also aiming more broadly: to be the provider of one pair of glasses that people buy once and use everywhere. XpanD's glasses will be available for between $125 and $150, starting June 1 at retailers such as Best Buy and Sears.
"The goal of the glasses is to work with every (size of) 3D display, from laptops to cinema," said Ami Dror, XpanD's chief strategy officer.
Dror says that would include all 3D televisions using infrared to communicate between the TV and the active-shutter 3D glasses. ("Active" glasses have battery-powered shuttering to allow the eyes to see 3D images, while "passive" glasses are the polarized lenses you get at the movie theater.) All major manufacturers--such as Sony, Samsung Electronics, and Panasonic--and most 3D-capable computer monitors and laptop screens--which gamers are expected to gravitate toward--use active-shutter glasses.
Dror anticipates the glasses being for sale in theaters or in retail stores alongside 3D displays. The way he sees it, people will want the option to choose their own glasses, especially if 3D-watching parties become popular.
Besides consumers being limited in how and when they can use their 3D glasses, XpanD believes that retailers can't be expected to stock glasses from every possible manufacturer on their shelves.
"At Best Buy, they carry 15, 20 models of TVs," Dror said. "We can't expect them to carry 15 types of 3D glasses. That doesn't make sense."
The competition
Gunnar Optiks, which makes glasses that reduce eyestrain induced by staring at a computer screen all day, has also said it plans to make universal 3D glasses. It's a great idea, but it's unclear that the technology has actually been tested yet. (Until CNET Labs gives them a spin, we'll reserve judgment.) In any case, what XpanD and Gunnar Optiks are trying to do is a necessary step in the evolution, if 3D is going to move from the cinema to the couch.
"It's great that XpanD wants to be the vendor of choice for universal 3D glasses," said David Wertheimer, CEO and executive director of the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California. "But it's an easy thing to say and a harder thing to get all the people [to] work together."
That's where the Consumer Electronics Association comes in. The industry trade group is acting as referee between competing brands to agree on a standard for 3D eyewear. Representatives from TV makers, cable and broadcasting companies, eyewear manufacturers, and others together are reviewing proposals for standards and hashing out what that standard should be--and which companies will eventually make the standard glasses. Although they've been officially meeting for several months, the idea first came up last year.
"It was just evident to everybody that glasses were going to be a part of this ecosystem, and noninteroperable glasses would hamper the overall growth of the market," said Brian Markwalter, vice president of technology and standards for the CEA.
They're currently studying making active-shutter glasses the default technology, which are the most popular right now with TV makers. But there are details still to be worked out, such as the effects of competing with other infrared devices already in the living room, including TV remote controls.
Markwalter said the group meets every two weeks and that it understands the urgency, since these TVs are already seeping out into the market.
"They do feel the pressure of the marketplace," he said. "The schedule they had talked about is trying to at least have it whittled down to a basic approach by May or June. They're meeting pretty regularly, moving along as aggressively as they can. "
Until then, 3D TV watching it isn't going to be a naturally social experience, the way standard 2D TV-watching is now, at least at first, while the likes of Sony and Panasonic race to get the technology to the marketplace. But it will get there eventually, USC's Wertheimer says.
"As with any new technology, you try to get it to market, and get people to use it and start giving you feedback. All of (the manufacturers) have their own glasses and their own TVs that can only interact together. They do that to take the variables out of the equation, so they control the experience consumers have with the television," Wertheimer said. "But the natural evolution of 3D TVs over time is for them to have interoperability with the glasses."
Microsoft nixes barrier to Windows 7's 'XP mode
Although Windows 7's "XP Mode" has been a welcome feature of the new operating system, there's been a fair bit of confusion brought on by the virtualization layer's hardware requirements.
To work, XP Mode has required a PC processor that supports hardware virtualization, and that feature had to be turned on in the computer's BIOS (basic input/output system). Those requirements caused some consternation, as PC owners didn't always have an easy way to tell if their system fit the bill.
Well, those requirements are no more. As part of a wave of virtualization announcements on Thursday, Microsoft said people running Windows 7 will now be able to use XP Mode without having to know whether their PC processor supports hardware virtualization.
"This change simplifies the experience by making virtualization more accessible to many more PCs for small and midsize businesses wanting to migrate to Windows 7 Professional or higher editions, while still running Windows XP-based productivity applications," Microsoft said in a blog posting.
As noted by ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley, those already running XP Mode don't need the update, but those who had found themselves on the sidelines because of their PC hardware can download the update and try out XP Mode. To run XP Mode legitimately, users still need to be running the Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate editions of Windows 7.
Microsoft also noted some other virtualization moves in the blog posting, including a forthcoming update that will be part of the first service pack for Windows Server 2008 R2. The update will add two features:
"Microsoft Dynamic Memory will allow customers to adjust memory of a guest virtual machine on demand to maximize server hardware use," the company said. "Microsoft RemoteFX will enable users of virtual desktops and applications to receive a rich 3-D, multimedia experience while accessing information remotely."
Also on the virtualization front, Microsoft announced an expanded partnership with Citrix as well as some licensing changes that will make it easier for businesses to allow workers to remotely access their systems via virtualized desktops.
To work, XP Mode has required a PC processor that supports hardware virtualization, and that feature had to be turned on in the computer's BIOS (basic input/output system). Those requirements caused some consternation, as PC owners didn't always have an easy way to tell if their system fit the bill.
Well, those requirements are no more. As part of a wave of virtualization announcements on Thursday, Microsoft said people running Windows 7 will now be able to use XP Mode without having to know whether their PC processor supports hardware virtualization.
"This change simplifies the experience by making virtualization more accessible to many more PCs for small and midsize businesses wanting to migrate to Windows 7 Professional or higher editions, while still running Windows XP-based productivity applications," Microsoft said in a blog posting.
As noted by ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley, those already running XP Mode don't need the update, but those who had found themselves on the sidelines because of their PC hardware can download the update and try out XP Mode. To run XP Mode legitimately, users still need to be running the Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate editions of Windows 7.
Microsoft also noted some other virtualization moves in the blog posting, including a forthcoming update that will be part of the first service pack for Windows Server 2008 R2. The update will add two features:
"Microsoft Dynamic Memory will allow customers to adjust memory of a guest virtual machine on demand to maximize server hardware use," the company said. "Microsoft RemoteFX will enable users of virtual desktops and applications to receive a rich 3-D, multimedia experience while accessing information remotely."
Also on the virtualization front, Microsoft announced an expanded partnership with Citrix as well as some licensing changes that will make it easier for businesses to allow workers to remotely access their systems via virtualized desktops.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Segate 7200.12 hdd
Ok i am writing a blog about a hdd cause i was always wanting to buy a new one for some time and was doing a lot of market research. I have been using segate for a long time and hav been happy with the reliablity of the product. The latest range of hdd comes in 500gb, 750gb, and 1tb. They fair really well in performance and reliability. So if u are on the lookout for a new hdd go for it.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Office 2010 nearly ready; upgrade offer launched
Microsoft said on Friday that it plans to finalize the code for Office 2010 next month and, as expected, it kicked off a program enabling those who buy Office 2007 in the coming months to get a free upgrade to the new version.
In a blog posting, Microsoft said that it will have a business launch for the Office 2010 products on May 12. The company has said it expects the software to be broadly available in June.
As for the technology guarantee program, Microsoft says it will apply to those who buy Office 2007 between now and September 30 and will allow an upgrade to the comparable Office 2010 product.
Though such programs are typical, this one had even less of an element of surprise after a Microsoft employee briefly posted details of the program last month. Microsoft CFO Peter Klein confirmed the program earlier this week, telling financial analysts on Tuesday to expect the company to defer revenue this quarter to next to account for the upgrades.
Although Office 2010 doesn't bring a radically different look or new file formats, as Office 2007 did, it introduces a number of changes, most significantly the addition of companion Office Web apps that work in a browser. Also, for the first time, Office will come in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
A beta version of the software has been available since November and Microsoft has also been doing limited testing of a near-final "release candidate" version of the software.
New Photoshop for Android includes Apple potshot
Adobe Systems released a new version of its Photoshop.com Mobile application for Android phones on Thursday night, an upgrade that came with an apparent attempt to tweak Apple's nose.
'Vignette blur' is of the new editing features available in the version 1.1 of Adobe's Photoshop.com Mobile for Android.
(Credit: Adobe)
The new version gets more editing options. It adds "vibrant" to make photo colors richer and "pop" for a pop-art style. Also new are "soft black and white," "warm vintage," "vignette blur," "white glow," and "rainbow," Adobe said.
But more significantly, perhaps, the mobile editing software also now can be incorporated by other programs on the phone. "Third-party application developers now have access to the Photoshop.com Mobile for Android 1.1 editor, allowing them to easily make it a part of their applications," Adobe said.
This is where the Apple potshot comes in--a notable move given a public squabble over Apple's unwillingness to include Adobe's Flash Player on the iPhone or forthcoming iPad.
"Unlike iPhone, the Android platform allows us to make the Photoshop.com editor broadly available to developers so they can provide it within any application they are working on. Photoshop functionality can then easily be accessed from an online auction, real estate, or social media application so users can quickly fix photos and make them look their best, before being showcased," Doug Mack, general manager of Adobe's Digital Imaging and Rich Media Solutions group, said in a statement.
The remark is hardly a condemnation of Apple. But I can't remember Adobe ever going out of its way to take sides by calling attention to what Photoshop on Mac OS X can do that it can't on Windows or vice versa.
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