- Secret messages hidden in images
- Printer does ink-free
- As Vista launches, Allchin exits
- Graphics standard OK'd
- Borland updates ALM plan
- Breaking News -- Intel makes chip breakthrough
- W3C sets XML standards
- China aims to "purify the Internet"
- Novell sets Linux build service
- Open source ID mgm't touted
January 31, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Secret messages hidden in images
You may have heard of steganography, an encryption technique that lets you hide embedded messages, documents, etc. within a normal-looking image. Very James Bond. A company at Demo 2007 called Ceelox just introduced something called Scram, which puts "steg" into the hands of everyday users as well as advertisers and businesses. On the business side, Ceelox gave the example of how a company might send a bank statement or patient records to a customer, neatly hidden inside an innocuous looking image (a capability that some vendors already provide, although maybe not as seamlessly). For some users, steganography is probably more accessible than basic encryption.
But the consumer piece of the puzzle may have greater significance as Scram opens the door for user-generated steganography and offers "a secure messaging tool platform for consumers to interact with brands." In a typical scenario, a user can go to the Scram client, type in an email address, encrypt data into any digital image, and hit send. The recipient gets the image in his mailbox, along with instructions on how to authenticate his identity (so only he can view and decrypt it).
Advertisers can take the same approach, using Scram to send out marketing offers, interactive sweepstakes, and potential viral campaigns, all hidden inside an image wrapper that is, in itself, an ad. Those same advertisers can build databases of customers who have viewed and passed along Scram messages. This kind of opportunistic customer acquisition feels a bit unseemly, but I can just see something like a secret message in an image making the email rounds. And Scram works in IM clients as well.
Posted by Steve Fox on January 31, 2007 01:56 PM
January 31, 2007 | Comments: (0)
I'm coming to you from the floor (well, really more like a big conference hall) of the Demo 2007 conference, billed as the "Launchpad for Emerging Technology." Historically, Demo has always been all about products, products, products -- demonstrators get six minutes to pitch their little hearts out to the crowd, hoping to win VC funding, partnerships, or press coverage. Also in keeping with the tradition, much of the stuff being shown here for the first time is cool and innovative; a much smaller percentage has any real chance of commercial success.
For the next day, I'll be doing tag-team coverage with my colleague Ephraim Schwartz, who will be posting to his Reality Check blog. First up, I'll take a shot at a few of the more intriguing consumer-ish goodies on display, starting with the ZINK printer.
ZINK Imaging's presenter kicked off his presentation by repeating the phrases "zero ink" and "printing without ink," so many times, I feared there would be no time for an actual product demonstration or explanation of the technology. Not to worry: He ultimately got to the printer itself -- a device about the size of a deck of playing cards. It has no ink cartridge or no ribbon -- just some electronics, a rechargeable battery, and a ten-pack of special paper. The paper looks like regular print stock, but is embedded with dye crystals. The presenter took a picture, hit a button, and the ZINK printer did some quick processing and spit out a vivid CMY color printout. The prints themselves are waterproof and look great, and the paper is apparently protected by multiple patents. ZINK plans to sell handheld standalone mobile printers as well as embed the printer in other devices, including a soon-to-be-announced 7-megapixel camera (no names yet). The device supports bluetooth (critical for printing from phones) and has a USB connector. Paper prices will be set by distributors, but company reps say it will be cheap -- likely something in the neighborhood of 20 cents per sheet. Business models and things like the channel for distributing the paper still need some ironing out. But a bigger questions is whether this will this play in a business document context, where you need full-size printouts (as opposed to snapshots, where the potential is high). A promising product for mobile printing, I wouldn't be surprised if ZINK gets some traction.
Posted by Steve Fox on January 31, 2007 12:20 PM
January 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)
As Vista launches, Allchin exits
Though the plans were first announced in 2005, the day has finally come. Jim Allchin, co-president of Microsoft's Platform Products and Services Group, is retiring. His departure tomorrow leaves Kevin Johnson in charge of the division responsible for Microsoft's operating systems, at a time of significant transition for the company and its platform.
A graduate of the University of Florida with advanced degrees from Stanford and the Georgia Institute of Technology, Allchin joined Microsoft in 1990, following a stint at networking software vendor Banyan in the 1980s. During his tenure he was responsible for overseeing some of Microsoft's most significant enterprise successes, including Windows XP and the .Net platform.
Allchin's retirement takes effect one day following the official consumer launch of Windows Vista, Microsoft's next-generation client OS. To some, his departure may be seen as a prudent move. Even before it became widely available, Vista fell under heavy criticism from beta testers and developers for failing to deliver on early promises, following repeated shipping delays.
These are Johnson's problems now, and plans are already underway to address many perceived shortcomings in Microsoft's OS releases. A major service pack for Vista is rumored to be in the works for release later this year. And still in the works is Longhorn Server, the much-anticipated upgrade to Microsoft's server OS.
Allchin commented on his time at Microsoft in an e-mail sent to press this afternoon:
Microsoft is an absolutely amazing company - full of such incredible people. In fact, when I came to Microsoft one of the things that struck me the most was just how many smart people there were. I had been around smart people at school and work before, but never so many of them. Not only were they smart though, they had incredible passion for technology, for learning, for improving, and most of all for changing the world using technology to improve people's lives.What's truly amazing to me is that we are just at the beginning for what technology will be able to do. The next 50 years are going to be much more exciting than the last 50 (and that's saying a lot!) when you consider the potential impact technology advances will have on people and businesses.
Will Microsoft succeed in tightening the reins on its OS group under Johnson's exclusive stewardship? Will it manage to keep Vista and Longhorn Server on-track, or are still more dramatic structural changes necessary within the company? And what of Bill Gates' own forthcoming retirement? Send us your thoughts.
Posted by Neil McAllister on January 30, 2007 02:50 PM
January 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and OASIS on Tuesday jointly announced publication of WebCGM (Computer Graphics Metafile) 2.0, an industry standard for technical illustrations in electronic documents.
Widely used in the defense, aviation, architecture and transportation industries, WebCGM 2.0 boasts new interoperability levels because of the collaboration between the two technology standards organizations, W3C and OASIS said.
"The result of this collaboration between OASIS and W3C is a single open standard for CGM on the Web that has been approved by the membership of both our organizations," said Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS, in a prepared statement released by W3C and OASIS. "This degree of endorsement assures implementers around the world that they can adopt WebCGM with confidence."
CGM is an ISO standard for a tree-structured, binary graphics format adopted especially by technical industries.
Version 2.0 of WebCGM adds a DOM (Document Object Model) API specification for programmatic access to WebCGM objects and a specification of an XML Companion File architecture for externalization of non-graphical metadata. It also extends the graphical and intelligent content of WebCGM 1.0.
Officially, WebCGM 2.0 has been approved as an OASIS Standard and a W3C Recommendation, which are the highest levels of ratification within these two organizations.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 30, 2007 12:26 PM
January 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Borland Software on Monday will announce its latest application lifecycle management strategy, called Open ALM.
The company also will announce shipment of its Borland Gauntlet software for real-time visibility and software quality metrics in the delivery lifecycle.
The intent with Open ALM is to enable customers to leverage existing investments in tools and practices and have software delivery processes be independent of any specific deployment platform or technologies. Processes such as agile, waterfall and Rational Unified Process are accommodated.
Previously, Borland built its ALM platform on its Software Delivery Optimization (SDO) strategy. "Open ALM is really just a refinement of our original SDO vision," said Mark Brown, vice president of product marketing at Borland.
Interoperability between Borland products and third-party and open source products will be key to Open ALM. The SDO slogan goes away with Open ALM.
Gauntlet, meanwhile, provides build and test automation. Pricing starts at $2,000 per seat.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 29, 2007 06:41 AM
January 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Breaking News -- Intel makes chip breakthrough
Deemed no less an important event than to run as the major headline on Saturday morning's New York Times, "Intel says chips will run faster, using less power,"Intel has indeed made a major breakthrough in the manufacturing of chips.
The ability to create at production levels a transistor measuring 45 nanometers [nm]--400 such transistors could fit inside a single human red blood cell-- will mean extremely high compute power at extremely low power usage.
The new chips, expected to be in production by the second half of this year will find their way not only into the latest computer processors from Intel but also it is expected they will be used in cell phones and other handheld devices, according to Mark Bohr, an Intel Fellow.
While Intel spokespeople were reluctant to quantify how the new technology might improve performance and battery life, according to the Times using such chips would make it possible to play a full-length movie on a cell phone without recharging the battery.
The breakthrough was made possible by using a new material, "high-k" in the design of the chip that turn on and off the millions of transistors and in the insulating material beneath the transistors.
The material has one-tenth the power leakage of electrical current than previous processors. Leakage during the flow of electric current is one of the major contributors to loss of battery power.
The breakthorugh represents the first change in the material used to manufacture chips in 30 years, said Bohr.
Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 27, 2007 01:43 PM
January 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) this week announced it has published eight standards in its XML family to support the ability to query and transform XML data and documents.
Primary specifications include XQuery 1.0: An XML query language; Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) 2.0 and XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0.
The new standards will play a role in enterprise computing by connecting databases with the Web, W3C said. XQuery provides for data mining while XSLT 2.0 boosts functionality in XSLT, which enables transformation and styled presentation of XML documents. These two specifications are dependent on XPath 2.0.
XPath 2.0 is an expression language allowing processing of values conformining to the data model defined in XQuery/XPath Data Model (XDM). The model provides a tree representation of XML documents and atomic values such as integers and strings. Version 2.0 supports a richer set of data types than the 1.0 version.
"XQuery will serve as a unifying interface for access to XML data, much as SQL has done for relational data," said Don Chamberlin of IBM Almaden Research Center, co-inventor of the original SQL query language and a co-editor of XQuery 1.0, in a statement released by W3C.
In addition to the primary specifications published this week, others include:
* XML Syntax for XQuery 1.0 (XQueryX).
* XDM.
* XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators.
* XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Formal Semantics.
* XSLT 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 Serialization.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 26, 2007 09:41 AM
January 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)
China aims to "purify the Internet"
I love that the Internet is a bastion of free speech and open commerce. Thus, you can count me among those raising an eyebrow after reading China's Paramount Leader Hu Jintao declared ambition to "purify the Internet environment."
What that means, precisely, isn't clear -- but it's clearly related to the country's crackdown on blogs and search engines, as well as its successful bid for a censored version of Google to serve its country's ever-increasing population of Internet denizens.
According to a recent report from the China Internet Network Information Center, the number of registered Internet-users in China hit 137 million in 2006 -- an increase of 23.4 percent. China thus now ranks second in Web users after the United States, the organization says. Chinese officials estimate that the country could overtake the U.S. -- which has 210 million Net users -- within two years. (That estimate is a bullish one, granted.)
The point, of course, is that as the country's Net population swells, so too does its economic impact on the Web. That, in turn, gives China some leverage in its Internet-purification scheme. If a company such as Google -- which boasts the informal motto of "Don't be evil" -- is willing to cash in on China's Internet presence at the expense of censoring the information it delivers, what's to stop other companies, both present and future, from following suit?
According to reports, "[Hu Jianto] told officials to intensify control [over the Internet] even as they seek to release the Internet's economic potential. 'Ensure that one hand grasps development while one hand grasps administration.'"
Then again, there will always be demand for the type of content and, well, general freedom on the Internet that Communist China-friendly companies won't supply. Thus those of us living outside of the country needn't worry about losing access to, say, information about, say, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
Posted by Ted Samson on January 24, 2007 05:42 PM
January 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Novell sets Linux build service
Novell on Wednesday announced open source availability of openSuse Build Service, a framework for developers to build and compile packages from multiple Linux distributions.
Users of the service can piece together their own Linux distribution based on technologies available on the OpenSuse Web site, said Justin Steinman, Novell director of marketing for Linux and open platform solutions. More than 6,000 open source packages are featured at OpenSuse, he said.
The main goal of the service is to promote Linux development, Steinman said. "As members of the open source community, we're about delivering tools back out to the community," he said.
The service lets developers build Linux packages that can be based on platforms such as openSuse, Suse Linux Enterprise, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu. Developers can maintain and build packages at a single location.
Novell's service features a server back end to host sources and the build infrastructure. Also included are package download and mirroring tools as well as communication infrastructure.
The client front end offers tools and interfaces to organize and build packages from source code. It features a command line and a Web-based interface.
The build service is available at Novell's OpenSuse.org Web site.
The company also announced availability of Kiwi, a system-imaging tool to build live media, including Xen virtual images.
Both the build service and imaging tool are available for immediate download.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 24, 2007 02:18 PM
January 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Liberty Alliance this week announced its openLiberty Project, which is an initiative to provide open source developers with resources for identity-based applications.
Featured is openLiberty.org, a collaborative portal for the project. Developers can access tools and information on developing more secure and privacy-respecting applications based on Liberty Federation and Liberty Web Services standards.
The openLiberty project is intended to coordinate open source identity initiatives.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 24, 2007 11:02 AM
January 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Wal-Mart cites legal fears in Novell move
Some members of the IT community scoff at Microsoft's legal claims that Linux infringes on a number of its existing patents, an assertion Redmond has reiterated since partnering with Novell to deliver a "lawsuit-resistant" version of Linux. Wal-Mart CTO Nancy Stewart is apparently a believer, however.
It seems that Wal-Mart's top techie was reluctant to move forward with the company's forthcoming massive Web build-out using its previous Linux flavor of choice: Red Hat Linux, according to CNET's Martin LaMonica. The end of his report reads:
"Questions over intellectual property are a 'huge problem,' Stewart said. The company now uses Linux in the data center of its current Web presence but had some trepidation with the idea of expanding it a much larger operation.""'To think about using it pervasively, we were very concerned about it,' she said. The larger Web operation would have 'significantly higher legal exposure.'"
What remains unclear is whether there really is a plausible grounds for a threat that could result in "higher legal exposure" for Wal-Mart. Nevertheless, that threat has seemingly reduced the retail behemoth to trembling in its boots and adopting Novell Suse Linux via Microvell.
Notably, plenty of other Linux users out there have not demonstrated similar trepidation and have accused Redmond of sowing seeds of FUD to convert companies to Novell Linux, then squeezing what amounts to "protection money" out of them.
No matter the reason Wal-Mart's CTO chose to cite fear of legal exposure as one of the rationales to use Novell for its big project, her statements undoubtedly came as music to Microsoft's ears.
Posted by Ted Samson on January 23, 2007 05:17 PM
January 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Smile, Sydney: You're on Google Maps!
Attention people of Sydney, Australia: You're being advised to tidy up, comb your hair, and for goodness sake, put some pants on this coming Friday, Jan. 26. Why? Because Google is preparing to get some up-close aerial shots of your fair city for Google Maps -- close enough such that individual people may be distinguishable on the resulting digital maps.
That's my advice, anyway: Google is urging you to do whatever you like to get noticed and stand out on Friday -- which happens to be Australia Day. "The company is encouraging people to wear something distinctive, hold up a sign (face-up), draw in the sand, or even arrange themselves into a 'fun formation,'" reports The Sydney Morning Herald.
Whether that charge will result in Google procuring a different type of "moon" map -- thanks to some more exhibitionistic Aussies -- remains to be seen.
The shots will, of course, be taken from a low-flying plane; Google has secured clearance to swoop down as low as 600 meters (approximately 1,970 feet).
This is the first time Google will try anything on this scale, according to the SMA's report: Lars Rasmussen, head of engineering for Google Australia and one of the lead engineers for Google Maps, "said the images will add a 'few more zoom levels' to the local maps and be between three to four times more detailed than are currently available for Australian terrain on Google Maps."
"That would put them on par or better than the Google Map images of the Netherlands where, for instance, one of the aerial photographs shows a woman in a swimsuit sunbathing on the balcony of a low-rise block of units."
A map of the flyover route can be found here.
Posted by Ted Samson on January 23, 2007 03:43 PM
January 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Macraigor Systems on Tuesday announced availability of a free Eclipse-compliant debugging solution for embedded systems and is joining the Eclipse Foundation.
The embedded debugging offering provides embedded systems engineers with a platform for development and debugging with the Eclipse platform. Macraigor also said it was joining Eclipse as an Add-In Provider. Macraigor will work with Eclipse projects including the C/C++ Developer Toolkit to boost embedded development.
The debugging solution, called the Macraigor Eclipse + GNU Tools Suite, packages the Eclipse 3.2.1 IDE, open source GNU tools and a program called OCDRemote, to interface between Eclipse, the GNU debugger and a Macraigor On-Chip debug device.
"Eclipse is rapidly becoming the development environment of choice for building and debugging embedded systems," said Craig Haller, chief engineer of Macraigor, in a statement released by the company. "By incorporating the free GNU development and debugging toolset into Eclipse, we are making it possible for embedded systems engineers to use the tools they are familiar with on a platform that improves their productivity."
Posted by Paul Krill on January 23, 2007 09:56 AM
January 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Sun Microsystems's new deal with Intel just expands its product base rather than negatively impacting its commitment to SPARC or rival AMD chips, a Sun official said in an interview on Monday.
In a quick question-and-answer session with InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill, Tom Goguen, Sun vice president of Solaris marketing, and Doug Fisher, Intel vice president of systems software, talked up Monday's Sun-Intel arrangement.
InfoWorld: What does this mean for SPARC?
Goguen: The long and short of [this agreement] is we see this as an opportunity to grow the market. We are in no way divesting from SPARC but rather looking at this as a great opportunity to move Solaris into new market opportunities and to build systems leveraging Intel's extensive technology and innovation.
InfoWorld: Weren't you already leveraging Intel platform technology in your arrangement with AMD?
Goguen: Clearly, when you take a look at the market, there are customers who prefer Intel-branded architecture and Intel-branded technology so first and foremost we'll be able to serve those customers with the new systems and optimize Solaris and Solaris 10. Intel is driving innovation in Xeon with technologies such as virtualization through I/0.
InfoWorld: What new products is Sun planning based on Intel technology?
Goguen: We have a pretty broad and extensive virtualization roadmap. We'll do things like our Xen hypervisor for the x64 architecture.
InfoWorld: Will Sun push SPARC over Intel-based systems?
Goguen: We like to offer customers a very broad choice. We would like to see them leveraging as much Sun intellectual property as we can but there's clearly markets and customers where they are best-served by an Intel-based solution.
InfoWorld: Which customers would those be?
Goguen: Customers make a rational decision about their needs. There are customers who have a preference for Intel-based solutions.
InfoWorld: Will Sun still sell AMD-based systems?
Goguen: We've not discontinued anything there.
InfoWorld: Is this deal in response to Intel's recently reporting a 39 percent drop in profits?
Fisher: Clearly not.
Goguen: It takes many months to sort out an agreement like this.
InfoWorld: Is this arrangement going to result in lower prices for Sun workstations and servers?
Goguen: I can't speak to the prices. This brings an opportunity for Sun and Intel to work more closely together to leverage each other's innovations.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 22, 2007 02:55 PM
January 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Symantec: Storm Worm intensifies
Symantec Corp. is warning today that the "Storm Worm," a.k.a. Trojan.Peacomm, is spreading quickly across the Internet, due largely to an intense spam campaign. Symantec has raised its "threat rating" on Peacomm to category 3,.
AV companies appear to be locked in a pitched battle with Peacomm's authors (the malware is believed to be of Russian origin). After generating headlines last week for using news about the storms battering Europe to trick some users into installing the Trojan, the authors further tweaked the program over the weekend to respond to changes in detection from the AV companies.
Peacomm arrives in emails claiming to contain a video clip with a variety of subject, Symantec says, including "230 dead as storm batters Europe" and "British Muslims Genocide."
The program is believed to be used as part of penny stock scams, which use spam email to drive up the price of companies in which the criminals have taken a stake.
Symantec claims that this is the biggest "outbreak" in more than a year, since Sober.O appeared in May, 2005 -- though Peacomm isn't spreading itself. Instead, Symantec claims to be receiving around 3,500 messages each minute with Peacomm attachments. Now that's some spam!
Posted by Paul Roberts on January 22, 2007 02:05 PM
January 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Sunny day for Solaris in Intel pact?
Intel chips are back in favor at Sun Microsystems once again, following a four-year hiatus in which Sun built its x86 server line exclusively using chips from Intel rival AMD.
At a press conference held in San Francisco this morning, Sun announced a line of Intel-based servers, beginning with a dual-Xeon model to be available in June. In return, Intel will elevate Sun's Solaris to the status of a "tier one" operating system.
Exactly what that means, of course, remains to be seen. At the press conference, Intel and Sun representatives said that Intel developers would work to accelerate Solaris on Intel hardware. But then, Solaris already runs on Intel hardware just fine, so it seems doubtful that much engineering effort will be required to squeeze a little extra performance out of it. More significant, probably, will be Intel's commitment to "really promote Solaris," cited by Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz.
According to Schwartz, the majority of customers who have downloaded Solaris for the x86 architecture are already installing it on Intel-based hardware. By offering a line of Intel servers of its own, Sun could potentially broaden the market for its x86-based hardware. At the same time, Intel's marketing efforts may indeed be the catalyst to "build a marketplace and ecosystem" for Solaris, as Schwartz says -- something Sun has so far struggled to do on its own.
Solaris, combined with Sun's Sparc-based servers, was once the premier operating platform for Unix-based applications. In recent years, however, Solaris's traditional customer base has increasingly turned to Linux running on industry-standard servers. To counter this trend, Sun has executed a number of competitive moves, including open-sourcing Solaris and slashing the cost of its OS support offerings, as part of an aggressive campaign aimed squarely at top Linux vendor Red Hat.
For the conspiracy-minded among you, Sun's partnership with Intel could be seen as further evidence that the company is moving away from its RISC-based past to concentrate on the x86 architecture. For its part, however, Sun denies any insinuation that it will abandon Sparc. Its representatives say the company is still on track to ship its forthcoming multi-core Sparc chip, codenamed "Rock," in mid-2008.
Posted by Neil McAllister on January 22, 2007 01:08 PM
January 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)
"Today is Sun Day," Intel says
Sun Microsystems and Intel are partnering on a chip usage arrangement, according to Intel's Web site.
Sun will offer a set of Intel-based servers, with plans for single, dual and multi-core enterprise servers, telecommunications servers and workstations supporting Solaris, Windows and Linux. Sun's first Intel Xeon systems will be out in the first half of 2007.
As part of the arrangement, Sun's Solaris OS can be deployed on Xeon-based servers.
Sun previously has used rival, Intel-compatible chips from Advanced Micro Devices as well as its own SPARC chips.
Full story and analysis to come.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 22, 2007 10:29 AM
January 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Jive in talks with Salesforce on Clearspace
Jive Software has begun talks with Salesforce.com to bring its forthcoming Clearspace enterprise collaboration suite to AppExchange, CEO Dave Hersh said.
"We met with them two days ago," Hersh told InfoWorld on Thursday. "That's next for us."
He said Jive was also open to a SaaS partner for Clearspace, initially to be an on-premises solution.
If Jive and Salesforce identified shared customers, they might strike a further SaaS relationship, he said.
Clearspace, which melds wikis, blogs, document sharing, and forums under one enterprise-class architecture, was on track for general release by the end of February, Hersh said.
However, before AppExchange and SaaS comes Jive's plans to integrate its Wildfire real-time collaboration system with Clearspace the first quarter of 2007. "[Wildfire] has lots of traction" with mainly SMB users.
At about the same time, Jive will make Clearspace an external, or public, collaboration system, which would then open doors to it becoming ready for CRM, Hersh said.
Clearspace had "all the next-gen tools that people need" to fill the gap between Microsoft's Sharepoint and the one-off Web 2.0 players, Hersh said.
"With 90 percent of collaboration people do, we'll cover them."
Jive, which survived the dot-com bust, "had been through the wringer" and now had the stripes that the growing number of Web 2.0 players did not, Hersh said.
Clearspace was designed over a year with its key Forums customers, leading to a user-centric, tagging-based user interface, he said.
Posted by Mike Barton on January 19, 2007 08:10 AM
January 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)
IBM on Friday is announcing that NASA is using the Rational Rose RealTime tool to help develop software for the successor to the Hubble space telescope.
Called the James Webb Space Telescope, it is due to be launched in 2013, said IBM Fellow Grady Booch.
The NASA application is a departure from the enterprise arena, where SOA tends to dominate, Booch said. "In this space, it's a very different kind of architecture," with reactive systems that must deal with time-critical events, he said.
The application is to be developed in the C++ language and feature 200,000 lines of code. It will be responsible for orienting the telescope for conducting experiments. "The telescope itself is very software-intensive," Booch said.
The Webb telescope will be able to examine galaxies far deeper than the Hubble system, he said.
Rational Rose RealTime leverages the Unified Modeling Language (UML) 2.0 specification. The product provides a means of visualizing and constructing systems for real-time domains, said Booch. Also being used by NASA are IBM's ClearCase and ClearQuest tools.
With Hubble, each component and instrument were built by separate space agencies using proprietary software, IBM said. This proved costly and time-consuming. Utilizing open standards-based software in developing the Webb telescope will help developers write applications faster and mitigate risk, according to IBM.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 19, 2007 06:45 AM
January 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
TJX looking for PCI auditor (about time!)
Here's the least surprising job advertisement you're likely to see: TJX Companies is in the market for an IT Compliance Officer.
According to the posting, dated Jan. 5 on Careerbuilder, TJX is looking for an IT Compliance Auditor to help: "plan and execute compliance testing, controls assessment and documentation for Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), Payment Card Industry (PCI), Data Privacy, and other compliance requirements as needed. Monitors compliance with information security policies and standards by conducting data privacy assessments, internal control reviews and risk assessments. Maintains a current knowledge of IT-related regulatory compliance requirements and standards."
I guess this helps answer one question that was lingering in my mind after news broke yesterday of The TJX Company's whopping data breach, which was "What about PCI"? You know, the toothy new data security standards from the Payment Card Industry? Those standards, which have been in force for two years now require companies that accept credit card transactions to meet certain standards for securing those transactions, including tracking and monitoring all access to network resources and cardholder data, and testing security systems and processes.
As a top tier retailer with thousands of stores, TJX should have had to publish Reports of Compliance (ROCs) with the various credit card companies that are part of PCI (Visa, American Express, MasterCard). In addition, as of Jan 1, TJX and other retailers needed to be in compliance with PCI 1.1, a newer and more comprehensive data security standard. In theory, failing to comply with PCI could get your right to accept credit card transactions revoked -- a death blow to retailers like TJX. However, it's not clear that card companies have ever taken that drastic step, especially with such a high profile merchant.
In the meantime, the PCI Security Standards Council issued a statement on their Web page saying that the TJX breach reinforces the need for standards like ...PCI! "Customer payment data is not just a payment brand issue but is the responsibility of all businesses that participate in the payment process." Customers expect that merchants will comply with PCI, the group said.
Of course, it might be helpful if credit card companies told US which retailers or etailers had met PCI's standards. That information, like much else in the payments industry, seems to be "nonpublic."
Posted by Paul Roberts on January 18, 2007 12:05 PM
January 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Apple to reap 50% margin on iPhone
Betting its fortunes on the power of its brand and the loyalty of its enthusiasts, Apple stands to gross a 50% margin on each iPhone it sells, according to research company iSuppli.
"iSuppli estimates the 4GB version of the Apple iPhone will carry a $229.85 hardware BoM and manufacturing cost and a $245.83 total expense, yielding a 50.7 percent margin on each unit sold at the $499 retail price," said Andrew Rassweiler, teardown services manager and senior analyst for iSuppli, in a written statement. "Meanwhile, the 8GB Apple iPhone will sport a $264.85 hardware cost and a $280.83 total expense, amounting to a 53.1 percent margin at the $599 retail price."
Following is iSuppli's estimated cost breakdown of the iPhone. (Click the image to enlarge):
It's not unusual for Apple to tack on a hefty margin to its wares. "The company having achieved margins of 45 percent and more in products including the iMac and iPod nano, according to iSuppli."
If people are willing to pay it, why not, right? And sure, there obviously are other expenses associated with the iPhone, including research and development, marketing -- plus Apple does need to pay for its ever-busy iLawyers.
But Dr. Jagdish Rebello, director and principal analyst with iSuppli, notes that the pricing puts Apple in a position to reduce the cost on the iPhone and still make a profit, something it may need to do given the number of music phones that will hit the market in 2007: 835 models are expected -- including some that rival the stylishness of the iPhone -- such as LG's KE850 Prada phone -- or that can be tweaked with new themes and icons to resemble it (try as Apple might to stop that from happening).
For more information about iSuppli's estimates, go here.
Posted by Ted Samson on January 18, 2007 10:22 AM
January 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)
A high-ranking Sun Microsystems official is denying a published report that the company is set to license its OpenSolaris OS under the GNU General Public License version 3.
"I have to say I was surprised because it just ain't so," said Rich Green, executive vice president for software at Sun, in his blog on Wednesday. "This is primarily due to the fact that the terms of GPLv3 aren't final, thus making it impossible for us to commit to it. It would be like signing a contract with blanks to be filled in later."
Discussions of Sun utilizing the GPL for Solaris have been going on for several years, apparently. Sun on Tuesday said no decision had been made on the GPL issue and Green's blog reaffirms that. For the moment, anyway.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 17, 2007 12:53 PM
January 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Google, Yahoo gain search share
Google remains the sultan of search in the U.S., leaving even second-place search engine Yahoo in the dust, according to the comScore Networks monthly qSearch analysis. Meanwhile, despite heavily pushing its revamped Windows Live Search service, Microsoft lost ground in December.
Google captured 47.3 percent of the U.S. search market last month, gaining 0.4 share points from the previous month. Yahoo picked up 0.3 share points, giving it 28.5 percent of U.S. searches. Microsoft, meanwhile, dropped from 11 percent to 10.5. Ask Network holds just 5.4 percent; Time Warner Network holds 4.9 percent.
Translated into actual searches, Americans conducted 3.2 billion on Google; 1.9 billion through Yahoo; 713 million using MSN-Microsoft; 363 million on Ask; and 335 million with Time Warner Network.
All told, U.S. Internet users conducted 6.7 billion online searches last month, 30 percent more than the same period last year, according to comScore.
Posted by Ted Samson on January 17, 2007 09:21 AM
January 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)
AOL Phisher faces 101 years under CAN SPAM
A 45 year old California man faces 101 years in prison for orchestrating a phishing scam against America Online users, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles.
Jeffrey Brett Goodin, 45, was found guilty by a jury on Jan. 12 of operating the Internet-based scheme to obtain personal and credit card information. He was the first person convicted by a jury in a CAN-SPAM case, according to the U.S. Attorney's office.
According to the statement, by Assistant United States Attorney Wesley L. Hsu, Goodin used "Earthlink accounts to send e-mails to AOL users. Those e-mails appeared to be from AOL’s billing department and urged the users to 'update' their AOL billing information or lose service."
You know the rest: the Web pages were actually scam pages set up to harvest the users info, yada yada yada.
But there's more: Goodin was convicted of 10 other counts, including wire fraud, aiding and abetting the unauthorized use of an access device (credit card), possession of more than 15 unauthorized access devices, misuse of the AOL trademark, attempted witness harassment and failure to appear in court.
He's due to be sentenced on June 11 and faces a maximum of 101 years, though my guess he'll get much less than that -- even with the court no-show.
Posted by Paul Roberts on January 16, 2007 07:45 PM
January 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Sun Microsystems continues to ponder offering its OpenSolaris OS under the GNU General Public License but no decision has yet been made, the company said in a statement released on Tuesday.
"While we are not ruling out the possibility that we could add GPL to OpenSolaris at some point, we have no announcement to make about that today. We maintain that the world needs more than one type of open source license and we believe CDDL (Common Development and Distribution License) is the most polished and complete version of the Mozilla family of licenses, which is one reason we kept CDDL for Java EE and added GPL v2, as well," the company said.
"While we are actively engaged with the FSF [Free Software Foundation] regarding the details for GPL v3, our decision has not been made and we are continuing to evaluate the situation," Sun said.
Sun in November announced it was offering up Java to open source via the GPL 2 license. Discussions of Sun offering Solaris via the GPL go back at least as far as 2004. OpenSolaris, the open source version of Solaris, has been available via the CDDL.
The GPL has carried with it a stipulation that contributions to the software be released to the public at large. With the open-sourcing of Java, Sun noted the GPL "Classpath exception," enabling combinations of proprietary code with GPL Classpath libraries without the need to redistribute the proprietary code.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 16, 2007 12:46 PM
January 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft has added Don Ferguson, who has provided leadership on IBM's WebSphere and other major product lines, to its roster of executives.
In a Web page dated January 8, Microsoft said Ferguson holds the role of Technical Fellow in Platforms and Strategy in the Office of the Microsoft CTO. He had been an IBM Fellow and Chief Architect for the IBM Software Group.
"Don focuses on both the evolutionary and revolutionary role of information technology in business. Understanding the trends, architecting and piloting the implications for existing and new products and evangelizing Microsoft’s vision are the key aspects of Don’s job," the Web page says.
Ferguson has provided "overall technical leadership" for WebSphere, Tivoli, DB2, Rational and Lotus products, Microsoft said.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 16, 2007 12:10 PM
January 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Apple miffed over faux iPhone icons
The iSaga surrounding Apple's iPhone took another turn over the weekend as the company's lawyers sent out cease and desist letters not only to Web sites hosting iPhone-like theme and icons for Treos, Pocket PCs, and other mobile devices -- but also to bloggers who had merely linked to said sites, according to reports.
Over on XDA-Developer, for example, a user called hanmin posted a Pocket PC screen emulating the iPhone. Soon after, hanmin received a request from Apple's iLawyers that he remove all the "copyrighted materials" from the forum (which he did).
But Apple also sent a cease and desist letter to blogger Paul O'Brien, asking him to remove a link in his blog to the aforementioned forum, as well as a screen image comparing the iPhone screen to the Pocket PC emulation.
O'Brien complied, but posted in his blog: "A bit excessive IMHO... and although I can accept that they can get upset over the screenshot, can they really demand I remove the link too? :-S"
iPhone-esque icons developed for Palm -- called iPhony -- suffered a similar fate over on Brighthand.com. As I write this, though (at around Tuesday, midnight PT), The Unofficial Apple Blog (tuaw.com) still has a link to the forum as well as a screen image posted.
Indeed, Apple may have its work cut out for it if it aims to clamp down on both developers of free iPhone-like icons and themes (such as one currently available for the Sony Ericsson on Atacama.com), as well as blogs that talk about them.
The iPhone emulations, of course, are indicative of just how popular Apple's technology is -- both in look and functionality. Perhaps the company could take that emulation as a high form of flattery, rather than a cause for saber rattling. After all, we're not talking about other companies cranking out arguably cheap knock-offs of Apple wares here. I really don't see this costing Apple anything.
Now, as to Apple's attack on blogs that are doing nothing more than reporting the news, well, we all know what happened the last time the company attempted to stifle the blogosphere.
Posted by Ted Samson on January 15, 2007 11:35 PM
January 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Cisco VP lays out case against Apple
The sugar buzz surrounding the announcement of Apple's sweet iPhone at Macworld promptly crashed with Cisco's trademark infringement lawsuit against the company.
Tempting -- or instinctive -- as it may be for die-hard members of the Apple Nation to hurl accusations of "sour grapes" at Cisco, the fact remains that Apple has quite brazenly (though not necessarily illegally, some argue) appropriated the trademarked iPhone moniker.
Cisco's senior vice president and chief counsel Mark Chandler has published a public statement about the issue, and it's well worth examing, as he intelligently lays out Cisco's case against Apple.
Cisco, he notes, has held the iPhone trademark since 2000 when it purchased Infogear Technology. (InfoGear registered the term in 1996.)
Cisco has supported the iPhone product for years, has "been shipping new, updated iPhone products since last spring, and had a formal launch late last year," Chandler writes.
Apple was aware that Cisco had rights to the name "iPhone" and approached Cisco to negotiate usage starting back in 2001, according to Chandler.
"For the last few weeks, we have been in serious discussions with Apple over how the two companies could work together and share the iPhone trademark. We genuinely believed that we were going to be able to reach an agreement and Apple's communications with us suggested they supported that goal. We negotiated in good faith with every intention to reach a reasonable agreement with Apple by which we would share the iPhone brand.""So, I was surprised and disappointed when Apple decided to go ahead and announce their new product with our trademarked name without reaching an agreement. It was essentially the equivalent of 'we're too busy.'"
So there you have it. Cisco held the trademark. Cisco was willing to sit down with Apple to work out a agreement. Yet Apple opted to move foward before that agreement was reached and market its newest gadget under a name it very likely had no legal right to use.
Apple's response to the lawsuit has been dismissive, according to reports.
Apple spokesman Steve Dowling called the Cisco lawsuit "silly,' adding there are several companies using the term iPhone for VOIP products, and Cisco's trademark is "tenuous at best." "We're the first company to ever use the iPhone name for a cellphone," he said. "If Cisco wants to challenge us on it, we're very confident we'll prevail."
While my colleague Ephraim Schwartz has suggested a crafty underlying strategy behind Apple's seemingly calculated trademark infringement, I'm frankly a bit disgusted in Apple and its utter hypocrisy. The company has a reputation of working overtime to protect its own trademarks. For example, it unsuccessfully sued Luxpro for marketing a portable MP3 player originally called Super Shuffle that in many ways resembled the iPod Shuffle.
So as Ciso's Chandler notes, were the shoe in the other foot -- if Cisco, or Microsoft, or any other company out there audaciously released a product bearing a name knowlingy swiped from an existing Apple product -- you can bet your bottom dollar (if you haven't spent it on an iTunes download) that Apple would sic its legal team on the offending company.
I'll close with this thought. Apple has a reputation for being admirably creative and innovative with its products. But it also has a reputation for rigidity. It's unfortunate that the company couldn't apply some of the former traits to either coming up with an alternative name or developing suitable terms of use for the iPhone name with Cisco. Rather, it would seem that Apple opted to stubbornly adhere to the course it had set for itself. Even if Cisco's lawsuit isn't successful in the end due to technicalities, this incident will still cost Apple resources and credibility.
Posted by Ted Samson on January 12, 2007 10:40 AM
January 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The Eclipse Foundation for open source tooling has become a member of the Java Community Process (JCP), the OSGi (Open Services Gateway initiative) Alliance and the Object Management Group (OMG), Eclipse said on Thursday.
"Participating more fully in industry organizations is a sign of Eclipse's growing role and maturity in the software marketplace," said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, in a statement released by Eclipse.
"We're happy to support these community organizations as members. This complements our longstanding policy of implementing based on standards wherever possible," Milinkovich said.
JCP provides a communitywide process for amending the Java platform. Major participants have included companies such as Sun Microsystems, which has not participated in Eclipse.
OMG is an industry consortium defining standards such as Unified Modeling Language (UML), Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP).
OSGi Alliance promotes adoption of the OSGi Service Platform for interoperability of applications and services on networks.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 11, 2007 12:56 PM
January 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The IDG veterans here in San Francisco are stumbling around in disbelief over news that Rex Farrance, senior technical editor at PC World, was shot dead in his Pittsburg (California) home on Tuesday night by four masked gunmen. To say this is a tragedy and grotesquely unfair is merely to state the obvious. Rex was one of the good guys: a family man, a popular and cheerful co-worker who gave his all to his job.
I worked with Rex at PC World (InfoWorld and PC World are both owned by IDG) starting in 1990 and promoted him to tech editor 1999. It was an obvious job for Rex, since his greatest joy at work was always explaining, as clearly as possible, how technology worked. As tech editor, he was fastidious in his role, examining the way manuscripts spelled out the technical details, and insisting on changes when an explanation didn't meet his standards. And he simply would not be rushed when issues of accuracy were at stake, even under deadline. He took his role as reader advocate seriously, almost religiously.
Rex was quirky, opinionated (but not overbearing), and almost invariably upbeat. When I returned to the IDG fold in 2003 after a three-year stint at CNET, Rex was one of the first people I bumped into in the hall, and he greeted me with his classic ear-to-ear grin. We immediately picked up where we had left off, conversing whenever we saw one another and sharing company scuttlebutt. We weren't particularly close, but I valued our interactions. Rex had a way of making people feel welcome; his enthusiasm for his work, for technology, and for his fellow employees was genuine. So too was his devotion to his family. For years, his PC desktop image was a silhouette of his wife Lenore, very pregnant with his son Sterling (who is now 19).
Police reports of the crime suggest there may have been drugs involved and that Rex was not a random victim. Frankly, that information doesn't gibe with the Rex I knew. The details of this heinous act will no doubt roll out over the coming days and weeks. Whatever the findings, I will cherish my memories of Rex Farrance.
Posted by Steve Fox on January 11, 2007 11:35 AM
January 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) on Wednesday took steps to advance voice applications over the Web, issuing a public draft of Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) 1.1.
Identified as the First Public Working Draft, the document incorporates features and feedback from SSML workshops held in China and Greece. A third workshop is planned for India this weekend.
SSML is part of W3C's Speech Interface Framework, a suite of specifications for building voice applications on the Web. The language is intended to increase the ability to listen to synthesized speech through mobile phones, desktop computers and other devices.
Version 1.1 adds support for more conventions and practices of the world's languages. Included is a feature to disambiguate "word boundaries" in languages that do not use whitespace as a word boundary, including Chinese, Thai and Japanese, W3C said.
Also featured in version 1.1 is clarification between an author's speaking voice and the language being spoken. Finer grained control is offered over lexicon activation and entry usage. Features to better integrate with existing and upcoming Speech Interface Framework specifications also are included.
Ratification of the SSML 1.1 specification by W3C is not expected for another year to 18 months, however.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 10, 2007 01:16 PM
January 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Tibco Software on Wednesday is announcing that it has become a sponsor of Direct Web Remoting (DWR), which is an AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) communication library.
The sponsorship will aid developers in exposing Java objects as AJAX services and extending message- and event-driven SOA into Web browsers via real-time AJAX services, the company said in a statement.
"DWR is a rapid way for Java developers to expose Java objects as simple AJAX services without the need for additional configuration or transformation. We have many customers already using DWR with the General Interface AJAX library," said Kevin Hakman, director of product marketing for Tibco General Interface, in a statement released by the company. "With DWR's reverse AJAX capability, messages and events can be pushed from the server to the browser so that Web applications can also have real-time notification and streaming data features."
Tibco will work with Joe Walker, the founder of DWR, to integrate DWR with the Tibco General Interface AJAX toolkit for building graphical UIs in a browser. Also, Tibco will seek to extend DWR so it can function as a Java Business Integration standard service engine and be deployed on the Tibco ActiveMatrix service virtualization platform.
Combining AJAX libraries from General Interface and DWR will provide capabilities to deliver rich user features such as editable grids, real-time events and notifications and streaming data, Tibco said.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 10, 2007 05:33 AM
January 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Patch for critical Excel flaw coming
It's Patch Tuesday, and among the holes Microsoft will be fixing is a critical flaw in the Excel spreadsheet, according to information from security firm Fortinet, which accidentally leaked the information in advance of Microsoft's official patch release.
A security advisory at Secunia.com posted today that describes an "unspecified code execution vulnerability" that is "due to an unspecified error when opening XLS files using Internet Explorer. This can be exploited to execute arbitrary code via a specially crafted XLS file with a certain unspecified opcode," according to the post. The flaw was discovered by
Jie Ma of Fortinet's Security Research Team. According to a Fortinet advisorydetailing the problem here.
"A remote attacker could construct a .xls file and put it on a controlled website. When the user opens the .xls file with the Microsoft Internet Explorer, the browser will automatically call Microsoft Excel to open the .xls file. And if specially crafted, this will cause Microsoft Excel to crash; then, the .xls may allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code."
That advisory lists Office 2000 Service Pack 3, Excel 2000, 2002, and 2003, as well as Excel Viewer 2003 are all vulnerable, as is Microsoft Works Suite 2004, 2005, and 2006. and Office 2004 and v. X for the Mac platform as vulnerable. Office 2007 is not.
Office application flaws have been a favorite target of hackers lately, with holes in Powerpoint, Word and Excel being used to great effect in spreading malware.
Posted by Paul Roberts on January 9, 2007 08:40 AM
January 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Toolkit eyed for offline Web apps
The Dojo Offline Toolkit, to enable Web applications to work offline, is under development by software architect Brad Neuberg in partnership with SitePen, according to Neuberg's Coding in Paradise blog.
"In summary, it's a way to have true offline access for Web applications," Neuberg wrote.
"That's important because if Web applications are going to continue their forward march, being how users primarily use their applications, they have to work offline," Neuberg said when contacted this morning by telephone.
The AJAX-based technology features a small Web proxy that sits on top of the user's local machine and caches the UI pieces of Web applications so they can work offline. Dojo Offline Toolkit serves as an extension to the Dojo Toolkit, which is an open source JavaScript toolkit for Web development.
To function with the Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari browsers, the open source Dojo Offline Toolkit is to be available within three months.
"True offline access for Web applications is one of the holy grails of Web development. I believe that providing the Web with true, reliable offline access will open the door to many exciting, powerful possibilities; this is why I have devoted the last few years to figuring out how to bring this ability to the contemporary Web," Neuberg wrote.
With offline technology, consumer applications such as GMail and Blogger could conceivably be the central applications for users even when they do not have a network. CRM systems or a corporate portal also could take advantage of offline capabilities.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 8, 2007 12:04 PM
January 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Amazon's Bezos backs 'human powered' search
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos became a billionaire by using technology to automate a task (buying books) that used to be intensely intra-personal. Now he's plunked down millions of his own dough to fund a human-powered search engine: Chacha.com.
According to this announcement, Bezos's personal investment firm, Bezos Expeditions, led a $6 million round of funding for ChaCha, with help from Rod Canion, founding CEO of Compaq Computer, Silicon Valley investor Jack Gill of Maven Ventures.
So what is ChaCha.com? While the logo might make you think you've discovered the Web site for a new condiment, ChaCha is actually a user-assisted search engine that allows searchers to chat with "guides" who help them find what they're looking for.
My chat with my guide, in response to my search "What is SOA" looked something like this:
AmandaR: Welcome to ChaCha! Please wait a moment while I search for your results.
You: ok.
[At this point, three SOA related links pop up: one from Wikipedia, a "What is SOA" whitepaper from Systinet and an article from javaworld.com appear ]
AmandaR: Are these results sufficient?
You: Hmm...
You: Yes. Those will do.
My session ends, and I get an opportunity to rate Amanda's performance ("Excellent" imho).
Now, mind you, this is all pretty odd, given the anonymity that most of us are used to enjoying with Google, Yahoo and the like. Of course, as AOL showed us last year, just because nobody's chatting with you when you search, doesn't mean companies like Google and AOL don't look at what you're looking for.
Of course, those folks looking for edible underwear might choose to use ChaCha's unassisted "ChaCha Search." And on that score, the company is a step down from Google and the like. In fact, my ChaCha search for "edible underwear" turned up a slew of sponsored links from online vendors of naughty apparel, compared with Google's, which at least contained this useful Wikipedia entry on the whole edible underwear phenomenon.
There's also some question about how well ChaCha will scale, should the hordes of Google users, speaking a virtual Babel of languages decamp, en masse, for ChaCha's user assisted search. ChaCha leverages an army of home workers to help searchers with their queries and claims to have 20,000 such guides so far. Certainly the population of "work from home" folks is large -- but is it large enough? Still, human powered search engines are all the rage, with companies like Google experimenting with "human in the loop" searching, and socialnetworking style search startups like efamily.com, which launched today at CES.
Posted by Paul Roberts on January 8, 2007 11:03 AM
January 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Zero-code AJAX framework sought
Developers of the ZK AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) Web framework put out a 2007 roadmap this week, endeavoring to release technology that requires "zero code."
Bearing the slogan, "AJAX but no JavaScript," ZK is being positioned as an open source framework enabling development of a rich user interface for Web applications but requiring no JavaScript and little programming, according to the ZK Web site.
For 2007, simplicity will continue to be a critical driver.
"Simplicity is one of the core values of ZK. In 2007, we will keep pushing ZK to the optimal goal: zero code," according to the roadmap, authored by ZK founder Tom Yeh.
"There are a few things that are special about ZK, from a design perspective," said ZK user Dietrich Kappe, in an email.
"Most AJAX frameworks require that you know lots of JavaScript and force you to develop code for both the browser and the server. ZK applications, on the other hand, don't just behave like desktop applications, but you also develop them like [a] desktop application. You simply compose a user interface out of UI components, back it with business logic, and the ZK framework takes care of generating all of the code that goes to and interacts with the browser," Kappe said.
"You don't need to a stitch of JavaScript, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) or XHTML to achieve sophisticated results," said Kappe. ZUML (ZK User Interface Markup Language), a markup language based on XML, is a key to ZK, he said.
With ZK, markup and scripting are done in Java and designing becomes as simple as authoring HTML, the site says. Event-driven, server-centric components are featured to enable development as simple as programming desktops.
"The major rhythms of 2007 for ZK include ease of use, cross-platforms, cross-scripting languages, mega-components, and community collaboration," Yeh says on the roadmap.
"ZK has become the number 1 AJAX project in SourceForge.net, accumulated 250,000 downloads and 500,000 unique visitors and been referred by over 2,500 Web sites since the first release in November 2004," according to Yeh.
"In 2007 we would like to ignite more development of diversified plugins, versatile components, cool themes, design patterns, and sample applications," said Yeh.
"At the core, we will keep enhancing the extensibility with more flexible plugins, such [as] clustering and scripting languages, and the [long-awaited] Component Development Guide. With open source, people tend to modify the source codes directly, but please talk to us first," Yeh said.
As part of the roadmap, ZK Mobile, a Java Platform, Micro Edition client, is planned for release in the first half of this year. A visual design tool compatible with the Eclipse IDE also is on the agenda.
Core ZK developers work for Potix, Kappe said.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 5, 2007 04:10 PM
January 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft Enterprise Library technology previewed
Microsoft has posted a Community Technology Preview release of Enterprise Library 3.0 technology, featuring application blocks to assist developers with common enterprise development challenges.
Application blocks provide source code-based guidance for use in enterprise development projects. The code can be used as is, extended or modified.
Featured in the CTP is a partial implementation of Validation Application Block and Application Block Software Factory technologies as well as a Visual Studio-integrated configuration tool. DAAB (Data Access Application Block) enhancements and a source code installer also are included.
Release notes can be found here.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 5, 2007 02:59 PM
January 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Apple hit with yet another lawsuit
It seems that everyone wants a juicy piece of Apple lately. The company has been tagged with a number of lawsuits over the past year over patent infringement, but a forthcoming one will seek $100 million from Apple over its "abuse of global power," Financial Times reports.
Filing the lawsuit -- technically a countersuit -- comes in response to Apple's unsuccessful lawsuit against the Taiwan-based electronics operation for patent infringement.
"We plan to sue Apple in a Taiwanese court before the end of the month and demand $100 million in compensation for the revenues we have lost due to their abuse of their global power," Wu Fu-chin, Luxpro chairman, reportedly told the Financial Times.
Apple sued Luxpro in a Taiwanese high court last year, accusing Luxpro of copying the iPod Shuffle with an MP3 player initially called Super Shuffle, released in 2005. Although the company changed the product name to the Super Tangent and added to it the Luxpro logo, it still resembled the iPod Shuffle's weight and design; hence Apple's lawsuit and successful bid to have production of the Super Tangent halted.
However, a Taiwan high court as well as the Taiwan Supreme Court later ruled that Luxpro had not infringed on Apple's patent. Luxpro is now planning to fle the countersuit in an effort to compensate the revenue it claims to have lost while the Super Tangent production was held up.
Posted by Ted Samson on January 5, 2007 01:40 PM
January 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Apple, Google, and Napster hit with lawsuits
Apple, Google, and Napster don't often show up in the same sentence, let alone the same hedline, so I was surprised to see the AP reporting that all three are being sued by a company called Intertainer for copyright infringement.
"The patent in question, filed in 2001 and granted in 2005, outlines the business model for offering video content from various providers to consumers over the TV and the Internet, Intertainer Inc. said in its lawsuit," according to AP.
Apple sells movies via iTunes. Google offers videos both on Google Video and through YouTube. Napster, known for its music-download service, has talked about offering video downloads.
Founded in 1996, Intertainer proclaims itself the pioneer VOD (video on demand) company on its Web site.
The company claims it was driven out of business by AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal and Sony, the companies it sued back in 2002 for " conspiracy to fix prices in the digital distribution of entertainment and restraint of trade."
Last March 2006, the defendants -- Sony, Time Warner, NBC Universal, and Movielink -- reached an out of court settlement with Intertainer "that resolved the antitrust lawsuit to the satisfaction of all parties," according to Intertainer.
We'll report more as we get the info. Stay tuned.
Posted by Ted Samson on January 3, 2007 02:32 PM
January 02, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Windows also target in month of Apple Bugs
The sun has set on this, the second day of the Month of Apple Bugs (aka MOAB), and patterns have begun to emerge: media files are the bait, URL parsing code is the Achilles heel, and Windows is as much a target as Apple's OS X.
The MOAB project is being run by the hacker known as LMH, sponsor of the Month of Kernel Bugs and Kevin Finisterre. The effort began on Monday with publication of the details of a vulnerability in the QuickTime 7 player's handling of the rtsp:// URLs that was rated "highly critical" in a security alert by Secunia.
The vulnerability, which can be exploited remotely, using a malicious file delivered via e-mail or a Web page, could allow attackers to take control of vulnerable OS X and Windows system, according to MOAB.
A similar story can be found in the second Apple bug of the month: a format string vulnerability in the UDP URL handler in VideoLANs open source VLC media player. The vulnerability works with version 0.8.6, released Dec. 10, and -- as with the Quicktime flaw -- works on both OS X and Windows. Workarounds include disabling the udp:// URL handler or uninstalling VLC.
So two days, two serious sounding holes (though VLC media player is not Quicktime to be sure). According to a post by LMH, MOAB isn't necessarily fixated on finding holes in code written by Apple, but let's face it: finding vulnerabilities in applications that work on OS X is different from finding holes in OS X or even that are unique to the OS X platform. With 29 days to go and plenty more vulnerabilities to yet to come, it will be interesting to see how strong the preference for media files is, how many are in Apple code, and how many native to OS X.
Posted by Paul Roberts on January 2, 2007 07:14 PM
TOP STORIES
Agile mgmnt for small teamsWhy developers avoid Vista
CBS to buy CNET Networks
Icahn's letter to Roy Bostock
Yahoo opens up Search Monkey
AT&T limits iPhone purchases
Silverlight gets put on Linux
IBM boosts BlackBerry access
Intel to develop PC with Alibaba
Cybercriminals can rent a botnet
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- Virtualization: A Step by Step Approach to Success
- Dialing up Agility with Business Transformation
- 5 Things You Need to Know About Storage Virtualization
- Is your smaller organization ready for High Availability?
- Is system maintenance doing more harm than good?
- Virtual Test Lab Automation: Manage development infrastructure
