By Fei Lumbania on September 2, 2010
By Fei Lumbania on September 2, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO - Of all the hassles that can plague a PC user (and, trust me, there are many), few are as infuriating as random lockups.
There you are, typing along, when suddenly everything just freezes. No error message, no bluescreen, just a locked-up, unresponsive system. I’ve been there. I feel your pain.
If you’re a Windows 7 (or Windows Server 2008 R2) user, you may be in luck: Microsoft recently issued a hotfix for systems that stop responding randomly.
What causes the problem? Microsoft says it’s “a deadlock condition between the Lsass.exe process, the Redirected Drive Buffering Subsystem (Rdbss.sys) driver, and the Winsock kernel.” Well, duh! That was going to be my first guess.
The hotfix is available for both 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows 7. (Fun fact: you’ll often see these versions represented as “x86″ and “x64,” respectively.) To get it, click View and request hotfix downloads, accept Microsoft’s terms, choose the hotfix compatible with your system, and then provide your e-mail address.
Click Request hotfix, then check your inbox for an e-mail containing a link to the download. (I’m not sure why Microsoft makes you jump through these hoops, but, then again, I’m not sure why Microsoft does half the things it does.)
If you’ve encountered this random-lockup problem, let me know if this hotfix fixes it!
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By Fei Lumbania on September 2, 2010
By Computerworld Philippines Staff
September 2, 2010
Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., has announced its new Application Control Software Blade that enables organizations to secure and manage the use of thousands of Web 2.0 applications in the enterprise.
The new blade integrates Check Point’s unique UserCheck technology to engage employees in the decision-making process and enables IT administrators to tailor application usage policies. In addition, it delivers unmatched application visibility by leveraging Check Point AppWiki, the world’s largest application library, with over 50,000 Web 2.0 widgets and more than 4,500 Internet applications, including social networking, instant messaging and media streaming. For the first time, companies benefit from a unique combination of technology, user awareness and broad application control - all available in a single solution.
According to a recent Check Point and Ponemon global survey of over 2,100 IT security administrators, the majority of respondents believe employees are essential to helping organizations mitigate security risks associated with emerging Internet applications in the enterprise. Check Point is bringing a differentiated, modern approach to application control that provides a unique combination of robust security technology and user awareness, both necessary for employees to utilize Web 2.0 tools without jeopardizing the security of the network. Check Point’s new Application Control software blade enables organizations to define granular policy controls for web applications tailored to meet the organization and employees’ specific needs. In addition, the new blade integrates Check Point’s innovative UserCheck technology to alert users of the potential risks applications may cause and asks employees whether the purpose is for business or personal use. The solution educates users on corporate use policies, while providing key usage trends to IT administrators.
Based on Check Point’s Software Blade architecture, the Application Control blade can be activated with a single click on any Check Point security gateway, enabling organizations to leverage their existing infrastructure. The new blade is centrally managed from a single security management console, and IT administrators can monitor and control application usage based on identity, user or group, frequency and level of risk with unified event analysis. The new blade also provides seamless, agent-based and agent-less, Active Directory integration to allow individual or group access to specific applications, while restricting others.
General availability for the Check Point Application Control Software Blade will be available for purchase through the Check Point worldwide network of value-added resellers in the fourth quarter of 2010.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 2, 2010
FRAMINGHAM - IBM next will will begin shipping a computer with something that customers have not seen in a new mainframe from the company since 1995 — water cooling.
The new mainframe, dubbed the zEnterprise 196 , can operate with up to 96 processors versus 64 in the System z10 mainframe using about the same amount of power.
IBM credits the improved efficiency to an assortment of updates affecting how the new system uses its resources. Nonetheless, IBM saw fit to offer water cooling to help reduce overall data center cooling needs.
The zEnterprise 196 doesn’t include the built-in, integrated water cooling systems of old, said Jim Porell, an IBM distinguished engineer who works on the zSeries. Instead, the company is offering users an optional water cooled heat exchanger,
“It’s actually kind of back to the future,” said Porell, of the water option. The last line of IBM mainframes that had built-in water cooling was the ES/9000 family.
Porell said the optional water cooling system can improve overall environmental needs by about 12%, which may help some IT managers ” squeeze the last piece of floor space in before they go buy a new data center,” said Porell.
Water is more efficient than air in removing heat, he added.
The mainframe quad core 5.2-GHz chip, which IBM claims is the world’s fastest processor, also runs a little hotter than the previous 4.4-GHz mainframe quad processor, said Porell.
IBM’s return to liquid cooling began in 2005 with the release of eServer Rear Door Heat eXchanger for its increasingly dense blade servers. But that technology was also optional add-on for user.
In April, 2008, IBM introduced a water-cooled supercomputer, the Power 575, which runs with Power6 chip. That system uses water-chilled copper plates located above each microprocessor.
IBM’s mainframe chip development continues to head in the direction of higher clock speed, and Porell declined to speculate on what the limit may be.
IBM’s mainframe chip was designed by the company in Poughkeepsie, NY, and is manufactured East Fishkill, NY.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 2, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO - These days, most of your electronics have miniature computers built-in: Home-theater gear, handheld devices, phones, and even appliances now have embedded smarts in the form of a microprocessor, memory, and software. And just like computer software, firmware–the software that runs on your gadgets–needs periodic updating.
Believe it or not, many new gadgets aren’t 100 percent complete when you buy them. Though a spiffy electronic toy may perform its basic functions, some of its promised features may be absent or incomplete. And to keep up with ever-changing kinds of content, your devices may require software enhancements to give old hardware new features.
To avoid antagonizing customers who might spend hundreds of dollars on a cool piece of hardware only to find a few months later that it no longer worked, manufacturers design much of their gear to allow updates. You won’t be able to get every feature of the latest and greatest product via downloadable updates, but firmware revisions can make your old equipment run faster and crash less often.
What Is Firmware?
Firmware is software stored in persistent memory–usually either flash memory or programmable, rewritable ROM (read-only memory)–that’s built into the device. Unlike apps loaded into your PC’s RAM, firmware doesn’t get erased when you power the system down. Firmware may store just the basic software needed to start up the system–like a PC’s BIOS–or it may store the entire operating system and applications suites, as with smartphones.
Why Should I Update?
Users often wonder why they should update their firmware. The real answer is “it depends.” Many PC manufacturers and motherboard makers recommend that users not upgrade a system’s BIOS, for example, unless an actual problem arises, such as memory compatibility issues, or unless the user is installing a new, unsupported CPU.
On the other hand, a Blu-ray player needs to be updated frequently, because new features on the content discs may render them unplayable on old firmware. So before you rush out to update your coffeemaker’s firmware, check the manufacturer’s recommendation first; otherwise, you might risk bricking your device (turning it into a useless assemblage of silicon and plastic) for nothing.
Of course, if you’re running third-party firmware (as in the case of a “jailbroken” iPhone), all bets are off. In this article we don’t consider updates that break the manufacturer’s warranty, so if you’re installing custom, user-created firmware, you’re well beyond the scope of this story.
Let’s start with PCs and laptops, and then move on to other computing gear, handheld devices (including smartphones), and other consumer electronics.
General Rules of Thumb for Updating Firmware
A few general rules for updating firmware apply to all devices. They’re simple, but critical:
Okay, now let’s move on to the updating process itself.
PCs and Laptops
Today’s PC firmware falls into two categories: the traditional BIOS (Basic Input-Output System), and a newer kind called EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface). EFI is much more capable than the old BIOS routines, which are still mired in the 16-bit world. On the Windows PC side, most systems still use BIOS, while servers generally use EFI. Apple MacBooks, MacBook Pros, iMacs, and Mac Pros use EFI as well. Earlier Intel-based Macs use a firmware architecture built around the SMC (system management controller); but in recent Macs, EFI has superseded that arrangement.
Current PCs typically permit updating through the BIOS setup screen. Copy the BIOS update file to a USB flash memory stick, and then plug the USB stick into the system that you want to update. When you start up the system, press a key that launches the BIOS update application. Alternatively, press a keyboard key (usually Delete, but in some instances another key such as F2 or F10) to enter the BIOS setup program.
At this point, you’ll need to navigate to the device that contains the firmware update. To do this (typically), select the file name and press Enter to launch the update process.
Updating the BIOS from an executable file is even easier. All Intel-built motherboards are updatable through a Windows-based application. Some other motherboard makers make this feature available, too, in which case you download the BIOS update app and launch it from the desktop.
A few motherboard makers include apps for updating the BIOS over the Internet. If the prospect of a wonky Internet connection failing in mid-update makes you nervous, don’t worry: Usually the site will download the entire update before the update process starts.
Laptop and desktop systems with much older motherboards may require you to start up from a bootable floppy disk containing the BIOS update. The update may start automatically when you boot, or you may need to type a command at the command prompt; for details, print out the readme file for the update before you boot from the floppy.
To update a Mac, simply download the appropriate firmware update for you system and launch it from the Finder. The update will take a few minutes, and you must ensure uninterrupted power during that time.
Routers and Peripherals
Some PC peripherals, including hard drives, network-attached storage, and high-end monitors, may have updatable firmware. The instructions for installing updates vary considerably, so pay careful attention to the manufacturer’s documentation.
Wi-Fi routers are perhaps the easiest peripherals to update; most have the capability built into their router management interface. We’ll use the update screen from a Netgear WNDR3700 as an example.
The Netgear interface tells you what the update may fix when installed, and it gives you the option to back out if you don’t think you need the update. Network-attached storage devices use a similar interface for firmware updates.
Monitors rarely need updates. In fact, most monitors don’t allow firmware updates, though I did perform an update on a high-end monitor a few years ago–from within a Windows app.
These days we’re starting to see more firmware updates for hard drives, especially solid-state drives, and these can be nerve-wracking to install. Before making any changes to a critical storage device, back it up! In at least two instances that I’m aware of, SSD firmware updates could brick the hardware, resulting in permanent loss of any data the drives might contain. Because the firmware updating process can be arcane, you should carefully study the documentation before updating.
As an example, updating an Intel X25-E solid-state drive involves downloading an ISO image, burning it to a CD, and then booting from the CD to install the firmware update. So you must be comfortable burning the CD and booting from it before you get to the firmware update process.
Perhaps the oddest firmware update I ever installed was for a Razer Mamba wireless mouse. The process involved unplugging the USB cable from the docking cradle and plugging it directly into the mouse–no updating over the wireless connection.
Sometimes even expansion cards need firmware updates. I’ve had to update graphics card firmware and network interface card firmware. In both cases, I had to run the updates from a command-line prompt, but was able to do so from within Windows.
One last rule of thumb: Whenever you update a PC peripheral, reboot the peripheral after installing the update (assuming that the device doesn’t restart automatically).
Smartphones
Mobile phones are usually very easy to update, and doing so is generally worthwhile: The updates may include critical security fixes, performance enhancements, and neat new features.
iPhones are easy to update: Plug your iPhone into your Mac or PC, and make sure iTunes is running. If a firmware update is available, click yes when asked whether you want to update.
Windows Mobile devices have become easier to install firmware updates on, but the process can still be somewhat esoteric.Many Windows Mobile updates may completely erase your phone, so be sure to do a sync to back up your contact, calendar, and other data from the phone before you proceed. Some phones update through ActiveSync; others rely on a dedicated app. First connect your Windows Mobile phone to your PC via USB to back up (sync), and then update. Read all dialog boxes carefully, and follow instructions carefully.
The update processes for Android phones are all over the map. Though you can manually download the firmware and update it, waiting for your cellular network to roll out the update may be a better approach. If you want to download and manually update the phone, start by downloading the latest version and copying it onto an SD card or to the phone’s storage via USB. Depending on the phone, performing the update will involve pressing some combination of phone buttons.
BlackBerry owners looking for an update should go to RIM’s BlackBerry Device Software page and follow the instructions there, though Mac users must install the BlackBerry Desktop Software first.
GPS Units, Digital Cameras, Media Players, and Handheld Gaming Devices
Normally, GPS devices are updated when new mapping data becomes available. Most off-the-shelf GPS units come with free updates for a set period of time; after that, you may have to pay for each update. GPS data tends to be quite massive, and updating the device may take an hour or more.
I recently upgraded my Garmin Nuvi handheld GPS unit. You can check for an update by downloading a Web browser plug-in that will determine whether your device needs an update (the GPS unit must be plugged into your PC via USB), or you can check by entering the device’s serial number. In either case, you then download a very large file that is both a Windows app and mapping data. Attach your GPS unit via USB, run the app, and let it update your firmware
Gaming devices like the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP update automatically over their network as needed. All you need is access to Wi-Fi. Though you can update these devices wirelessly, attaching them to wall power is preferable. If you go the wireless route, make sure that you have a healthy battery charge.
Digital cameras occasionally need firmware updates, whether they’re simple point-and-shoot cameras or professional-level digital SLRs. In most cases, to update the camera’s firmware, you download the update, copy it to a flash memory card, and insert the memory card into the camera. (Alternatively you can copy the update directly to a memory card in the camera, if it’s connected to your PC.) Then either select an entry from the camera’s built-in menu or press some combination of buttons to load the update. Usually, you’ll have to copy the firmware file to the top level (root) of the memory card, not to a subfolder.
To update a media player like Apple’s iPod or Microsoft’s Zune, attach the player to your PC and run the appropriate app (iTunes or Zune software.) Then updates occur almost automatically; just click Yes if prompted to update. Zune updates are almost always required if you want to continue to use the Zune store; iPod updates are optional in many instances.
Other music players, such as the Archos, typically copy the downloaded firmware file to the device over a USB connection, at which point you disconnect it and the update occurs automatically. In some cases, you may have to run a Windows app.
Firmware Updates for Your Home Theater
Firmware updates are relatively new to the world of living-room electronics. After all, you don’t typically think of “booting your TV”–you just turn it on.
But as consumer electronics gear becomes smarter and more capable, it also has a greater need for firmware updates. The two primary candidates for upgrades are Blu-ray players and HDTVs; but as other gear (such as A/V receivers) become networkable devices, firmware updates become available for them, too.
For example, I recently updated the firmware in my Onkyo TX-NR3007 A/V receiver, which solved an HDMI sync problem the unit was having. Such updates sometimes even fix problems you might have assumed were just a quirk of your HDTV set–problems with audio/video on certain ports cutting out, unexpected freezing and power cycling, image-processing errors, and more.
Most consumer electronics equipment is updated in one of the three following ways (though other techniques, such as updating through a serial port, also exist).
ISO file burned to CD: Some older Blu-ray players didn’t have a network capability and lacked USB ports. The only way to update them was to burn the downloaded firmware file to a CD and then install them via either a menu selection or a combination of remote-control button presses. Even some premium DVD players from a few years ago required this type of updating.
Despite talk (as the standard was being fleshed out) of using actual Blu-ray content discs to automatically install firmware updates, this feature seems not to have been realized in actual products.
Firmware copied to USB flash drive: This updating method is most common in situations where a network connection is unavailable or unreliable. I have updated several HDTVs via flash drive.
Firmware directly downloaded from the Internet: This is an increasingly prevalent method for updating firmware. Let’s look at a couple of examples.
You can set up a Panasonic DMP-BD85 Blu-ray player to automatically inform you of new firmware updates, as long as it’s connected to the Internet. However, the actual update screen is buried in the menus inside of the ‘others’ main menu selection–it’s not in the ‘network’ menu selection.
In the case of the Onkyo TX-NR3007 receiver, the update firmware menu is appropriately listed in the ‘Hardware Setup’ part of the setup menu.
Game Consoles
Quite a few users have game consoles as part of their home theater setups. Updating the firmware on current-generation units is simple, because it’s required. For example, the Xbox 360 needs to have an always-on connection to the Internet in order to make available most of its services, though you can play single-player games without a connection. When the console detects a new system update, a dialog box pops up and informs you that you’ll be logged off the network if you don’t install it.
These updates can add some fairly significant features–Microsoft revamped the whole user interface with the New Xbox Experience patch, and Sony added 3D gaming support to the PS3 (with 3D Blu-ray support coming in September)–so it’s a good idea to stay on top of them.
Final Thoughts
If you’re at all concerned about updating the firmware on your device, it’s worth cruising some key online forums to see whether the updates are working–or are useful. With devices such as smartphones, you might want to take a wait-and-see attitude. Apple supports iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G, for example, but users have reported significant performance decreases following the firmware update.
As we’ve seen, the process of updating your gear’s firmware can be easy or complicated, depending on the age and design of the hardware. Nevertheless, it’s usually worthwhile to perform the update, because you’ll get bug fixes and, often, new features. So the next time a message pops up on your Blu-ray player or handheld device prompting you to update your firmware, give serious consideration to saying yes.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 2, 2010
FRAMINGHAM - Microsoft on Tuesday again abstained from naming which of its Windows programs, if any, contain bugs that could lead to widespread “DLL load hijacking” attacks.
Also on Tuesday, the company published an automated tool to make it easier for users to block attacks exploiting vulnerabilities in a host of Windows applications.
The DLL load hijacking vulnerabilities exist in many Windows applications because the programs don’t call code libraries — dubbed “dynamic-link library,” or “DLL” — using the full pathname, but instead use only the filename. Criminals can exploit that by tricking the application into loading a malicious file with the same name as the required DLL. The result: Hackers can hijack the PC and plant malware on the machine.
“Microsoft plans to address those of our products affected by this issue in the most appropriate way for customers,” said Jerry Bryant, a group manager with the Microsoft Security Response Center, in a Tuesday entry on that team’s blog . “This will primarily be in the form of security updates or defense-in-depth updates.”
Although Microsoft again declined to call out its vulnerable software, outside researchers have identified as potential targets a number of its high-profile apps, including Word 2007, PowerPoint 2007 and 2010, Address Book and Windows Contact, and Windows Live Mail.
Other vendors’ software may also be at risk, including Mozilla’s Firefox, Google’s Chrome, and Adobe’s Photoshop.
Bryant hinted that some Microsoft software could be exploited. “Due to the fact that customers need to click through a series of warnings and dialogs to open a malicious file, we rate most of these vulnerabilities as Important,” he said, referring to the second-highest threat ranking in the company’s four-step scoring system.
Microsoft typically uses Important to describe bugs that can be exploited remotely — via the Internet or e-mail, for example — but which also require that the user assist the attack in some way, usually by clicking through warnings or opening a malicious file.
In another blog , Jonathan Ness, an engineer with MSRC, and Maarten Van Horenbeeck, an MSRC program manager, described how customers can deploy and use a tool the company first offered Aug. 23 .
That tool blocks the loading of DLLs from remote directories, such as those on USB drives, Web sites and an organization’s network, and is aimed at enterprise IT personnel.
Not surprisingly, Microsoft acknowledged that users have asked for more help with the tool. Shortly after its release, IT professionals complained that the tool was confusing and asked colleagues for advice on how to configure it.
To simplify things, Microsoft has posted a “Fix It” tool on its support site that automatically blocks any DLLs from loading from WebDAV or SMB (Server Message Block) shares, two of the most likely attack vectors. Users must still download and install the original tool, however.
Ness and Van Horenbeeck also downplayed the threat to some extent, saying that DLL load hijacking bugs cannot be exploited via “drive-by” attacks, where a user’s PC is infected as soon as he or she browses to a malicious site.
“A victim would need to browse to a malicious WebDAV server or a malicious SMB server and double-click a file in the Windows Explorer window that the malicious server displays,” they said.
Microsoft has known of the issue since at least August 2009 , when researchers with the University of California Davis notified the company of their work. There’s evidence, however, of reports as far back as 2000, and attacks exploiting the flaw the following year, when the Nimda worm leveraged the bug in Office 2000.
HD Moore, chief security officer at Rapid7 and the creator of the Metasploit penetration testing toolkit, was the first to reveal the potential attacks when, on Aug. 19, he said he’d found 40 vulnerable Windows applications . Moore was followed by other researchers who claimed different numbers of at-risk programs, ranging from more than 200 to fewer than 30.
Some vendors have already patched the problem in their software. Both uTorrent and Wireshark, a BitTorrent client and network protocol analyzer, respectively, have been updated to address the bug.
Others are working on a fix. “We’re testing our own Firefox-specific fixes and plan to get them out to users soon,” Mozilla’s security team said in an e-mail reply to questions last week.
Even so, Microsoft said patches may be long in coming to some users. “We recognize that it may take quite a bit of time for all affected applications to be updated and for some, an update may not be possible,” Bryant admitted.
In lieu of patches, the blocking tool is the best defense, he continued. With that in mind, Microsoft plans to make the tool available “within the next couple of weeks” for downloading and deployment using Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), Microsoft’s most-used business patch management mechanism.
The company is also thinking about pushing the tool to everyone, including consumers, via Windows Update, although it would be switched off by default, said Bryant.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 2, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO - SAN JOSE, Calif. — Data traffic volumes have surpassed voice in the mobile space, a trend that is expected to continue well into the future, an Ericsson official said during an industry panel session in Silicon Valley Tuesday evening.
Three years ago, said Ericsson CTO Hakan Eriksson, there was very little data passing over the mobile network. “Two years later, last year in the autumn, data passed voice in the mobile network,” said Eriksson, speaking at a session entitled “The March to Mobility,” which also featured executives from Intel, Nokia, and Hewlett-Packard. “It has taken data about 18 months to do what voice took 20 years to do,” in building out traffic volumes, he said.
Ericsson expects data loads to keep growing. By 2015, there will be 30 times more data than voice on the network; by 2020, data will outpace voice by 1,000 times, said Eriksson.
“Data is going to overtake voice big time,” Eriksson said.
Some kind of volume-based billing system will be needed for mobile services, since a flat fee does not make sense, said Eriksson. While users may not understand what a gigabyte is as a possible measurement for mobile transmissions, they already pay electric bills based on kilowatt hours, a measurement also not really understood by electricity customers, he said.
Panelists also pondered form factors for mobile devices as well as location-aware systems and potential issues such as the safety of handheld phones. More touch-oriented devices are anticipated, with a range of form factors eyed, said Phil McKinney, vice president and CTO of the personal systems group at HP.
“There’s really no one-size-fits-all as far as devices,” said Eric Klein, vice president of technology planning at Nokia.
Not everything is practical on a handheld device, according to Mike Bell, vice president of Intel’s Ultra Mobility Group. “I think trying to read a book on a three-inch cell phone screen is ridiculous. I just don’t buy it,” Bell said.
Meanwhile, handheld devices could eliminate the need to carry wallets, Klein said. Phones could maintain access to money, he explained. “You walk up and pay with a phone,” he said.
Bell was critical of Apple’s iPhone App Store model for application distribution, describing it as akin to a proprietary application to look at the Internet. “It’s this giant step backwards,” he said.
Panelists also were doubtful that cell phones presented any health hazards. “If there was a problem, we should have seen it with 5 billion people using [handheld phones],” Eriksson said.
Tuesday’s session was presented by the Churchill Club, a Silicon business and technology forum.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 2, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO - Raise your hand if this has happened to you: You’re on an airplane, watching a movie on your laptop, when all of a sudden the screen goes dim. Or you’re giving a PowerPoint presentation and your PC suddenly goes to sleep.
These kinds of hassles can happen after a period of “idleness,” when the system detects no mouse or keyboard input. Blame Windows’ power settings, which by default try to conserve power if they think you’re not doing something. (Funny how Windows isn’t yet smart enough to know if a movie’s playing or there’s a projector connected to your laptop.)
As you probably know, all it takes is an occasional jiggle of the mouse to keep the system humming. And that’s the idea behind Mouse Jiggler, a free utility that “fakes” mouse input–and saves you from having to mess with Windows’ power settings.
Just run this tiny app as needed–say, before you start your movie or presentation–and click Enable Jiggle. Then take your hands off the mouse for a couple seconds. You’ll see your pointer start to hop back and forth a tiny bit–enough to trick Windows into stayin’ alive.
In some programs (like Windows Media Player), mouse activity like this can have the unwanted effect of making onscreen controls appear. For situations like those, enable the Zen Jiggle setting, which does the “jiggling” behind the scenes, with no actual cursor movement. Clever!
Mouse Jiggler works with all versions of Windows; it requires Microsoft’s .Net Framework 2.0 or later.
Install Your Favorite Apps in One Fell Swoop
Are you upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 or buying a new PC? In both cases, you face the same tedious chore: reinstalling all your apps. That means digging out a bunch of CDs and/or downloading programs from various sites, then installing them one at a time. I don’t know about you, but I can think of better ways to spend several hours.
The Ninite Web site creates a custom software installer with all the freeware and open-source apps you want. Just choose from the dozens of available programs–everything from AVG Anti-Virus Free and Dropbox to OpenOffice.org and uTorrent–and the service builds an installer that will download and load them all.
Once you start the installer, you can sit back and relax: Ninite automates the entire process, meaning you don’t have to sit around clicking Next a bunch of times. Even better, Ninite automatically chooses the proper version of each program–32- or 64-bit–and eliminates any toolbars that might try to sneak in during installation.
I love this service. I’ve used it several times on new PCs, and it saves time like you wouldn’t believe. Bookmark it!
Facebook Dislike Button is Real–And I Like It!
Perhaps you heard the news about a fake Facebook “dislike” button that quickly spread virally across the service.
What you may not know is that there really is a legitimate Facebook Dislike Button in the form of an add-on for Firefox. (Thankfully, an Internet Explorer version is imminent as well.)
Developed by FaceMod, the Official Facebook Dislike Button does about what you’d expect: adds a Dislike option right alongside the Like button. Now, when a friend says they’re “having the worst day ever!”, you can show your support by “disliking” it (which is obviously preferable to “liking”).
Just one little wrinkle: only other Dislike Button users will be able to see your “dislikes.” That’s one reason it’ll be better when IE users can get in on the action. (The developer says support for other browsers, like Chrome and Safari, is coming soon.)
Well, what do you think? Do you “like” the Official Dislike Button, or do you think Facebook should get a clue and build one of their own right into the service?
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By Fei Lumbania on September 2, 2010
The survey, conducted by research firm TheInfoPro in June, also asked IT managers from which vendors they were most likely to switch. Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and Sun Microsystems, which was acquired by Oracle in 2009, took the top spots.
For the second year, results showed Oracle struggling, TheInfoPro said in a statement. Asked how difficult it would be to switch vendors, 21% of the IT managers surveyed said it would be hard to replace Oracle, while 43% said it would be easy, and 35% said it would be “somewhat difficult.” For IBM , 36% said it would be hard, 23% said it would be easy and 41% said somewhat difficult. For HP , 41% said it would be hard, 26% said it would be easy, and 33% said it would be somewhat difficult.
In other areas, equipment from Hewlett-Packard and IBM was seen as highly replaceable, according to InfoPro, which also conducted hour-long interviews with the participants. Respondents said EMC or Hitachi Data Systems would be the most likely candidates to replace their IBM equipment, Coulter said, adding 29% of IBM customers surveyed said they’re planning to spend less this year than in 2009, he said.
“From narratives we read from interviewees, it’s mainly about their storage,” said Marco Coulter, managing director of TheInfoPro’s storage and cloud sectors.
Among IT vendors, EMC remained the clear leader in respondent’s minds when it came to storage area networked (SAN) systems, and NetApp led the way with network-attached storage (NAS), Coulter said.
Five EMC products were listed as among the “most exciting” as was the company itself by the Fortune 1000 respondents. EMC was rated second most exciting by mid-sized enterprises, with NetApp as first. Many of EMC’s customers said they plan to spend more than $25 million with the company this year, InfoPro said in a statement.
In the category of data storage management software, CommVault came out ahead of Symantec, with 54% of CommVault customers indicating they will spend more on their products in 2010, compared with 28% of Symantec’s customers.
“They’re just sitting there taking away from Symantec. I think there’s a lot of frustration with Symantec,” he said. “This is only my personal opinion, but I think people have used Symantec over the years and seen backup as very difficult with them, while CommVault has a slightly easier way of solving the backup problem.
CommVault also received high scores for technical support, Coulter said, where Symantec got slightly weaker scores.
The survey also showed that 28% of respondents said their spending on data storage systems would be flat this year, while 42% said the same for 2011. For 2010, 30% of respondents said they plan to cut spending on storage, while 42% they expect to increase it.
“As we look at the storage market overall, there’s still growth in 2010 and 2011, but we do see the growth rate slowing down,” Coulter said. “Just keeping the lights on is becoming a growing narrative.”
For the first time, a category of spending titled “Just keeping the lights on” reached the number 10 spot in the “new initiatives” category in TheInfoPro’s survey.
The respondents, 165 of whom worked for Fortune 1000 companies and 113 for mid-sized enterprises, said that dealing with capacity growth was the number one pain point, followed by a lack of proper forecasting and reporting tools.
Many of the IT managers indicated that using thin provisioning, which allocates storage to applications on an “as-needed” basis, helped them to better use their storage capacity. They also said they were able to reduce backup array and tape drive capacity through the use of deduplication, Coulter said.
Coulter was quick to point out that primary deduplication, however, technology that removes duplicate data before it’s stored on disk storage systems, is still mostly unused by large organizations.
“At some point, once you’ve thinly provisioned everything and deduplicated everything, you can’t continue to store more data on the capacity you have. At some point, storage growth will pick up,” Coulter said.
The expected use of solid state drives (SSD) in storage arrays, saw a modest 2% to 3% growth rate among those surveyed.
As in previous TheInfoPro surveys, virtualization and cloud computing remain top of mind this year with 54% of respondents saying virtualization is changing roles and responsibilities, and one in four indicating they expect the majority of production to be virtualized by 2012. And, while 8% of enterprises use an external cloud for storage, 31% expect that by 2012 more than 25% of data services will be protected through the cloud.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 2, 2010
FRAMINGHAM - A little-known group of security researchers will kick off a month of bug disclosures starting tomorrow that target unpatched vulnerabilities in software from Abode, Microsoft, Mozilla, Apple and others.
But the researcher who launched the month-long bug festival practice four years ago isn’t optimistic that reviving the practice would have an impact.
The “Month Of Abysssec Undisclosed Bugs” (MOAUB) will feature flaws in Microsoft’s Excel and Internet Explorer, the Linux-based cPanel Web hosting control panel, and other software, said Abysssec Security Research in a post to the firm’s blog earlier this month.
“They’re threatening — at least, the companies affected will see it as a threat — to release vulnerabilities on all kinds of software, from desktop applications to browsers,” said Jamz Yaneza, threat research manager at Trend Micro, today.
Microsoft , which figured prominently in the MOAUB announcement, said it’s aware of the group’s plan. “As always, if and when a vulnerability is publicly disclosed, Microsoft will take immediate action to determine the appropriate response for our customers,” said Jerry Bryant, group manager with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC).
Yaneza said he had not heard of Abysssec before this.
According to the group’s Web site, it is made up of four researchers — none of whom were identified by a full name — that specialize in penetration testing, exploit development and application security review. Abysssec’s Web site was registered in 2008, but the WHOIS record is hidden behind a privacy wall.
However, LinkedIn listed Shahin Ramezany, of Albany, N.Y, as a researcher with Abysssec. The group did not reply to an e-mailed request for an interview.
“Starting on the 1st of September, we will release a collection of [zero-days], Web application vulnerabilities, and detailed binary analysis (and [proof-of-concepts]) for recently released advisories by vendors such as Microsoft, Mozilla, Sun, Apple, Adobe, HP [and] Novel [sic],” the foursome said.
Yaneza said users should pay attention to the MOAUB disclosures, but he didn’t seem worried about the threat.
“It’s all going to be low-hanging fruit,” he said, referring to the term that describes easily-found vulnerabilities. “We’ve seen vulnerabilities on these [programs]. I’m not too much concerned. If users patch as usual and keep their automatic patching turned on, they should be fine.”
Bug-of-the-month collections were popular several years ago, but the practice has been little used since 2007. In July 2006, HD Moore, now the chief security officer of Rapid7, used a “Month of Browser Bugs” event to showcase vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), Firefox, Safari and Opera.
Moore’s month-long bug event was quickly followed by others, including “Month of Kernel Bugs” in November 2006, and a “Month of Apple Bugs” in January 2007.
Yaneza called Abysssec’s upcoming bug month a “publicity stunt” designed to attract attention to the group.
Moore agreed.
“Sure, they are publicity stunts, but that’s not the point,” he said today. “Projects like Month of Brower Bugs, and the kernel and Apple ones, they get vendors to patch lots of vulnerabilities, dozens and dozens, and focus security research on a necessary area.”
But he wasn’t sure MOAUB would do that. “Other projects focused on one general area, like browsers or Apple,” Moore said. “But this seems like it’s just a bunch of vulnerabilities. I don’t know if this will have the same impact.”
Microsoft’s Bryant also took Abysssec to task. “Disclosing vulnerabilities publicly only puts customers at risk,” he said in an e-mail, repeating a long-time stance by the company.
Abysssec will post its findings on the Exploit Database Web site throughout September.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 2, 2010
FRAMINGHAM - Intel wants to be a force in the mobile computing world — a fact that was made clear by the company’s recently announced plans to acquire chip maker Infineon Technology’s wireless division and security software provider McAfee.
But several analysts questioned whether spending billions of dollars on those two companies and others, and revving up the MeeGo mobile operating system in partnership with Nokia, can be enough to make much difference. Some say Intel has already fallen well behind the mobile curve and has a long way to go to catch up.
With the planned acquisitions of Infineon for $1.4 billion and McAfee for $7.7 billion and the 2009 purchase of mobile software maker Wind River Systems for $884 million , Intel likely will grow more focused on mobile, several analysts said. Those deals could help the company move beyond its primary role as a chip maker whose products are used in 80% of today’s desktop and laptop computers but whose sales growth is nonetheless slower than smartphones and mobile devices.
“Becoming more vertical [in mobile] for Intel is about survival,” said analyst Jack Gold of J.Gold Associates. “Intel knows it has to change with the times. The Internet of connected things means it’s not just about the processor anymore. It’s about connectivity — hence the wireless acquisitions — and it’s about security to keep us safer when we are connected.”
Ken Dulaney, a Gartner analyst, said Intel is “not yet a force in mobile, and historically they have been unsuccessful.” Given the fact that Intel will encounter entrenched competition from Qualcomm and other chip makers that build ARM-based chips widely used in smartphones, Dulaney wasn’t willing to predict how the company will do in the mobile market.
“We will have to wait and see,” Dulaney said. ARM-based chips, which incorporate technology from ARM Holdings in Cambridge, England, work well at the low levels of power consumption required for smartphone and small devices. Intel has “never mastered” that energy-efficient architecture, he said, but he did acknowledge that Intel’s next version of its Atom chip, called Medfield , “may be on the verge of improving power management.”
Rob Enderle, an analyst at Enderle Group, said the Infineon purchase “gives Intel a foot in the door [of the mobile market], but they have to push Atom chips through that door.” So far, he added, Intel “has taken an ugly approach to the [mobile] market.”
The McAfee deal could help give Intel a comprehensive security approach, and mobile device makers might be interested in using future Intel chips if they had security baked in, Enderle said. “McAfee is much more than antivirus, and that includes encryption, which is arguably better than Research In Motion’s,” he said, referring to the maker of the popular BlackBerry smartphones.
Part of the concern about Intel’s mobile future comes from its recent history. In 2006, Intel sold its unprofitable StrongARM business (whose products were based on the ARM architecture) to Marvell Technology Group for $600 million. Intel “dropped ARM prematurely,” Enderle said. “They lost market momentum and have to rebuild it from scratch and acquisitions.”
Infineon makes ARM-based chips used in the iPhone and other smartphones, but that business alone will not propel Intel into a strong mobile position, analysts said.
The Infineon division that Intel is acquiring has about a 5% of the mobile chip market. Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and STMicroelectronics are the biggest players, accounting for half the market for mobile processors and radio chips in cell phones, according to Gartner.
Tristan Garra, a financial analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co., said buying Infineon may be “too little, too late” for Intel in the smartphone market. And Craig Berger of FBR Capital Markets wrote a note saying he was skeptical about Intel’s ability to execute in the mobile market or other businesses beyond microprocessors for personal computers.
Intel invested a great deal in high-speed WiMax technologies , but analysts said the company will also need to perform in the much bigger 4G market for LTE wireless technology. Perhaps Intel’s $6 billion annual R&D budget will make a difference there, analysts said.
Even if it offered futuristic mobile chips, analysts said Intel would still need more than chips to succeed; it might need to find a hardware partner to build smartphones with its chips.
“At the end of the day, Intel has to build something that users find compelling, and they’ve got to find somebody to build it for them, something that’s an Intel-based iPhone,” Enderle said. “That’s possible, but until they do that they aren’t going to be successful. This market is defined by devices, not components.”
Dulaney argued that any Intel-based smartphone hardware would also need to run on a major mobile operating system, not just the relatively young MeeGo. “Intel probably needs to get one of the major OSs to commit to them, like Symbian, iOS or RIM,” Dulaney said. “They have Android support, but so does everyone else. And MeeGo has a long way to go.”
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By Fei Lumbania on September 1, 2010
By Computerworld Philippines
September 1, 2010
A single-antenna wireless N desktop adapter that delivers data at speeds of up to 150 Mbps, the D-Link DWA-525 extends a desktop’s coverage and reception to provide users with a faster wireless connection while helping to reduce wireless dead spots. Compatible with IEEE 802.11b/g/n standards, the DWA-525 provides superior coverage and reception in comparison to 802.11b/g standards and also includes Wi-Fi Multimedia and Power Save QoS support to prioritize media traffic while conserving battery power in smaller devices. For additional convenience, the DWA-525 supports Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) to quickly secure and set up a wireless network. It includes 64/128-bit WEP encryption and WPA/WPA2 security to protect user networks and wireless data. The DWA-525 also offers absolute interoperability in the 802.11b/g standard.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 1, 2010
By Computerworld Philippines
September 1, 2010
Say goodbye to the pains of having messy wires all over your workstation. Genius intros 2 wireless keyboards which combine style and practicality. SlimStar 800 features eight function keys for instant access to office applications you use most often. It also has a detachable palm-rest which gives you hand and wrist comfort, which you need especially when typing long hours. SlimStar 800 is also water-resistant which means you’re free to drink a beverage while working without having to worry about spill damage. LuxeMate T810 is a 3-in-1 device, integrating the functions of a keyboard, mouse and remote control. It features a unique OptoTouch design which allows a fourway directional scrolling for faster and easier browsing. This keyboard works amazing with Microsoft XP Media Center Edition (MCE) and Vista and gives full PC remote control function for Live TV, DVD, My Video, and My Music. LuxeMate T810 has a rubber-coated texture which gives an anti-grip control and feel. Both SlimStar 800 (P1,675) and LuxeMate T810 (P3,370) feature 2.4GHz giving up to 10 meters of interference-free operation.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 1, 2010
By Computerworld Philippines
September 1, 2010
For people who need to connect a lot of peripherals and other addons to their PCs and notebooks, here’s Buffalo’s new collection of hubs. Buffalo has 3-port (P450), 4-port (P450), or 7-port (P 1,655) hubs to maximize your connectivity. They come in fun colors and are not too pricey, either. These hubs are made of tough material and are travel-sized for your convenience.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 1, 2010
By Computerworld Philippines
September 1, 2010
Touted as the world’s smallest Android smartphones, the Xperia X10 mini has dimensions of 3.2 by 1.9 by .63 inches, while the X10 mini pro with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard is 3.5 by 2.05 by .67 inches. Both are approximately the size of a credit card, but are bursting with numerous features. As Google Android smartphones, the duo can be customized with directly downloadable applications from Android Market. Both phones have a 2.55-inch scratch resistant TFT touchscreen supporting over 16 million colors. Their 5-megapixel camera for stills and video comes with auto focus, geo tagging, photo and video light and the Sony Ericsson album application, a feature that organizes image files. Their user experience platform was specifically designed for a smaller form factor with a one-hand touch experience. Users can quickly access their most used and favorite applications through a unique and customizable four-corner user interface.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 1, 2010
By Computerworld Philippines
September 1, 2010
D-Link’s DSL-2740B Wireless N ADSL router is one of the first routers to earn the ‘Compatible with Windows 7’ logo and provides consumers with a quality user experience together with a seamless and high speed wireless connection. Supporting 802.11n technology to provide high speed wireless performance, the DSL-2740B features ADSL2/2+ standards to provide Internet transmission speeds of up to 24Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream. Its Quality of Service (QoS) capability also supports priority usage. The DSL-2740B also supports WPA and WPA2 for the best possible encryption regardless of client devices. It is also equipped with a simple Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) to easily add devices and secure the network. Additionally it includes the Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) firewall and hacker attack logging features to prevent unauthorised access to the network. SPI inspects incoming packets before they are allowed in while the hacker attack logging feature protects the network from Denial of Service attacks.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 1, 2010
By Computerworld Philippines
September 1, 2010
Cyberoam’s new wireless network security appliance — CR15wi, comes with an in-built wireless access point featuring 802.11 n/b/g standards, MIMO technology and up to eight virtual access points. The appliance delivers the entire range of UTM security features over WLAN for protecting home offices, remote offices as well as public Internet access outlets. Currently, corporate Wi-Fi environments are at huge risk from information theft and cyberterrorism attacks due to their inability to trace end users, especially the guest users. CR15wi overcomes this by a unique Layer 8 technology, treating user-identity as the 8th Layer or the “human” layer in the protocol stack. This allows administrators to apply identity-based security policies to gain visibility over user activity in the network. For secure authentication, CR15wi supports multiple virtual access points that create independent, segregated networks in the same physical area of the organization (sales, marketing, guest users etc.). This prevents rogue clients from connecting to networks where they don’t belong.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 1, 2010
By Computerworld Philippines
September 1, 2010
The new Fujitsu PRIMERGY TX100 S2 comes with a Zero-Watt feature similar to the Zero-Watt PC also available from Fujitsu. Contrary to conventional servers, which draw a trickle of residual power even when they are fully switched off, the PRIMERGY TX100 S2 draws 0.0 Watts when it is turned off. This reduces power consumption and heat output from the system cooling, and additionally protects the system from external hack attacks overnight and at weekends. Just like every Fujitsu server model, the PRIMERGY TX100 S2 is tested for around 5000 reboot cycles, meaning that units could theoretically be turned on and off every day for more than 13 years.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 1, 2010
By Computerworld Philippines
September 1, 2010
Ruckus Wireless’ Wi-Fi Wall Switch (the ZoneFlex 7025) integrates high speed 802.11n Wi-Fi technology with wired Ethernet ports into an elegant, inconspicuous and low-profile wall jack that fits into any standard United States or European electrical junction box. The Ruckus Wi-Fi Wall Switch was purposely developed to meet the growing demands within hotels to connect in-room devices that are now IP-enabled while concurrently supporting a broader range of IP-based services. The Ruckus ZoneFlex Wi-Fi Wall Switch is also ideal for filling “void areas” within hotels and schools such as corners of buildings, conference rooms and other locations where ubiquitous wired and wireless coverage is not pervasive. For many hotels, Ethernet access in conference rooms is typically handled by bringing in a switch to provide wired connectivity if wireless isn’t available. The Ruckus ZoneFlex Wi-Fi Wall Switch eliminates this problem allowing multiple devices to connect using both wires and Wi-Fi.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 1, 2010
By Computerworld Philippines Staff
September 1, 2010
Designed with top-of-the-line notebook computers in mind, the WD Scorpio Black 500 GB SATA Hard Drive delivers the capacity and speed needed to supercharge a notebook PC without compromising battery life or quiet operation. Features like these also make this drive an option for compact desktops, external hard drives, gaming systems, and blade servers.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 1, 2010
By Computerworld Philippines Staff
September 1, 2010
Lenovo’s ThinkCentre M90 and M90p desktops are designed to meet the complex computing needs of today’s global, 24/7 businesses through enhanced security, manageability and flexibility features. The ThinkCentre M90 and M90p are also Lenovo’s first ThinkCentre desktops to feature the new 2010 Intel Core vPro family of processors, which provide added power to easily multitask even while operating intensive applications. The ThinkCentre M90 and M90p desktops include Intel Core i5 and i7 processors with Intel Turbo Boost and Intel Hyper-Threading technologies for up to 81% better performance compared to previous ThinkCentre models. This powerful performance helps busy users easily multitask during activities such as data entry, e-discovery and payroll processing. The ThinkCentre M90 and M90p desktops are available in tower, small form factor and ultra small form factors. Models of the Think- Centre M90 desktop start at PhP 38,000. Both desktops are available on www.lenovo.com and through business partners.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 1, 2010
By Paul Krill
InfoWorld (US)
September 1, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO - EMC VMware on Tuesday is introducing its cloud computing platform for Java development, which relies on technologies from the company’s SpringSource division.
The VMware Cloud Application Platform leverages the popular Spring Framework for Java development and the newly branded vFabric product set, which features pre-existing SpringSource products offering capabilities such as data management, messaging, and dynamic load balancing. The 2.5 million users of Spring will be eyed as initial users of the platform.
“At the end of the day, we feel we’re providing a very legitimate path to this cloud computing architecture of the future for Java,” said Shaun Connolly, EMC VMware’s vice president of products. Until now, there had not been a clear path to the cloud for Java developers, he said.
Applications on the VMware cloud platform can share information with underlying infrastructure to boost software performance, quality of service, and infrastructure utilization, according to VMware. Users can deploy vFabric inside a data center or within public clouds such as VMforce. Also, vFabric can be deployed at a VMware vCloud service provider such as Savvis.
VMware anticipates its Java cloud platform being used for deployment of rich Web applications or for application integration.
Components of vFabric include the following technologies:
o tc server, an enterprise version of the Apache Tomcat Java server
o GemFire data management software
o RabbitMQ messaging server, for communicating between applications inside and outside the data center
o ERS (Enterprise Ready Server), which is an enterprise version of the Apache Web server featurjng dynamic load balancing
o Hyperic, for application performance management
“The benefits of our VMware vFabric is these are very lightweight components,” Connolly said. “At the end of the day, developers want a nice elastic fabric and that’s why we chose the name vFabric,” he said. VMware’s Java cloud platform is akin to Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud platform for Microsoft-based developers, Connolly said.
VMware’s cloud platform is aimed at the private cloud market, said analyst Karin Kelley, of the 451 Group. “They’re basically building up their middleware stack to support the enterprise private cloud for Java apps and they’re really targeting the private cloud market,” she said.
VMware VFabric can run on top of the company’s vSphere virtualization technology, which supplies automated provisioning and configuring, Connolly said. RabbitMQ, Hyperic, and GemFire technologies were gained through acquisitions. SpringSource itself was acquired by EMC VMware last year.
Spring and VMware Application Platform Services are available for download. VMware anticipates selling vFabric-based services, with prices beginning at $500 per CPU.
VMware will roll out VMware Cloud Application Platform at the VMworld conference in San Francisco.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 1, 2010
By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld (US)
September 1, 2010
FRAMINGHAM - Nearly five months after the iPad’s launch, Apple has finally matched supply with demand.
Apple’s online store now shows iPad orders will be shipped within 24 hours , the first time the tablet has been available for next-day shipping since its early April debut.
Although Apple took pre-orders for most of a month before the April 3 launch, subsequent orders for the iPad were delayed 15 business days, a mark that fell to 7-10 days by mid-May. Earlier this month, shipping delays dropped again, first to 5-7 days, then to 1-3 days.
Last month, Apple’s executives acknowledged that they had underestimated demand for the tablet.
“We went into the iPad thinking that planning of one million from our capacity was a very bold move,” Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, said in a July earnings call with Wall Street analysts when he was asked whether there were supply issues with specific components.
“What we are doing is we’re increasing capacity as quickly as we can, and you know there are a number of things that we have to increase in order to do that,” Cook told analysts. “But I am fairly confident that we will be able to increase the capacity. It is not a situation where there is something profound that we can’t eventually increase.”
Apple said it sold 3.3 million iPads in the year’s second quarter, one million of them in the first 28 days of availability.
Before that, Apple gave hints of other signs of stress on iPad supply when it pushed back the international launch until the end of May.
Brian Marshall, an analyst with Gleacher & Co., has projected that Apple will sell 12 million iPads this year, with sales in the fourth quarter of 4.9 million units, a 51% increase over 2010’s second quarter number.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 1, 2010
By John Mark V. Tuazon
September 1, 2010
Back in the day, Ergie Ong, CIO of PJ Lhuillier Group of Companies (PJL), a national network of more than 1,200 Cebuana Lhuillier pawnshops and remittance centers, recalls that the network requirements of companies are tied to the bare minimum, owing to simple applications being developed for the enterprise, coupled with the fact that telecommunications companies are unable to provide high bandwidth connection to end-users.
But as developments in technology naturally advanced, the demands for a higher-bandwidth network infrastructure became apparent, due to various business applications being developed to help streamline firms’ business processes. “Applications are proliferating and the network is critical for delivering these to business users,” explains Bernie Trudel, technology lead for the data center at Cisco, APAC.
One such application is video, which, according to the latest Visual Networking Index (VNI) conducted by Cisco, will exceed 91% of total global consumer Internet traffic by 2014. Videoconferencing, a tool starting to gain traction within the walls of the enterprise, is set to grow sevenfold within the same time period, the report says.
“Aside from the traditional office automation and businesscritical applications, we are seeing much more voice and video traffic as organizations are increasing their use of media-rich collaboration and social networking applications,” Trudel relates.
FINE-TUNING APPLICATIONS
While large corporations are tripping over themselves in the pursuit of deploying the latest technologies to supposedly improve their business processes, Ong of the PJ Lhuillier Group says they are focusing their strengths on developing fine-tuned applications that exactly meet their business requirements.
“We wanted to make sure that we maintain and pay for cost-effective network solutions,” Ong reiterates. “Given that, our system is based entirely on the minimum lines that we actually use.”
Ong’s development team, he relates, made it a point to minimize data transmission into the system by developing from the ground up a central application that supports and integrates all their products—which include pawning, remittance, insurance, bills payment and electronic loading systems, among others.
With the fine-tuned system, Ong claims they are able to process more than 10,000 of transactions per day using only a low bandwidth line, with that figure going up to about 50,000 transactions per day during peak seasons. Their branch system can process online transactions using dial-up lines when the primary line is down. “With our central in-house application, we can deploy new products in just one to two days, centrally updating it from our data center,” he adds.
The local office of First Advantage Corporation (FADV), a global information processing firm, lives by the same philosophy. Jan Espino, the company’s regional IT manager for Asia Pacific, shares that since their subsidiary’s focus is on employment screening for clients in the region, they only employ a core application that integrates all the functions needed by end-users.
“Our core application is hosted off of our data center in Bangalore, India, and connected using an international MPLS connection,” he explains. The core application developed inhouse automates the screening process, he goes on, and is accessed via a Web browser.
Their core application only uses half of their bandwidth, Espino points out, while the other half is relegated to accessing e-mail and Internet connectivity, which employees mainly use to augment their research materials.
ALLOTTING BANDWIDTH
Using light applications that are not heavy on network bandwidth use is one foolproof solution, but in the interconnected environment of the World Wide Web—where applications such as social networking, video and the like are gaining massive popularity—users are wont to make a significant dent on the network’s performance.
“Communication tools like video conferencing and email generates a steady stream of traffic, which no doubt consumes a significant amount of bandwidth,” says Desmond Toh, marketing director of network devices vendor DLink. “Having the risk of bandwidth competition, this may lead to poor and irregular application response time. These applications can easily saturate available bandwidth and starving other applications.”
Designating specific bandwidth allocations for missioncritical applications and light network requirements, therefore, becomes an all-too important task. PJL’s Ong, in fact, has taken this point to heart, banning the use of social media and other such bandwidth-hungry applications in their offices.
“Our managers asked if we can check if the employees are accessing the Web for work-related activities,” he recalls. “We found out that a lot of people are accessing Facebook, so we denied access to it right away.”
Upon banning the social networking site, Ong shares that there was a significant improvement in their network infrastructure, so they chose to stick with the policy. “But we allow access if users go through the approval process, which sees if the requirements to access the sites are valid,” he adds.
FADV’s Espino has limited the non-official use of the Internet in their company for productivity and security reasons. Among the sites included in their blocked list—which is managed through Active Directory—are video streaming sites, instant messaging applications, external emails, and social networking.
“We have an acceptable use policy which defines what acceptable Internet use is, to make sure users use it judiciously” he says. “We do not have wireless access points where users can just use their laptops with, and we have built firewalls to ensure security is not compromised through the network.”
Espino claims banning these sites do not affect the productivity of their employees, and that in fact, “it should even boost productivity because they are focused with their work.”
EAGLE’S EYE VIEW
Having policies in place ensure that critical business applications are serviced, but ensuring that they are complied with to the letter requires that network administrators monitor activities within their network, to gain visibility about bandwidth pain points within the infrastructure.
“The network management team imperatively requires tools that enable them to control the valuable network resources in order to ensure that each application receives its corresponding level of priority and the most effective use of bandwidth is made,” suggests Cisco’s Trudel.
D-Link’s Toh concurs: “It is important for the organization to have the ability to monitor traffic within the Local Area Network (LAN), the Wide Area Network (WAN), and certain points in the Internet,” he surmises.
In this scenario, the old saying that knowing the problem is half the solution becomes relevant. Without an effective monitoring tool, enterprises would rely solely on users abiding by their policies, or external influences respecting the private use of their infrastructure, which is not always the case.
“Organizations cannot afford their network uptime to be compromised. In order to achieve this, it is essential for companies that have large data networks to monitor network traffic and usage for more efficient troubleshooting when there are outages in the system,” Toh clarifies.
PLJ uses a freeware tool for monitoring their network traffic, Ong shares. “We use it to determine which of our branches go online and offline,” he explains.
Their proactive approach in using apps with small bandwidth requirements bodes well for them as well. “We tend to avoid high-bandwidth requirements, so we make sure our systems use minimal bandwidth,” Ong says, adding that they recently had to turn down a proposition from the management to centrally manage their branches’ CCTV cameras, saying it is not a practical application to use their network for.
D-Link’s Toh says there is wisdom in having a central management for the network, especially in large corporations, “because it is not feasible to execute system checking tasks manually as it is very time consuming.” “The application should be able to perform polling of network/devices status periodically. With the information gathered, they can address the issues accordingly,” he adds.
ALL GROUNDS COVERED
FADV’s Espino says it is best to approach network automation and management in a twopronged approach: employing the best-of-breed network devices that provide bandwidth throttlingand prioritization, among others, and, more importantly, managing the usage of end-users.
“No matter how sophisticated your system is, if users can just install applications, access Facebook, and the like, you will still face congestion,” he points out.
For PJL’s Ong, the best mindset is always expecting failure of the system, where contingencies are necessary. After all, no matter how advanced network technologies become, they are still prone to bogging down unexpectedly.
“One of our big advantages is having contingencies whenever our branches go offline,” Ong narrates. This involves employing mobile phones as alternative transmission gateways whenever systems go down. Branch employees would simply have to send text messages to the system in order to process transactions. Additionally, Ong says, they have developed a text-to-mail service in order to enable e-mail messaging during downtimes.
“Cases of systems going offline and downtimes are rampant especially in the Philippines,” he notes. “Having contingencies in place is important if online processing is critical to your business.”
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By Fei Lumbania on September 1, 2010
By Ellen Messmer
Network World (US)
September 1, 2010
FRAMINGHAM - Trend Micro is blazing a new trail with a service called SecureCloud intended to give enterprises a way to encrypt data in cloud-computing environments.
SecureCloud allows you to maintain control over the encryption key used to secure data stored in the Amazon EC2, Eucalyptus or VMware vCloud cloud infrastructures. Other cloud-computing variants could be added in the future.
“IT operations may be firing up [a remote virtual machine] image but we have security validating the integrity, and it’s encrypted until it hits the cloud, and it’s encrypting data at rest,” according to Todd Thiemann, senior director of data center security and marketing at Trend Micro.
He notes that SecureCloud allows the IT department using either public or private cloud-computing services to answer the basic questions, “Is this image OK? And is it mine?”
Greatest Tech Arguments: Public vs. Private Cloud
Now in beta with general availability expected by year end, SecureCloud is provided through a Web site portal and makes use of policy-based encryption to allow access to a virtual-machine image as well as storing related activity logs.
In addition to offering the security service, Trend Micro is looking at making comparable software available to companies for on-premises use.
In a separate announcement, Trend Micro also unveiled an antimalware protection module for its VMware server security software, Deep Security 7.5. It includes integrity monitoring, log inspection and stateful firewall capabilities, and leverages the most recent VMware vShield Endpoint APIs. Trend Micro Deep Security 7.5 is expected to ship in October.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 1, 2010
By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld (US)
September 1, 2010
FRAMINGHAM - Google on Monday said that a recent report claiming it failed to patch a third of the serious bugs in its software had the facts wrong.
IBM’s X-Force security company, which released the report last week, acknowledged the error and issued a revised chart that shows Google patched all the vulnerabilities rated “critical” or “high” in its online services.
“We questioned a number of surprising findings concerning Google’s vulnerability rate and response record, and after discussions with IBM, we discovered a number of errors that had important implications for the report’s conclusions,” said Adam Mein, a security program manager at Google, in an entry on a company blog .
Last week, X-Force’s report claimed that 9% of all Google bugs disclosed in the first half of 2010 were unpatched, and 33% of the vulnerabilities ranked as critical or high had not been fixed.
According to IBM’s revised tabulations, Google patched every vulnerability revealed in the first six months of this year.
“After we released our trend report … we received feedback from two software vendors regarding the severity and remedy information for some of the vulnerabilities behind this chart,” said Tom Cross, a researcher with X-Force, in a mea culpa blog posted on Saturday. “As a consequence of this feedback, we have manually reassessed the CVSS scoring, remedy information, and vendor information for every vulnerability that impacted the percentages that appear in this chart.”
Cross’ blog post included a revamped table that showed the new numbers.
Although Cross did not name the other vendor that complained about the patching results, Sun Microsystem’s numbers also changed dramatically. Where the original table had Sun letting 24% of all first-half 2010 bugs and 9% of the most serious flaws go unfixed, the recalculated figures were 8% and 0%, respectively. The changes dropped Sun from the vendor with the largest percentage of unpatched vulnerabilities to the one in fifth place.
In April, Oracle announced plans to acquire Sun for $7.4 billion ; X-Force listed the two companies’ vulnerabilities separately.
Other vendors’ unpatched percentages also decreased after X-Force re-examined its data, including Microsoft’s and Mozilla’s, as did the catch-all category of Linux.
What caught Google’s eye, said Mein, was X-Force’s assertion that one-in-three critical bugs had not been patched.
“We learned after investigating that the 33% figure referred to a single unpatched vulnerability out of a total of three — and importantly, the one item that was considered unpatched was only mistakenly considered a security vulnerability due to a terminology mix-up,” Mein said.
Mein pointed to a 2009 blog post by Jonathan Ness, a member of Microsoft’s security team, as proof of what he called mistaken identity. Ness’ blog discussed the difference between “stack overflows” and “stack buffer overflows,” and said the former were not security vulnerabilities because they could not be used on their own to insert attack code onto a PC.
It’s not unusual for software vendors to dispute the findings of independent security researchers. Mozilla, for instance, has repeatedly disagreed with reports that claim Firefox has more bugs than rival browsers, calling some of those reports “misleading” because Mozilla’s open-source approach requires that all vulnerabilities be disclosed while Apple and Microsoft can fix flaws without revealing that they were ever there.
At times, developers also quarrel with researchers over the severity of a bug, or even whether a flaw should be labeled a vulnerability. More than two years ago, Microsoft first claimed that a Windows bug was a “design flaw,” then weeks later changed its mind and called it a security problem.
X-Force has also had problems with its vulnerability counts and calculations. In the report it issued last week, the company admitted that the methodology it used to compile the 2009 edition was flawed and said it had corrected the problem to make the results more accurate in the mid-2010 report.
Cross said that X-Force would release a revised report this week.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 1, 2010
NEWS DIGEST
4 BPO Workers Too Stressed Out | Sustainability is Inevitable
5 BPO Leverages Web 2.0 Traits in Business Process
SPOTLIGHT
6 Man of the Hour. Newly appointed Secretary Ivan Uy outlines his plans for the Commission on ICT.
OPINION
8 Managing Technology
10 Tech-Enabled Business Trends by Michael Alan Hamlin
10 RealIT: The Inside Track The E-Government Fund by Ivan Uy
56 Executive Briefing Millenials: The New Breed of Global Citizens by James Velasquez
58 Technopreneurship The Rise and Fall of HP’s Mark Hurd by Peter Cohan
STRATEGIES & TACTICS
12 The Benefits of UC. While unified communication has an enormous potential to cut costs by replacing expensive phone lines with IP telephony, the initial investment for the technology may be hard to come by for some users.
16 Crafting a UC Strategy
SECURITY
32 Keeping Your Company Image Safe. Brand protection firm Cyveillance has seen an explosion of brand abuse on social media. What can you do to stop it?
CIO FORUM
18 The Google Cloud Experience
20 Dreaming of the Cloud
22 Aiming for the Cloud
24 Umbrella for the Right Cloud
DATA CENTER
36 Q&A: Lawrence Hughes and The Second Internet
TECH FOR SMBs
40 Zagu Cools Down with IT
MANAGEMENT
42 CIOs: Focus on Learning, Not on Performance Goals
TECHNOLOGY UPDATE
44 Microsoft Exchange 2010: The End of Third-Party Archiving
KNOWLEDGE CENTER
45 Microsoft vs VMware: Who’s Better at Disaster
CIO ROUNDTABLE
26 IT in the New Gov’t. In this month’s CIO Roundtable, four public sector IT officials— some currently serving their terms, some moving on to other forms of service as of press time—and zeroed in on the peculiar animal that is IT in government.
CAREER WATCH
48 7 IT Career Rules Worth Breaking
49 Tee Jay Sumawang: Ceaseless Thirst for Knowledge
POWER TOOLS 50
INDUSTRY BULLETIN 59
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By Fei Lumbania on September 1, 2010
By Matt Hamblen
Computerworld (US)
September 1, 2010
FRAMINGHAM - Shipments of Samsung Mobile’s Galaxy S Android smartphone reached 1 million in the U.S. 45 days after it first became available, the company announced Monday.
While Apple sold some 1.7 million iPhone 4 smartphones during its first weekend, some analysts see the Galaxy S initial shipment totals as the beginnings of Android supremacy.
“No question there is an anti-Apple, pro-Android movement afoot,” said Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates. “It’s not just about price. It’s also about having an open alternative with much less dictatorial control of what the user can do with the device.”
Gold said he expects that sales of Android devices from all manufacturers will surpass Apple iPhone sales by 2011. Gartner analysts have said the same thing.
A Samsung spokeswoman today said that today’s announcement referred to “shipments for Galaxy S, not sales.” Presumably that means shipments to all retail outlets (including Amazon.com) and the four major U.S. carriers that will sell the Galaxy S,
Most bloggers ignored the distinction Samsung noted between shipments and sales because shipments to a carrier or retailer usually result in quick final sales to end users for hot phones.
The Galaxy X models from each of the carriers include a 4-inch AMOLED display and 1 GHz Hummingbird processor that are clear draws for customers.
Two of them, AT&T and T-Mobile, are already selling the devices, which they call Captivate and Vibrant respectively. Sprint will start selling a Galaxy S it calls Epic tomorrow while Verizon’s Fascinate model is rumored to become available on Sept. 9.
Samsung’s Web site shows the four models side by side, with the Epic 4G the most notably different, with a slide-out physical keyboard in landscape mode and a front-facing camera. The Epic 4G might have gone on sale earlier, but Sprint decided to stockpile units to meet demand amid a global shortage of display screens.
All four Galaxy S phone models will initially run Android 2.1, and then move to Version 2.2, or Froyo, later this year.
Gold said sales of Android devices like the Galaxy S sales have been bolstered by a growing number of available apps. He noted that developers are finding it easier to get applications approved by Android Market than by the Apple App Store.
Another factor for its success, Gold said, is that hackers and other developers see the Android platform as one that can be used for experimentation, although Google and manufacturers are trying to stop that practice.
Various bloggers have attributed other reasons for Android’s success, including pricing.
Fortune’s Seth Weintraub noted that users who purchase a two-year agreement with AT&T can get a Captivate device for a penny .
Amazon advertises many phones and devices for nearly free or half the cost of what carriers advertise as their cost, a practice Apple has resisted, analyst noted. The purpose of the low-cost up-front pricing is obviously to lure buyers into two-year contracts.
What may intrigue some buyers of Android more than anything is that the Captivate is sold by AT&T, which is also the exclusive carrier behind the iPhone.
Samsung attributed its Galaxy S success to sales by multiple carriers, as well as a broad promotional campaign with print, online, cinema and TV ads, as well as promotions on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 1, 2010
By Anuradha Shukla
MIS Asia
September 1, 2010
SHENZHEN, CHINA - Global security threats have increased significantly, having reached record highs in the first six months of 2010, according to IBM’s X-Force 2010 Mid-Year Trend and Risk Report.
New vulnerabilities
In the report, IBM’s X-Force Research and Development team said that 4,396 new vulnerabilities were recorded from January to June of 2010—an increase of 36 per cent from the first half of 2009. About 55 per cent of the companies reporting these problems also indicated that they did not have a vendor-supplied patch.
Of these threats, Web application vulnerabilities were the most commonplace; more than half of the publicly disclosed threats, 55 percent, were caused by these vulnerabilities.
Secondly, covert attacks or Advanced Persistent Threats, which are designed to be undetectable by traditional security, have increased in sophistication and are often hidden within PDF and JavaScript formats. 37 per cent more activity involving PDF attachments was observed in the first half of 2010.
The report also added that phishing activity has significantly declined, over 82 per cent as compared to 2009, but financial institutions are still a primary target, having been targeted by 49 per cent of all phishing emails.
Key trends
The X-Force Report also identifies key trends that are gaining ground. Virtualisation and cloud computing are noted as important security topics. Thirty-five percent of vulnerabilities that affect virtualisation systems were found to impact the hypervisor, meaning that attackers may be able to gain control of more than one virtual system running on the same machine.
For organisations seeking to switch to cloud computing, the team says that it is important to start by determining the security requirements of workloads to be hosted in the cloud in order to stave off security risks.
Alex Li, brand manager of Tivoli, Software Group, IBM China/Hong Kong Limited, said that looking at unfolding trends such as these involving threat dynamics makes it crucial to prepare for the future. Li said that threats are on the rise, but the industry has become far more vigilant about reporting them, underscoring the increased focus on better security solutions and risk management.
IBM’s X-Force team is a premier security research group. Since 1997, it has taken note of and analysed upwards of 50,000 vulnerability disclosures, and has published a mid-year Trend and Risk Report that helps clients learn about and avoid security threats.
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By Fei Lumbania on September 1, 2010
By Michael Alan Hamlin
September 1, 2010
Young adults have embraced the Internet and social media, but they are much savvier when it comes to online trust and personal brand management than older adults, according to a recent Pew Internet study. Entitled, “Reputation Management and Social Media,” the survey reveals how people monitor—and manage—their personal brands and search for others online. Another survey shows why “SocMed” savvy is so important, especially in the Philippines.
comScore—which measures online activity—said last month that 93% of Internet users in the Philippines visit Facebook every month, making the Philippines the social network’s largest market globally by penetration. That’s about 22 million Filipinos, assuming about 24 million regular Internet users as estimated by AC Nielsen. The extrapolation is necessary because comScore only counts Internet penetration from homes, not Internet cafés, schools, and offices.
Forty percent of Internet users in the Philippines are teenagers and young adults between the ages of 15 and 24, according to comScore, which apparently doesn’t measure use by younger users. At any rate, 60% of Internet users are supposedly older and wiser adults. However, if they follow the trends identified in the Pew study, when it comes to prudent use of the Internet and social media, that’s not the case.
First, some general trends. About 57% of US Internet users monitor their reputations online, up from about 47% four years ago. The default method for monitoring reputation is search alerts. The comScore survey shows that about 80% of Internet users in Asia Pacific use search, and in the Philippines usage increases to 86%. It’s a good bet that while search is useful for many reasons, monitoring personal brands is probably at or near the top of the list.
Users are also proactively managing their online brands. Forty-six percent of US Internet users have created profiles on social networking sites, up 10 points as well from 36% in 2006. We’ve already seen that the Philippines has very high social network reach, and users in the Philippines spend more of their online time using social networks than users anywhere else in the world. Oddly, only Indonesia comes close, 32.8% compared to 33.1% for Filipino users. It’s fair to say that Filipinos are very actively engaged in managing their online personal brands.
Incidentally, the comScore study shows that the use of the micro-blogging service Twitter is also growing rapidly, up from about nine percent in February to 15% in May. The Philippines is also the number three market for Twitter in Asia Pacific, after Indonesia and Japan.
Searching for information related to other personal brands is an emerging mainstream activity, perhaps in part to assess a user’s relative brand attractiveness compared to former classmates, colleagues, and rivals. Given the intense loyalty Filipinos exhibit towards province mates, classmates, and colleagues, assuming that Filipinos have little need to research individuals from their past seems a reasonable thing to do.
However, anecdotally, my wife recently announced to me that since she started using Facebook, she had connected with former classmates and colleagues she hadn’t heard from in years. Her experience and that of millions of other Filipinos and Internet users worldwide show that it’s not just search but social networking when it comes to leveraging powerful online tools for personal brand monitoring, whether friend or foe.
When it comes to guarding personal brands online, however, younger users appear to be the experts. According to the Pew survey, 44% of US users 18-29 take steps to limit the amount of personal information they make available online. That compares to 33% of Internet users aged 30-49,
25% of those 50-64, and 20% of users 65 years-old or older. Perhaps the reason is that as users age, they are less worried about stalkers. Of course, it could be that they are simply less social media savvy.
Younger users are more likely to proactively manage their personal brands in other ways, such as changing their privacy settings to limit who sees their information. That can be complicated, suggesting that younger users are more adept at managing social networks than older users. Younger users are also more inclined to remove negative comments others make on their profiles and to remove tags associating their names with photos taken by other users.
Online personal brands matter, and younger users seems to be better at managing them. But no study reveals whether that’s because they understand personal branding better than older users, or are just more adroit at manipulating the technology to protect their feelings.
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