Computerworld Philippines Staff
March 3, 2010

HP has announced that after eight years with company, Bernadette Nacario is leaving her post as country general manager of the personal systems group (PSG) effective April 8, 2010. “Ms. Nacario has decided to pursue an exciting opportunity outside HP,” said HP in a statement.

Nacario rejoined HP in 2004 as country general manager for both personal systems group (PSG) and imaging and printing group (IPG). In the middle of 2006, she requested to focus on PSG to drive the business unit to the next level of growth.

Over the past few years, she has strengthened partner and customer engagement and gained their confidence. During her 6-year stint, HP PSG won key strategic accounts to gain strong market share for PSG’s business. She also led the team in developing industry-leading & innovative programs such as the “HP My Backyard” & “HP Island.”

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By Tom S. Noda
Computerworld Philippines
February 23, 2010

Local wireless service provider Smart Communications, Inc. has unveiled the world’s first ever TV Internet surfing service – the Smart Bro SurfTV – launched today by its subsidiary Smart Broadband, Incorporated.

In a press briefing held at the Shangri-La hotel in Mandaluyong City, Smart executives said SurfTV is a small box device that connects to a TV set to provide Internet access using Smart Bro’s nationwide coverage.

Orlando Vea, chief wireless advisor of Smart, explained that whenever plugged into the RCA port of a color TV set, SurfTV turns an ordinary TV into a multi-tasking machine – providing a ready-to-run Internet experience where users can surf, chat, email and do other online tasks.

Vea said the target market for SurfTV are the households that have TVs. He described the TV as “the most ubiquitous home appliance” in the Philippines today, as it is present in almost 93% of households, in contrast to the PC which is only present in 18% of households. He added that in the Visayas and Mindanao areas the number drops to about 11%, which he said is not a good score.

“According to the ITU, about 25% of the global population has access to a personal computer. Moreover, our neighbors in Asia are all aggressively pushing both computer usage and Internet access for their citizens,” He said. “In Singapore, for example, 80% of households have at least one PC and many have two or more. Malaysia’s number of PC and Internet penetrations are in their 60% and 70% range.”

Danilo Mojica, head of Smart’s wireless consumer division, told reporters that Smart Bro SurfTV comes in a boxed set complete with a keyboard, mouse, remote control, and a Smart Bro USB stick-type modem with a prepaid SIM pre-loaded with PhP100 worth of load. The entire kit costs PhP4,500, while Internet access costs PhP10 for every 30 minutes.

Mojica said the Smart network has an Internet speed of 7mbps.

Although prices of PCs and laptops have gone down in recent years, Mojica said cost remains a significant barrier for basic desktops and the new netbooks that still sell around Php15,000 to Php20,000 pesos. “This is roughly the entire monthly income of the average Filipino household.”

The executive claimed the Internet has significantly changed over the last 10 years with the different habits of users, especially Filipinos, who use it for social networking activities, education, business, entertainment, and multimedia tasks, among others.

“The Philippines has been the fastest growing area for Facebook last year. And there were around one million Smart Bro subscribers at the end of 2009, the largest in the industry,” Mojica said, adding Smart’s GSM cellular network distribution points have scaled to 1.2 million nationwide.

Vea believes Filipinos are ready for the Internet, judging on how much videos Filipino users upload to Youtube, or how many terabytes worth of photos they share online. He said with SurfTV, household TVs will certainly add up to the variety of devices that are now available for Internet access, such as desktop computers, laptops, cellular phones, and other handheld devices like the PSPs, iPods and iPads.

According to a survey conducted by Smart, which was based also with SurfTV’s pilot testings in Bataan, Kalibo and other provinces – parents, especially mothers would prefer their children to do their Internet surfing at home rather than in Internet cafes.

Smart executives said they will address data storage issues for SurfTV in the near future.

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By Tom S. Noda
Computerworld Philippines
February 3, 2010

It’s all back to ground zero for the Department of ICT (DICT) and Cybercrime bills as their chances of becoming a law were officially shut down in the Senate on Tuesday.

“I was informed no more bills will be taken up on the last session day of the Senate. It appears our journey has come to an end,” said Secretary Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua III, chairman of the Commission on ICT (CICT). “Thanks to all those who supported us along the way.  I guess it’s up to the next administration to pass our ICT bills.”

The Senate’s legislative calendar for the present administration officially ends today, February 3, but no more bills will be taken up.

Roxas-Chua, who was present in the Senate’s session on Tuesday, told members of the CyberPress club that it is “so possible” for the ICT bills to be approved if only the Senate chose to act on it.  “If only they want it approved, they can do it, right here and right now,” Roxas-Chua said.

The CICT chief said that of the various bills that were tackled in the Senate’s last eight sessions, there have been no developments on the ICT bills. He noted the Senate spent a significant amount of time on the C-5 issue linking presidentiable and incumbent Senator Manny Villar.

Villar, who described himself as the “brown taipan” in business circles, surprised everyone in the Senate on Tuesday with his privilege speech defending himself on the C-5 controversy. The episode, which was later dubbed as the “Villar Show” ate a lot of time in the Senate’s second to the last session on Tuesday, overriding the opportunities for pending bills to be passed.

‘UNSEEN FORCE’
Roxas-Chua said the DICT and Cybercrime bills were in the period of interpolation since last week but no developments took place. Many of the bills’ supporters expressed that an “unseen force” may have kept the ICT bills in the Senate hanging.

Besides countless presidential requests, the ICT bills earned fervent support from local ICT advocates and practitioners who, along with CICT, vowed to attend the Senate’s last nine session days since it resumed on Jan. 18.

Among the staunch supporters of the ICT bills are CICT, Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPA/P), Call Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP), Game Developers Association of the Philippines (GDAP) and the CIO Forum (CIOF).

Former CICT commissioner Dondi Mapa said that CICT itself could be in danger of getting abolished. 

“That same ‘unseen force’ may even cause the CICT to be abolished by the next president,” Mapa said. “Let’s just hope that whoever becomes president in June does not abolish the CICT.”

Only recently, supporters of the ICT bills said the one that hampered the DICT bill was the request for interpolation of Senator Mar Roxas who never interpellated on the bill since he registered for it in September 2009.

Reports said many government stakeholders saw the need for a Philippine DICT as it will help the country in becoming a world-class IT hub focused on the further development of ICT skills, e-governance, universal IT access, and building businesses around open source technology.

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By Tom S. Noda
Computerworld Philippines
February 2, 2010

Staunch supporters of the Cybercrime and Department of ICT bills are beginning to believe that an “unseen force” may be preventing the passing into law of the two proposals pending in the Senate, despite countless presidential requests and fervent support of local ICT advocates and practitioners.

The bills’ supporters, led by Secretary Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua III, chairman of the Commission on ICT (CICT), are starting to believe that someone or some people with great influence are keeping the ICT bills in the Senate hanging.

And with only two session days left, supporters are beginning to accept a poor ending. They are officers and members of CICT as well as leaders of the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPA/P), Call Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP), Game Developers Association of the Philippines (GDAP) and the CIO Forum (CIOF).

Roxas-Chua, who regularly gives public updates on the bills via his Facebook (FB) account, reported that although the ICT bills are lined up for interpolation, a single discussion has not yet been taken and their enactment into law appears to be bleak in the present administration. He vowed to be present in the Senate’s last nine session days since its legislative calendar resumed last Jan. 18.

“Sorry folks, another day wasted,” Chua said in his FB status on Monday. “There seems to be an unseen force preventing our bills from being taken up.”

Chua said there are many bills that were tackled in the Senate since Jan. 18 but, unfortunately, the ICT bills were not among them, despite being certified as “urgent” by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo last Wednesday.

Last Monday’s session was the 7th consecutive session day in the Senate which Chua and leaders of the said ICT groups attended. Chua said the Senate’s discussion on Monday was spent on the C-5 controversy linking presidentiable and incumbent senator Manny Villar.

In a recent interview with Computerworld Philippines, supporters of the DICT bill said the interpolation request of Sen. Mar Roxas is the only thing that holds the bill’s enactment into law. They said that although Roxas registered to interpolate on the bill in September 2009, he has yet to speak for the bill.

Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago, who registered to interpolate like Roxas, already gave her piece on the issue in September last year, supporters said.

Some supporters also commented that the Senate’s treatment of the DICT bill is a complete opposite of the treatment given by the House of Representatives who passed HB 4300 for the same purpose two years ago in 2008.

Computerworld Philippines tried to reach Roxas for comment since Thursday but hasn’t received a reply as of writing. He was present during last Wednesday’s session but immediately left after the roll call.

Chua said CICT is willing to do some adjustments on the DICT bill if ever Roxas, a known critic of the bill, has any objections. However, he said the problem stems from having no discussion on the matter at all.

As for the Cybercrime bill, Chua said it might have a better chance than the DICT bill since they are not aware of any oppositions.

Within the two session days left in the Senate, the ICT bills will have to be approved on 2nd and 3rd reading and reconciled with the House versions in a bicameral conference. If the bills fail to pass, lawmakers will have to do it all over again in Congress in the next administration.

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Veronica C. Silva
Computerworld Philippines
February 2, 2010

Oracle Corporation’s office in the Philippines on Thursday introduced to the local press its latest middleware, which was developed with the strength of its acquisition of Bea Systems in 2008.

Launched worldwide in July 2009 and regionally in October 2009, the Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g already counts top bank Metropolitan Bank and Trust Company (Metrobank) and the Bureau of Customs among its numerous clients in the country.

Chin Ying Loong, general manager for ASEAN, Oracle Fusion Middleware, said the launch of the new product in the local market is a commitment of the software giant to bring its latest innovation to its customers in the country.

“With Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g, our customers will benefit from the increased performance and centralized management of a modern infrastructure, enabling them to drive down costs, improve efficiency and differentiate their organization from competitors,” said Ying Loong.

Oracle Fusion Middleware integrates disparate systems and applications of enterprises and even business partners. As an open and integrated middleware, the new product brings together the different functionalities of Oracle and Bea Systems.

Oracle acquired Bea Systems for US$8.5 billion particularly to enhance the Oracle Fusion Middleware. Oracle said customer feedback has prompted the acquisition as customers noted the efficiency in working with the middleware of the two companies.

Speaking on the acquisition back in 2008, Oracle President Charles Phillips said “it (the transaction) will accelerate the adoption of Java-based middleware technologies and SOA; advance innovation in enterprise applications infrastructure software; extend our strategic relationships with customers and partners; and increase our penetration in key regions like China.”

Ying Loong said the new product is designed to solve important business requirements of today’s enterprises, including rich Internet applications, business process management, enterprise team and social computing, application customization, identity and compliance management, and systems consolidation.

It was also designed to exploit current technology trends such as multi-core processing, 64-bit operating systems and large memory, virtualization and cloud computing, and storage.

“It optimizes technology trends to protect customer investments,” added Ying Loong.

He noted that industries such as telecoms, banking and manufacturing already have made investments in several IT systems and applications. The middleware can be used to integrate these different systems and applications, thus, customers’ previous IT investments need not go to waste.

Oracle Fusion Middleware has complete components, which can be bought separately but when integrated together, they can work together. Among its components are development tools, user interaction, enterprise performance management, business intelligence, content management, service-oriented architecture and process management, application grid, enterprise management, and identity management.

Customers with the version 10g can seamlessly upgrade to version 11g, said Ying Loong.

Oracle Fusion Middleware is designed to support large or small datacenters alike.

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By Tom S. Noda
Computerworld Philippines
January 28, 2010

Supporters of the pending Senate Bill 2546 which intends to create the Department of ICT (DICT) said the interpolation request of Sen. Mar Roxas is the only thing that’s holding the bill’s enactment into law.

And with only three legislation days left, image of the longtime dream for the government department starts to fade.

Indeed, the senator’s request was to interrupt, to speak about the pending bill, but many didn’t expect that such interruption will keep the DICT bill hanging.

CICT chief Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua III, accompanied by the bill’s supporting groups recalled on Wednesday that Roxas registered to interpolate on the bill since September 2009 along with Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago. The female senator already gave her piece a few days after registration but Roxas remained silent on the issue until last Wednesday’s session.

The House of Representatives passed HB 4300 for the purpose of a DICT two years ago in 2008.

For their 6th straight session day in the Senate since the sessions resumed last Jan. 18, CICT officials and the bill’s supporters could only share deep sighs – as each session would end with almost no development on the pending bill.

Together with CICT, the supporting groups that religiously attend the Senate sessions were the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPA/P), Call Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP), Game Developers Association of the Philippines (GDAP) and the CIO Forum (CIOF).

The bill’s supporters expressed doubt on the senator’s reason in postponing his interpolation on the bill, since months have already passed and there is still no word from him on the issue.

Roxas was present during the senate session’s roll call on Wednesday but immediately left, missing anew his chance to interpolate on the DICT bill which he requested himself last year.

OPEN FOR ADJUSTMENTS
Chua told Computerworld Philippines that CICT is open to adjust some of the clauses in the pending bill if Roxas has any objections. Yet the problem stems from having no discussion on the matter at all.

“We’re open for any adjustments or removal of clauses in the bill, but first of all, we need to know what they are. We need to discuss,” Chua said, noting the DICT bill is in the period of interpolation anyway.

Proposed since 2001, critics of DICT’s creation described it as “redundant” and a “bloat to the bureaucracy.”

Chua, however, claimed that most of CICT’s budget today goes to the salaries of employees, yet the commission’s function is almost like a department, as it caters to “half of the communications function” of the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC). CICT recently regained power over the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) as ordered by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

If DICT is approved, it will take over the National Computer Center (NCC), Telecommunications Office (Telof), and the Communications Planning Service division.

HOPE LINGERS
Chua and supporters of the bill said they plan to push for DICT and Cybercrime bills until the last session day of the Senate’s legislative calendar, which will most likely be on Feb. 5, as it marks the beginning of the campaign period for national elections.

The CICT chief said with only three session days remaining, he’s asking for the “full presence” of DICT supporters, as the two ICT bills will have to be approved on 2nd and 3rd reading and reconciled with the House versions in a bicameral conference within that span of time.

“Many bills were tackled today but unfortunately, our bills were not among them,” Chua said Wednesday. “It’s looking pretty bleak, but we’re not giving up yet.”

Chua said if the ICT bills don’t pass in the Senate, it will all be back to zero in the lower house in Congress in the next administration.

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By John Mark V. Tuazon
Computerworld Philippines
January 25, 2010

Despite a slight decline in global demand for IT professionals in early 2009, recruitment for IT workers remain remarkably high, the CEO of a local IT jobs website remarked recently.

“IT today is as vital as any key unit or department of the organization, so there is always a need for tech professionals,” claimed Gina Duminy, President and CEO of itprosasia.com. “The market is picking up and we should expect more opportunities to open up here and abroad.”

Despite the stability in IT professionals recruitment, Duminy pointed out that the last decade saw a slight decline in enrollment for IT and other related disciplines. “IT as a course of study will always be up against the healthcare and other service-oriented disciplines,” she explained, emphasizing that despite this, players in the IT and BPO space are continuously underscoring the fact that there are many opportunities for professionals here and abroad.

Data from three months’ worth of job postings since the site’s recent relaunch suggest that employers demand programmers from the market the most, followed by technical support representatives, Java developers, analysts and application architects.

On technology demanded by employers, .NET takes the top spot, with PHP, HTML, J2EE, and Java following suit. “This is a very interesting indicator as it mirrors what kind of technologies businesses are investing in terms of software, for instance. It mirrors what technologies businesses are actually dependent on,” Duminy elaborated.

Duminy said they were able to identify this critical information due to the recent revamp of their jobs site, which used to be called itpros.ph. “[In the new site], we have already laid down all key expertise or skill categories and all the possible tools or technologies they may be using are outlined,” she clarified.

The revamped site, which had a soft launch last October 2009, is the product of a “long and tedious process that all started with an extensive review of the old itpros.ph,” according to Duminy. She said the new site incorporates elements gathered from user feedback from tech professionals and employers, such as a simpler presentation of job postings, and a cleaner front page design.

Postings on the website are also grouped depending on skills sets or technologies that potential employees may have. “This way, it would be much easier for them to define who they are, what they are capable of doing and at what level of expertise,” Duminy added.

Itprosasia.com pulls from a resource of about 800 HR practitioners it gathered from its previous incarnation, and utilizes such resources to offer specialized services such as Career Lounge, a career cocktails for experienced techies and T/EX, and the Technology Jobs Expo, a job fair for IT professionals. “We know the issues affecting the industry and in our own way, do best to contribute in helping find solutions,” Duminy added.

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By Tom S. Noda
Computerworld Philippines
January 20, 2010

Time maybe running out for the creation of the Department of ICT (DICT) in the Senate, but hopeful members of the Commission on ICT (CICT) had a sigh of relief on Tuesday with the passage of the Cybercrime bill in Congress.

The House of Representatives passed on third and final reading on Tuesday House Bill (HB) 6794, popularly known as Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2009. It seeks to address crimes committed via the Internet such as child pornography, illegal hacking of Web sites, phishing, data fraud, and the like by imposing corresponding penalties.

Once a law, the Cybercrime Act is expected to deter rising incidents of illegal, malicious and life-threatening acts committed through the Internet.

The bill mandates for the creation of the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center under the Office of the President.

“We very much welcome the approval of the Cybercrime Bill by the House of Representatives and we are very grateful to the congressmen who recognized the importance of this measure,” said Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua, chairman of CICT.

He said it is now up to the Senate to finally make the Cybercrime bill a law.

Chua, who has been attending the Senate sessions since Monday, has called on the public, particularly through his Facebook account to rally behind the approval of the ICT bills, namely the Cybercrime bill and Bill 2546 which mandates the creation of DICT.

“If you believe either of these bills will be good for the ICT industry and the country, please join us in the Senate,” Chua posted on his Facebook status on Monday.

Prominent people from public and private sectors, the academe, IT industry, and even the media have been sending their last hurrahs for DICT’s creation through Chua’s FB site. This, as the CICT chief would regularly post in his FB status that he “is headed to the Senate again to push for the DICT and Cybercrime Bills. Will today be the day?”

And like the many people who were annoyed by the Senate’s lack of quorum last Tuesday, the CICT chairman expressed disappointment as he feared that if the ICT bills don’t pass in the Senate, lawmakers would have to start from scratch in the next administration.

The Senate’s regular session resumed on Jan. 18 and it is scheduled to adjourn on Feb. 5 which is the official start of the campaign period for national candidates.

Clamored for almost eight years now, DICT’s creation would result in the take over of the Commission on Information and Communication Technology, the National Computer Center, Telecommunications Office and the Communications Planning Service division. It will also take over the communications-related functions of the Department of Transportation and Communications.

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By Tom S. Noda
Computerworld Philippines
January 14, 2010

Intel on Wednesday formally launched in the Philippines its latest family of core processors, namely the Intel i3, i5, and i7 chips which the company claims are faster and smarter when it comes to performance.

Some of the chips boast of Intel’s turbo boost technology for laptops, desktops and embedded devices, said the company.

Adam King, director of product marketing and business operations, Intel Asia Pacific, said more and more people are now craving for a fully digital lifestyle citing the increase of the IT consumer market in 2009. For instance, online video consumption went high-end to mainstream from year 2006 to 2009.

“PCs are becoming an inner growth in one’s life. In fact, in Asia Pacific, 50% of users, aged 18 and above all play online games. Today is so yesterday,” King said, claiming what used to be just a futuristic vision of IT advancement and users has now become a reality.

However, unlike before when users had to remember name combinations of processors, Intel has made the names of its new products as simple and identifiable, which, aside from the turbo boost also does hyper-threading technology. The features allow a computer to automatically adapt to whatever a user does. The applications feel faster, and the PC is more responsive even in multi-tasking, such as simultaneous functions of music, movies, photo editing and social networking.

Intel’s turbo boost and hyper-threading technologies allow each processing core to run multiple “threads,” providing amazing responsiveness and great performance, balanced with industry-leading energy efficiency when processing several tasks simultaneously.

The recent introduction of i7, i5 and i3 chips likewise coincides with the arrival of Intel’s groundbreaking new 32 nanometer (nm) manufacturing process – which for the first time in the company’s history – will be used to immediately produce and deliver processors and features at a variety of price points, and integrate high-definition graphics inside the processor. This unprecedented ramp and innovation reflects Intel’s $7 billion investment announced early last year in the midst of a major global economic recession.

Intel is unveiling several platform products, including more than 25 processors, wireless adapters and chipsets, including new Intel Core i7, i5 and i3 processors, Intel 5 Series Chipsets, and Intel Centrino Wi-Fi and WiMAX adapters that include new Intel My WiFi features. More than 400 laptop and desktop PC platform designs are expected from computer makers based on these products, with another 200 expected for embedded devices.

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By Computerworld Philippines Staff
October 29, 2009

MobileXtreme! The Big Apps Competition, a nationwide search for the most innovative mobile applications has been launched by IPVG, Ayala Technology Business Incubator, GlobeLabs and MegaMobile Inc., the mobile communications business unit of IPVG.

As an aggregator, MegaMobile welcomes mobile concepts and developed products (preferably the latter) for applications that run on the Java (J20) platform. The competition will be facilitated through an official web-based portal where contestants can upload their entries, which can consist of applications under the following categories:

Category 1: Games and Entertainment
- Entertainment, fun and games

Category 2: Enterprise and Productivity
- Enterprise and productivity solutions; applications that address business needs as well as home and work productivity needs of individuals

Category 3: Cause-oriented
- Cause-oriented applications, news and public service, applications that address needs of underserved and marginal sectors of society (ex: farmers, fishermen)

The competition will present a chance for developers to showcase original applications. The best entries will receive infrastructure support from IPVG to help develop their ideas into full blown commercial products, plus a chance to have their products launched commercially through IPVG and MegaMobile. Category winners will also receive a bonus cash prize of Php 50,000 each.

To kick off the competition and issue the official call for entries, a one-day conference dubbed as MobileXtreme! The Big Apps Competition - Opening Forum will be held on November 7, 2009 at the UP-AyalaLand TechnoHub Conference Room in Quezon City, from 1PM to 6 PM. Keynote speakers for the said conference will include representatives from IPVG, MegaMobile, Ayala Foundation and representatives from the IT industry. The Opening Forum will be free of charge and potential contestants can learn firsthand what the board of judges will be looking for in the entries and what the experts’ insights are on current and emerging mobile trends.

MobileXtreme! will run from November 2009 to February 2010. Online learning materials, discussions and forums at the competition’s official portal will be held simultaneously during this period.

Deadline for submission of entries will be January 10, 2010.

Finalists will be invited to the MobileXtreme! Awards Night – Open Tech Party to be held on February 26, 2010 at the main lobby of the UP-AyalaLand TechnoHub in Quezon City.

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By Paul Krill
InfoWorld (US)
October 29, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO - Microsoft will unveil this week several open source initiatives to boost interoperability between Microsoft technologies, such as Windows 7, Windows Azure, and Silverlight, and open source technologies, including the Eclipse tools platform and Java.

Although the company has at times been viewed as the commercial opposite of the open source movement, the company’s latest gestures to the open source community show Microsoft is willing to make moves that can assist open source devotees build products that rely on Microsoft’s products. Microsoft is working with Tasktop Technologies and Soyatec in projects and technologies unveiled Tuesday.

“This is part of our ongoing efforts to make our products more open,” said Vijay Rajagopalan, principal architect for the Microsoft interoperability strategy team.

In partnership with Eclipse solutions provider Tasktop, Microsoft is looking to enhance the developer experience of Eclipse on the newly released Windows 7 platform. Support is being extended to run the Eclipse IDE on Windows 7 and also to build Windows 7 applications.

The two companies will develop updates to the Eclipse IDE to incorporate features of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. The intention, according to Microsoft, is to ensure that the “improved” productivity and user experience of Windows 7 will be available to developers using the Eclipse IDE and also to desktop applications built on the Eclipse platform.

Developers will be able to access Windows 7 functionality such as Jump Lists from the redesigned Windows 7 task bar. Jump Lists enable access to Eclipse-specific functions. Also, the project will extend Eclipse Standard Widget Toolkit to integrate Windows 7 features such as task bar display of progress and search widget integration. Updates also will modernize the look and feel of Eclipse to match the Windows 7 user interface experience.

“We are working with Tasktop to improve the developer experience on Windows 7,” Rajagopalan said.

Tasktop will contribute enhancements to the Eclipse that will be available under the Eclipse Public License for early access in the first quarter of 2010. General release is planned for the Eclipse Helios technology release train in June 2010.

Windows remains a critical platform for Eclipse users, stressed Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop. “Over three-quarters of Eclipse downloads are of the Windows distribution,” he said.

“This joint effort between Tasktop and Microsoft is going to bring those new enhancements in Windows 7 into the hands of Eclipse IDE users,” Kersten said.

Microsoft also is announcing an open source plug-in, called Windows Azure Tools for Eclipse, to give PHP developers more flexibility in developing Web applications for the Windows Azure cloud platform. The plug-in, available as a free download, features wizards and utilities for writing, debugging, and deploying PHP applications to Azure.

“Essentially, it’s an open source plugin that will enable PHP developers using Eclipse to create PHP Web applications,” Rajagopalan said. The technology is available for download.

The existing Windows SDK for PHP is bundled into the Eclipse PHP project through the plug-in, which also includes a Windows Azure “storage explorer” to browse data contained in Azure tables, blobs, or queues.

Despite its Eclipse endeavors, Microsoft still has no plans to join the Eclipse Foundation. “I think we’ll continue to explore opportunities to work with them,” Rajagopalan said. “At this stage, we haven’t made any decision to join the Eclipse community.”

Also being unveiled is Windows Azure SDK for Java, providing tools to help Java developers use Azure. The SDK leverages Windows Azure Storage services for storing data and offers development methods for writing Web applications.
“We are releasing the Java SDK for Windows Azure so that Java developers who are running on-premise applications or other cloud applications can [also] use Azure storage,” said Rajagopalan.

Soyatec partnered with Microsoft on both Eclipse Tools for Windows Azure for PHP and Windows Azure SDK for Java. Microsoft and Soyatec also have released a 1.0 version of Eclipse Tools for Silverlight, which is a plug-in for Eclipse-based developers to build rich Internet applications that leverage Silverlight.

Included in the project is support for Macintosh and guidance on interoperability between Silverlight applications and Java-based Web sites and Web services, including REST, JSON, and other standards, Microsoft said. A customer technology preview of the plug-in was offered in March.

A Microsoft-Soyatec road map calls for spring 2010 availability of version 2 of Eclipse Tools for Silverlight, featuring support for Silverlight 3.0 and offline application capabilities.

With its initiatives, Microsoft is reaching over to the “other side” — the open source developers, said analyst Al Hilwa of IDC. “[However,] it’s a question mark” as far as how many developers will take Microsoft up on its accommodations, he said. But Microsoft’s efforts are commendable, even if the company does have its own self interest in mind, Hilwa said.

“At the end of the day, this is not a charitable organization per se. I don’t expect them to be, but the important thing is there’s different ways to interpret what may be in their interest,” he said. “Now, they’re taking a more open view of what’s in their interest.”

For example, Microsoft is trying to extend adoption of Azure to Java developers, Hilwa noted. “They’re saying it’s not necessary that you have to be a .Net developer to take advantage of Azure,” said Hilwa.

Microsoft has been on a campaign in recent years to make accommodations for open source. The company cited developments such as its Windows Azure for PHP effort and Restlet Extension for ADO.Net Services to bridge Java and .Net. The company also is working with Zend, IBM and others on Simple API for Cloud Application Services, an open source project for cloud interoperability.

The company in the past, however, has irked open source devotees with endeavors like forging an intellectual property agreement with Novell pertaining to Linux.

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By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld (US)
October 29, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - A massive bot-based attack has been hitting Facebook users, with nearly three-quarters of a million users receiving fake password reset messages, according to security researchers.

The attack, which began Monday afternoon, according to e-mail security vendor Cloudmark, targets Facebook users with a spoofed message that claims recipients’ Facebook passwords have been reset as a security measure. The messages, which come bearing subject lines such as “Facebook Password Reset Confirmation,” include a file attachment that supposedly contains the new password.

In fact, the attached .zip file includes a Trojan downloader, dubbed “Bredlab” by some antivirus companies, “Bredolab” by others. The downloader grabs a variety of malware from hacker servers, including fake security software , or “scareware,” and installs attack code and rogue antivirus applications on the compromised PCs.

Multiple security companies, including Symantec, Trend Micro, MX Lab and Websense, have put out warnings about the attack campaign. “This variant of Bredolab connects to a Russian domain and the infected machine is most likely becoming part of a Bredolab botnet,” said Shunichi Imano, a security researcher at Symantec, in a post to the firm’s security blog .

Jamie Tomasello, Cloudmark’s abuse operations manager, said today that her company alone has detected nearly three-quarters of a million phony Facebook messages since Monday, and nearly 250,000 in the last 24 hours. “Our count continues to go up, and is at about 735,000 now,” said Tomasello. “It’s a pretty high volume.”

According to Tomasello, both desktop clients and ISPs that use Cloudmark to filter potentially malicious mail have reported receiving the fake Facebook e-mail.

At least 8% of the users who have received one of the fake messages have tagged it as legitimate, going to the trouble of pulling the message from their junk folder — where Cloudmark has placed it — because they think it’s real, Tomasello said. Cloudmark has no data on how many users were actually duped into opening the .zip file and running the enclosed .exe that installs Bredolab, however.

“The numbers are equal to or higher than other Facebook malware or phishing campaigns,” Tomasello claimed. She said that Cloudmark is currently revising that 8% estimate upwards.

Because of its huge base — last month Facebook said it had more than 300 million users — the site is a frequent target for hackers and identity thieves.

Last March, for example, the Koobface worm made the rounds on Facebook, as well as other social networking sites such as MySpace and Friendster, infecting large numbers of users.

Facebook did not respond to a request for comment on the attacks, or to questions what it is doing, or can do, to stymie the campaign or warn its users.

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Computerworld Philippines Staff
October 29, 2009

Autodesk, Inc. has announced the release of the Autodesk Subscription Advantage Packs, product enhancements available to Subscription customers that will provide new, specialized functionality, tools and content to help increase productivity. The features and benefits in the Subscription Advantage Packs are compatible with the latest Autodesk 2010 software.

“Subscription Advantage Packs provide exclusive, early access to product enhancements that are broadly appealing. They offer a robust set of new features for many Autodesk products and are focused on helping customers improve their everyday design workflows,” said Callan Carpenter, vice president, Global Subscription & Support. “Subscription customers can take advantage of these powerful capabilities before anyone else, and increase productivity across their organizations.”

The Subscription Advantage Packs will be available exclusively for Autodesk Subscription customers worldwide and in a variety of languages. English versions are now available for download on Subscription Center at www.autodesk.com/subscriptionlogin. In-product access will also be available for most products, enabling Subscription customers to download Subscription Advantage Packs directly through the interface of their Autodesk software.

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By Jaikumar Vijayan
Computerworld (US)
October 29, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - Amazon said today that it has taken steps to mitigate a security issue in its cloud computing infrastructure that was identified recently by researchers from MIT and the University of California at San Diego.

The report described how attackers could search for, locate and attack specific targets in Amazon’s Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2) because of certain underlying vulnerabilities in the infrastructure.

Though the attack described in the report was conducted against Amazons infrastructure, the researchers concluded that similar targeted attacks could be carried out in other cloud services as well because the vulnerabilities were generic.

In response, Amazon spokeswoman Kay Kinton said today that the report describes cloud cartography methods that could increase at attacker’s probability of launching a rogue virtual machine (VM) on the same physical server as another specific target VM.

What remains unclear, however, is how exactly attackers would be able to use that presence on the same physical server to then attack the target VM, Kinton told Computerworld via e-mail.

The research paper itself described how potential attackers could use so-called “side-channel” attacks to try and try and steal information from a target VM. The researchers had argued that a VM sitting on the same physical server as a target VM, could monitor shared resources on the server to make highly educated inferences about the target VM.

By monitoring CPU and memory cache utilization on the shared server, an attacker could determine periods of high-activity on the target servers, estimate high-traffic rates and even launch keystroke timing attacks to gather passwords and other data from the target server, the researchers had noted.

Such side-channel attacks have proved highly successful in non-cloud contexts, so there’s no reason why they shouldn’t work in a cloud environment, the researchers postulated.

However, Kinton characterized the attack described in the report as “hypothetical,” and one that would be “significantly more difficult in practice.”

“The side channel techniques presented are based on testing results from a carefully controlled lab environment with configurations that do not match the actual Amazon EC2 environment,” Kinton said.

“As the researchers point out, there are a number of factors that would make such an attack significantly more difficult in practice,” she said.

At the same time, Amazon takes all reports of vulnerabilities in its cloud infrastructure very seriously, she said. The company will continue to investigate potential exploits thoroughly and continue to develop features bolster security for users of its cloud service, she said.

Amazon Web Services has already rolled out safeguards that prevent potential attackers from using the cartography techniques described in the paper, Kinton said without offering any details.

She also pointed to the recently launched Amazon Web Service Multi-Factor Authentication (AWS MFA) as another example of the company’s continuing effort to bolster cloud security. AWS MFA is designed to provide an extra layer access control to a customer’s Web services account, Kinton said.

The research report that highlighted the security issues in cloud computing infrastructures is scheduled to be presented at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security next month.

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By Owen Fletcher
IDG News Service (Beijing Bureau)
October 22, 2009

BEIJING - Facebook plans to let users buy music and other virtual products on its Web site, the company said Wednesday, expanding its sources of revenue as the company seeks to turn its huge popularity into fiscal profit.

Separately, Google will let users sample and buy songs directly from its search results page with a service it plans to announce next week, according to reports. The move comes as Google looks to hold its dominance against Bing, which has stolen around 9 percent of the U.S. online search market since its launch earlier this year, according to Internet monitoring companies.

Songs and official sports icons are among the new virtual gifts Facebook will add to its store, the company said on its blog. Users in the U.S. will be able to pay US$0.10 to send friends a song that can only be listened to online, or $0.90 to send a copy that can be downloaded and transferred, the company said.

The service, powered by music streaming site Lala.com, will be available by the end of this week, a Lala representative said in an e-mail.

Google will let users stream songs from Lala and iLike.com, which is owned by MySpace, according to a report in the The Wall Street Journal. A Lala link will let users stream a full song once for free and pay about $1 to download a copy, the report said.

Google already has an ad-supported music search service, offered only in China, that lets users stream and download songs for free. A Google executive earlier this year said the company had started work on applying the model in other countries.

Google did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Lala declined to comment on any deal with Google.

Google’s rivalry with Bing was visible as both countries announced search deals with Twitter on Wednesday. Google said it would launch a search service for Twitter messages just hours after Microsoft announced a similar deal for Bing.

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By Ellen Messmer
Network World (US)
October 22, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - At the Gartner Symposium IT/Expo this week, thousands of IT managers packed into sessions on the topic of virtualization of enterprise computers, along with the prospect of adopting public cloud-based services or building private ones. Some say the revolution is underway, and security managers are caught in the middle, losing their earlier controls.

Gartner analysts, including David Cearley and Gene Phifer, trotted out user case studies involving FedEx, Presidio Health, Johnson Diversey and others extolling the public or private cloud, while in a separate session Michael Lock, head of enterprise sales at Google, found himself looking like a budding rock star in front of an huge audience of high-tech execs eager to hear about Google Apps. With new ways of conducting enterprise computing and application development shaking up established IT practices, the darker mood about it all was mainly heard from Gartner’s security analysts, recognizing the revolution underway is ripping away the security controls of today.

“Our nightmare scenario is here now,” said Gartner analyst John Pescatore. Botnet-driven cybercrime is clearly accelerating as online predators involved in “cybercrime as a service” plunder corporate and consumer data for financial gain. In addition, corporate employees are now using handheld smartphones the company didn’t even issue and spending substantial time on networks not owned by the enterprise.

Now comes cloud computing as service offerings and “obviously attacks will come after this,” Pescatore said. In many instances, the fact is the “IT organization is being driven to have less control over software and hardware.”

The implication of this, Pescatore said, is they can sit and dream of something pleasant, like the return of the mainframe, or they will have to make a shift to using or developing “security as a service” to adapt to new threat scenarios in both public cloud computing and virtualization of their IT infrastructure.

With the cloud taking shape nebulously as many types of public, private and hybrid services, an important technology to turn to will likely be encryption services. “In the next few years, you’ll see encryption services out there,” Pescatore said.

Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald also minced no words in describing the implications for security in the virtualization and cloud-computing revolution.

“We’re at a critical point,” MacDonald said. Adoption of consumer technologies and the transformation of the technical infrastructure in the enterprise means that there’s “frustration of the business units with us,” MacDonald said.

With virtualization, the key concept of “locking down a physical device” is disappearing in favor of virtual machine-oriented security, such as virtual security appliances as software instead of physical appliances, he said. In addition, the enabling of quick deployment of virtualized applications and databases to facilitate business partnerships will need to be done, though “security becomes very difficult in this environment.”

Cloud computing and virtualization “break one of the foundational principles of security architecture: Us and them,” MacDonald said.

Known technologies such as signature-based antivirus are now insufficient, increasingly useless and he added, way overpriced. Antivirus must be buttressed with whitelisting to control application use, and the newer software-based virtual appliances for security have to be examined for use in a virtual-machine environment.

About the physical security appliances out on the market today, MacDonald said “these boxes are expensive,” and he disparaged Cisco, Juniper and TippingPoint as “not having much going on now because they like to sell boxes.”

When it comes to cloud computing services, the security professional is being pressured to “get out of the way” and figure out something that’s “secure enough,” said MacDonald, though the impulse will be to say no to the cloud.

Though the public cloud “makes sense for less-sensitive data,” there are limits, such as “PCI stuff, no way,” MacDonald said, referring to the data falling under the Payment Card Industry security requirements.

But there are going to be “trade-offs” as new cloud service offerings, and the stance the security professional should take is to clearly explain the risks to the business owners of the data and make sure they accept it, not push it back onto the security and IT department.

“They get all the accolades and you take all the risk, who wants that job?” he pointed out.

Speaking on a panel at the Gartner conference, a number of CIOs acknowledged their prime concerns are about security in cloud computing.

June Hartley, CIO at the National Business Center of the U.S. Department of the Interior, said security requirements known as FISMA that the U.S. government uses for security compliance will likely be changed to meet the new world of private and public cloud computing.

Casey Coleman, CIO at the General Services Administration and co-chair of what’s known as the Federal Cloud Council, agreed, but both indicated there was no apparent barrier to that.

Sometimes there are some unexpected risks.

Sal Allavarpu, senior director, product marketing at Citrix Systems, a player in the virtualization market which has created virtual appliance versions of its Access Gateway, Branch Repeater and NetScaler security, network and application control appliances, says there are new security issues that arise in virtualization and cloud computing.

For one thing, it’s not advised to run applications with different levels of trust controls on virtual machines located on the same physical server, he says. “It’s best to keep them separate, virtual machines with the same trust controls on the same physical server,” he said, noting auditors prefer this.

Without sharing detail, he said he knows of a recent occurrence in a cloud-computing arrangement where law enforcement going after someone seized the data for the entire physical server even though the suspect had data on just one virtual machine on that server. This caused a lot of consternation among other companies whose data happened to be on that same physical server in separate virtual machines. He noted that virtualization and cloud computing is new to law enforcement in some instances and this kind of issue is still being hammered out.

Mark Hurd, chairman and CEO at HP, who gave the keynote at Gartner yesterday, evoked a knowing chuckle from the audience when he said he has visited with many CEOs and frankly, they didn’t like the term “cloud” because they would prefer to think they’re operating in “clear skies.”

But without tipping his hand, he hinted that HP could be active in this arena itself with cloud-oriented services over time, probably the more private cloud varieties.

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By Lucas Mearian
Computerworld (US)
October 22, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - Engineers have created a new fingernail-sized chip that can hold one-trillion bytes (a terabyte) of data - 50 times the capacity of today’s best silicon-based chip technologies.

The engineers, from North Carolina State University, said their Nanostructured Ni-MgO System can store up to 20 high-definition DVDs or 250 million pages of text, “far exceeding the storage capacities of today’s computer memory systems.”

The team of engineers was led by Jagdish “Jay” Narayan, director of the National Science Foundation Center for Advanced Materials and Smart Structures at the university.

The engineers made their breakthrough using the process of selective doping, in which an impurity is added to a material that changes its properties.

Working at the nano-scale level, the engineers added metal nickel to magnesium oxide, a ceramic. The resulting material contained clusters of nickel atoms no bigger than 10 square nanometers — a pinhead has a diameter of 1 million nanometers. The discovery represents a 90% size reduction compared to today’s techniques and an advancement that could boost computer storage capacity.

“Instead of making a chip that stores 20 gigabytes, you have one that can handle one terabyte, or 50 times more data,” Narayan said in a press release.

The process also shows promise for boosting vehicles’ fuel economy and reducing heat produced by semiconductors, a potentially important development for more efficient energy production.

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By Agam Shah
IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)
October 22, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO - The global economy may not be robust, but the PC and chip sectors are hoping to gain some ground with the help of Microsoft’s Windows 7 OS, which will start shipping on Thursday.

After widespread disappointment with Windows Vista, there is a lot of interest in Windows 7 as consumers and enterprises look to upgrade aging hardware and software, analysts said. Demand for PCs with the OS could spike in the first few weeks, and the OS could play a role in driving professional PC purchases next year as budgets grow and enterprises look to upgrade IT infrastructure.

“There is obviously interest in the beginning, so you see a potential spike in demand in the first month or so. Then it goes back to a normal mode whereby the market is driven by natural refreshes, which tends to be on the corporate side,” said David Daoud, research manager with market research firm IDC.

The OS’s effect as a major factor in PC purchases could dry out after a month or two, Daoud said. However, it could play a minor role in buying decisions during the holiday season, when PC shipments generally go up. IDC expects PC shipments during the fourth quarter to go up in a “mid-single-digit”%age range, Daoud said.

Some consumers are delaying PC purchases until after the Windows 7 launch to avoid Vista and the hassle of upgrading, analysts said. Windows Vista, which started shipping late in 2006, was mashed by critics as a bloated OS with slow boot times, device driver incompatibilities and other problems. PC makers in June offered free Windows 7 upgrades to customers who bought PCs pre-installed with Vista, but some customers may decide to wait.

The real effect of Windows 7 on PC shipments may be felt in 2010, when enterprises start upgrading client PCs, analysts said. Some customers view Windows 7 as a major OS upgrade and will take advantage of it to roll out new hardware. The last major PC refresh cycle for those companies was earlier in the decade with Windows XP, which was released in 2001.

“We tested things and discovered problems with Vista early on,” said Steve Rausch, director of information services at Gibson General Hospital in Princeton, Indiana. “We had issues with it. We couldn’t get it to work with our applications,” he said. Rejecting Vista ended up costing the hospital money, because it had to pay about US$20 per PC to downgrade to Windows XP.

The new OS makes the decision to buy new hardware easier, as Windows 7 is “not a hindrance as Vista was,” Rausch said. The hospital has started rolling out Windows 7 PCs on a per-needed basis, and a large-scale rollout may not happen until more money is available.

“I would like to see that happen in 12 months, but that’s being pretty aggressive,” Rausch said.

Group One, an options trading firm in San Francisco, is already rolling out Windows 7 systems powered by Intel’s latest Nehalem microprocessors, said Terence Judkins, managing director of systems. Windows 7 offers better support for the latest hardware than did previous Windows operating systems.

“When Microsoft offered the Release to Manufacturing to volume license customers in early August, we switched to that not just for new Nehalem machines, but actually for any trading machine” that was being upgraded, Judkins said.

The company has elected to retire the older workstations that do not support Windows 7, Judkins said. “We still have a fair number of XP machines in our environment, but we are no longer imaging any machines with it,” Judkins said.

However, before companies start making big investments in Windows 7, there needs to be a security net for them to feel safe spending money, analysts said. There is growing confidence that the economy won’t be as bad next year as was previously feared, Advanced Micro Devices’ CEO Dirk Meyer said on a conference call last week to discuss his company’s financial results.

“The tone of the conversations we are having with CIOs … has changed in the last three months. Clearly, wallets are starting to [open] up,” Meyer said.

Gathering in New York for the Windows 7 launch this week, hardware vendors were also hoping for a sales boost with Windows 7.

The Windows 7 launch “is a great opportunity” to move to a new machine, said Tom Tobul, executive director of marketing for software and peripherals for Lenovo. Tobul was showing off Lenovo’s new ThinkPad SL410 and SL510 laptops, which are timed for release with Windows 7 this week. The laptops are priced starting at $529 and aimed at small and medium-size businesses.

“There’s also a huge tail of XP in the market” he said, referring to users who declined to move to Vista. Tobul and other PC company executives stressed that Microsoft brought hardware makers into the testing process early on to avoid the well-publicized problems that hurt Vista.

PC shipments have progressively improved after a big collapse in the fourth quarter of last year, IDC’s Daoud said. After three consecutive quarters of declining or flat shipments, IDC last week said global PC shipments grew by 2.3% year-over-year, to 78.1 million units, during the third quarter. IDC expects PC shipment growth of about 9% in 2010.

Revenue will also stabilize as PC shipments grow, IDC said. IDC estimates PC revenue will drop by 16% this year compared to 2008, but in 2010 it expects revenue to be flat or to grow 2% to $210 billion.

The surge in PC shipments will have a positive effect on semiconductor companies, with chip volumes rising as the market fills up with new Windows 7 PCs, said Avi Cohen, managing partner at Avian Securities. Chip makers such as Intel and AMD have ramped up their operations and added capacity in fabrication plants over the past two months.

The impact of Windows 7 on semiconductor companies is indirect, said Tony Massimini, chief of technology at Semico Research. Higher PC sales could improve the state of the semiconductor industry, in which a lot of fabs have been running on low capacity because of economic slowdown, he said. It could also improve sales of ancillary PC products such as printers and networking equipment, Massimini said.

Nevertheless, some analysts cautioned that the economic recovery is just starting, and enterprises don’t have the budget to upgrade PCs overnight.

“The corporations will adopt Windows 7 gradually,” perhaps over two to five years, said Yun Kim, a senior research analyst with financial firm Broadpoint Amtech. “That’s kind of what we saw with XP.”

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By Juan Carlos Perez
IDG News Service (Miami Bureau)
October 22, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO - Microsoft has reached collaboration agreements with Twitter and Facebook to get their members’ public status updates and messages indexed and presented in useful ways on the Bing search engine.

Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Online Audience Business, made the announcement on stage at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

The partnership with Twitter has it working with Microsoft to optimize how Bing crawls and indexes “tweets.” Microsoft in turn will apply search algorithms to the Twitter messages, so that Bing users will not only be able to see a real-time feed of “tweets” but also rank them by how relevant they are to their query, Mehdi said.

“This is a big deal we’ve been working on for a long time,” Mehdi said.

To rank “tweets” by relevance, a feature Microsoft calls “Best Match,” Bing will take into consideration a number of factors, such as who are the authors of the messages based on a “social relevance” score Bing will assign to them, Mehdi said.

Bing will also evaluate the message’s quality, noticing, for example, if it contains a link to an online article or Web page. It will also take into consideration how popular the message is by calculating how many times it has been “re-tweeted” by others.

In addition to providing links to Twitter messages, Bing will extract the URLs of the pages that the messages are making reference to, so that users can go directly to that source of the information.

When providing links to “tweets” that contain a shortened URL, Bing will put in parenthesis the main Web domain of the link, so that users know, before clicking, whether it’s a reputable site and thus avoid landing in a malicious phishing or malware-laden site.

Bing will also display a tag cloud of the most popular Twitter topics, so that users can click on and dive deeper into them.

The Twitter deal is nonexclusive, and hours later rival Google announced its own agreement with Twitter.

“The ‘tweets’ will be integrated universal-search style, ranked alongside the other [different types of] results, and you’ll be able to click on those results and go to a page that shows only ‘tweets’ and real-time updates,” said Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products and user experience, in an interview after her appearance on stage at the Web 2.0 Summit to announce the news. Users will also be able to restrict results to Twitter posts from the get-go using the engine’s filtering controls.

Google has so far been crawling Twitter posts on its own, but the subset of content available in this manner has been very small, she said. With this Twitter partnership, Google gets access to what Twitter calls its “firehose” API (application programming interface), which was recently released, she said.

“So we can do this really comprehensive coverage and indexing of ‘tweets’ integrated into Google search,” Mayer said.

Like Microsoft, Google has identified what Mayer calls “relevance signals” in Twitter posts, such as the links they contain and the people authoring them. The latter remains constant, so a Twitter author’s level of competency in a given topic can be analyzed and evaluated, she said.

However, Google is looking at social-networking content in a broader scale beyond Twitter. When asked if Google is interested in striking a deal like this with Facebook, Mayer said, “We’re interested in comprehensiveness, which is a fundamental element of search. We need to have all the answers in order to find the answers for people.”

Along those lines, she said that Google is working on a new search feature to let users view content in their Google search results that their friends have shared with them on social networks.

“We can use social networks and analyze them to improve search quality. When you’re signed in and have a Google Profile established, we’ll look at the different social networks you associate with, understand who your friends and connections are, and surface content written by them on your results pages,” Mayer said.

The Twitter search-result integration and the new social-networking results feature will be implemented “very soon,” Mayer said, declining to be more specific. Google’s announcement of the Twitter agreement states it will be ready “in the coming months.”

Still, it seems Bing is for now ahead of Google with an optimized search experience for Twitter that is already live.

Although Google remains by far the most popular search engine, Microsoft is making a big push to improve its position in this market, starting with Bing’s launch in May and the broad search deal with Yahoo, which is awaiting regulatory approval.

In addition to its core microblogging and social-networking features, Twitter has emerged as a repository of real-time testimonies on whatever is on people’s minds, such as news stories of global importance, celebrity gossip and hot-button issues. As such, being able to capture, analyze and make sense of Twitter’s stream of posts is seen as an important new area in the world of search engines.

“We’re super happy with the Twitter partnership,” said Qi Lu, president of Microsoft’s Online Services Division, who was also on stage being interviewed by conference moderator Tim O’Reilly. Lu declined to disclose financial details of the deal. He also said he wasn’t sure on its duration.

Neither Mehdi nor Lu said much about the Facebook arrangement, other than to indicate that it will be similar in nature to Twitter’s but that it will be implemented at a later date.

It will be interesting to see what shape the Facebook agreement takes, considering that Facebook allows individual members to make only basic profile information available via search engine results. Facebook has indicated it may let members make their profiles open to anyone on the Web, including their status updates, but that hasn’t happened yet.

Twitter, on the other hand, is a much more open service and most of its users make public their “tweets,” messages that can’t be longer than 140 characters.

Facebook expects its deal with Bing to become active early next year, a Facebook spokeswoman said via e-mail. Before Bing can make Facebook status updates searchable, Facebook has to first roll out to all users its new Publisher Privacy Control system, which is now being tested with a small group of users, the spokeswoman said.

“As you may recall, the new Publisher Privacy Control enables users to define who can see the content they publish on a per-post basis. For example, they may want to make some posts available to everyone, while restricting others to their friends and family,” she said.

Microsoft and Facebook have an existing partnership through which Microsoft provides Web search and search ads to Facebook.

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By Juan Carlos Perez
IDG News Service (Miami Bureau)
October 19, 2009

MIAMI - Google, not known for using conventional marketing to promote its wares, has nonetheless found that such an approach is effective for its enterprise products and will roll out internationally a campaign it launched in the U.S. in August.

The “Gone Google” campaign is aimed at IT and business executives who influence IT purchasing decisions, and is designed to sell them on the benefits of using products like Google Apps and the Search Appliance enterprise search device.

The campaign, which is also being extended in the U.S., will involve billboards and signs in airports and train stations, as well as ads in major online and print publications in the U.K., France, Canada, Japan, Australia and Singapore.

The campaign focuses mainly on Google Apps, the company’s Web-hosted suite of collaboration and communication applications, whose “cloud” software-as-a-service (SaaS) architecture Google maintains is a superior alternative to managing on-premises software.

The company is intent on convincing businesses of all sizes, but in particular large enterprises, that Google Apps is less costly, easier to implement and maintain, and makes possible better workplace collaboration than on-premise options such as those sold by Microsoft and IBM’s Lotus division.

“The idea behind ‘Going Google’ is that companies switch to Google Apps and it’s a real transformational change,” said Tom Oliveri, Google’s enterprise marketing director.

Of course, Google isn’t alone in the SaaS market for collaboration and communication software, where Zoho and Yahoo’s Zimbra also compete. Meanwhile, IBM and Microsoft are busy re-tooling their on-premise software to work on the cloud as well.

Google, like other SaaS vendors, also faces skepticism over the security, privacy and reliability of Web-hosted applications, which reside, along with their data, at external data centers beyond the control of an enterprise’s IT managers.

Still, Google maintains that it is making steady progress at winning over large corporations. Some recent large deployments of Google Apps Premier, which costs US$50 per user per year, include 20,000 users at Motorola, 35,000 users at Rentokil Initial and 7,000 users at Konica Minolta.

On Sunday, Google will announce its latest Apps enterprise win — MeadWestVaco, a global packaging company based in Virginia that has signed up for 17,000 users.

Currently, Google Apps is in use at more than 2 million businesses by more than 20 million end users, although the company doesn’t break out how many of those deployments are of Premier, the paid version of the suite.

Over the past year, Google’s enterprise team has doubled in size to about 1,000 employees and the company is actively recruiting to continue beefing up the staff, Google spokesman Andrew Kovacs said.

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By Dan Nystedt
IDG News Service (Taipei Bureau)
October 15, 2009

TAIPEI - Acer, the world’s third largest PC vendor, on Wednesday announced two of its most highly anticipated products with Google’s Android mobile operating system on board, the Liquid smartphone and an Aspire One netbook.

Acer Liquid is a touchscreen smartphone running Android version 1.6, formerly codenamed Donut and the latest upgrade to the software. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipset inside the smartphone provides processing power and other capabilities.

The smartphone also includes a camera that tags photos with location information from the built-in GPS receiver, so people know where and when they snapped a shot. Songs and videos can be played on the handheld. Liquid is designed for Internet browsing, and allows high speed Web access through HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) mobile networks.

The smartphone will use a new user interface, Acer said in a statement. Few other specific details were immediately available about Liquid.

Acer chose Android over other varieties of Linux because it has the best connectivity of any Linux OS built-in, said Jim Wong, president of global product operations at Acer during a news conference in London that was broadcast over the Internet.

Acer also offered a further glimpse at its Aspire One with Android netbook.

The device will run both Android and Microsoft Windows, and users will be able to switch between the two simply by clicking to switch OS, Acer said.

Android will give people access to the Web on start up, with just an 18 second boot-up time. The OS shuts down in 3 seconds, Acer said.

Other details about the new netbook, including when the device might go on sale and how much it would cost, were not immediately available from Acer. But the device showed up for pre-order on Amazon.com, where a full listing of its specifications was displayed.

The netbook is listed at US$349.99, comparable to other Aspire One’s with similar components. The Aspire One with Android has a 10.1-inch screen, an Intel Atom N280 microprocessor, 1GB of DDR2 (double data rate, second generation) DRAM and a 160GB hard-disk drive, as well as a 6-cell battery for long-lasting power. It can be booted in either Android or Windows XP Home, according to the sales data on Amazon.com.

Acer executives said the main reason the company decided to make the Aspire One with Android a dual-boot netbook was so people can use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Web browser. Many Web sites say they are optimized for IE, said Wong.

The company has not yet started planning for new product development using Android next year. “We will continue to monitor Android development,” Wong said.

IE held a 65.7% share of the Web browser market as of September, according to Net Applications, which tracks the statistics. Firefox was second with a 23.8% market share and Apple’s Safari was third at 4.2%, followed by Google’s Chrome at 3.2%.

A survey by SurveyWare on Net Applications’ Web browser market share page, however, reported that 63.1% of respondents said Firefox was the best browser, followed by the Opera browser at 13.5%, IE at 12.1% and Safari at 11.3%.

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By Computerworld Hong Kong staff
Computerworld Hong Kong
October 15, 2009

HONG KONG - The IT industry will create 21,000 new jobs in Hong Kong over the next four years, among the massive number of 5.8 million jobs worldwide, according to findings of a global study by IDC.

The expected growth rate for IT employment of 3 percent a year is more than 16 times the rate of growth of total employment in Hong Kong and is a strong indicator that investing in IT will contribute to economic recovery and growth, said IDC.

Besides, IT-related activities will generate HK$ 14 billion in taxes in 2009, said IDC, adding that over the next four years that means more than HK$ 8 billion in aggregate net new taxes.

The IDC study, commissioned by Microsoft, investigated the contribution of IT to GDP, job creation in the IT industry, employment in the software sector, formation of new companies, local IT spending, and tax revenues in 52 countries, representing 98 percent of total worldwide IT spending, said Microsoft, adding that the research found that Microsoft and its ecosystem of local partners, vendors and service providers are a major catalyst of local economic growth and opportunity, during both the current economic difficulties and recovery.

Key findings about Hong Kong’s IT and software industry
In addition, IT spending was expected to grow at triple the rate of GDP growth, said IDC, adding that IT spending in 2009 will be HK$38 billion. From the end of 2008 to the end of 2013, IT spending will grow 2.6 percent a year, compared to GDP growth of 0.9 percent a year, the research house noted.

Spending on software is growing faster than the spending on IT overall — 5.8 percent a year between 2008 and 2013, more than double the 2.6 percent growth for all IT spending, the analyst firm said.

Software accounts for a modest slice of overall IT spending but has a disproportionately positive impact on local economies. Therefore, although local spending on packaged software will be only 13 percent of total IT spending in 2009, 47 percent of IT employment will be software-related and its growth over the next four years will be 6.5 percent, more than double the growth of total IT employment, IDC added

The IT market will drive the creation of nearly 600 new businesses between now and the end of 2013, among 75,000 new around the globe, said IDC, adding that most of news firms in Hong Kong will be small and locally owned organizations.

Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is estimated to account for a little less than 1 percent of IT spending in Hong Kong, but the percentage might triple over the next four years, said IDC.

Cloud services could add more than HK$40 billion in net new business revenues to Hong Kong’s economy between the end of 2009 and the end of 2013, IDC forcast.

Microsoft ecosystem to generate nearly HK$15 billion
The IDC study indicated that companies in the Microsoft ecosystem in Hong Kong will generate nearly HK$15 billion in revenues for themselves in 2009. For every HK$1 Microsoft will make in Hong Kong in 2009, companies in the local ecosystem will make HK$11.05, said IDC.

To generate those revenues, companies in the local ecosystem will drive nearly HK$5 billion of investment, most of it in Hong Kong, the analyst house noted.

Companies in the Microsoft ecosystem employ 25,000 people; IT-using organizations employ another 28,000 IT professionals who work with Microsoft software or the products and services based on it, according to IDC.

Together, these employees will account for 42 percent of IT-related employment in 2009 and 47 percent of IT-related taxes in Hong Kong, IDC said.

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By Ellen Messmer
Network World (US)
October 15, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - A number of Facebook applications, including one called CityFireDepartment, has been hacked and tries to attack site visitors’ computers via unpatched Adobe software vulnerabilities, a researcher says.

Hacked Facebook accounts are not unusual but “this is the first time I’ve seen Facebook applications hacked,” says Roger Thompson, chief research officer at AVG, who said the firm traced back several hacked Facebook applications to a Russian site which appears to be taking advantage of the compromised Facebook applications to launch attacks against victims’ computers based on unpatched Adobe software vulnerabilities.

In addition to CityFireDepartment, which AVG is cautioning Facebook users not to visit until “it’s cleaned up,” Thompson says. Other compromised Facebook applications also include MyGirlySpace, Ferraritone, Mashpro, Mynameis, Pass-it-on, Fillinthe and Aquariumlife, he says.

The attack “uses an Adobe exploit, and if you’re not patched, it’s installing the exploit, initially rogue antispyware but probably also a Trojan,” Thompson says. AVG has informed Facebook directly about AVG’s findings but he noted it’s not simple to identify who maintains each of the Facebook applications.

Thompson has chronicled AVG’s findings in a blog item. The attack site, which appears to be in Russia, may also be associated with several other Web-based attacks, he adds.

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By Matt Hamblen
Computerworld (US)
October 15, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - A recent global survey of business and IT managers found that their companies got back benefits perceived as equal to four times their investment, on average, in unified communication and collaboration technologies.

The online survey, done in May, looked at deployments of networking tools including voice over IP phones, videoconferencing and instant messaging to support distributed work forces and teleworkers in 10 countries. Sponsored by Cisco Systems Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., the study was conducted by Frost & Sullivan, a technology analysis firm, and involved 3,662 business and IT managers.

Only 44% of the managers surveyed had deployed tools for better collaboration, but 80% of those who have not deployed them said they planned to deploy them in two to three years.

The range of unified communications and collaboration tools included in the survey was broad, but generally audio- and Web- conferencing tools provided the greatest benefits to companies, followed by videoconferencing (sometimes at the desktop instead of in a room-sized location), and then instant messaging, wikis and blogs, said Bill Versen, director of global unified communications and collaboration at Verizon, in an interview.

The survey took into account other collaboration tools as well, such as user presence on a device, document sharing, integration of voice, e-mail and instant messaging and desktop telephone management features from mobile phones (sometimes called fixed-mobile convergence).

For the study, the typical return on investment concept used in assessing a business investment was replaced with what Frost & Sullivan called a return on collaboration. The ROC was quantified in terms of how much “improvement” an organization made (as judged by the person filling out the survey) in a functional area, such as marketing or research and development.

While the ROC average was rated 4.2 times the collaboration investment across six business functions in all the companies surveyed, the benefits were highest for sales, research and development and marketing, with human resources the lowest, the study found. Investor relations and public relations fell in the middle.

In R&D, more than 40% of managers said deploying advanced collaboration tools enabled products to be developed faster, with an improved chance of success in the market, higher quality and lower overall cost of development. In sales, more than 40% of those surveyed said the tools improved the quality of communications with customers, improved the success of sales efforts and reduced the cost of sales and the sales cycle time.

The returns were much higher for larger companies as compared to companies with fewer than 1,000 employees.

The survey also found that collaboration technologies were more prevalent in financial services, high technology businesses and professional services.

The survey also found several other insights:

- More than 90% of IT managers said VoIP quality was as good or better than a traditional wired system. In China, nearly 90% of organizations surveyed used VoIP in some form as their primary phone service.
- A majority of respondents said collaboration tools were helping them balance work with their personal lives, giving them more of a sense of control.
- Nearly 60% of those surveyed said that despite modern tools, there are still times they don’t want to be reached.
More than 60% reported that collaboration tools reduce the need to travel on business.
- Almost half of respondents said their companies have a formal telecommuting policy in place, although only 22% telecommute every day. India came out as the most telcommuting friendly country (with 59% of organizations saying they had a formal policy) , followed by Hong Kong (54%), and the U.S and China tied for third (47%).
- More than half said the need to reduce their organization’s carbon emissions was important in deciding to adopt collaboration technology.

Cisco sells an array of collaboration technologies and Verizon offers consulting and integration services to corporations on communications. One example of the use of collaboration tools was given today when the two companies said that First American Corp., a provider of business information, is using Verizon to deploy Cisco TelePresence rooms in three locations, First American’s Santa Ana, Calif., corporate headquarters as well as its offices in Westlake, Texas, and Bangalore, India.

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By Agam Shah
IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)
October 15, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO - Ncomputing is launching a device that can be used to add a virtual client to a host PC via a USB connection.

The U170 can run full multimedia applications when it is connected to a host machine’s USB port. Multiple U170 boxes can add extra users to a host machine, which can be cheaper than buying separate machines, said Carsten Puls, vice president of strategic marketing at Ncomputing.

The device has a video port, audio port and two USB ports for the keyboard and mouse. “The only thing you have to connect back to the PC is a single USB connection,” Puls said.

The device is priced at US$99 and will be available by the end of the year, Puls said. Users must still buy a monitor and peripherals to complete a workstation.

Beyond reducing the need for a PC, the device also helps reduce energy costs, Puls said. It draws about 2 watts of power, Puls said, far less than a full clients PC.

In this case, the USB cable takes the place of the Ethernet cable for a client to communicate with a host machine. Virtual desktop software from Ncomputing called Vspace on host machines sets up individual desktops as new U170 boxes are connected. One host PC can support up to four boxes.

Vspace is compatible with multiple versions of Windows, including Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 7 OS.

The company is targeting small-and-medium businesses with the device. The typical USB cable extends up to five feet, but USB extenders can lengthen that. The company has set up configurations where the device connects to PCs from up to 50 feet.

USB has advantages as the ports are included on most PCs, but over longer distances it may be better to use Ethernet, Puls said. The company has other products that let users access host PCs over Ethernet.

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By Agam Shah
IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)
October 15, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO - Acer overtook Dell as the world’s second-largest computer vendor during the third quarter, as the PC market showed signs of coming back to life, IDC said on Wednesday.

Global PC shipments grew 2.3% from the same quarter a year earlier, to 78.1 million units. It was the first quarter this year in which PC shipments have grown, IDC said.

Acer’s shipments grew by a whopping 25.6% to reach 10.96 million units, outpacing Dell, whose shipments declined 8.4% to 9.95 million units. Acer “outperformed the market in virtually all regions,” IDC said.

Acer benefited from strong shipments during the back-to-school season, as prices for laptops fell and netbook shipments gained momentum, said Jay Chou, research manager at IDC.

Dell has not embraced low-cost netbooks as enthusiastically as Acer, Chou said. Acer benefitted more from the competitive pricing environment for laptops and netbooks.

Acer ended the quarter with 14% of the market, compared to Dell’s 12.7%. Both companies trailed Hewlett-Packard, which retained its spot as the world’s top PC vendor. HP held 20.2% of the market after shipping 15.79 million PCs, a year-over-year growth rate of 9.3%.

HP is stronger in retail sales than Dell, which helped it generate stronger back-to-school sales.

Dell is stronger in sales to businesses, and it could rebound during a corporate PC refresh cycle that could happen in 2010, Chou said. Until then, Dell may struggle to keep up with competitors in unit shipments. The company saw solid growth in emerging markets, IDC noted, which was a positive sign.

Ever since Dell lost its market share lead, founder and CEO Michael Dell has insisted he is more concerned with profits. “If we wanted [market share], we’d go and sell a whole bunch of netbooks,” he said in a recent earnings call. Netbooks carry lower profit margins than full-fledged PCs.

Lenovo recorded strong growth of 18.2%, giving it the fourth-place spot with PC shipments of 6.99 million. Toshiba was fifth, with shipments growing 6.9% to 4.04 million.

“The continued strength of both the U.S. and worldwide PC business in the face of difficult economic environments underscores the value that both consumer and corporate buyers place on PCs,” Bob O’Donnell, vice president for clients and displays at IDC, said in a statement.

PC shipments in the U.S. grew by 2.5% during the third quarter, while shipments in Asia-Pacific “grew nicely,” IDC said. Shipments in Japan declined by a double-digit%age as consumer and corporate spending remained weak. Shipments also declined in EMEA, IDC said.

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By Chris Kanaracus
IDG News Service (Boston Bureau)
October 15, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO - Oracle plans to launch its long-awaited Fusion Applications in 2010, and they will be deployable both on-premises and as SaaS (software as a service), CEO Larry Ellison said Wednesday during a keynote address at the OpenWorld conference in San Francisco.

Fusion Applications, which Oracle first announced several years ago, will combine the best elements of Oracle’s various business software product lines into a next-generation suite. Oracle has placed special emphasis on improving the user experience with Fusion, as well as embedded BI (business intelligence) throughout the applications, Ellison said.

Ellison’s keynote contained the most specific information the company has provided about Fusion Applications since first announcing the project several years ago. The CEO took pains to tell the packed room of Siebel, JD Edwards and E-Business Suite users that Oracle has no plans to abandon the product lines anytime soon.

“Oracle will continue to enhance those applications for the next decade and beyond. We’re absolutely committed to do that,” he said to applause. “We can afford to not only maintain the software you’re running today, but also build the software you may want to move to tomorrow.”

Ellison did not provide details regarding licensing and pricing models, including whether Oracle will sell the new applications via subscription, as is the norm with SaaS.

But Oracle is nonetheless ensuring the products are ready for SaaS, including by developing monitoring tools that will track their performance, Ellison said.

While SaaS vendors provide users with service-level agreement guarantees, “there aren’t very good tools for figuring out whether you’re actually getting the service levels you’re paying for,” he said. Oracle’s tools will enable it to “not only contractually commit but prove we’re delivering the service levels.”

Fusion Applications are based on a SOA (service oriented architecture) provided by Oracle’s Fusion Middleware stack, Ellison said.

This gives Oracle “a huge advantage” because the SOA model will allow users easily to tie together “the Fusion generation and all the stuff you have deployed today,” Ellison said.

“We don’t think all customers are going to replace what they have today with Fusion,” he added. “We think they will augment what they have with some Fusion. Fusion is designed to be delivered that way. … We have replacement applications and then we have net-new applications.”

The initial suite will include modules for financial management, human capital management, sales and marketing, supply chain management, project management, procurement management and GRC (governance, risk and compliance), but other key areas, such as manufacturing, will come later.

Ellison stressed the benefits of the modular approach. “You assemble the components in the order you want to use them, in the order that makes sense for your industry,” he said.

Oracle has worked “very, very closely” with customers to design and test Fusion Applications, work that has resulted in a superior user interface, Ellison said.

Embedded BI is another major focus of the suite. “You can’t use the system without using business intelligence,” Ellison said.

In a demonstration, a pair of Oracle executives showed how the system alerted one user that a particular shipment had been delayed. The application allowed the user to bring up a dashboard showing which order manager was responsible for the particular transaction, and then begin an instant-messaging conversation with him directly from the tool. In turn, the order manager was able to search for less critical orders and reroute them to fulfill the first one.

“We tell you what you need to know, what you need to do, and we tell you how to do it,” Ellison said.

Ellison’s presentation proved that “Fusion apps are real,” said Ray Wang, a partner with the analyst firm Altimeter Group.

While Oracle “definitely has the capability to deliver this as SaaS, it’s really up to them to figure out if they want to enter [that market] large-scale,” Wang added. In some product areas, such as talent management, “they can’t compete without the SaaS option,” he said.

SaaS applications are different from straight application hosting, because they use a “multitenant” architecture wherein customers share a single instance of an application but their data is kept private from other customers. In a presentation Tuesday, on-demand CRM (customer relationship management) vendor and Oracle rival Salesforce.com compared multitenancy to an office building, where individual tenants share the overall infrastructure but customize their office spaces.

Oracle “will definitely” offer a hosted version of Fusion Applications, although it remains to be seen exactly how their SaaS strategy for the software plays out, Wang said.

When Fusion Applications arrive, they will also raise the competitive stakes between Oracle and its main rival, SAP.

But SAP spokesman Saswato Das dismissed Oracle’s announcement.

“Basically, our Business Suite 7 is the most comprehensive and flexible suite of applications on the market,” Das said. “Oracle has been talking about Fusion for a long time, and our suite is available now. They’re playing catch-up.”

Meanwhile, the work ahead of companies looking to adopt Fusion Applications sooner rather than later is “not trivial,” said Floyd Teter, head of the Oracle Applications Users Group’s Fusion Council, which has been educating group members about the upcoming applications release.

One key step customers should take is to catalogue their application customizations and determine which ones could be retired, Teter said. “A lot of us have done a lot of custom things. If you’re a long-term Oracle customer, it’s easy to lose track.”

Fusion Applications will also require some companies to acquire new development skills, Teter said. “A lot of us run a lot of customizations through MOD PL_SQL. That’s going to be gone. The skill set now is more Java and specifically [Java Enterprise Edition]. You also better have some knowledge of JavaScript.”

In addition, Fusion Applications rely on Oracle’s JDeveloper IDE (integrated development environment), rather than other Java development tools like Eclipse.

For many companies, there will be plenty of time to plan, since the first version of Fusion Applications won’t include certain functional areas.

The lack of manufacturing has prompted the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, which uses E-Business Suite, to wait for a future version, said Teter, who is a project manager at the lab. “When I get a full-functionality replacement, we’ll look at it. In the meantime, we’ll continue to stay current on EBS.”

But Teter said the vendor’s work on Fusion has produced impressive results, particularly in regards to user experience.

Earlier in his keynote, Ellison turned to Oracle’s recently announced Exadata 2 appliance for data warehousing and transaction processing. He claimed the machine widely outperforms and is much less expensive than competing technologies, such as from IBM, calling it “the fastest computer that has ever been built to run data warehousing applications.”

“This system will outperform any of the competition,” he said.

Exadata 2 uses Sun hardware, while the original machine, announced at last year’s OpenWorld show, used Hewlett-Packard iron.

Oracle is in the process of buying Sun Microsystems but the deal is on hold while European officials conduct an antitrust review.

Ellison didn’t discuss the acquisition during his keynote, but Sun and its officials have played an active role in this year’s OpenWorld conference.

Ellison temporarily ceded the stage to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who delivered a joke-peppered talk espousing the value of technology, from biotech to the Hollywood special effects that powered his long career as an action star.

“Think of Conan the Barbarian fighting the giant snake,” he said, referring to his role in the 1982 film based on Robert E. Howard’s tales of a legendary warrior king. “I never could have done that and look so studly without technology,” he said to an eruption of laughter from the crowd.

Schwarzenegger also congratulated Ellison and Sun chairman Scott McNealy on the pending acquisition, stressing the companies’ importance to California’s economy. “Working together, I know the sky is the limit for you and your employees,” he said.

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By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld (US)
October 13, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - It’s almost certain that hackers obtained the Hotmail passwords that leaked to the Internet through a botnet-based attack, a researcher said today as she provided more proof that Microsoft’s explanation was probably off-base.

“When I look at the infamous list of 10,000 Hotmail accounts, it just does not appear to be cataloged in the way you would normally expect from a phishing attack,” said Mary Landesman, a senior security researcher at San Francisco-based ScanSafe.

Landesman based her opinion on further analysis of the list that was posted to the Web two weeks ago. Microsoft acknowledged that “several thousand” Windows Live Hotmail usernames and passwords had been acquired by criminals, and that it believed the list was the result of a massive phishing attack. Google later said the same thing after another list surfaced with Gmail account details .

“There are just too many inconsistencies in the list,” Landesman said, ticking off several characteristics of the Hotmail list that didn’t fit with phishing results researchers have uncovered in the past, ranging from relatively strong passwords to typos.

“There were many misspellings of ‘hotmail,’ and other typos that you wouldn’t expect people to make when they were logging in live to their accounts,” Landesman said, noting that those kinds of errors are inconsistent with phishing attack lists.

She also disputed the notion that a large number of the accounts used very weak passwords, another clue that the users were unsophisticated and thus more likely to fall for a phishing scam.

Some researchers who analyzed the leaked list said that it was dominated by weak passwords , with the simple “123456″ and “123456789″ as the most popular.

While true, that doesn’t tell the whole story, Landesman countered. “123456 was the most frequently used password, but it appeared only 63 times out of the +10,000 records,” she said. That would represent just over 6/10ths of 1%.

“I’d call most of the passwords certainly strong, respectable passwords, and not the type of passwords from someone naive,” Landesman said. “That doesn’t fit the profile of people who you might think would be susceptible to phishing scams.”

In fact, the treasure trove of Windows Live ID usernames and passwords that Landesman uncovered in August, which she believes is related to the leaked Hotmail list, contained a large number of accounts owned by corporate and government users, who typically relied on what she called “very strong” passwords.

“A [malware-based] keylogger attack turns all the advice about strong passwords on its side,” Landesman said, speculating that users with stronger passwords were less likely to succumb to the deceit of a phishing attack. “In cases where you see very strong passwords, it’s almost certain that data theft was involved,” she added.

Landesman first refuted Microsoft’s contention that the Hotmail passwords had been obtained by phishers last week. She added more to her list of proof points last Wednesday in a follow-up entry to the ScanSafe threat alert team’s blog.

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By Paul Krill
InfoWorld (US)
October 13, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO - Sun Microsystems Chairman Scott McNealy and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison both took the stage at the Oracle OpenWorld 2009 conference Sunday evening to offer reassurances that Sun technologies will not go away should Oracle complete its planned acquisition of Sun.

From Java to the Solaris OS to the Sparc CPU platform and Sun storage technologies, Oracle will be good for all of them, the executives stressed at the San Francisco event. As a matter of fact, combining Sun’s research and development budget with Sun’s presents “one of the great R&D opportunities of all time,” McNealy said.

Oracle, for example, intends to spend more money developing Sparc than Sun does now, he said. “That’s a good sign for Sparc innovation,” McNealy said.

“You look at the core technologies that we’re developing: They’re going to find a nice home in this next chapter,” he said, referring to merger.

Ellison, for his part, took exception with IBM for suggesting Oracle was not committed to Sun’s wares, particularly Sun hardware. “We’re looking forward to competing with IBM in the systems [business] and we think the combination of Sun and Oracle [is] well-equipped to compete successfully against the giant,” Ellison said.
Ellison said he would give $10 million to anyone — any major company or enterprise — whose existing database application would not run at least twice as fast on Sun gear. The challenge would be part of a new ad campaign. But he acknowledged Oracle recently was fined $10,000 for running a recent ad comparing Sun and Oracle to IBM, in which the benchmark evidence had not yet been documented. His explanation cited overzealousness on Oracle’s part.
“If IBM wants to compete, we’re happy to compete and we made a series of commitments,” Ellison said. Solaris, meanwhile, is the leading enterprise OS and the leading OS for running the Oracle database, he said.

“We said we’re not selling the hardware business and we think Sparc is a fantastic technology. And with a little more investment, it could be even better,” said Ellison.
Oracle also plans to increase its investment in the open source MySQL database, Ellison said. He added that Oracle already has continued to invest in the Innobase technology it acquired that serves as the transaction engine in MySQL. There had been speculation that Oracle bought Innobase “to kill it,” but that has not happened at all, Ellison stressed. MySQL currently is owned by Sun.
IBM had been a rumored suitor for Sun prior to Oracle forging a deal to buy the company nearly six months ago. The sale remains held up by the European Union, which is concerned over commercial database giant Oracle owning MySQL. Recently, Ellison said Sun has been losing $100 million a month waiting for the sale to close. McNealy said efforts to close the sale were proceeding with authorities.
To argue on behalf of Oracle’s commitment to Java, McNealy brought Sun Vice President James Gosling, considered the father of Java, onstage. Oracle’s product mix features Java and the company has participated in numerous Java Specification Requests (JSR), Gosling said. The JSR process is used to submit modifications to the platform to the community at large.

Oracle, though, has been a bit unprepared for the volume of activity in the Java world, Gosling, said. “We do 15 million downloads of the JRE (Java Runtime Edition) a week on average,” he said.

Also appearing onstage at OpenWorld was John Fowler, Sun vice president of system. “My team is excited about working closely with Oracle because we have been working with Oracle now [for] what’s measured in decades,” Fowler said. He lauded recent Sun-Oracle performance benchmarks and noted the recently introduced Sun-Oracle Exadata Database Machine Version 2, which combines Sun hardware with Oracle’s database and storage management software. Fowler also announced the Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array, which integrates 1.6TB of Flash storage into a device that looks like a server.

McNealy cited a long list of Sun accomplishments, including the Network File System, the various editions of Java, Sparc’s being the first 64-bit volume RISC architecture, and the company’s contributions to open source, including its use of Berkeley Unix. “We were the Red Hat of Berkeley Unix,” he said.

In a brief interview after the evening presentation, Tim Bray, Sun’s director of Web technologies, would not comment on whether the Sun name would go away as part of the merger with Oracle or whether Sun would become a division of Oracle.

In a Top 10 list entitled “Top 10 Signs Engineers Have Gone Wild,” McNealy took potshots at Apple for not supporting Java on its iPhone. “Friends don’t let friends type on an iPhone especially since it doesn’t run Java. Are you listening, Steve,” McNealy said, referring to Apple CEO Steve Jobs. “[The iPhone is] the only device on the planet that doesn’t run Java.”

He also ridiculed President Barack Obama’s winning of the Nobel Peace prize last week, without mentioning the President by name. One of the engineering signs on McNealy’s list pertained to a Nobel prize for a gas mask bra, leading McNealy to follow the reference with a comment that such an award was “no more ridiculous than some other Nobel prizes that I’ve heard of.”

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By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld (US)
October 13, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - Snow Leopard users have reported that they’ve lost all their personal data when they’ve logged into a “Guest” account after upgrading from Leopard, according to messages on Apple’s support forum.

The bug, users said in a well-read thread on Apple’s support forum, resets all settings on the Mac, resets all applications’ settings and erases the contents of critical folders containing documents, photos and music.

The MacFixIt site first reported the problem more than a month ago.

Users claimed that they lost data when they’d logged into their Macs using a “Guest” account, either purposefully or by accident. Reports of the bug go back to Sept. 3, just six days after Apple launched Snow Leopard , or Mac OS X 10.6. Users who said they’d encountered the bug said that they had upgraded their systems from Mac OS X 10.5, known as Leopard.

Specifically, Snow Leopard’s home directory — the one sporting the name of the Mac’s primary user — is replaced with a new, empty copy after users log-in to a Guest account, log out, then log-in to their standard account. All the standard folders — Documents, Downloads, Music, Picture and others — are empty, while the Desktop and Dock have reverted to an “out-of-box” condition.

“I had the Guest account enabled on my MacBook Pro,” said a user identified as “tcnsdca” in a message posted Sept. 3. “I accidentally clicked on that when I went to log in. It took a few minutes to log in, then after I had logged out of that account and back into mine, my [entire] home directory had been wiped. All of doc, music, etc. gone.”

“Add my parents to the list of people waxed by this bug,” added “Ratty Mouse” today on the same thread. “Brand new iMac, less than one month old, EVERYTHING lost. Just as I convinced them to go Mac after years of trying.”

On the thread, several users urged others to disable any Guest accounts to prevent any accidental data loss.

Some people were able to restore their Macs using recent Time Machine backups, but others admitted that they had not backed up their machines for weeks or months.

“Just my luck I hadn’t made a backup since 11th August,” acknowledged “rogerss” on a different support forum thread. “So annoyed now, in the process of restoring from Time Machine, but have lost loads of my work due to this fault.”

Others users, however, had neglected to back up their Macs.

“Nooooo!!! This morning I had access to Guest Account and than all my data were lost!!!” bemoaned someone tagged as “carlodituri” last Saturday. “I had 250GB of data without backup and I lost everything: years and years of documents, pictures, video, music!!! Is it possible to recover something? Please help me!!!!”

Not surprisingly, users unaffected by the bug were reluctant to attempt to reproduce the problem. Some, for instance, wondered if the data loss would be triggered on Macs upgraded to Snow Leopard when the Guest account was simply set to “Sharing only,” which is the default.

Apple did not respond today to questions about the bug.

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