IBM hat bekannt gegeben, dass es sein KI-Programm Watson, das besonders als Quizshow-Kandidat berühmt geworden ist, an die Hochschule schickt. Der Konzern stellt dem Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) als erster Uni weltweit eine Version des kognitiven Systems zur Verfügung.
Der japanischen Elektronikkonzern Toshiba hat die Zahlen für das dritte Quartal sowie die ersten neun Monate des Geschäftsjahres 2012/2013 bekannt gegeben. Obwohl der Hightech-Riese ein Plus beim Ergebnis verzeichnen konnte, war der Umsatz rückläufig.
Nokia kann einen prominenten Neukunden für die Mapping-Plattform "Here" verkünden. Toyota Motor Europe nutzt Nokias Local Search for Automotive-Technologie für seine neuen Touch & Go-Navigation und -Infotainment Systeme.
Die Börsianer glauben offenbar nicht an ein schnelles Comeback des Smartphone-Pioniers Blackberry. Mit dem neuen Betriebssystem Blackberry 10 und frischen Smartphones will das kanadische Unternehmen den Befreiungsschlag schaffen. Doch die Anleger sind überaus misstrauisch.
Das Berufsbild der Mädchen unterscheidet sich von demjenigen der Jungen. Der frühe Kontakt mit Informatik ist Voraussetzung, damit Jugendliche eine ICT-Lehre ergreifen. Mädchen finden auf anderen Wegen in den Beruf als Jungen. IT-Anwenderunternehmen bilden deutlich unter ihrem Fachkräftebe- darf aus. Dies sind die Ergebnisse der jüngsten gesamtschweierzischen Erhebung bei Informatik- und Mediamatik-Lernenden durch ICT-Berufsbildung Schweiz.
Der US-amerikanische Computerspiele-Hersteller Electronics Arts mit Sitz in Redwood Shores hat nach enttäuschenden Verkäufen im Weihnachtsgeschäft seine Jahresziele zusammengestrichen. Das mit hohen Erwartungen gestartete Kriegsspiel "Medal of Honor" kam bei den Kunden nicht gut an und konnte dem US-Konzern nicht dabei helfen, aus den roten Zahlen zu kommen.
Die EU-Kommission wartet kurz vor Ablauf einer Frist für Google immer noch auf Vorschläge des Suchmaschinenbetreibers, wie er dem Vorwurf der Manipulation von Suchergebnissen begegnen will. Die für Donnerstag gesetzte Frist gelte weiter, sagte Wettbewerbskommissar Joaquín Almunia am Mittwoch in Brüssel. Er erwarte, dass die Vorschläge des US-Konzerns "auf dem Weg sind", ließ der Spanier wissen.
Der Halbleiterhersteller Infineon hat einen durchwachsenen Start in sein neues Geschäftsjahr erwischt. Wie erwartet verbuchte der deutsche Konzern zwischen Oktober und Dezember einen Umsatzrückgang und einen Gewinneinbruch.
Der schwedische Telekomausrüster Ericsson hat im vierten Quartal mehr erlöst als im Vorjahr. Der Umsatz stieg um fünf Prozent auf 66,9 Milliarden Schwedische Kronen (7,77 Milliarden Euro), wie der Branchenprimus am Donnerstag mitteilte. Der operative Kerngewinn legte um 17 Prozent auf 557 Millionen Euro zu. Beide Ergebnisse fielen über den Erwartungen von Analysten aus.
Prominenter Personalzuwachs bei der Zürcher IT-Dienstleisterin Belsoft IT Solutions: Mit dem 44-jährigen Giancarlo Palmisani stösst der ehemalige Chef der IT-Messen Orbit und Internetexpo (iEX) und zuletzt Aiciti als neuer Leiter Sales und Marketing zum Management Team der Firma.
its web-based personal finance manager—one designed for small-business owners who want help untangling personal and business finances. The new Mint Home & Business (like Mint) will download online banking transactions and provide tools to automate categorization of expenses and income, and to divide a single expenditure between personal and business accounts. Unfortunately, it doesn't provide a full suite of small business finance tools (for example, there's no invoicing), so you'll have to decide whether the tools it offers are worth the hassle of having to manage business finances on more than one service. Mint Home & Business isn’t yet available—Intuit officials say it will be "soon," but haven't shared whether it will be a free and marketing-supported (like the current Mint personal finance manager), or whether fees will be involved. The service was among the newest products on display at an event marking Intuit’s 30 years in finance software. —a web site where businesses or consumers can search for a certified public accountant to do their taxes. Right now the service has some 60 CPAs, with information on their background and where they practice, as well as user reviews with star ratings.
Hackers behind a recently detected email attack campaign are exploiting a vulnerability in a Yahoo website to hijack the email accounts of Yahoo users and use them for spam, according to security researchers from antivirus vendor Bitdefender. The attack begins with users receiving a spam email with their name in the subject line and a short "check out this page" message followed by a bit.ly shortened link. Clicking on the link takes users to a website masquerading as the MSNBC news site that contains an article about how to make money while working from home, the Bitdefender researchers said Wednesday in a . At first glance, this seems no different from other work-from-home scam sites. However, in the background, a piece of JavaScript code exploits a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the Yahoo Developer Network (YDN) Blog in order to steal the visitor's Yahoo session cookie. Session cookies are unique strings of text stored by websites inside browsers in order to remember logged-in users until they sign out. Web browsers use a security mechanism called the same-origin policy to prevent websites opened in different tabs from accessing each other's resources, like session cookies.
The Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZBV) sued computer game distributor Valve because it prohibits Steam gamers from reselling their games. Steam users own the games they purchase and should be able to resell them when they want to, just like owners of traditional card or board games can, said Carola Elbrecht, project manager for consumer rights in the digital world at the VZBV, on Thursday. But while those traditional game owners can resell their games whenever they like, Steam users often cannot, she said. In theory, a Steam user could download a game, burn it on a CD and resell it, she said. In most cases, though, buyers wouldn't be able to play the game they purchased because the games are linked to a user account and without the key for that specific account, online-only games are not playable, she said. Because Valve forbids its users to sell or transfer their accounts to another person, the exchange of games that can only be played online is impossible, she said. This means that a Steam user only partially owns games, Elbrecht said. "If I pay the full price for a game, then why am I not allowed to do with it what I want," she added.
Microsoft's Surface RT tablet has a sales problem, according to new analyst estimates. Despite the almost omnipresent Surface RT advertising blitz that has been blanketing television screens for months now, IHS iSuppli believes that only 680,000 to 750,000 of the tablets have 900,000 Surface RT tablets to retail. If true, this is disappointing news for Microsoft. More worrying than the sales figures, however, is IHS iSuppli's report of "very high" return rates, which could hint at even greater concerns about Windows RT's very viability as a platform. IHS iSuppli analyst Rhoda Alexander didn't disclose detailed return rate estimates during , though she did say, "It seems to be linked in a lot of cases to a steep learning curve of the [Windows 8] OS—which is not necessarily intuitive." In other words, the presumed cause for the high level of returns isn't a problem with the Surface RT tablet, which is a beautifully designed piece of hardware. It's an underlying problem with Windows RT itself—and it isn't the only one.
Today is the last day customers can purchase an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for the discounted price of $39.99. of the upgrade to $199.99. An upgrade to Windows 8, a less-capable edition that lacks corporate features such as BitLocker encryption and the ability to remotely connect to a company's network, will cost $119.99 beginning Friday. That edition was never discounted. Customers with PCs running Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 can upgrade to Windows 8 or Windows 8 Pro, although with varying degrees of success. The migration from Windows 7 to Windows 8 is the most thorough, while that from XP is the least effective in bringing along existing files, settings and applications. in July 2012, and kicked off fulfillment in October alongside Windows 8's debut.
The $300 Synology DS213air is a decent two-bay NAS box whose main claim to fame is its ability to perform as an 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi access point. The unit streams media quite well; however, its name is a bit misleading in that the DS213air has more in common with the $200 DS212j than the significantly faster $300 DS213. The DS213air’s wireless feature isn’t all that unique either, since you can turn add similar functionality to any current Synology NAS box using an inexpensive third-party USB 802.11 adapter. On the upside, this router sports Synology's usual bountiful array of software features. The DS213air uses a 1.6GHz Marvell Kirkwood mv6282 single-core CPU, and it sports 256MB of system memory. Our review unit arrived populated with two 1TB Seagate Barracuda drives in RAID 1 (mirrored). Using those components, the DS213air wrote our 10GB mix of smaller files and folders at 35.5MBps and read them at 38.3MBps. With our single large 10GB file, its performance increased to 43.6MBps writing and 74.5MBps reading. Those numbers aren't bad, but they’re slower than what we see from most of the competition these days. I also tested the DS213air's streaming ability with a third-generation iPad, an Asus S7 laptop, and a slower Acer 7250 laptop. Music, photos, and even 1080p video streamed smoothly to all, though as with any Wi-Fi, your proximity and environment will impact results. Note that you must first configure the DS213air using wired Ethernet, pull the Ethernet cable, power down, and then power up again before the DLNA server will choose the Wi-Fi rather than wired network. Synology's operating system (along with QNAP's) stands head and shoulders above the rest of the competition for breadth of features. The short list includes DHCP, mail and website serving, DLNA and iTunes media serving, free one-camera video surveillance, Web-based photo/video/music serving, FTP, SFTP, HTTPS, and the usual administration features. That makes it a small business server in everything but name. A demo on Synology's Web site lets you play with many of the features. You can check it out .
. But you don't need to pay to get a Start button: There's one tool that's free, open-source, and very customizable. Meet Classic Shell. Unlike most Start menu replacements, Classic Shell has been around for a while. Its first version came out in November 2009, long before Windows 8 was even close to public. At the time, it was meant to fix interface annoyances in Windows Vista. That was version 0.9 (the first publicly available version), and today, more than three years later, it's at version 3.6.4. As software projects are wont to do, Classic Shell grew over time, and now consists of three separate parts: Classic Explorer, Classic Start Menu, and Classic IE9. That tendency of software projects to grow and morph over time is exactly what Classic Shell sets out to fix. It doesn't try to invent anything new: In the project's own words, Classic Shell is "a collection of features that were available in older versions of Windows but were later removed." You're not going to find any groundbreaking UI innovations here, and in my eyes, that's a good thing. These are interface patterns that worked and that Microsoft took away for reasons unknown. Classic Shell's most newsworthy component is Classic Start Menu, and it's stellar. Hit the Windows key on your keyboard, and up pops a Start menu, just like you remember it from Windows 7 (or Windows Vista, or Windows XP–you can choose your own skin). Start typing to search for programs, hit Enter to launch. Search is blazing fast. You can pin items to the Start menu, and customize every aspect of it. Never use the Printers item? No problem, you can easily make it go away. In other words, Classic Start Menu is just like the Start Menu you know and love, only more customizable.
Before we discuss your problem, let's consider why you would want a second hard drive in your PC. If you simply want to increase your internal storage, my advice below should help you. If you want to set up a RAID, see . But please don't install a second internal drive for backup. The same power surge, malware, fire, or burglar that might deprive you of everything on your main hard drive will likely also rob you of your backup. For a better solution, see