Mehrere Wochen haben Apple und das US-Justizministerium über den Vorwurf von Preisabsprachen im amerikanischen E-Book-Markt gestritten, jetzt ist eine New Yorker Richterin am Zug. Das US-Justizministerium bezichtigt Apple, zum Start des iPad-Tablets 2010 zusammen mit Verlagen die Preise für digitale Bücher künstlich hochgeschraubt zu haben.
Nach der Einführung des Leistungsschutzrechtes für Presseverlage in Deutschland lässt Google sich die weitere unentgeltliche Verwendung von Verlagsinhalten bestätigen. Mit dem neu eingeführten Bestätigungssystem biete Google den deutschen Verlagen eine weitere Möglichkeit, mitzuteilen, „ob ihre Inhalte - weiterhin - bei Google News angezeigt werden sollen“, erklärte Google-Manager Gerrit Rabenstein in einem Blogpost heute.
Die Emmener Distributorin Also übernimmt per 1. Juli die gesamten Aktivitäten der Lexmark-Distribution von Coma Services, der in Bremgarten domizilierten Tochter von Bechtle. Die beiden unternehmen einigten sich laut Communiqué auf einen sogenannten Asset-Deal.
Der taiwanesische Smartphone-Hersteller HTC hat es im Moment nicht besonders leicht. Konkurrenten wie Samsung schiessen ein Flaggschiff nach dem anderen auf den Markt und machen Umsätze, von denen HTC aktuell nur träumen kann. CEO Peter Chou soll schon vor einiger Zeit angekündigt haben, das Unternehmen zu verlassen, wenn sich das HTC One als Flop herausstellen sollte.
Die Veröffentlichungen über das geheime Internetspionageprogramm Prism haben eine Vertrauenskrise in die grossen US-basierten Softwarehersteller ausgelöst. Auch wenn die einzelnen Unternehmen jeglichen direkten Zugriff auf ihre Server durch US-Geheimdienste strikt verneinen, bleiben doch viele Zweifel an dieser Darstellung.
Der drittgrösste US-Mobilfunker Sprint Nextel erhöht sein Übernahmegebot für das Internetunternehmen Clearwire und übertrumpft damit Mitbieter Dish. Sprint bietet nach eigenen Angaben nun 5,00 Dollar je Aktie.
Bedeutende Geschwindigkeits- und Flexibilitätsvorteile bei der Analyse grosser Datenmengen haben im Mittelpunkt eines zweitägigen Symposiums des Hasso-Plattner-Instituts gestanden, das am Freitag zu Ende ging. Vor rund 100 Informatikforschern aus aller Welt betonte Institutsstifter und SAP-Mitgründer Prof. Hasso Plattner, dass Handelskonzerne das Aufkommen von Verkaufsdaten aus zehn Jahren heute innerhalb von Sekundenbruchteilen auswerten könnten - und das bei Datenvolumina von 330 Millionen Transaktionen pro Tag.
Die Geschäfte beim amerikanischen SAP-Rivalen Oracle laufen schlechter als erwartet. Der Umsatz stagnierte im vierten Geschäftsquartal bei 10,9 Milliarden Dollar und verfehlte damit die Marktprognosen, wie der weltweit drittgrösste Softwarekonzern in einem Communiqué mitteilte.
Im langwierigen Patentstreit mit seinem Rivalen Samsung hat Apple in Japan einen Etappensieg errungen. Ein Gericht in Tokio entschied heute, dass Samsung ein Patent bei älteren Smartphone-Modellen verletzt hatte. Dabei geht es um die Darstellung von Symbolen auf der Bildschirmoberfläche, wenn der Nutzer ein Dokument bis zum Ende gelesen hat.
Die Anzahl von im Umlauf befindlicher maliziöser Software für mobile Betriebssysteme erlebt einen starken Zuwachs. Davon betroffen sind in erster Linie Android-Anwender. Im März dieses Jahres hat sich die Zahl von bösartigen Android-Schädlingen auf 509 Mio. belaufen.
Once-mighty America Online appears to be working on a new RSS reader product, with about a week to go before Google pulls the plug on its own Reader. “All your favorite websites, in one place,” the product’s proclaims. The reader is currently in private beta; people can either request an invitation online or enter a code to use the service. No other information about the product could be gleaned from the AOL site. The company’s Twitter feed appears to be silent on the product as of late. AOL could not be immediately reached to provide more information.
Rackspace is now offering hosted versions of the MongoDB data store, using MongoDB management technologies it acquired from its purchase of ObjectRocket in February. It also has contracted with 10gen, the company shepherding the open source MongoDB, to provide advanced support for the service. ObjectRocket created a platform specifically for running MongoDB in hosted, or cloud, services, said Matt Asay, 10gen’s vice president of corporate strategy. The new service will be “one really good way to pave the path to a successful MongoDB experience,” he said. Although both provide directions for installing and running MongoDB on their clouds, Rackspace is hoping that the ObjectRocket’s technologies will provide a more streamlined process of deploying and managing the data store. The ObjectRocket platform takes care of a lot of configuration and tuning issues that could flummox an administrator trying to run MongoDB in the cloud for the first time, such as choosing the optimum amount of RAM to allocate, Asay said. It also provides controls for automatically scaling a single server copy to a multi-node cluster deployment, and has tuned the underlying software stack to work specifically with MongoDB.
Businesses that rely on Facebook to get the word out to customers likely have a love/hate relationship with its integrated analytics system. On one hand, the "Insights" system seems to offer a vast amount of information. On the other hand, it's not easy to make sense of al lthat information, and the system doen't always tell the whole story. , "It should be clearer to businesses how to use this information to drive the results they care about." The upgrades cover a number of key components in the Insights system. These include three main changes: Upgrades to the Insights system have already begun to be released to a small number of users, who will be notified of their selection via the Insights tool itself. Later this summer the system will be rolled out to the rest of us.
For the better part of a year, Oracle has touted the “pluggable database” feature in its upcoming 12c database release as a significant architectural shift that will usher in major performance and efficiency improvements and also make cloud-based applications more secure. But customers who want to take advantage of the pluggable database concept when 12c is released won’t get it in return for their regular maintenance fees. Instead, Oracle plans to offer it as a “separately priced option,” CEO Larry Ellison on the company’s fourth-quarter and year-end earnings call. The feature allows multiple databases to run inside of a single 12c database instance and constitutes Oracle’s take on multitenancy, which is a key ingredient of cloud-based applications. In the past, multitenancy has referred to a practice followed by SaaS (software as a service) vendors such as Salesforce.com, where many customers share the same application instance, but with their data kept separate. Oracle believes that application-level multitenancy is inferior and less secure than 12c’s approach, which pushes multitenancy to the database tier, Ellison said on the conference call.
red flag. Fake antivirus and ransomware attacks—a staple of PC-based malware in recent years—are making their way to mobile platforms. Fake AV displays a false malware detection in an effort to con you into paying for software to remove the infection, while ransomware locks up your system (or mobile device) and prevents you from using it at all until the ransom is paid. , this particular threat has elements of both fake AV and ransomware attacks. The alert is designed to look like a malware scan has detected an infection, but it also locks the Android device and prevents you from doing anything else until you pay the fee to download the “protection” app. Once the malicious app is installed, the real fun begins. The malware has compatibility issues with many Android devices, and attempts to prevent other apps from being launched. It alters the settings of the Android OS itself, and in some cases requires a hard reset to restore normal functionality.
Intle appears to be shifting its focus towards the Android operating system, and breaking away from years of optimizing its top line of Core PC processors—including recently launched Haswell processors—chiefly for Windows. on Intel’s website hints that Android development will continue beyond Broadwell and into future Core chips. The listing for an “Android System Software Program Manager” includes responsibilities for “planning and delivery for full system—across architecture, development, integration and validation.” Intel already backs Android for its low-power Atom tablet and smartphone processors, but the company has not yet talked publicly about Android for Core processors. Core processors have more advanced instruction sets and graphics capabilities than Atom processors, and those would need to be optimized for Android.
Warren Spector is a name known well by dedicated PC gamers. The man helped make innovative games like games. With Disney shuttering his Junction Point Studios, Spector is taking a vacation for the first time in his life. But he’s keeping busy with speaking engagements and going back to school, designing a game development program for the University of Texas Austin. Now free of public relations restrictions, Spector opens up to us about game development and his own future in this exclusive interview. For 30 years I’ve been arguing for the need to take a more structured approach to training the next generation of developers; it’s important to teach them what makes games work. Now, it’s much easier to convince people that games education has a place in the colleges and the universities in the country.
I don't know about you, but whenever I visit YouTube these days, I want to scold it like a child: "Clean up your room!" Because, seriously, what a mess. Between the ads, the sidebar, the tools, the related videos, and especially the comments, YouTube has become a cluttered eyesore. . Specifically, it cleans the page of everything but a large video window. Now you can focus on what you wanted: the video. Cleanr is available for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, If you're a Chrome user, you'll need to follow the brief tutorial video on the install page; because this isn't a Google-approved extension (wonder why?), you have to install it manually with a little dragging and dropping.
Windows 8 tablets aren’t in good shape: for its desktop functionality, and many people aren’t willing to pay premium prices for the ability to run Office—and not much else—on what amounts to be keyboard-less PCs. Indeed, with Windows 8 and Windows RT making up just , the Korean tech giant might have just thrown Microsoft the life-preserver it needs to help keep Windows tablets in the game. Here are three ways Samsung can lend Microsoft a helping hand. After announcing another handful of Android smartphones (all with the name “Galaxy S4” and whatever noun Samsung decided to tack onto the end), the company surprised those in attendance by unveiling two new slates running Windows 8: . The Ativ Q is the more noteworthy of the two for its ability to seamlessly switch between Windows and Android, giving it access to a whole mess of software normally unavailable on Windows 8 devices.
A U.K. regulatory group is giving Google 35 days to delete what remains of the data collected by its Street View cars in the U.K., and is using the threat of legal action to compel the company to comply. The , which was served to Google in the form of an enforcement notice from the Information Commissioner’s Office, the U.K. government’s data and privacy regulator, follows a reopening of an investigation into Google’s Street View project. In 2010, that investigation revealed “,” when Google Street View cars collected payload data through the company’s Wi-Fi mapping efforts in the U.K., by scraping personal data including emails, URLs and passwords. Google agreed to delete the payload data following that investigation, but when reaching this week’s decision, “the ICO also considered the discovery of additional disks containing payload data, which were located by Google while the reopened ICO investigation was in progress,” the group said Thursday in a statement.
Microsoft’s push to make its Bing search engine more social will take it in a new direction—actually letting a select group of users curate results. Microsoft’s “experiment,” known as Bing Boards, will allow a small group of food and lifestyle bloggers, experts, and social influencers to cultivate their own selection of search results on a given topic. The Board will be a visual collection of images, videos and links that tell the story from the blogger’s point of view, Microsoft said. These results won’t replace the search result that Bing normally returns, but will sit alongside them within the middle column of Bing’s search results, Chen Fang, program manager of Bing Experiences, said in a . When one searches Bing, the results show up in the middle of the page on a 4:3 screen, or on the left hand of a widescreen monitor. The Bing Board appears as a larger image to the right of the main search results. When clicked on, the Board opens up to a larger image, with additional links and images inside.
Half the battle with campy comedy is picking the right subject for a roast in the hot seat. Poking fun is just part of good satire. The other half is a fondness for the subject that transcends the jokes. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon replaces the generic jungle-island backdrops from previous entries in the series with a neon-lit 1980s dystopia that lovingly references every cliché of the era to hilarious effect. I looked at the PC version, but it's available for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 as well.
If you’ve been eyeballing an Ultrabook™ but think your budget won’t accommodate one, fear not: There are plenty of ultra-thin, ultra-light, ultra-speedy systems that won’t break the bank. In fact, for $800 or less, you can replace your aging, under-powered laptop with one of these state-of-the-art machines. Why opt for an Ultrabook? They’re ideal for business travelers, offering not only slim, lightweight designs, but also lightning-fast boot speeds and enough battery life to survive a coast-to-coast flight. Here’s a look at four of the best models you can get for under $800. to improve performance. If there’s a downside here, it’s that the 12.5-inch touchscreen is a little smaller than ideal laptop size, while the entire system feels a little heavy when used as a tablet.
. As consumers look to cheap tablets for their basic computing needs, PC makers are putting more effort into creating luxury machines to compete with Apple's MacBooks. The idea is that if you're only going to buy one PC for serious productivity, it might as well be a dream machine—and a big part of that ideal is manifest in the ultra-high-resolution displays we're starting to see on the streets. , announced on Thursday, is just the latest example. How do all these luxury laptops compare? We've created a chart, pitting the ATIV Book 9 Plus against Acer's Aspire S7, Asus' Zenbook Infinity, Toshiba's KiraBook, Google's Chromebook Pixel and Apple's 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display.
The National Security Agency (NSA) can retain communications of U.S. citizens or residents potentially indefinitely if those communications are encrypted, according to a newly leaked secret government document. . The documents state that the NSA is not allowed to intentionally target persons known to be located in the U.S., but under which the agency is allowed to retain, or share with other U.S. agencies, communications of U.S. persons that were acquired inadvertently. These include cases when the data is likely to contain foreign intelligence, information on criminal activity or is encrypted. According to the document describing data collection “minimization procedures,” foreign communications between a U.S. person and a party located outside of the U.S. that was collected during data acquisitions authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) can be retained for “cryptanalytic, traffic analysis, or signal exploitation purposes.”
Against a backdrop of market tumult, enterprise software companies this week reported mixed quarterly results. Though Red Hat reported a robust quarter, Oracle revenue flatlined and Tibco’s sales and profit declined year over year. Meanwhile, shares of tech companies plunged Thursday along with the rest of the market, as investors took in the news that the U.S. Federal Reserve may taper off some initiatives to support markets as it sees the economy improve. For example, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke for the first time suggested a timeline for winding down purchases of mortgage bonds and treasuries, possibly next year. Though the Fed still plans to keep interest rates low, stocks plunged Thursday. The broad Standard and Poor’s 500 index declined 2.5 percent, its worst drop since November 2011. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended down 353.87 points, or 2.3 percent, with all of its 30 components in negative territory, including its five tech stocks: Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM and Intel.
MapR Technologies and VMware have collaborated to make it easier for enterprises to virtualize big data applications and get better support at the same time. The companies have collaborated to certify for VMware's vSphere platform the MapR distribution of the open-source Apache Hadoop software framework for the distributed processing of large data sets. The certification enables enterprises to more easily deploy and run the MapR distribution for Hadoop on vSphere, and more importantly receive commercial support. For enterprises that don't want to run their big data implementation in a public cloud, virtualizing the applications allows IT departments to utilize hardware more efficiently and gain more control over their resources, according to VMware. VMware's push to make its virtualization platform big data-friendly took an important step last year when it introduced Serengeti, an open-source project that helps enterprises deploy, manage and scale Apache Hadoop in virtual and cloud environments. The latest release features support for MapR as well the Apache HBase data store.
Capgemini is introducing a hybrid cloud orchestration service focused on Microsoft products, although enterprises will be able to manage any load with the offering, including applications running on Linux, the company said. The core of the service is Microsoft software, including Windows Server 2012, System Center 2012 and Windows Azure, wrapped with billing, service management, dashboards and governance tools integrated by Capgemini, said Ron Tolido, the company’s CTO for continental Europe. Two aspects of the cloud service are visible to the customer, he said. First, there’s a set of dashboards that give financial oversight to the CFO, insight into operations to the CIO, and availability data to the CTO.
Lenovo is bringing another Windows 8 tablet to market -- this one made with keyboard cover in mind -- along with five new touch-based laptops that are slated to arrive globally in July and August. The tablet, called the Lenovo Miix, features a 10.1-inch screen with a 1366 by 768 resolution and an Intel Atom dual-core processor. As the product's name suggests, Lenovo has tried to mix the features of a PC and a tablet, and offers an optional detachable folio case with a built-in keyboard. The Lenovo Miix will start at US$500 and boasts 10 hours of battery life. The tablet will have 64GB of storage, along with a micro-SD slot for expandable memory of up to 32GB. It weighs around 550 grams and is 10 millimeters thick. The Miix is just the latest "multi-mode device" from Lenovo, which has releasing more products that can switch between being a laptop and a tablet. Lenovo's CEO expects convertible PCs will entertainment-focused tablets in popularity over time. But so far Windows 8 devices have yet to find much demand in the market.
A U.S. researcher at IBM who invented the basic building block of the modern DRAM has been honored with a prestigious Japanese award and a $500,000 prize. Robert Dennard was given the Kyoto Prize in the electronics category on Friday, awarded by the Inamori Foundation. The first DRAM chip that used his technology went on sale in 1973. DRAM at that time had less storage than current versions—it was sold in 1k and 4k varieties. Dennard's invention involved combining a field-effect transistor and capacitor in a single cell to store a charge that represented a single bit of data. Cells were then arranged on a grid structure, allowing them to be accessed in random order, as opposed to sequential storage like tape. This random access memory was called "dynamic" because the charge on each cell gradually fades over time and must be periodically recharged. The recharge cycle is short enough to allow for quick reads and writes, on the scale of nanoseconds.
Google is hoping to appease developers that want better portability for their hosted apps by working with Red Hat on running App Engine in private clouds. The public version of App Engine lets users run web applications on Google’s infrastructure. The bulk of Google’s and Red Hat’s joint effort has been aimed at beefing up the open source App Engine Test Compatibility Kit (TCK). Google engineers provided many of the tests of the internal App Engine product, while Red Hat engineers added several tests to verify that their implementation of App Engine is correct, Champenois said.
Have you heard the saying "The best thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from?" It popped into my mind when I learned of the new nVoy brand and certification program for products based on the IEEE 1905.1 standard. If you're not familiar with it, IEEE 1905.1 defines hybrid networks that combine (Multimedia over Coax Alliance), and conventional wired ethernet topologies. Each of those technologies is defined by a standard of its own, of course. And then there's the , a wholly separate standard from a different international body that defines hybrid home networks that use powerline, coax, and phone line, but not wireless (although it can coexist with Wi-Fi). So why does the world need a standard that defines a collection of standards? For that matter, why does the world need the Wi-Fi Alliance's ? If IEEE 1905.1 and IEEE 802.11ac are standards, why do we need marketing consortiums to certify that products based on those standards will be interoperable? Isn't that the very definition of the word "standard"? After all, I already operate a hybrid network at home: Some of my devices connect via Wi-Fi, some use HomePlug AV powerline, and my entertainment center runs on MoCA. Everything is connected to my gigabit ethernet Wi-Fi router. And my hybrid network was running fine long before someone thought to come up with a fancy logo for it.
In an age of abundant, generic first-person-shooters that take place in the modern Middle East, players were clamoring for a story that wasn't lifted directly from the headlines. Homefront attempted to answer that call with a story that imagines an alternate ending to the Korean conflict, where America is occupied and you're fighting in your own front yard—metaphorically, of course. When Homefront was released, it quickly became apparent that it was just like the other shooters, only with a new setting. Even though its U.S. locations included the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, the game was repetitive and unexciting.
You carry a lot of data and sensitive information on your laptop, tablet, and smartphone. The standard method of protecting that information from prying eyes is to encrypt it, rendering the data inaccessible. But with most encryption software, that information becomes accessible the moment you log in to the device as a matter of convenience. Think about what information that might be: names, postal and email addresses, and phone numbers for friends, family, clients, and business associates; calendar events indicating where you’ll be and when you’ll be there; personal photographs; and more. You might also have proprietary information about your company, clients, information that companies have entrusted you under the terms of non-disclosure agreements, and other sensitive information that should be secured. Encryption basically scrambles the data so it’s nothing but unusable gibberish to anyone who isn’t authorized to access or view it. And that’s great, but ask yourself this: How many steps must you go through to decrypt your data? Encryption is designed to protect data, but it should also be seamlessly accessible to the user—it should automatically decrypt, so you don’t have to jump through hoops to use your own encrypted data. And that means it’s not protected at all if someone finds your laptop, smartphone, or tablet in a state that doesn’t require a log-in password.
You gotta hand it to Nvidia: While most manufacturers are responding to the by curling into a fetal position and mewling about a savior that always seems to be right around the corner, Nvidia is actively seizing the future by unleashing a torrent of products that shake things up and are actually fun, too. And if any device sums up Nvidia’s forward-thinking philosophy to a T, it’s the Shield. Team Green’s gaming handheld is basically a nexus for all things Nvidia, packing a Tegra 4 processor that will no doubt be able to play even the most demanding Android games with aplomb. What, that’s not good enough for you? The Shield can also connect to a remote GeForce GRID server or to a computer running a modern GeForce GTX 600-series or 700-series graphics card to deliver a full-fidelity stream of your favorite PC game straight to the handheld. Yup, with the Shield, you’ll be able to play in a full 64-player Battlefield match from the comfort of your couch…or your bathtub. Glorious! Sounds wonderful, right? But then there’s the price. Oh, geez, the price: Even after , Nvidia plans to sell the Shield for $300 when it goes on sale next week.
Microsoft and Oracle are set to reveal details of a new partnership on Monday, one of a "startling series" of announcements Oracle CEO Larry Ellison promised next week around the Oracle Database 12c. Oracle will be announcing next week technology partnerships with the largest and most important SaaS (software as a service) companies and infrastructure companies in the cloud, who will be committing to Oracle technology "for years to come," Ellison told analysts during an earnings call on Thursday. He added that Oracle will announce partnerships with companies like Salesforce.com, NetSuite and Microsoft, but did not provide further details. by the end of the month and the full production version will be available for purchase in early 2014. The company now expects the 12c to be the "foundation of a modern cloud" with multi-tenancy capability at the database layer, thus avoiding the overhead of getting multi-tenancy through virtual machines or security issues that arise from a multi-tenanted application architecture. Some companies built multi-tenancy into the application to run a lot of customers' data on a small number of servers, and do that economically, he said. The multi-tenancy capability in 12c will be a separately priced option.
The emerging IEEE 802.11ac wireless LAN standard will be able to deliver faster connections wherever it’s used, but the biggest benefit may come at public hotspots—eventually. On Wednesday, the Wi-Fi Alliance pre-standard 802.11ac products for interoperability with other Wi-Fi gear. Assuming nothing unexpected happens in the standards process, that means all products the Alliance approves as 11ac gear will work with each other and with older versions of Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi Alliance claims 802.11ac can offer two or three times the speed users get on most of today’s networks, though real-world results can vary because of a wide range of factors. A second wave of 802.11ac, which the group isn’t certifying yet, is expected to offer even higher speeds. The new standard boosts performance through several improvements, including wider channels and better modulation techniques. But one reason 802.11ac can go faster is that it operates only in the 5GHz spectrum band, which has more channels and less competition for airspace than the 2.4GHz band most frequently used in Wi-Fi.
Two secret documents describing the procedures the National Security Agency (NSA) is required to follow when spying on foreign terror suspects reveal the provisions that allow the agency to collect, retain, and use information on U.S residents without a warrant, The Guardian newspaper reported Thursday. describing two top-secret government data collection programs. Both the documents are dated July 28, 2009, and are signed by Attorney General Eric Holder. They also appear to have been approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a secret court that was established specifically to oversee government data access requests filed under Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. FISA was originally designed to give U.S. intelligence a tool for keeping an eye on suspects in foreign countries who were perceived to pose a threat to U.S. national security. It was amended in 2008 and now gives U.S. intelligence agencies significantly broader authority to keep an eye on the communications that foreign-based suspects have with people outside the country and inside the United States.
Oracle hasn't even officially released its 12c database yet, but CEO Larry Ellison has already revealed plans for the version that will follow, 12.1c, which apparently will be Oracle's most direct response yet to SAP's HANA in-memory platform. Oracle Database 12.1c will be a "columnar, compressed, high-speed, in-memory database," Ellison said during Oracle's quarterly earnings call Thursday. "One reason I was confident SAP HANA could never compete with Oracle was because of 12.1c." Oracle will couple 12.1c with new systems containing large amounts of DRAM, Ellison said. HANA systems also use a lot of DRAM, holding information in main memory rather than reading it off of slower storage mediums, providing a performance boost SAP has deemed remarkable. as alternatives to HANA.