As its annual gets underway, Microsoft is announcing that it has shuffled and revamped the way it handles its startup support activities. A number of disparate programs have been tied together under a single, unified division within the company, called Microsoft Ventures. Tech veteran Rahul Sood, who joined Microsoft in 2010 from Hewlett-Packard, in a blog post that outlines the numerous changes the company is making to the way it supports entrepreneurs. He calls the new unified division "a coordinated global effort that offers the tools, resources, expertise and routes to market by providing mentorship, technology guidance, seed funding, joint selling opportunities and other benefits." Whew! What's changing? The updates focus on three major areas. First is the long-running program, which was established in 2008 and is now being folded into Microsoft Ventures. BizSpark provides free access to Microsoft software design and development products, as well as training services, for a period of three years to relevant startups and other partners. To date, 45,000 companies have taken advantage of the offer. Under Microsoft Ventures, this program isn't significantly changing, but it will be now managed by Ventures directly.
Recent leaks about surveillance programs at the U.S. National Security Agency show an agency with little regard for the U.S. Constitution and laws on the books, two past NSA leakers said Wednesday. in Washington, D.C. "What's at stake is the very essence of what it not only means to be an American, but also what it means to be a citizen." that were later dropped. After 9/11, Drake said he witnessed the "United States government, in the deepest of secrecy, unchaining itself from the Constitution."
All eyes in the technology world turned towards Microsoft’s Build 2013 conference in San Francisco Wednesday, where the company’s biggest guns gathered to convince a vast horde of developers (and journalists) that yes, Windows 8.1 is the key to finally fulfilling the company’s vision for its new-look operating system. The keynote speeches at Build 2013 were Microsoft’s chance to sway people into buying what the company was selling—if its pitch was keen enough. Was it? No—but the problem wasn’t the message as much as the medium.
able to transform from tablet to laptop, you can utilize many different types of brain-training apps to help your youngsters learn the essentials. Here are some of the most popular, mind-enriching apps and games to turn an Intel inspired Ultrabook™ system into a learning tool, and sneak some education into your kid’s playtime. What’s more educational than reading? For only $0.99, this app gives you access to more than 23,000 books that you can download and read at any time without additional charge. The library includes classic literature, fiction, children’s books, and a whole lot more. Kids love cute critters. This app uses fluffy, animated dogs, cats, and other furballs to help develop basic math skills.
Microsoft formally unveiled Windows 8.1 to developers on Wednesday, with executives promising a “rapid release” schedule to keep the pace of new innovations coming. . For Microsoft, the Build 2013 developer conference represents a chance to connect or reconnect with developers, luring them back to the Windows platform. Although Microsoft is nearing 100,000 Windows 8 apps, that still falls well short of the millions of apps that have been written for the Apple iOS and Google Android platforms. For Steve Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft, the company is undergoing a transformation to a business that develops devices and services, and not just software. “And the only way that can happen is by a company undergoing a rapid-release schedule,” he said.
This portable app's website says "Bright Snippet Sire," but everybody calls this open-source favorite Briss for…er…short. Briss crops a section of a PDF file and creates another PDF file of the cropped area. Briss works on Linux, Mac, and Windows. It's easy to use, and it's awfully handy if you have a PDF page with something you'd rather not pass along. You can simply highlight what you want to keep and generate a whole new file. If you own an e-reader, you'll find Briss particularly useful. To read a PDF on an e-reader, you normally have to format and convert it, and traditional eBook converters (such as EPUB converters) frequently make a hash out of PDF conversion. Briss converts two-column pages into single-column pages, cuts out the unnecessary margins, and automatically removes unwanted fluff, such as page numbers and chapter headings. It then produces a PDF file that you can then successfully pass through an EPUB converter.
Facebook recently disclosed that a system glitch resulted in the exposure of sensitive personal data from as many as six million users. The impact from this particular breach seems relatively inconsequential, but it’s a sign of a larger problem when it comes to protecting personal data on the Web. Let’s start with a little about the incident itself. The Facebook data breach is related to the Download Your Information feature. When someone downloads their Facebook contact data, the glitch exposed email addresses and personal phone numbers for contacts even if that data was not visible on Facebook itself. Facebook resolved the issue within 24 hours of being notified, and publicly disclosed the incident on its blog last Friday. There was a delay between the incident response and disclosure to give Facebook time to inform regulators and affected customers of the breach. Six million is a big number in some contexts; but to be fair to Facebook, it represents only one half of one percent of the 1.1 billion Facebook users. When you consider how big the breach have been, or the recent revelations alleging that the NSA has access to virtually all data from everywhere, the Facebook breach almost seems trivial.
Manufacturing giant Foxconn Technology Group is on track with its goal to a create a “million robot army”, and already has 20,000 robotic machines in its factories, said the company’s CEO Terry Gou on Wednesday. Workers’ wages in China are rising, and so the company’s research in robots and automation has to catch up, Gou said, while speaking at the company’s annual shareholder’s meeting in Taipei. “We have over 1 million workers. In the future we will add 1 million robotic workers,” he said. “Our [human] workers will then become technicians and engineers.” Foxconn is the world’s largest contract electronics maker and counts Apple, Microsoft and Sony as some of its clients. Many of its largest factories are in China, where the company employs 1.2 million people, but rising are threatening to reduce company profits.
If you've purchased an external hard drive recently, there's a good chance it came with a USB 3.0 interface. That'll work with your old desktop, as most USB 3.0 devices are backward-compatible with USB 2.0 ports. The problem is you're not enjoying the significant speed benefits afforded by the newer technology. So what's the solution? Buy a new machine? Nah: just upgrade your current one. Turns out it's pretty easy to add USB 3.0 ports to a desktop, provided you can meet two simple requirements. First, your system will need an available PCI or PCI Express expansion slot. Second, you'll need $20-30 you can devote to the upgrade.
U.S. consumers should be able to reclaim control of their personal data from data brokers, websites, and other companies, a member of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said Wednesday. in Washington, D.C. Reclaim Your Name would allow consumers to find out how data brokers and other companies are collecting and using data, give them access to the data collected, and allow them to opt out of collection for marketing purposes, Brill said. The initiative would help consumers navigate the potential down sides of collection of their information in the name of big data analytics, she said. In some cases, big data collectors are “taking advantage of us without our permission,” Brill said. “Often without consent or warning, and sometimes in completely surprising ways, big data analysts are tracking our every click and purchase, examining them to determine exactly who we are—establishing our name, good or otherwise—and retaining the information in dossiers that we know nothing about, much less consent to.”
Being creative is about feeling free to express yourself and being empowered to do it the way you want. Few of us feel creative or empowered when we’re jammed into a cubicle cooking up a spreadsheet. Sometimes you just need to break the routine to find your inspiration. Here are four simple ways you can use an Intel inspired Ultrabook™ to keep your mind limber and your ideas flowing. , are equipped with 3G connectivity, allowing you to connect to the Web anywhere you have data service through your cell phone carrier. is equipped with plenty of customizable options, including the ability to pull in real-time updates from all your favorite resources and feed them right to your desktop. Set it up and check in with it whenever you feel a little drained. Fresh news and interesting stories always help to get the wheels turning. . The best material often comes out of collaboration and open-minded discussions. Nothing beats in-person communication for brainstorming, but with our friends and family so busy and scattered, that can be impossible. A video hangout on Google+ is a pretty good alternative, letting you easily get multiple people together to share thoughts and hash things out.
Microsoft kicked off its Build conference in San Francisco this week by releasing a preview of the next version of its Visual Studio IDE (integrated development environment), as well as updates to other development tools. “If you are interested in building a modern, connected application, and are interested in using modern development lifestyles such as ‘agile,’ we have a fantastic set of tools that allows you to take advantage of the latest platforms,” said S. “Soma” Somasegar, corporate vice president in Microsoft’s developer division, in an interview with IDG News Service. Somasegar noted, for instance, how the new Visual Studio provides more tools to help developers build applications for , a beta of which is also being released this week. Microsoft is releasing a preview of Visual Studio 2013, the final version of which is due to be released by the end of the year. The company is also releasing Visual Studio 2012 update 3, and a preview of the .NET 4.5.1 runtime framework.
, and teased an interim solution for people who just can’t wait: This November, Microsoft will sell a $399 kit that includes a developer’s version of the sensor along with a marker to buy the final version when it becomes available, Bob Heddle, the director of Microsoft’s Kinect for WIndows program, said in an interview. , allows the console to “see” and “hear” users and objects. You shouldn’t expect to use Kinect for Windows to navigate Photoshop with a wave of your hand, because the technology is currently envisioned to appear only in business environments. “I would imagine that most consumers will see this in interactive retail screens, for example,” said Heddle in an interview in May. for $220. In all, Microsoft will ship three versions of Kinect for Windows: the old Xbox 360 sensor, the development version due in November that’s based on the Xbox One Kinect, and the “final version” available next year.
Windows 8.1 isn’t the only nifty trick Microsoft has up its sleeve this week. was an all-too-brief look at another Microsoft gem. Yes, I’m talking about modern-style Office apps.
If you already think Windows 8 is a flawed OS, Microsoft’s new 8.1 update won’t change your mind. But I've been digging into a preview release of the new system since Tuesday afternoon, and it's clear that Microsoft's course-correction efforts have paid off in loads of convenient new features. . Microsoft executives say your current apps won’t be affected by installing the preview, but some could require re-installation once Windows 8.1 is released in its final form. The download appears to be about 2.44 GB, based on a demo Microsoft showed journalists Tuesday. The preview holds few surprises for those who've been keeping track of the Windows 8.1 saga. Yes, it includes the new boot-to-desktop option, and Microsoft has re-organized the Start page to make finding apps easier. Within the desktop, the Windows flag serves as a faux Start button, although it’s really just a shortcut to the Start page. The expected personalization options are there, including dynamic desktop art as well as the ability to share a background between your desktop and Start page. But there’s also a flood of other tweaks, apps and features, making this free upgrade a tremendous value in terms of volume alone.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff have had their share of public differences, but the jibes will likely be stowed away on Thursday, when the two conduct a press conference to discuss their companies’ recently announced, nine-year technology partnership. During the press conference, which is scheduled for 4 p.m. ET, Ellison and Benioff will also take questions from media and analysts. Some of those queries will likely concern why Salesforce.com and Oracle, which are competitors on many fronts, would Salesforce.com, long a user of Oracle’s database, will standardize on Oracle’s Linux OS distribution, Java middleware and Exadata server platform. In turn, Oracle plans to integrate Salesforce.com’s software with its Fusion HCM (human capital management) and cloud-based financial software, and Salesforce.com will implement those two products “throughout the company.”
Somewhere deep inside Symantec, there’s a humming farm of virtual machines whose sole purpose is to crawl 200-plus Android app stores worldwide, download about 10,000 new apps every day, and scan each and every one. They’re looking not just for malware, but for other —oh, like take your phone number and send it along to a third party, or grab your camera pictures or contacts. This database of four million scanned Android apps and counting is the foundation of Norton Mobile Insight, the biggest (but not the only) change to the new version of Norton Mobile Security (version 3.4 for iOS/3.5 for Android), announced Wednesday for iOS and Android devices. If a Norton Mobile Security user downloads an app that’s been scanned and logged by the Norton Mobile Insight database, the database will send back information about the security and privacy risks for that app. “Even if the app isn’t malware, we try to shed some light on the apps themselves and report back to them whether the app is potentially annoying,” says Con Mallon, senior director of Norton Product Management at Symantec. Symantec’s Mallon takes a measured view of what makes an Android app annoying. “There’s a lot of apps that do have advertising—not a bad thing in and of itself, but there are poor implementations where ads step over the mark,” says Mallon. “They may be putting start buttons in your home screen, or as you’re exiting an app, you may be served up a web page of advertising. These are annoying and unwanted behaviors.”
Monitors with wide aspect ratios provide plenty of room for viewing browser windows, documents, spreadsheets, photos, and other applications cheek by jowl. There are times, however, when a vertical orientation is more desirable—when you’re editing a digital portrait, reviewing long documents such as contracts or legal briefs), or working on programming code, for example. Unfortunately, most displays stick stubbornly to their landscape orientation. But some recent monitors can pivot between landscape and portrait modes—a welcome sight indeed. We examined three such models: HP’s 23-inch EliteDisplay E231, Samsung’s 27-inch Series 7 S27C750P, and NEC’s 29-inch MultiSync EA294WMi. Despite their shared promise of pivoting flexibility, however, the monitors vary considerably in their design quality and image quality. best describes HP’s EliteDisplay E231. This 23-inch, LED-backlit, TN (twisted nematic) display has has a nonreflective screen with a native resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels. It connects to your PC via DisplayPort (version 1.1, so you get no support for multistream transport), DVI, or VGA. Sexy it isn’t. The E231’s sturdy, black-plastic bezel—0.5 inch wide on the sides and 0.75 inch wide along the top and the bottom—calls to mind a set of horn-rimmed glasses. Five physical buttons on the front adjust brightness or contrast and interact with the on-screen menus. A USB 2.0 hub provides one upstream and two downstream ports.
The recently revealed mass collection of phone records and other communications by the U.S. National Security Agency may not be effective in preventing terrorism, according to some critics. The data collection programs, as revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, is giving government agencies information overload, critics said during the in Washington, D.C. “In knowing a lot about a lot of different people [the data collection] is great for that,” said Mike German, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent whose policy counsel for national security at the American Civil Liberties Union. “In actually finding the very few bad actors that are out there, not so good.” The mass collection of data from innocent people “won’t tell you how guilty people act,” German added. The problem with catching terrorism suspects has never been the inability to collect information, but to analyze the “oceans” of information collected, he said.
Each time any one of the billion Facebook users visits the social networking site, the company’s servers must assemble data—user posts, likes, shares, images—from hundreds or even thousands of different servers around the globe. The page must be created on the fly and within a few hundred milliseconds. No simple task, but thus far, Facebook has only offered in San Jose, California. Facebook engineer Mark Marchukov, who will be doing the presentation at Usenix on Wednesday, has also posted a with more details. Because the structure—and volume—of the data that Facebook serves is so different from the sort typically handled by a commercial relational database, the company developed its own data store, called TAO (“The Associations and Objects”). Facebook describes TAO in the accompanying Usenix paper as “a geographically distributed, eventually consistent, graph store optimized for reads.”
Mozilla Tuesday shipped Firefox 22, which enables the in-browser audio-video calling standard WebRTC, and switches on a new JavaScript module that promises to speed up web apps. The update also includes patches for 17 security vulnerabilities, seven of them marked “critical.” Mozilla highlighted several of the changes in Firefox 22, notably the default support for WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communications), an open-source API (application programming interface) that web applications can call for in-browser audio and video communications without requiring specialized plug-ins like Adobe’s Flash. WebRTC traces its roots to Google, which acquired the VP8 video codec in 2010 from a company called On2, open-sourced the technology, and pushed for its adoption as a standard by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C). Mozilla engineers have been also working on the project to implement WebRTC in Firefox.
Google is revealing some new numbers around malware and phishing attempts in an effort to get more people thinking about online security and to make the Web safer. The data is being incorporated into the company’s biannual transparency reports, which are meant to provide clarity on the numbers for user data requests Google receives from government agencies and courts, as well as figures on removal requests received from copyright owners and governments and traffic reports for Google services worldwide. The malware and phishing data stems from Google’s Safe Browsing technology, which was established in 2006 to examine billions of URLs each day to find unsafe websites. These unsafe sites, Google said, generally fall into two categories: malware sites, which use code to install malicious software on users’ computers; and phishing sites, which fake their legitimacy while trying to trick people into giving their user names and passwords or other private information online.
Upcoming integration points between Yammer and Microsoft products will include email interoperability, document collaboration and enterprise search, as Microsoft pursues its plan to make Yammer a common enterprise social collaboration layer across its business software. The news comes on Tuesday, the one-year anniversary of Microsoft’s announcement that primarily to boost the enterprise social networking capabilities of its SharePoint collaboration server. In addition to the previously announced plans to unify SharePoint and Yammer via single sign-on, Microsoft said it will deliver improved interoperability between Yammer and email. Today, Yammer users can receive email notifications about changes in Yammer discussions they’re participating in, but the alerts tend to be brief, short on context and in plain text, said Jared Spataro, senior director in the Microsoft Office Division and leader of the SharePoint business.
Steve Ballmer hat in San Francisco die Entwickler-Konferenz Build 2013 eröffnet, dabei die Preview von Windows 8.1 veröffentlicht und die neuen Funktionen vorgestellt. Daneben kündigte er eine Facebook-App für Windows 8 an.
Microsofts Musik-Streaming-Dienst Xbox Music gibt es angeblich in Kürze auch als Web-basierte und damit plattformunabhängige Version für den Browser.
Dank der Cloud scheinen sich alle Differenzen überwinden zu lassen. Nach Microsoft hat Oracle auch eine langjährige Zusammenarbeit mit Konkurrent Salesforce.com vereinbart.
Google veröffentlicht in seinem Transparenzbericht unter der Rubrik Safe Browsing neu auch Zahlen zu unsicheren und mit Schad-Software befallenen Websites.
Microsoft hat seiner Lync-App für Windows 8 ein Update spendiert und gleichzeitig einige neue Features für Yammer in Verbindung mit Sharepoint und Office 365 vorgestellt.
Interessierte Unternehmen können sich ab sofort mit den ersten Preview-Versionen von Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2 und SQL Server 2014 eindecken.
Über 200 Personen haben sich zur Jubiläumsgeneralversammlung des Schweizer Verbandes für alle Informatikfachleute mit Hochschulausbildung getroffen.
Der Schweizer Distributor Elconex hat zwei erste Android-Smartphones aus dem Hause Archos in sein Sortiment aufgenommen. Sie bieten ein 5- beziehungsweise 5,3-Zoll-Display und kommen beide mit einer Dual-SIM-Funktion.
Die Gerüchte haben sich bewahrheitet: Sony hat eine 6,4-Zoll-Version seines Smartphones Xperia Z präsentiert. Es kommt im dritten Quartal auf den Markt. Gleichzeitig erscheint auch die Smartwatch 2 SW2.
Der ab sofort zum Download zur Verfügung stehende Firefox 22 bringt wie erwartet standardmässigen Support für WebRTC und macht damit File-Sharing oder Videochats im Browser möglich. Zudem wurde die Javascript-Engine verbessert.
Mit Blackberry Secure Work Space lassen sich geschäftliche und private Daten auf einem Mobilgerät auseinanderhalten. Jetzt steht die Sicherheitslösung auch für iOS- und Android-Geräte zur Verfügung.
Google hat die Street-View-Collections mit Panorama-Ansichten vom höchsten Wolkenkratzer der Welt erweitert und liefert beeindruckende Bilder vom Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
In den meisten Unternehmen hat Cloud Computing die Erwartungen mehr als erfüllt, nicht ausgeräumt sind hingegen Bedenken bezüglich Sicherheit. Zu diesem Schluss kommt eine breit angelegte Studie von CA Technologies.
Die beiden Softwarekonzerne haben eine Vereinbarung geschlossen, womit Oracle-Software künftig auf Windows Server Hyper-V und Windows Azure angeboten wird.
Swisscom lanciert die App iO und will damit sämtliche Kommunikation in einer Anwendung bündlen. So erlaubt iO über WLAN, 3G oder 4G/LTE den kostenlosen Versand von Nachrichten sowie Bildern, aber auch Telefonanrufe.
Mit der Veröffentlichung der Vorabversion von Windows Server 2012 R2 wird erstmals ersichtlich, wie der in Windows 8 vermisste Startbutton wieder implementiert werden soll.
Gerade einmal ein paar Tage sind seit der Markteinführung von Adobes neuen Creative-Cloud-Programmen verstrichen, und schon werden im Netz gehackte Versionen herumgereicht.
Mit dem Release der zweiten Beta des iOS 7 unterstützt das Betriebssystem jetzt auch das iPad und bringt die Voice-Memo-App zurück.
Kurz bevor Google dem hauseigenen RSS-Dienst den Stecker zieht, hat jetzt AOL einen eigenen RSS-Reader vorgestellt.
Ein undokumentiertes Zugangskonto bei HPs Storeonce-Backup-Servern ermöglicht es potentiellen Angreifern, aus der Ferne die Kontrolle über das Gerät zu übernehmen.
In einem Forum sind die Mindestanforderungen für die Installation von Windows 8.1 alias "Blue" aufgetaucht. Demnach verlangt das OS-Update für die 32-Bit-Version einen 1-GHz-Prozessor, 1 GB RAM und 16 GB freien Speicherplatz.
Noch bevor das Envy Rove 20 von HP in der Schweiz erscheint, hat der Hersteller mit dem Slate 21 ein weiteres Riesen-Tablet vorgestellt, dieses Mal mit Android-Betriebssystem.
Bislang stellten PDF-Dokumente für sehbehinderte Menschen eine grosse Hürde dar. Dank des PDF-Readers VIP-PDF des Schweizerischen Zentralvereins für das Blindenwesen, der Stiftung "Zugang für alle" und des Dienstleisters Xymedia soll sich das nun ändern.
Facebook soll an einem Dienst arbeiten, der unter dem Namen "Reader" entwickelt wird und der an die populäre Zeitungs-App Flipboard erinnern soll.
Lenovo hat neue Touch-Geräte mit Windows 8 angekündigt, darunter das Tablet Miix sowie günstigere Notebooks, die deutlich unter 500 Dollar verkauft werden.