Die Lenovo Group versucht den Anteil ihrer auf dem taiwanesischen Markt verkauften Notebooks, die über ein Touchscreen verfügen, von derzeit 10 Prozent auf 50 Prozent bis zum Jahr 2014 zu steigern. Rund 25 Prozent aller in Taiwan verkauften Notebooks besitzen einen Touchscreen.
Der Streit um den Weiterverkauf gebrauchter Software in Deutschland geht in die nächste Runde. Der Bundesgerichtshof (BGH) wies die Klage von Oracle gegen die Münchner Firma Usedsoft an das Oberlandesgericht (OLG) München zurück. Das OLG müsse den Fall neu verhandeln und Details über den konkreten Ablauf des Verkaufs klären, entschieden die Karlsruher Richter.
Das von den USA aus betriebene, rechtsextreme, ungarische Internet-Portal kuruc.info, das regelmässig gegen Juden, Roma, Schwule und andere Minderheiten hetzte, ist von Facebook verbannt worden. Dies berichtete die jüdische Stiftung „Tat und Schutz", die sich dem Kampf gegen Antisemitismus verschrieben hat, in einer Aussendung.
Nach seinem Antrag auf Asyl richtet sich der frühere US-Geheimdienstmitarbeiter Edward Snowden auf einen längeren Aufenthalt in Russland ein und denkt sogar über seine Einbürgerung nach. Snowdens Anwalt Anatoli Kutscherena sagte am Mittwoch, sein Mandant habe nicht die Absicht, Russland bald zu verlassen und schliesse einen Antrag auf Erwerb der russischen Staatsbürgerschaft nicht aus.
In China haben mittlerweile 591 Millionen Menschen einen Internetzugang. Die Zahl der Internet-Nutzer stieg in den vergangenen sechs Monaten um rund 27 Millionen, wie das China Internet Network Informationen Center (CNNIC) am Mittwoch berichtete.
Der weltgrösste Chipausrüster ASML hat nach einem starken Quartal seine Umsatzprognose für das Gesamtjahr angehoben. Grund sei die grosse Nachfrage von Kunden, die Chips für mobile Geräte wie Tablets herstellen, teilte ASML am Mittwoch mit.
Bei Swisscom übernimmt ab Herbst 2013 Stefan Nünlist erneut die Leitung der Unternehmenskommunikation. Die Führung dieses Bereichs umfasst laut Communiqué die Gesamtverantwortung für die Öffentlichkeitsarbeit, die interne Kommunikation, Public Affairs und Corporate Responsibility.
Nachdem bereits zuvor erste Gerüchte aufkamen, wonach sich das neue iPhone 5S wegen den Problemen beim Fingerabdrucks-Chip verzögert, soll Apple nunmehr eine grössere Änderung am Design des iPhone 5S vorgenommen haben.
Die EU-Kommission will laut einem Zeitungsbericht die Gleichbehandlung der Bürger im Internet aufgeben. Daten sollen demnach auch unterschiedlich schnell im Netz übertragen werden können.
Der US-Whistleblower Edward Snowden könnte den Moskauer Flughafen Scheremetjewo schon bald verlassen. Das glaubt zumindest sein Asylanwalt, der Russe Anatoli Kutscherena. Er erwarte, dass Snowden danach vorerst in Russland bleiben werde, so Kutscherena.
Intel missed analyst estimates for the second fiscal quarter, reporting slightly lower profits, plus revenue that climbed just 2 percent versus a year ago. Intel reported profits of $2.0 billion, down 2 percent from a year ago, on second-quarter revenue of $12.8 billion, up 2 percent from the same period. Newly-appointed chief executive Brian Krzanich said that the company would continue to develop microprocessors and other products for all segments of the market, with a special emphasis on low-power, ultra-mobile computers. But the company has suffered as customers increasingly turn to mobile phones and tablets for their computing needs, and away from the personal computers that Intel has long powered. . The division's revenue climbed 1.4 percent sequentially, however. Even revenue within the Data Center Group, which includes Intel's high-margin Xeon processors, was flat versus last year, although it grew sequentially by 8.1 percent.
The U.S. National Security Agency and Department of Justice exceeded their legal authority to conduct surveillance when collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. residents, several U.S. lawmakers said Wednesday. Several members of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, both Republicans and Democrats, ripped into representatives of the DOJ and the U.S. intelligence community for their collection of U.S. phone call records, saying the bulk collection violates Patriot Act restrictions that limit surveillance to information relevant to an antiterrorism investigation. Representative John Conyers Jr., a Michigan Democrat, called on the agencies to stop the data- collection program. “We never, at any point in this debate, have approved the type of unchecked, sweeping surveillance of United States citizens employed by our government,” he said during a hearing on the NSA. “If the government cannot provide a clear, public explanation for how its program is consistent with the statute, it must stop collecting this information immediately.”
Lenovo has discontinued sales on its website of the Yoga 11 convertible PC with the Windows RT operating system. Analysts say this is a sign of PC makers moving away from their commitment to the struggling OS. , but said consumers “may still buy this product from a Lenovo retailer or reseller.” the Yoga 11S, a hybrid released earlier this year that uses the Windows 8 operating system powered by an Intel Core processor. allowed it to serve as a laptop, and also a tablet when the screen was folded up.
Tech advertising jumped 30 percent from a year ago during the first quarter, led by Microsoft, which pushed out Intuit to promote its latest operating system, called Windows...something or other. In all, ad spending by tech companies totaled $723 million, up 30 percent from a year ago. The jump was especially noteworthy because ad spending actually declined across all other sectors, Nielsen said. For the last five years, Intuit has led all tech companies in advertising during the first quarter, as it promotes its TurboTax and Quicken software as the tax preparation season ramps up. But this year, with Microsoft’s aggressive , Windows 8, and Windows Phone, Redmond's ad spending jumped by 200 percent compared to the same period in 2012, when it was winding down Windows 7.
. The two companies have collaborated in the past, and now the seven employees that comprise Cloudsmith will direct their talents to working directly on the Puppet IT automation platform. are on the cutting edge of the DevOps movement—a trend driven by the need for more frequent code updates that allows developers and IT operations to collaborate and work more efficiently together. The merged relationship between development and operations teams enables more frequent updates with less risk of adverse impact on the network. on its site: “By aligning goals and sharing strategies, DevOps practices can improve efficiency and quality of code shipped, allowing businesses to innovate quickly while providing a higher standard of support.” Puppet Labs is more focused on the IT operations side of things, and Cloudsmith creates developer tools based on Puppet. Merging the capabilities of the two together will result in a more powerful platform for testing and deploying new code, and give IT admins the tools they need to effectively manage virtual and cloud servers.
. The GlassUp team announced Tuesday that it is raising money to produce its Glass competitor. seeking to raise $150,000 to take its augmented eyewear to production, says that the team showed off its first prototype in January at the Consumer Electronics Show. The team hopes to deliver its first production models by February 2014 for an estimated price of $299, it said. According to Francesco Giartosio, GlassUps’ chief executive, one of the chief differences between Google Glass and the GlassUp eyewear will be in how the device displays data; instead of projecting information onto the edge of the glass from an offset projector, GlassUp will use a dedicated lens embedded in the glass itself. That will allows GlassUp to overlay monochromatic text directly “ahead” of the user’s eye, which Giartosio said was more ergonomic. GlassUp’s display has a resolution of 320 by 240 pixels.
. , and in a blog post it goes on to offer some arguably semi-compelling reasons why you might want to plop one of these in the conference room at your pint-sized company. Let’s look at each one in turn. This is the big one. Skype is increasingly being built in to all manner of consumer devices (including Blu-ray players and TVs), so it makes sense that the Kinect-equipped Xbox would be ready for video chats out of the box. This actually could be useful to small businesses, especially in an environment where you have multiple locations that need to communicate with one another. Two offices with conference rooms connected via Xbox Skype sessions could have a meeting as a unified team. At the very least it would be better than the dreaded conference call. Skype is also an increasingly viable way to ditch landline phone service and make cheap international calls, and while it isn’t feasible to put an Xbox on every desk, if you don’t want to deal with Skype installations for everyone, having a single, central point where Skype is available might make sense.
Last week’s can purportedly focus on engineering excellence and becoming more relevant across a spectrum of devices. But what does this mean for the CIO? What do Microsoft’s internal machinations imply for its corporate customers? From my perspective, it means four different things for you. Let’s take a look at each of them. When CEO Steve Ballmer wrote in his to the troops that this was a reorganization “that will enable us to innovate with greater speed, efficiency and capability in a fast changing world,” he wasn’t kidding about the greater speed part.
Acer's Iconia W3 is the one and only 8-inch Windows tablet in town, but it appears that the company isn't sitting on its heels after gaining that head start. A new report claims that the pint-sized slate is slated for a refresh this September, mere months after its unveiling in late June. The new and improved Acer Iconia W3 would be a slight alteration to correct some of the issues that retailers and reviewers had with the original iteration, according to . Acer Netherlands spokesperson Sterre Swank told the site that the tablet's refresh will be thinner and lighter than the version available now. Tweakers.net also reports that the twisted nematic display of the original could also be replaced with an upgraded IPS screen, though Swank did not confirm that particular change. IPS displays tend to have better color vibrancy and much better viewing angles than TN displays. IPS displays, however, cost more than TN screens, but that hasn't prevented IPS displays from showing up in low-cost slates like the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD. In , we observed some visible pixels on the 8.1-inch, 1280-by-800 display but it was nowhere near bad enough to be a dealbreaker.
Google Reader is dead. It changed forever the way we read our news, and it's gone for good, leaving the arena open for other players to attempt the same feats. Nextly, an innovative reading app based on streams, takes regular RSS feeds, strips them of everything that's annoying about the format, and provides a new reading experience that combines RSS with regular website browsing and social-network surfing.
Microsoft may have bungled a few things with Windows 8 (snark reply: "Just a few?!"), but File Explorer isn't one of them. For one thing, the file manager finally earned a home on the Taskbar (even if you have to switch to the desktop to find it). Even better, Microsoft endowed it with the now-familiar Ribbon interface, making for much easier navigation of your files (and Explorer itself). However, I think it could be even better with a little tweaking. Here are three simple changes you can make to improve the File Explorer experience: See those tiny icons in the upper-left corner of the File Explorer window? Click the even tinier arrow next to them for a list of additional functions you can enable. Why add, say, a Delete icon when Explorer already has one? Because the latter appears only when you're viewing the Home tab. Put it on the Toolbar, however, and it's always just a click away.
. features vector-based maps, higher-quality images, and a completely new interface, but the central change that Google is pushing is Maps’ new focus on personalization. For directions, Maps is now supposed to highlight only the streets and landmarks you need to know about, making it easier to navigate. Driving and transit directions appear side-by-side, so you can judge whether you’re better off taking the bus or the car. Search results are labeled right on the map, and info cards drop down from the search box allowing you to take a quick look at a shop’s hours and location. And as you favorite locations and ask for directions, Google Maps learns your tastes and can begin to suggest other local hot spots you might want to try out. You can also set your home and work locations. Despite these improvements, however, serious Maps fans may want to stay away from the new Maps as some features are currently missing.
Salesforce.com is hoping customers will tap more pieces of its growing cloud software portfolio with a new product, Sales Performance Accelerator, that combines its CRM software with its Work.com performance management application as well as customer lead information from Data.com. “We’re basically trying to make every sales rep an A-player,” with the combined package of applications, said Mark Woollen, vice president of product marketing, Sales Cloud. Information from Salesforce.com’s Data.com service can help increase the amount of “pipeline,” or early-stage deals, salespeople have to work with, Woollen said. Meanwhile, Work.com’s gives managers a way to provide their sales teams with better coaching, leading to more consistent “win rates,” he said.
A Dutch draft law that aims to introduce a decryption order that forces suspects to decrypt data on their computers could violate the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), said the Dutch Council for the Judiciary on Wednesday. Several E.U. countries such as France, Belgium and the U.K. already have laws that compel individuals or companies to decrypt data requested by law enforcement authorities for investigations. In the U.K for instance, failure to comply could mean a prison sentence of for cases not involving national security or five years for those that do. Refusing to give access to encrypted material if requested by a judge or another person with appropriate permission can be punished with a maximum jail sentence of one year and a fine in Belgium. , punishment can be as high as three years in jail and a fine of €45,000 (US$59,000) if someone refuses to hand over the key to encrypted files that may have been used to prepare, aid or commit a crime. If it turns out the disclosure of the keys could have prevented a crime or diminish the effects of a crime, the punishment can go up to five years in jail and a €75,000 fine.
Open-source IT automation software vendor Puppet Labs has acquired Cloudsmith, which provides tools and services that can help administrators and developers more easily use the Puppet software. Puppet bought Cloudsmith both for its technologies and its engineering expertise, said Luke Kanies, CEO and founder of Puppet Labs. All seven of Cloudsmith’s employees will continue to work for Puppet, he said. “They built developer-like tools for an operations world, taking developer workflows to help operations people work in a mixed developer/operations world,” Kanies said. , which seeks to shorten development time of software by having software developers work more closely with system administrators and other IT operations staff.
As SAP invests heavily in mobile, a security testing company will release a tool next month to ensure mobile-accessible SAP systems are not vulnerable to hackers. , a product that performs automated security assessments, penetration testing and compliance audits for SAP’s ERP (enterprise resource planning) software, said Mariano Nunez, Onapsis’ CEO. The module will focus in part on the SAP Mobile Platform, formerly known as the Sybase Unwired Platform Developer Center, which helps developers build SAP mobile applications for different devices and platforms. It also looks at the NetWeaver Gateway, an SAP server that links devices to back-end systems, Nunez said. Exposing those back-end systems is complicated, and companies can face a risk of hacking if the systems are misconfigured or do not have up-to-date patches.
Europe’s competition chief confirmed Wednesday that he has written to Google Chairman Eric Schmidt to ask for better assurances from the company in an ongoing antitrust investigation. “After the analysis of the market test that was concluded on June 27, I concluded that the proposals that Google sent to us are not enough to overcome our concerns,” said European Union Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia at a press conference Wednesday. Google has been under investigation by the European Commission since November 2010 after rivals accused the search giant of setting search algorithms to direct users to its own services and reducing the visibility of competing websites and services. It was also accused of content-scraping and imposing contractual restrictions that prevent advertisers from moving their online campaigns to rival search engines. The Commission decided there was sufficient cause for concern, but rather than proceed directly to punitive measures, Almunia opted for a so-called Article 9 procedure, in which the company under investigation can present proposals to rectify the situation. If these proposals are accepted by the Commission, they become legally binding.
Microsoft pushed out an —the OneNote app for Windows 8—which makes the app more useful for business users. The new OneNote MX can connect to OneNote notebooks on Office 365. OneNote MX is a great tool, but it has had limited functionality for business users. The issue is that OneNote MX connects by default to the SkyDrive associated with the Microsoft account used to log in to Windows 8. That’s fine for personal use, but businesses prefer that data be created and stored where it can be centrally managed and shared, rather than being spread across multiple personal SkyDrive accounts. The update for OneNote MX enables users to connect to OneNote notebooks stored in an Office 365 SkyDrive account. OneNote has become a crown jewel of the Microsoft Office suite, and it has led the way in blazing cross-platform trails for Office. Long before Microsoft finally made , OneNote was available as a standalone app for both iOS and Android.
The Apache Software Foundation has released Struts 2.3.15.1, a security update for its popular Java Web application development framework that addresses two vulnerabilities, including a critical one that could allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on the server. Struts version 2.3.15.1 has become the “General Availability” release, the designation for the project’s highest quality version available to users. The new release addresses two vulnerabilities that stem from issues in the implementation of the DefaultActionMapper class and its “action:”, “redirect:” and “redirectAction:” prefixes in particular.
China’s Internet populace grew to 591 million by the end of June, as more new users in the country relied on handsets to go online, according to a non-profit research group. The growth raises China’s Internet penetration by two percentage points to 44 percent, the government-linked China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) reported on Wednesday. During the first half of this year, the country added a total of 26 million new Internet users. China has the world’s largest Internet population, but still a vast swath of Chinese rarely go online, if ever. Many Chinese still lack knowledge of computers, or have little need to use the Internet, according to the CNNIC. In the country’s rural areas, Internet penetration is especially low, at only 28 percent. . But mobile handsets are helping many Chinese go online for the first time, the CNNIC added.
Short on friends? James Clegg can sell you a few. How about a thousand or so followers on Twitter, delivered overnight for about a penny apiece? on the growing popularity of the fake-follower sales business, Clegg emailed me to offer an inside look into the way the business works, including detailed reporting on all the money that changes hands. Clegg’s business is simple: You visit one of his 13 websites that sell fake followers, and punch in how many you want to buy. Today, the going rate for 1000 Twitter followers is about $11. For many people who look at this mammoth industry, the first question is "Why?" Why would anyone spend money for friends who don’t exist? “There is no one single type of buyer,” says Clegg. “I have had minor celebrities, big corporations, comedians, people buying for their friends for a practical joke, and many more. I’d say the majority are companies looking to get themselves from 20 followers to 1000 followers—and they start their real social media marketing from there.”
The thin-and-light Ultrabook trend has even clunky laptops looking relatively sleek these days. Micro Express’ NB5720 is far from a sexy, stylish Ultrabook, but it looks pretty good for a boxy, half-plastic laptop. If you’re looking for style, look elsewhere. But if you place power, performance, and price over prettiness, the $1599 NB5720 is definitely worth a look. It’s not a total eyesore—it boasts a smooth, slate-gray, brushed-aluminum cover with tapered edges and a minimalist keyboard deck. But it’s nearly as thick as a brick—1.68 inches—and it weighs more than several: 5.75 pounds. That’s a lot of bulk paired with a 15.6-inch screen. But when you’re looking for a no-excuses laptop, what’s under the hood is what really matters, and the NB5720 doesn’t disappoint on that score. You’ll find one of Intel’s best fourth-generation Core processors onboard, for starters (the 2.8GHz, Hyper-Threading–enabled Core i7-4900MQ). That’s supplemented by 16GB of DDR3/1600 memory and a discrete Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M graphics card. Storage comes in the form of a 256GB SSD, plus a 750GB hard drive that spins its platters at 7200 rpm. As you might expect, this notebook burrowed through the bulk of our benchmark suite like a woodchuck preparing for a honeymoon, producing a Notebook WorldBench 8.1 score of 483. That renders it nearly five times faster than our reference notebook, the Asus VivoBook S550CA, which has a more humble dual-core, hyper-threaded, 1.7GHz Intel Core i5-3317U processor (from Intel’s Ivy Bridge family).
Once a PC enthusiast's dream storage device, the solid-state drive (SSD) is quickly becoming commonplace in custom PC builds and retail desktops alike. After taking , we're moving on to basic care and feeding—how to stretch the life of your drive. All it takes is a little education, and some new ways of managing storage that have nothing to do with your traditional hard drive's maintenance routine. An SSD is flash storage. It has no moving parts. So unlike on a traditional mechanical hard drive, nothing breaks. SSD wear and tear has to do with write cycles. Flash storage handles data in a specific way. When data is written to a block, the entire block must be erased before it can be written to again. The lifespan of an SSD is measured in these program-erase (P/E) cycles. Modern, consumer-grade, Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND memory can generally endure about 3,000 to 5,000 P/E cycles before the storage's integrity starts to deteriorate. The higher-end, Single-Level Cell (SLC) flash memory chip can withstand up to 100,000 P/E cycles. You'd have to work hard to reach the P/E cycle limit for an MLC-based drive, let alone an SLC-based one. Nevertheless, every time you write something to the drive, you bring it a little closer to its demise. Don't obsess over every single write cycle—a few of our later tips are best suited for such tendencies—but do check out the following techniques for minimizing unnecessary writes to the drive.
India has decided to allow mobile services operations to be wholly owned by foreign investors, a move that is expected to lead multinationals to take full control of their Indian joint ventures by buying out local partners. The earlier limit of 74 percent on foreign ownership in mobile services companies did not deter companies such as Vodafone, Telenor, or Sistema from setting up joint ventures in India. Some of these companies may now take full ownership and control of their Indian subsidiaries, said Kamlesh Bhatia, research director at Gartner. But it is unlikely that foreign mobile companies that have not invested in the country so far will now be tempted, Bhatia said. India has to first overhaul the country’s regulatory framework including its taxation laws to attract new entrants, he added.
More fixes are appearing for a pair of highly dangerous vulnerabilities exposed earlier this month in the Android mobile operating system. Security vendor Webroot and ReKey, a collaboration between Northeastern University in Boston and vendor Duo Security, released software on Tuesday that detects if an Android device is vulnerable and applies a patch. Google, which manages the open-source Android project, quickly issued patches for the so-called “master key” vulnerabilities, one of which was found by Bluebox Security and another one that appeared on a Chinese-language forum. But mobile phone manufacturers and operators are often very slow in releasing patches to their users, a problem that is likely to become more critical as mobile device use rises.
Oracle said on Tuesday that its monthly round of patches for July includes 89 fixes, 27 of which address remotely exploitable vulnerabilities in four widely used products. Eric P. Maurice, director of Oracle Software Security Assurance. “As usual, Oracle recommends that customers apply this Critical Patch Update as soon as possible,” he wrote. Fusion Middleware has 21 fixes, 16 of which are remotely exploitable. One of the fixes concerns JRockit, the Java Virtual Machine in Fusion Middleware. The vulnerability is related to a series of Java issues patched in Oracle’s June updates for Java SE (Server Edition), Maurice wrote.
Today’s tech titans are blessed with wondrous perks: company cars, private jets, even a for Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. But Russian oil titan Gazprom--one of the largest companies in the world--and its chief executive Alexey Miller, together have reached a new level: setting aside 119.7 million rubles ($3.69 million) for a new tablet. Gazprom published its by Bloomberg. The tablet will be designed to allow Miller to constantly monitor Gazprom’s operations, while offering him all the power of his desktop computer. And the manufacturer, whoever it might be, needs to design the tablet to include 3G, GPRS, and Wi-Fi—and the Apple iOS operating system, to boot. So did Gazprom just agree to pay $3.69 million for the best blinged-out iPad money can buy? Not necessarily. As the chief executive of a company that pulled in $153 billion in revenue in 2012, there are two concerns that Gazprom likely has in designing a tablet: security and bandwidth. Gazprom resulted when the USSR’s oil and gas ministry went private, which transformed a government-backed agency into one nominally controlled by the private sector. As such, Russian interests are competing with multinational corporations, especially in offshore areas where Russia’s influence legally ends.
The U.S. government’s portal for the data it creates, , is getting a revamp that should make it easier to view and reuse government data. The update should also help federal agencies comply with a issued in May to make government data machine-readable by default. The beta version of the site, now available for user testing under a subdomain of , features more visualization of government data, an expanded section for communities of interest, and a stream of examples of government data usage by third parties.