Der Apple-Führung um Konzernchef Tim Cook dürften turbulente Zeiten bevorstehen: Der für seine aggressiven Methoden bekannte Investor Carl Icahn hat sich bei dem US-Konzern eingekauft. Er habe bereits mit Cook gesprochen, schrieb der 77-jährige Icahn beim Kurznachrichtendienst Twitter heute.
Apple will laut einem Medienbericht zum wichtigen Weihnachtsgeschäft neben einem neuen iPhone auch frische Modelle seiner iPad-Tablets auf den Markt bringen. Sie würden aber nicht zusammen mit dem neuen iPhone-Modell am 10. September vorgestellt, sondern später, berichtete die Finanznachrichtenagentur Bloomberg am Dienstag.
Das chinesische Internetunternehmen Sina den Umsatz im zweiten Quartal des aktuellen Geschäftsjahres zwar kräftig ankurbeln, das Ergebnis jedoch driftete in den roten Bereich ab.
Die SBB konkretisiert ihre Internet-Strategie: Ab Mitte 2014 werden die 31 grössten Schweizer Bahnhöfe kostenlosen Internet-Zugang anbieten. Vorgesehen ist, die Kunden eine Stunde lang gratis surfen zu lassen. Nachher wird es kostenpflichtig.
Vor einem Jahr sah sich der Internet-Vergleichsdienst Comparis.ch mit einer Strafanzeige aus der Bundesverwaltung konfrontiert. Der Vorwurf des illegalen Hacker-Angriffs ist inzwischen vom Tisch. Nun schlägt Comparis.ch zurück und reicht seinerseits Strafanzeige ein.
Der deutsche Internetmodeversand Zalando bekommt einen neuen Grossaktionär. Der dänische Modeunternehmer Anders Holch Povlsen übernimmt zehn Prozent der Anteile von anderen Gesellschaftern und steigt damit zum drittgrössten Anteilseigner auf, wie Zalando heute mitteilte.
Facebook investiert in Spracherkennung. Dafür übernimmt das Soziale Netzwerk die 2001 gegründete Firma Mobile Technologies, wie ein Manager auf seiner Facebook-Seite mitteilte.
Das ZTE Open ist seit Juli über Telefónica in Spanien, Venezuela und Kolumbien erhältlich. Nun will der Hersteller weitere Märkte erschliessen. Das Smartphone mit Mozillas Firefox OS soll in Kürze über Ebay in den USA und Grossbritannien verfügbar sein, wie ZTE mitteilt. Der Preis beträgt wie in Spanien umgerechnet rund 70 Euro.
Die chinesische Internetseite des Dalai Lama ist nach Angaben einer Internet-Sicherheitsfirma gehackt worden. Es könne sich dabei um einen Versuch handeln, Menschenrechtsaktivisten auszuspähen, welche die Seite regelmässig besuchten, teilte Kaspersky Lab am Montag der Nachrichtenagentur Reuters mit.
In London gehen die Behörden gegen High-Tech-Mülleimer vor, die testweise Daten vorbeigehender Smartphonebesitzer gesammelt hatten. Diese Datensammlungen müssten "umgehend aufhören", solange es über derlei Massnahmen keine öffentliche Debatte gegeben habe, erklärten die zuständigen Behörden des Finanzbezirks der britischen Hauptstadt am Montag. Zudem sei die Bürgerrechtsbehörde ICO eingeschaltet worden.
Internet Explorer proved to be the biggest security concern for Microsoft in the last month, with the browser spurring 11 of the 19 critical vulnerabilities the company issued in August’s “Patch Tuesday” set of software fixes. Such a sizable group of critical patches once again underscores the need for users and organizations to update their copies of Internet Explorer. Their reluctance to upgrade has been a source of ongoing frustration for security professionals, who repeatedly warn of the dangers of unpatched browsers and remind everyone how easy it is to actually update. , which this time could pester IPv6 networks. on Tuesday. Three of these bulletins were marked as critical, with the remainder categorized as important.
Oracle has joined the market for pre-integrated systems intended to ease the process of setting up and managing a virtualized compute environment. The Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance, released on Tuesday, includes Oracle x86 servers and storage hardware, along with network virtualization technology that Oracle acquired last year when it . The promise of such appliances is that most of the set-up and wiring is done by the vendor at the factory, leaving customers with a minimum of configuration work to get the box running, reducing the room for error. Other vendors, such as NetApp and EMC, already offer pre-integrated systems for virtualization. Oracle contends it will have an edge because it owns the virtualization stack it uses, including the OS, hypervisor and applications.
Is it already mid-August, and are we really up to the eighth Patch Tuesday of 2013? It’s time to start planning Halloween costumes and thinking about holiday shopping. Yikes! . That’s not a light month by any stretch, but considering there have been many months with nearly double that amount, it’s not too bad. More importantly, only three of them are rated as Critical, and none of them are being actively exploited in the wild. Security experts seem to unanimously agree that the top priorities this month are Internet Explorer (MS13-059) and Microsoft Exchange Server (MS13-061). , about the Internet Explorer patch. "This month is no different from recent months where we have seen many memory corruptions addressed in Internet Explorer.” , focused MS13-059 as well: “As usual, Internet Explorer is the first patch everyone should install."
A software bug that caused some characters to be substituted for others in scans by some Xerox machines is more serious than previously thought. The problem came to light last week when German computer science student David Kriesel noticed some figures printed in a small, fine font on a document were incorrectly copied into a PDF file output by the machine. Numbers from one part of the document had been reproduced in another part, apparently due to the way the JBIG2 compression system works. Xerox setting the quality higher doesn’t totally eliminate the problem. “After further testing of the scanning function, we’ve now determined the factory default and highest modes do not completely alleviate the problem of substituting characters on ‘stress documents.’ The default and highest modes do substantially reduce the likelihood of character substitution but due to a software bug character substitution is not completely eliminated,” Xerox said in a statement.
Some of the biggest names in hard disk drives will band together this week to remind the world that storage isn’t all about flash. Seagate Technology, Toshiba, Western Digital and HGST will launch the Storage Products Association in the midst of the Flash Memory Summit, a four-day event revolving around storage media that doesn’t revolve. Though all the charter members of the SPA make SSDs (solid-state disks) as well as spinning disks, they want to bring HDDs back into the conversation. Hard drives aren’t going away just because consumers and enterprises are buying more flash, said SPA Chairman David Burks. “There’s an important role for NAND flash, but there’s also a really important role for HDD-related media,” Burks said.
Google says it's looking into to all of these matters, but right now it's unclear if the bugs are software- or hardware-related.
As I write these lines, a car-sized robot powered by 32 cubes of plutonium is roaming the surface of Mars, taking photos using no less than 17 cameras, , and generally having a good time. NASA's Curiosity rover is one of the space agency's most ambitious, important, and exciting scientific missions. As you may expect from a machine that had to be flown for over 350 million miles just to begin its work, Curiosity is an incredibly complex beast. Weighing in at 1980 pounds, the rover carries 180 pounds of scientific instruments. One nice way to gain a better understanding of those instruments and the rover's mission is using NASA and JPL's free Windows 8 app, Mars Rover: Curiosity. The app launches with a beautiful animation of the rover's dramatic descent to the surface of Mars. Once the animation plays out, you're left with a 3D model of the rover parked on the surface of Mars. You can use your mouse or touch screen to shift your viewpoint around the model and zoom in or out, though unfortunately, you don't get to drive: The entire demo is static, with no animation at all. As you rotate around the rover, icons pop up over its various parts. Click an icon, and a sidebar pops open on the left side of the screen with a comprehensive explanation about the part in question. Most sidebars contain an image or two, and are quite text-heavy.
The sleek 55-inch screen uses 3D Active glasses to allow two viewers to watch two different signals simultaneously in HD. Both viewers can watch 3D programming at the same time.
Unsurprisingly, a New York law firm has filed the first class-action lawsuit alleging that Microsoft misled investors over the state of its Surface with Windows RT tablet. Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP claims that Microsoft made “false and misleading” statements about its financial performance and the Surface RT tablet between April 18, 2013 and July 18, 2013. During that time, the firm alleges, Microsoft knew that the Surface RT was experiencing poor customer demand and lackluster sales, and that it had materially declined in value. Microsoft couldn’t be reached for comment at press time. , although Microsoft representatives haven’t said whether or not the $900 million accounted for those discounts, either.
The next CyanogenMod update will let you stream to Chromecast from almost any app. It's a match made in heaven!
Teradici has updated the PCoIP Hardware Accelerator with caching and better GPU support to improve the performance of virtual desktop installations based on VMware’s Horizon View platform. The PCoIP protocol is used to run desktops in the data center. To do that the protocol compresses, encrypts and encodes the desktop and transmits the necessary pixels across an IP network to a compatible client. Depending on the applications and the number of users involved, that can put a lot of stress on the underlying servers, and that’s where Teradici’s PCoIP Hardware Accelerator comes in. By off-loading image encoding to a hardware encoding card, it reduces peaks in CPU utilization, ensuring more consistent desktop performance for users, according to Teradici. The next software update, the version 2.3 driver, will add support for caching, and the company has also fine tuned the processing of pixels to better take advantage of GPUs in VMware environments, according to Olivier Favre, director of product management at Teradici. For users, the latter means higher frame rates generated by the GPU on the server can still be presented to the user, he said.
Intel's 10-inch and 7-inch Android tablet designs come less than a month after One Laptop Per Child’s $149.99 XO Tablet became available in Walmart.
is designed to help define a product roadmap and enable collaboration to keep the project humming along smoothly. It’s been a long time since I’ve been involved on the project management side of the fence. I always used—and still have—Microsoft Project. The thing with Microsoft Project, though, is that it's a complex and cumbersome tool, and it requires a fair amount of knowledge and experience to use properly. Also, Project doesn’t easily allow a project manager to illustrate a roadmap and connect the dots between achieving the strategic vision and the milestones of the project. Lastly, Project lets project managers share information, but it doesn’t facilitate true team collaboration. I walked through a demo of Aha! with co-founder and CEO Brian de Haaff. I was impressed with the general layout and simplicity of it. Compared to Microsoft Project, Aha! has a much cleaner, more intuitive layout. Brian showed me how dragging requirements around to re-order them in one view automatically updates their position and priority in other views as well.
Europa Universalis IV, the latest grand strategy game from Paradox Interactive, once again gives you control of a civilization during the Age of Exploration—with the clear intent of watching you mess it all up.
Most ergonomic tech gear tends towards the practical. But Microsoft's new Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard and Mouse may actually inspire some envy from design nuts as well. Unfortunately, there's also some bad news: like the (also re-released in a bundle on Tuesday), Microsoft's new Sculpt Mouse doesn't support left-handed mousing. And what day does Microsoft's new mouse launch on? Yes, International Left-Handers Day. Ouch. Internally, Microsoft's new Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop ($80.95 for the keyboard, $59.95 for the mouse, $129.95 bundled together) has been code-named "Manta Ray," according to Suneel Goud, a product manager at Microsoft. It's easy to see why: the curved keyboard appears to swoop forward. But Microsoft also has an agenda: keep workers happy, and they'll stay at their desks, happily tapping away at their Windows PCs. In this, the company has a natural advantage: typing on a glass tablet can be awkward even at the best of times, unless it's bundled with an ergonomic keyboard of its own. Although Microsoft is commonly known for its software, it has shipped mice since 1983, and Microsoft's Intellimouse is credited with the first scroll wheel.
On Tuesday, Kaspersky Lab launched its 2014 versions of Kaspersky Anti-Virus ($59.95) and Kaspersky Internet Security ($79.95). Pricing varies upon the length of protection and how many PCs you want to protect; those listed here include one year for up to three PCs. If you’re a current customer you may upgrade from the 2013 products free of charge. The look and feel of the software hasn’t changed much since last year, but there are, of course, a few new features and improvements. The new Trusted Applications mode improves the blocking of malicious files and programs. It adapts the Default Deny approach that is more commonly seen in corporate security solutions. When enabled, the Trusted Applications mode will deny the opening or running of programs and files not ‘whitelisted,’ or trusted. The Trusted Applications mode can be used in conjunction with the traditional antivirus, which works in the opposite fashion: It allows all content except if specifically detected as malicious. Although you can customize the Trusted Applications settings, like selectively blocking or allowing a file or program, it’s been designed to be as automated as possible, using the Kaspersky whitelists and other technologies to automatically allow known, safe content.
isn't just paying off for Google (and, by extension, you); it's also paying off for security researchers scouring the company’s software for vulnerabilities. The search giant recently announced that over the past three years, Google has received more than 2,000 security bug reports and paid out more than $2 million in rewards. Bug bounty payouts are becoming an increasingly popular way for software makers to keep their products more secure. Instead of relying exclusively on employees or reporting from private security firms, bug bounty programs create a channel for private individuals to report security flaws directly to the company. If the flaw meets the bounty program’s requirements, then the company will pay out a monetary reward to the discoverer of the flaw. The basic concept of bug bounty programs can be traced back to open source software and the mantra that the more eyes you have looking at a piece of code, the more likely you are to find and patch security flaws. Unlike the open source community, however, Google bug hunters don’t always have access to underlying code. Instead, researchers try to find innovative ways to exploit Google’s systems. and more effective than hiring employees to do the same job.
Nimble is no newbie to the social CRM scene, and has been offering its unified social dashboard for several years now. Nimble 3.0, takes the system a step forward, doing its best to develop superpowers. Nimble 3.0 ($15 per month per user, feature-limited free version for personal use only) is not just about organizing your contacts and interactions: It's about finding the right people to interact with, and making sure you don't forget to do so. Nimble 3.0 is not dissimilar to its previous version, and while there are no significant UI changes, in some aspects it looks like a brand new product. The former Activities, Contacts, Deals, Messages, and Social tabs have been reworked, with the most prominent additions being the Today tab and the Signals tab. The Social tab is missing in action, but your social interactions are still available in other tabs. As before, Nimble aggregates your online life from Gmail (or any contacts CSV file), Google+, Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, and Twitter, making it equally easy to bore in on a single contact for a wide picture of their online presence, and to keep up with social activities from all your different networks. The new Today tab is a start page of sorts, featuring engagement opportunities sorted by how good they are (e.g., if a CEO of a big company has a birthday today, that's better than some lowly worker trying to join your network). It also gives you a nice overlook of tasks due today, and upcoming deals--all of which can be added through Nimble or synced from your Google Calendar. The top of the page features today's "top 3," which are a daily choice of interesting contacts pulled from your networks. Every day, you can mark these contacts as important or not, and help Nimble improve. When you mark a contact as important, you get to set a recurring reminder to stay in touch with them, so the connection never falls through the cracks.
Mobile ad networks can provide a loophole to serve malware to Android devices, according to researchers from security firm Palo Alto Networks who have found new Android threats being distributed in this manner.
The Chinese-language of the Dalai Lama’s Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) has been hacked and infected with malware. According to security firm Kaspersky Lab, the Website for the Tibetan government-in-exile has been compromised and poisoned with malicious software that may be used to spy on visitors to the site. Technical evidence points to hackers who have carried out previous cyber attacks on various human rights groups throughout Asia. Several groups—such as the newly re-surfaced —have mounted attacks on organizations around the world that oppose Chinese government policies. According to Kaspersky, the CTA site has been under attack from the same group of hackers since 2011, but previous breaches have been quietly identified and repaired.
on Windows 8.1, a couple of reports say the release date is still a couple months away. claim that Windows 8.1 will launch in October, not just for existing Windows 8 PCs, but for new computers running the updated operating system. The duo were the first to report on Windows 8.1's (then called Windows Blue) existence, many months ago. that it would release the software to PC makers (a process known as RTM) in August. Both reports say Microsoft is still on track. But as ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley explains, Microsoft may be holding back the actual launch for a couple of reasons: First, Windows 8.1 is reportedly quite buggy, even for a test build, so the extra time will allow Microsoft to clean things up via software updates for new PC buyers. Second, releasing both the update and new Windows 8.1 devices at the same time might create a bigger splash, amounting to a “launch event” for the more user-friendly version of Microsoft's operating system.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is offering a new service that aims to make it easier for developers to send push notifications to Android and iOS applications. Amazon pitches Simple Notification Service with Mobile Push as an easier way for developers to add notifications than previously has been possible. Using one API, developers can send notifications to iOS and Android-based devices, including Amazon’s own Kindle Fire tablets. Previously adding push notifications at a large scale on multiple platforms has been complicated for developers, according to Amazon. That’s because each smartphone OS has a different service that delivers notifications. So to support multiple mobile platforms, developers must integrate with each platform, which introduces operational complexity and cost, Amazon said. Mobile Push is compatible with Amazon’s own Device Messaging platform as well as Apple’s Push Notification Service and Cloud Messaging from Google. Notification messages sent to a mobile endpoint can appear as message alerts, badge updates, or even sound alerts.
Cyber criminals will bank their Windows XP zero-day vulnerabilities until after Microsoft stops patching the aged operating system next April, a security expert argued today. Jason Fossen, a trainer for SANS since 1998 and an expert on Microsoft security, said it's simply economics at work. "The average price on the black market for a Windows XP exploit is $50,000 to $150,000, a relatively low price that reflects Microsoft's response," said Fossen. When a new vulnerability—dubbed a "zero-day"—is spotted in the wild, Microsoft investigates, pulls together a patch and releases it to XP users. If the bug is critical and being widely used by hackers, Microsoft will go "out-of-cycle," meaning it will issue a security update outside its usual monthly Patch Tuesday schedule.
Ask any gamer: Sometimes, things only get better with a restart. Microsoft seems to be taking the tenet to heart with its upcoming video game console, as yet another controversial Xbox One feature is being rolled back in the wake of consumer backlash. This time, it's the Kinect sensor's always plugged-in requirement getting the boot. . “Although you won’t be able to use any feature or experience that explicitly uses the sensor.” There has been a lot of interest in how the Xbox One Kinect would function as the motion sensor is featured as a major selling point for the new console—so much so that Microsoft originally said that the console wouldn't function unless the Kinect was connected. that you could turn off the Kinect along with the rest of the system, and it would only be listening for the command “Xbox On” to power up the system.
Some level of government surveillance is “essential” if the nation is to minimize the incidence of terrorist strikes like the Boston Marathon bombing, according to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. by former US government contractor Edward Snowden. Private information has been collected for a long time by the likes of credit card companies, Ellison said. But domestic spying would go too far “if the government used it for political targeting,” with members of political parties using it to investigate “people on the other side of the aisle,” said Ellison, who worked on a database project for the Central Intelligence Agency early in his career, before founding Oracle.
BlackBerry has launched the 9720 smartphone running the 7 OS in a bid to stay relevant in the growing low end of the smartphone market. for its future that could include joint ventures or a sale of the company. As its new BlackBerry 10 operating system struggles to get off the ground, the company is still depending on the old version 7. During its last fiscal quarter BlackBerry shipped 6.8 million smartphones, but only 2.7 million phones running the new OS. The launch of the BlackBerry 9720, which runs a refreshed version of the BlackBerry 7 OS, may play to the company’s dwindling strength. The smartphone has a re-engineered physical QWERTY keyboard with a dedicated BBM key, a trackpad and a a 2.8-inch touchscreen with 480 x 360 pixel resolution.
The “Comment Crew,” a group of China-based hackers whose outing earlier this year in major media outlets caused a row with the U.S., have resumed their attacks against dissidents. FireEye, a security vendor that specializes in trying to stop sophisticated attacks, has noticed attackers using a fresh set of tools and evasion techniques against some of its newer clients, which it can’t name. But Rob Rachwald, director of market research for FireEye, said in an interview Monday that those clients include an organization in Taiwan and others involved in dissident activity. , described in an extensive report in February from vendor Mandiant, thrust them into an uncomfortable spotlight, causing tense relations between the U.S. and China. to be hitting organizations they had compromised before.
The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday launched a review of whether the country uses optimally advancements in technology to protect its national security while preventing unauthorized disclosure and maintaining public trust. Surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency has been at the center of a privacy controversy after its former contractor, Edward Snowden, released in June certain documents that suggested large scale collection of phone metadata and information from the Internet by the agency. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper has been directed to form the new Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, which is to brief Obama on its interim findings within 60 days of the establishment of the group. A final report and recommendations are to be submitted through Clapper to the president no later than Dec. 15. The constitution of the body including the number of members it will have was not disclosed.
Foxconn's Hon Hai Precision Industry reported a strong gain in net profit during the second quarter, but revenue growth for the Apple supplier continued to remain weak. Hon Hai's net profit in the quarter reached NT$16.9 billion (US$564 million), up 40.8 percent from NT$12 billion in the same period a year ago, the company reported on Tuesday. Revenue, however, increased year-over-year by only 0.4 percent, putting it at NT$895.6 billion. and makes up about 40 percent of Hon Hai's revenue, according to analysts.