David Miranda, Lebensgefährte des „Guardian“-Journalisten Glenn Greenwald, geht in der NSA-Affäre nun gerichtlich gegen die britische Regierung wegen der stundenlangen Anhaltung auf dem Londoner Flughafen Heathrow vor.
Die Angst vor dem Ende der Privatsphäre im Internet hat den bekannten amerikanischen Justiz-Blog Groklaw ins Aus getrieben. Es gebe offensichtlich keine Möglichkeit mehr für vertrauliche Kommunikation, schrieb Gründerin Pamela Jones auf der Website. Sie verwies auf Enthüllungen über die Überwachung des Internets durch amerikanische Geheimdienste.
Die schweizerischen Kabelnetzbetreiber konnten laut Bericht des Branchenverbandes Swisscable per Ende Juni 2013 in den Märkten Breitbandinternet und Telefonie ein Wachstum verzeichnen. Nach dem ersten Halbjahr 2013 zählten die Betreiber 1.013.000 Kunden beim Kabelinternet (+11,8 Prozent) und 600.000 Kunden bei der Kabeltelefonie (+14,6 Prozent).
Die diesjährige deutsche Funkausstellung IFA in Berlin könnte mit einem Meilenstein in die Technikgeschichte eingehen: Vieles deutet darauf hin, dass Samsung als erster der beiden grössten Smartphone-Hersteller auf den neuen Markt der Computeruhren vorpreschen will. Findet der Smartphone-Marktführer das richtige Rezept, könnte er einen wertvollen Vorsprung in dem Zukunftsgeschäft gewinnen.
Blackberry reagiert auf den anhaltenden Abwärtstrend. Wie Jefferies-Analyst Peter Misek gegenüber The Globe and Mail sagt, schraubt der kanadische Hersteller die Produktion seiner neuen Blackberry-Smartphones zurück. Konkret betrifft es das aktuelle Flaggschiff Z10 und das Q10.
Der US-Geheimdienst NSA hat nach den Enthüllungen des ehemaligen Mitarbeiters Edward Snowden angekündigt, 90 Prozent seiner Systemadministratoren loszuwerden, um solche Leaks in Zukunft zu vermeiden. Erreicht werden soll das vor allem durch die Automatisierung von Software, die die "Sicherheit verbessern" soll.
Die im Besitz von Facebook befindliche Fotoplattform Instagram hat ihre Markenrichtlinien geändert. War es bis vor Kurzem noch explizit erlaubt, dass Dienste, die auf die Instagram-API zugreifen, selbst ein "Insta" oder ein "Gram" im Namen tragen dürfen, wurde dies nun revidiert. Erste Betreiber von Dritt-Apps haben nun eine entsprechende Aufforderung erhalten, ihre Angebote umzutaufen.
Damit die Mobilität auch jenseits der Schiene für den DB-Konzern, den End- aber auch den Geschäftskunden gut funktioniert und die Kernprodukte entsprechend unterstützt werden, bietet DB Fuhrpark das Flottenmanagement sowohl für den DB-Konzern, als auch für externe Geschäftskunden an. Die Software für diese Flottenfahrzeugverwaltung stammt von BSI Business Systems Integration mit Hauptsitz in Baden.
Der Secure-E-Mail-Spezialist Seppmail kündigt zusammen mit der Schweizerischen Post den Gateway "Incamail Edition" an. Er soll Behörden, Anbietern von eGov-Dienstleistungen, Institutionen im Gesundheits- und Finanzwesen sowie sicherheitsbedachten Unternehmen eine einfache, komfortable Verschlüsselungslösung bereit stellen.
Die auf Dokumentenmanagement und Print-Services fokussierte Ricoh Schweiz hat Roland Mauduit zum "Head of Small & Medium Business" bestellt. Mauduit, der in dieser Funktion Daniel Périsset nachfolgt, kommt aus den eigenen Reihen von Ricoh.
Hewlett-Packard has launched a file storage service for users of its Autonomy WorkSite document management software that it promises can be more helpful than consumer-focused hosted file services. “With consumer-grade services, you can’t govern what’s out there and often you are not sure about security,” said Dan Carmel, who is the head of enterprise content management strategy and solutions for HP Autonomy. The synchronizes files on an internal WorkSite deployment with an HP file storage repository accessible from the Internet, making internal files available from outside the corporate firewall. All files inherit their read and write permissions from their in-house counterparts.
Many companies have begun using specialized software to analyze what people are saying about their products and services on social media, and now SAP says it can help them match up individuals’ social profiles with customer history data from CRM (customer relationship management) systems. Dubbed Social Contact Intelligence, the application can help sales and marketing staff find better leads for sales as well as gain more knowledge about their actual customers’ likes and dislikes, according to SAP. Social Contact Intelligence is built on top of and dependent on HANA, SAP’s in-memory database platform. It’s now in “ramp-up,” SAP’s term for an initial release with a small set of customers, and also part of a broader suite called Customer Engagement Intelligence. Currently it’s only offered on-premises, but SAP is considering cloud-based deployments for the future, according to a spokeswoman. Core CRM software is “such a commodity it’s almost relegated to a system of record,” said Jamie Anderson, vice president of customer solution marketing. Thanks to the rise of social media and resulting changes to the way customers interact with companies and make buying decisions, “we’ve realized the CRM market is evolving faster than CRM products on their own.”
Google has reduced the time buyers have to wait to receive the US$35 Chromecast TV device, saying it will ship orders in two weeks or less.
Sony confirmed the Playstation 4 release date during a press conference at the European Gamescom show today.
system. Rest easy, all you Microsoft Tag fanatics out there— the technology will continue to live on in the hands of a company called Scanbuy. But Microsoft’s involvement with it will formally end in two years, on Aug. 19, 2015. The name may not ring any bells, but chances are you’ve seen the garishly colored boxes dotted here and there on the Web or in magazines. Microsoft Tags are/were the software giant’s response to the QR Code, usually (though not always) built out of impossible-to-miss primary colors (cyan, yellow, and magenta) and specifically designed so that the companies that created them could easily track the types of users who were scanning them. It sounded like a good idea, but the technology never took off, undoubtedly due to competition from QR Code and rank user disinterest. is “the largest provider of QR Codes,” so the technology is passing into what seem to be good hands. Some have raised eyebrows over Scanbuy’s ownership—it is backed by Microsoft rival Google—but this is such an insignificant part of Microsoft’s business that it’s difficult to get too worked up over the conspiracy theories. , writer Nancy Gohring asked Scanbuy CEO Mike West why anyone would want a technology that even Microsoft—notorious for making bad bets like this—didn’t even want any more. West responded that Tag still has plenty of users, and that its proprietary nature was appealing to some big brands: “We don’t have to worry about some random person creating a Microsoft Tag code generator and releasing rogue codes with malicious intent. All the things that QR Codes have as a negative don’t exist with Microsoft Tag.”
A new CEO for Barnes & Noble has apparently brought new ideas for the struggling Nook tablet business along with him.
, than Amazon went down. The online retail site—and its associated cloud services—were down for just under half an hour Monday afternoon. I stand by my assertion that the sky is not falling, but there’s more to using the cloud than just availability. , or about two thousandths of a percent of his net worth. Thurrott also pointed out the irony of how many users turn to Internet-based services like Facebook or Twitter to complain about cloud outages and declare the impending death of this cloud fad. The debate over cloud availability is silly. As I pointed out my post about the Google and Microsoft outages, local networks and servers are not impervious to outages, so the risk is essentially the same as it pertains to availability.
YouTube is adding some new video-playing functions to its mobile app on both iOS and Android devices. Some of the tools are aimed at giving users more control over how they stream video to their television sets using Chromecast, Google's new video streaming device.
Technology legal news website Groklaw is shutting down due to concerns over the continued availability of secure email in the wake of revelations about U.S. government surveillance. . "There is no way to do Groklaw without email. Therein lies the conundrum." Groklaw, which was launched 10 years ago, has been known for its exhaustive coverage of technology law, particularly involving software patents, open source software and privacy issues. Secure email provider Lavabit recently announced it would shut down due to an ongoing legal dispute, presumably with the U.S. government. "I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit," company owner Ladar Levison wrote on its website.
If great games make for a great console, Miceoosft made its case for the Xbox One on Tuesday, releasing 23 launch-day titles that include several traditionally AAA franchises. , the football-mad European market will receive EA Sports’ FIFA 14 as a bundled launch title, if Europeans pre-order the console. (Once supplies sell out, another “blockbuster game” will be made available.) And in addition to the top titles, Microsoft also announced a new program, known as ID@Xbox, designed to lure indie developers back to Microsoft’s console. Microsoft made the announcements at the the Gamescom conference in Germany, the European equivalent of the E3 conference within the United States. in July, a low point as gamers begin putting their wallets away in preparation for the Xbox One. Microsoft’s list of titles are designed to lure them back:
Watch out Sonos, Jongo has two new speakers *and* its own subscription music service on the way.
The introduction of Rackspace’s hosted Dedicated VMware vCenter Server will allow IT staff to control their VMware environments from a data center run by the vendor. As enterprises move IT infrastructure out of their own data centers, vendors are offering a growing list of alternatives that in Rackspace’s world includes hybrid clouds, which combine public and private clouds, and dedicated hosting. The latest addition to the latter offering is Dedicated VMware vCenter Server, which allows IT departments to retain full control with the tools they are used to without having to bother with the underlying infrastructure. “Many of our customers have large VMware installations in-house today, and they have made significant investments in that and don’t want to throw it away,” said Andrew Wing, senior product manager at Rackspace. For companies that want to stick with VMware, but don’t want to expand their data centers or have data centers at all, Rackspace already offers managed virtualization based on VMware vSphere 5.1. The addition of vCenter builds on that. From a single console, administrators can control virtual servers running in-house and in Rackspace’s data centers. It is also possible to mix vCenter servers that run in an enterprise’s own data center and ones that are hosted by Rackspace.
Electric vehicles ain't as dainty as they used to be.
Although cyberattacks caused just 6 percent of significant outages of public electronic communications networks and services in the E.U. last year, they affected more people than hardware failure, a much more common factor in service disruptions, according to a report from the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA). released Tuesday by ENISA. By comparison, incidents that resulted from cyberattacks affected 1.8 million users on average. Cyberattacks affected primarily Internet access and were the second most common cause for outages of fixed Internet service in particular, accounting for 20 percent of those incidents, ENISA said. They also accounted for around 13 percent of incidents that disrupted mobile Internet service. The ENISA report compiles data on 79 incidents that occurred across 18 E.U. member states in 2012 and resulted in severe outages of both mobile and fixed telephony and Internet services. ENISA defines fixed Internet and telephony services as those offered through dial-up, DSL, cable, fiber, PSTN, VoIP over DSL and other wired networks.
When the phone launches this Friday, consumers will not be able to use the engraving function.
It's sobering just how much time you can waste, um, I mean, spend on Facebook. TimeRabbit tells you just how bad it is. Install this free utility, and it will track every second (and minute, and hour) you spend on the world's most popular social network. TimeRabbit requires little interaction on your part: It really is set-it-and-forget-it software. Once you install it, TimeRabbit automatically tracks how much time you spend using Facebook. And "using" is the key word here: TimeRabbit figures out when you're active on Facebook, as opposed to when you have it open in a browser tab that you're not actually looking at. That's thanks to its code, which monitors your browser's activity to see whether the current URL address includes "facebook.com". If it does, TimeRabbit starts the clock, and the tally grows.. TimeRabbit works with all versions of Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, and with versions 7,8, and 9 of Internet Explorer. In my tests, TimeRabbit worked seamlessly with all supported browsers, accurately (and sometimes scarily!) tracking the time I spent perusing Facebook.
After snatching up social traffic app Waze in June, Google is finally adding the app’s crowdsourced incident reports its own mobile Maps.
Electronic Arts would really like you to stop hating the company and start using Origin, its digital delivery service for PC games. As such, EA is now allowing refunds on its own first-party games through Origin. Refunds will be available within 24 hours of first launching the game, or within seven days of purchase—whichever comes first. For pre-ordered games, players can request a refund within seven days of the game's release date. . Players will get a response within 48 hours, and will get their refunds in seven to 10 days if the refund is approved. The offer only applies to EA's own games, not third-party games sold through Origin. Although there appears to be no limit to how many refunds you can request, EA's terms of service say that refunds “may not be supported where Electronic Arts detects fraud or abuse of the refund process.”
Intel said the first Thunderbolt 2 products would be available by the end of the year, and it wasn't lying: Asus just announced the world's first Thunderbolt 2-equipped motherboard, the straightforwardly named Z87-Deluxe/Quad. is capable of both displaying a 4K resolution video on a monitor while simultaneously transferring a 4k video file to external storage with nary a hitch, though we've yet to test the claim. (Hey, the first motherboard was only just announced!) because those mind-blowing speeds come with an almost mind-blowing sticker price, which has also slowed adoption rates. In fact, an Intel spokesperson has said that "Thunderbolt is targeted toward premium systems," and the Asus Z87-Deluxe/Quad appears poised to keep the tradition going strong. In addition to the motherboard's pair of bi-directional 20Gbps Thunderbolt 2 ports and support for Intel's cutting-edge Haswell chips, here are the rest of the short spec list Asus released.
If you buy one of this year's hot titles on the Xbox 360, Amazon will let you trade it (and $10) in for its Xbox One counterpart.
Heading into the heart of hurricane season 10 months after Sandy slammed the New York metropolitan area, Wall Street has had time to reassess and revamp backup plans. Sandy’s storm surge caused the first weather-related, 48-hour closure of markets since the Great Blizzard of 1888. “You could say Sandy forced the hand of the trading firms,” said David Weiss, an analyst with the consulting firm Aite Group. “A confluence of trends” that lend themselves to overall system resiliency was, however, already under way, Weiss added. The commoditization of server hardware suitable for trading and back-office systems, for example, has helped give rise to third-party data centers that can help financial-sector companies reduce risk.
Microsoft is updating the recently launched beta of Windows Phone App Studio to improve performance and scalability after the new app development tool crossed 55,000 active projects. The hosted service was launched two weeks ago in a bid by Microsoft to increase the number of applications available on Windows Phone by allowing users to create apps without writing any code. The service lets users choose from a number of templates to get started and then add content such as images, videos, RSS and Twitter feeds. .] In the first 48 hours, Microsoft saw more than 20,000 people from all over the world starting more than 30,000 projects, and on Monday it crossed 55,000 active projects. To help manage demand, the company implemented a temporary access code system, it said.
Custom Web and mobile apps, once the exclusive purview of large companies with vast resources, have become a common hallmark of successful small and mid-sized businesses. Externally, apps can offer deeper engagement with customers through online and mobile access to useful tools and information. Internally, they can help workers communicate more effectively with highly customized real-time data on their desktop and mobile screens. But reaching the promised land of apps and money can be daunting, and not every app development adventure ends in success. If you want to put a custom app to work for your business, you’ll first need to make one critical decision: Should you outsource it, or try coding it in-house? This decision is so fundamental that many people overlook it entirely without even realizing they have options here. And failing to consider it carefully can cost your company dearly in both opportunities and money. We’ll examine some of the most significant factors to help you make the best decision for your business, and give you a sense of what you’ll experience if you decide to go the DIY route. Does your business really need a completely new app, or will you get more benefit from an existing package that can be tweaked to meet your needs? The answer to this question depends largely on what you’re looking to accomplish. If, for instance, you just want to add blogging or social media feeds to your website, you can get the job done with any number of free, easy-to-configure options. Or if your goal is to improve internal communication about customer accounts, you’d almost certainly be better served by a proven customer relationship management (CRM) package than by a homegrown database app. If, however, your idea is more novel, like, oh… let’s say you wanted to crank up customer engagement at your landscaping business with an app that lets customers submit sketches and pictures of their yards, then you’ll probably have to go totally custom (or at least build your solution out of a variety of existing components).
After the terrorist strikes of Sept. 11, 2001, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) learned some valuable lessons in keeping a time-sensitive financial trading network alive during a time of crisis. “We found that during 9/11, carrier point-of-presence facilities went down, a lot of firms in the industry were not able to trade. So we made a decision to build a resilient network for the industry,” said Vince Lanzillo, who is head of co-location for the Americas for NYSE Technologies (NYXT), a commercial subsidiary of NYSE Euronext that offers infrastructure, content and liquidity services to the financial industry. So, when Hurricane Sandy struck last year, NYXT was prepared to continue operations, though the NYSE itself decided to halt trading, citing concerns with employee safety and other factors. NYXT built and now operates the SFTI (Secure Financial Transactional Infrastructure—pronounced “Safety”), which is used by financial firms and by the NYSE itself for its primary and backup exchanges. SFTI has access centers in most major markets in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
With an update to its Foglight for Virtualization software package, Dell can now help organizations rid their systems of resource-sucking zombie virtual machines. “It’s so easy to create VMs. We have customers creating thousands and thousands of them. But what are the lifecycles of these VMs? In these larger environments, [administrators] don’t know if they are being used,” said John Maxwell, Dell vice president of product management. Foglight for Virtualization Enterprise Edition 7.0 will also support the latest versions of VMware’s virtualization products.
The market share of Apple’s iPad fell dramatically in China during the second quarter as a result of competition from Android tablets made by little-known “white box” vendors. , research firm IDC said on Tuesday. The iPad still led the market with 1.5 million units shipped to China. But the figure was down from the 3 million units shipped in the previous quarter, IDC analyst Dickie Chang said. The decline in shipments is probably the result of Apple reducing iPad inventory in preparation for its next generation tablets, Chang said. New versions of the 10-inch iPad and 8-inch iPad mini could come later this year, he added.
“I want to learn everything about everything,” Scarlett Johansson murmurs. Those aren’t the words of an ambitious Hollywood actress. They’re spoken by “Samantha,” the world’s “first intelligent operating system.” With nothing more than language, curiosity, and a zest for virtual life, Samantha entices her shy, awkward owner to fall in love. , a movie opening this November and starring Johansson and Joaquin Phoenix. Completely coincidentally, forging emotional bonds with users is key to the strategy that Nuance Communications is employing to compete with Apple’s Siri and Google’s Google Now, today’s dominant digital assistants. Apple, Google, Nuance, and other companies envision a service that “knows” the weather, your calendar, traffic conditions, and other information, and can deliver it to you across your phone, your computer, your TV, and eventually your car. At Apple and Google, the approach has focused on data: contributing it, collecting it, and collating it.
If you're tired of waiting for the awesome games that are just around the corner, then get your hands on some !
It’s hard to stand out as a $150 printer. Many, many models crowd this affordable price range. Brother pulls off quite a feat, therefore, with the $150 MFC-J870DW. It beats out every other competitor by being (NFC) as a standard feature. It also crams this product with nearly everything else you could possibly want in a consumer printer. Even better, the printer has reasonably priced inks and a two-year warranty. Checking features off a list is just half the race, though. Performance counts, too. And there, the MFC-J870DW is just an also-ran. NFC is a common feature in smartphones and tablets. You’ve likely seen commercials where people touch devices together to exchange a photo, or you’ve heard of by touching your phone to something. Frankly there’s not much more to NFC at this point, but Brother’s got the right idea in using it to ease printing from mobile devices. You don’t even need to touch your device to the printer—you can be several feet away (see video). You do, however, need to download Brother’s free iPrint & Scan app (available for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone), and the printer and the device must be on the same wireless network. Other mobile-printing options include Apple AirPrint for iOS devices, Google Cloud Print, and Cortado’s workplace solution for iOS, Android, and BlackBerry devices. In addition to NFC, this printer also boasts CD/DVD printing from a front-loading tray, ethernet and Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n, not ) connectivity, and a 20-sheet photo tray as well as a 100-sheet letter/legal input tray. The control panel has a 2.7-inch diagonal touchscreen, plus a touch-sensitive control panel whose buttons light only when they’re needed.
A McAfee vice president and seasoned technology executive will head the Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity office, the agency announced Monday. Phyllis Schneck will take the position of Deputy Under Secretary for Cybersecurity for the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD), which has four divisions that oversee physical and cybersecurity for U.S. infrastructure. She will be the Department of Homeland Security's chief cybersecurity policy official, occupying a position created in 2011. Amid a wave of constant cyberattacks, the U.S. government has stepped up its efforts to protect its own networks as well as encourage private companies such as utilities to ensure their systems are not vulnerable to remote attacks. Schneck, who holds a doctorate's degree in computer science from Georgia Tech, has been vice president and chief technology officer for the global public sector at McAfee, which is a division of Intel.