Schon im nächsten Jahr dürften Unternehmen weltweit ihre Bemühungen im Bezug auf die Realisierung interner Private Clouds verstärken und Hewlett-Packard (HP), Cisco Systems und Microsoft könnten zu den Hautprofiteuren dieses Trends gehören.
Die UN-Vollversammlung hat eine unter Federführung Deutschlands und Brasiliens ausgearbeitete Resolution zum Schutz der Privatsphäre im digitalen Zeitalter verabschiedet. Die als Reaktion auf die Spähaffäre um den US-Geheimdienst NSA eingebrachte Entschliessung wurde am Sitz der Vereinten Nationen in New York einmütig angenommen. Der Text war auf Druck der USA abgeschwächt worden.
Die Ebay-Tochter Paypal will das Bezahlen unterwegs ein Stück reibungsloser machen. Beim neuen Verfahren "Check-In" erkennt der Verkäufer den Kunden an dessen Gesicht, abgerechnet wird über das Paypal-Konto. Der Nutzer muss sich allerdings zuvor über die Paypal-App auf dem Smartphone in dem Geschäft anmelden, erläutert der Bezahldienst.
Die europäischen Hersteller von Glasfasern wollen sich gegen die Billigkonkurrenz aus Asien wehren. Sie haben die Behörden der Europäischen Union aufgefordert, die Zölle auf China-Importe anzuheben. Massive Subventionen von der chinesischen Regierung hätten den dort ansässigen Produzenten ermöglicht, die Preise in Europa zu unterbieten, hiess es zur Begründung. Das bedrohe die Zukunft der Branche.
Bei der in Oerlikon domizilierten Sunrise sind die neuen Prepaid-Optionen "flat" erhältlich. Dies teilt das Unternehmen in einem Communiqué mit. Die neuen Angebote funktionieren dem Communiqué zufolge wie eine Flatrate, bieten den Anwendern gleichzeitig aber die Unabhängigkeit eines Prepaid-Tarifs, was speziell für Kunden attraktiv sei, die sich nicht für die Dauer eines 12- oder 24-Monate-Vertrages in der Schweiz aufhalten, so Sunrise.
Die Zuger Infoniqa SQL kauft die in Baden-Dättwil domizilierte Glasshouse Technologies. Die seit 2001 im Schweizer Markt präsente Glasshouse ist auf Informations-Management fokussiert. Infoniqa SQL werde sämtliche Mitarbeitenden des Internehmens mit übernehmen, heisst es in einer Mitteilung dazu. Auch der Standort Baden-Dättwil soll bis auf weiteres bestehen bleiben.
Über eine mit dem französischen Telko Bouyges Telecom bietet Swisscom nun auch im Land der Gallier 4G/LTE-Roaming an. Surfen mit LTE-fähgigen Handys mit Bandbreiten bis zu 150 Mbit/s ist für Swisscom-Kunden bereits seit Juni möglich. Damals schloss Swisscom das erste interkontinentale 4G/LTE-Roaming-Abkommen zwischen Europa und Asien überhaupt.
Die US-amerikanische Festplattenherstellerin Western Digital geht neue Wege. Mit einer neuen Hybrid-Laufwerktechnik will das Unternehmen neue Märkte erobern. Hierfür hat Western Digital ein 120GB Solid State Drive (SSD) mit einer 1 TB grossen Festplatte (HDD) in einem 2,5-Zoll großen Laufwerk kombiniert.
Die USA werden Wikileaks-Gründer Julian Assange laut einem Zeitungsbericht vermutlich nicht wegen der Veröffentlichung geheimer Dokumente anklagen. Das Justizministerium sei zu dem Schluss gekommen, dass es dann auch gegen US-Medien vorgehen müsste, schrieb die "Washington Post" am Dienstag unter Berufung auf informierte Personen. Zugleich sei noch keine endgültige Entscheidung getroffen worden.
Intel will sich von seinem Pay-TV-Projekt verabschieden und den Service "On Cue" noch in diesem Jahr verkaufen. Der weltgrösste Chiphersteller visiert dabei einem Bericht der Finanznachrichtenagentur "Bloomberg" zufolge einen Preis von für 500 Mio. Dollar (370 Millionen Euro) an.
Apple is sending a signal that it hasn't abandoned the professional computing market with the latest Mac Pro, which will ship next month. But the workstation faces competition from its own sibling iMac as computer buyers weigh purchases. Loyalists of Apple's Mac Pro have been to the high-end desktop, which last received a facelift in 2010. The new workstation is priced starting at US$2,999 and has the latest Intel Xeon E5 processors, solid-state drive storage, Thunderbolt 2 and dual graphics cards tightly packed in a cylindrical chassis. The Mac Pro is targeted largely at creative professionals and engineers and has drawn interest for its new design and use of the latest technologies. "Apple has dominated the creative market for years. They have a lot of loyal users there, and those guys are influential," said Roger Kay, president at Endpoint Technologies Associates.
$1,300 (and up!) price tag. announced in October, with an energy efficient Haswell-based Intel Celeron 2955U processor, 2GB of RAM, and a fast-waking 32GB SSD augmented by two years of free 100GB cloud storage, courtesy of Google Drive. Beyond Wi-Fi, you’ll find solitary USB 2.0, USB 3.0, and HDMI ports, along with an SD card slot built into the Acer C720P’s slim 2.98 lb., 0.78-inch thick chassis. But those are all just numbers! The big news, of course, is finding a (backlit 1366-by-768) touchscreen in such an affordable device—and the fact that it’s a Chromebook. , something that Windows itself can’t even claim anymore. And aren’t most of your everyday tasks online anyway?
Windows Store app, it just got better, with the ability to capture notes using the Share charm and scan physical documents with your device's camera. OneNote now lets you capture virtually any Windows 8 screen. If you find a website you want to make note of or a recipe you want to save for later, just swipe from the right to open the Charms bar, and and use the Share charm to send it to OneNote across all your devices. You can save it as a part of the currently open page or as a new one. You can also add a short annotation. With the app's new Camera Scan feature, you can photograph tough-to-capture documents like magazine pages or a meeting whiteboard. Camera Scan automatically crops, rotates, straightens, removes shadows, and sharpens the image to make it look more like a scanned document.
We've known since last month about the US Government spying on Internet giants Google and Yahoo. Now we're beginning to understand how they may have done it. And no--they probably didn't send James Bond or Mata Hari to seduce an employee. In today’s espionage, bits and bytes trump bullets and babes. The , for more information on that No one without a security clearance knows exactly how the NSA tapped into these companies' servers. But in a , Nicole Perlroth and John Markoff offer a very plausible theory.
Call it a work in progress. YouTube is now trying to stanch the increased flow of spam on its site, just weeks after a new system was employed to clean it up, the company recently said. Earlier this month the Google-owned site its commenting system to push better quality comments and ones from certain people higher up, while diminishing less important or spammy posts. As part of those changes, users were forced to sign up for Google+, if they hadn’t already, and comment using that account. The new system was designed to reduce spam and lead to better conversations on the site, but things didn’t quite turn out that way. While the system did address previous spam issues, it also introduced new opportunities for abuse, YouTube said in a Monday evening .
BitTorrent's first video series with Vice goes behind the scenes of Lady Gaga's new song.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation should make public a legal opinion it used to justify a past telephone records surveillance program because other agencies may still be relying on the document for surveillance justifications, the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued in court Tuesday. EFF lawyer Mark Rumold asked a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to order the FBI to disclose a 2010 legal opinion from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, telling the judges that the OLC report amounts to final policy that agencies are required to disclose under open-records law. The EFF filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the OLC opinion in February 2011 and after the DOJ rejected its request. The FBI telephone surveillance program, which operated from 2003 to 2007, isn’t directly related to a controversial National Security Agency telephone records collection program disclosed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden earlier this year. However it’s possible for other surveillance agencies to use the OLC opinion to justify their surveillance programs going forward, Rumold said after the hearing. It doesn’t appear that the OLC limited its opinion to the FBI, he said. It’s important to make the opinion public because it shows “the blossoming of secret surveillance law,” he said.
Online music service providers are a step closer to more easily operating legally in the E.U. thanks to a vote Tuesday by a European Parliament committee. The Parliament’s legal affairs committee voted unanimously to allow online providers to obtain copyright licenses to stream music across E.U. borders. Currently, companies wanting to offer such services must obtain copyright licenses from 28 different member states. The proposed law would allow for a small number of authors’ collective management organizations to operate across E.U. borders. The Parliament said the proposal should mean more and better online music services. The law would apply to music streaming services such as Spotify as well as online music retailers including Amazon and Apple. The use of rights in the music sector accounts for about 80 percent of the revenue received by collecting societies. There are more than 250 collecting societies across the E.U. It is not clear whether organizations would pass monetary savings on to users if the law is passed.
A new Trojan program that targets users of online financial services has the potential to spread very quickly over the next few months, security researchers warn. The malware was first advertised on a private cybercrime forum in July, according to malware researchers from Kaspersky Lab who dubbed it Trojan-Banker.Win32/64.Neverquest. “By mid-November Kaspersky Lab had recorded several thousand attempted Neverquest infections all around the world,” said Sergey Golovanov, malware researcher at Kaspersky Lab, Tuesday in a . “This threat is relatively new, and cybercriminals still aren’t using it to its full capacity. In light of Neverquest’s self-replication capabilities, the number of users attacked could increase considerably over a short period of time.” Neverquest has most of the features found in other financial malware. It can modify the content of websites opened inside Internet Explorer or Firefox and inject rogue forms into them, it can steal the username and passwords entered by victims on those websites and allow attackers to control infected computers remotely using VNC (Virtual Network Computing).
Microsoft’s tablet ambitions keep taking baby steps towards the mainstream. On Tuesday, Chitika Insights sent me a report outlining some usage stats for the Surface RT and Surface 2, and surprise! The Windows RT-based Surface variants send almost as much traffic Chitika’s way as Nook or Nexus tablets do. The numbers aren’t all rosy for the tablet that wants to be a laptop, however. While use of the original Surface RT claims that very little of that traffic comes from Microsoft’s second-gen slate. More than a month after its release, the Surface 2 generates just 6.5 percent of the Surface line’s 6.4 percent usage share. That’s not exactly shocking. While the . Chitika’s numbers are pretty glum for except Apple if you pull back a bit further. The ad network excluded iPad usage stats from the overall tablet Web traffic in this report to provide clarity on the non-Apple market—and the iPad accounts for a whopping 80 percent of all traffic tablets send Chitika’s way.
VMware has posted a new beta release of Virtual SAN (VSAN) that lets enterprises add more storage capacity and management features. Server virtualization is still VMware’s bread and butter, but the company has this year expanded its aspirations to include the whole data center, including networks, storage as well as servers. The purported advantages are in many ways the same as in the server sector, including making it easier for administrators to add and remove capacity, be that storage or networking, and also use it more efficiently. The first version of the NSX network virtualization platform was made generally available last month, and VMware is still working on the storage part. On Tuesday, the company published what it called a VSAN beta refresh, which improves performance and adds some new features.
are any indication, touchscreens are the interface of the future. But there's just one problem with that portentous prediction: If it's true, laptop buyers are stuck with one foot in the past. The market analysts at NPD DisplaySearch say touchscreen notebooks just ain't selling. , though that's expected to rise to 11 percent by the end of the year. . . "I mean, there was more demand than there was supply in the types of devices that our customers had the most demand for, and there was some misalignment between where products were distributed and where there was demand, etc."
Google was hit by privacy complaints in 14 E.U. countries Tuesday over its new terms of service that allow user photos and comments in advertising. Google started featuring the names and photos of users in so-called “shared endorsements” on Nov. 11. This means that if a user, for instance, follows a computer manufacturer on Google+, that user’s name, photo and endorsement could show up in ads for that computer. Those changes to Google’s terms of service violate European data protection law, according to privacy advocate Simon Davies, who lodged the complaints. “On the basis of my initial assessment it appears that the changes will substantially violate Data Protection law,” he wrote in . He asked data protection authorities to investigate and seek the immediate suspension of the changes pending the outcome of the investigation.
A court in California has ruled against Samsung Electronics’ attempt to stay the proceedings in a patent dispute with Apple, agreeing with Apple that the procedure for reexamination of its patent could take years, and there was no certainty the result would benefit Samsung. Samsung had asked for a stay in a damages retrial even as the jury had started deliberations. It informed the court that the examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had issued an “Advisory Action” finding all claims of the U.S. Patent no. (the ‘915 patent) invalid. It described the Advisory Action as the examiner’s final word on the invalidity of the patent. Known as the “pinch-to-zoom” patent, the Apple patent is a key patent in the dispute between Apple and Samsung. It covers the ability to distinguish between the scrolling movement of one finger and two-finger gestures like pinch-to-zoom on a touch-screen to activate certain functions. The jury would be deliberating on awarding damages on an invalid ‘915 patent for 12 of the 13 products at issue, Samsung said in its filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose division.
For all that we already know about , but retail Steam Machines will be made exclusively by third-party PC makers, and we don’t even know which PC makers are embracing Steam boxes—until now. Late Thursday, custom PC maker iBuyPower unveiled a prototype of its own Steam Machine. Underneath the sleek white exterior—which (which costs about $180 retail all by its lonesome). More good news: The power supply is integrated within the body of the Steam Machine, rather than relying on a bulky external power brick. iBuyPower told , for example, the publication reached 46 fps in Metro: Last Light at 1080p resolution and High graphics details, and only eeked out 60-plus fps in Crysis 3 by dropping to “Medium” settings. Those two particular games are particularly system-punishing, though, and dropping the eye candy a bit shouldn’t be as much of an issue in the living room as it is on your PC, since you’re sitting further away from the display.
In the retail stampede that now marks the holiday shopping season, Black Friday is being trampled right along with the occasional unlucky store employee. We now live in a “Black November” dystopia: a nonstop onslaught of deals that starts the first day of November and lasts the entire month. “Black Friday has outgrown itself as retailers have cannibalized the name ‘Black Friday’ and used it to promote deals all throughout the month of November,” says Matthew Ong, a senior analyst at NerdWallet. “This is partially a response to the late Black Friday date in 2013, but this Christmas creep is a trend that’s been ramping up in the last few years and [is] only likely to continue.” But it’s not just about the timing. A closer look at the deals around Black Friday show how the date has become a buzzword to trick people into pulling the trigger on shoddy deals. Retailers are manipulating prices and the products themselves just to get you into the store. Once you’re in the store, they’ve already won. So before you camp out in line, read on to learn the real deal about Black Friday. [Related: ]
A few months ago, I took Roccat’s for a spin. It’s pretty nice! You can reprogram many of the keys, set up all manner of timers and macro commands, and press letters to make words in relative comfort. The price was fair, too—you can snap one up on Amazon for $85. A solid piece of gear all around, but it’s a shame it wasn’t a mechanical keyboard; I’m a sucker for the superior comfort and responsiveness afforded by a solid set of Cherry MX switches. So Roccat’s Ryos MK Pro should be right up my alley: it does just about everything the Isku FX does while adding plenty new features and sports glorious, clickety-clackety mechanical keys. This would be my no-brainer recommendation for anyone looking for a premium gaming keyboard, right up until the moment I see the price tag—$170. That’s $30 more than the that usually lives on my desk. Is Roccat’s Ryos MK Pro $30 better than Razer’s best? Follow that relentless clacking noise to find out. The Ryos MK Pro I’ve got here packs Cherry MX Brown switches, though they’re available in any flavor you prefer—if Cherry MX switches are a foreign concept for you, check out . In short, a switch’s type determines the amount of force you need to apply before the key is actuated, or pressed. MX Browns require a bit less force press than most other types of switches and serve up a tactile bump when actuated—with a little practice you’ll learn to move on to the next key after the bump, instead of pressing a key all the way down. MX Browns also offer no audible click, so they’re ostensibly a bit quieter.
Going visiting this holiday season? If you’re staying with friends or family members, don’t be surprised if the bed is lumpy, the room is cold, and the Wi-Fi is locked down. Not on purpose, of course. Nearly everyone has a home Wi-Fi network nowadays, but not everyone remembers their network password when guests start showing up with tablets, laptops, and phones in need of Internet. Typically, this happens because after Uncle Rusty sets up the router, he never has to touch it again and eventually his unbeatable password gets forgotten. Result: No Wi-Fi for you, or any other visitor. live over the river and through the woods), the connection could be slow. Worse, streaming a couple of Netflix movies will quickly burn through your monthly data allotment. No, the only smart fix here is to wrangle your host’s router, to duck into the settings and make the network more amenable to guests. Tricky? It might be, but I bet it'll be easier than you think.
Cybercriminals are increasingly using the “Blackshades” malware program whose source code was leaked three years ago, according to an analysis by Symantec. Blackshades, which Symantec identifies as “W32.Shadesrat,” has been infecting more Microsoft Windows computers and is being controlled by hundreds of command-and-control servers worldwide, which deliver instructions and receive information, wrote Santiago Cortes, a security response engineer at Symantec, in a . Blackshades is a remote access tool (RAT) that collects usernames and passwords for email and Web services, instant messaging applications, FTP clients and more. It has been sold on underground forums since at least 2010. It’s common for hackers to use remote access tools, which can be used to upload other malware to a computer or manipulate files. To avoid antivirus software, the programs are often frequently modified.
Yahoo has been hiring hotshot journalists to boost its news cred, and Monday’s addition of Katie Couric could help with the company’s efforts to reinvigorate itself. But it has to get the content just right. The Internet company deputy news editor Megan Liberman. The moves could give users more reasons to visit the site and help Yahoo sell more ads against its video news reports. But for that to happen, observers said, Yahoo’s original news content needs to be just that: original.
A new malicious software program, advertised for sale on underground forums, claims to mine and steal bitcoins, according to a Danish security company. The Atrax malware is notable for its low $250 price and use of TOR, short for The Onion Router, a privacy network that makes it difficult to track communications, wrote Jonas Monsted of CSIS in a . After seeing it advertised on Web forums, CSIS is looking for an active sample of Atrax to get a fuller understanding of its capabilities, Monsted wrote. “We are looking at a new crimeware kit with a lot of different functions and plugins,” he wrote.
Salesforce.com has come under fire from critics who say the “hackathon” it held at last week’s Dreamforce conference was judged unfairly, and CEO Marc Benioff is now promising a thorough investigation. “We are doing a full review of the Hackathon,” Benioff said in a . “We always respond to feedback, and this will be no different. It must be a legitimate victory.” Contestants in the hackathon competed to make a mobile application using Salesforce.com’s technology. The top $1 million prize went to Upshot, which developed an application that allows users to create and edit Salesforce.com reports from mobile devices. The official rules for the hackathon allowed coding to begin on an application as of Oct. 25, when the contest was announced. Eligible applications also had to be “developed solely as part of this Hackathon,” the rules state.
We've been hearing a lot about technical problems with the Federal government's . But slow downloads and 404 errors aren’t the worst of what could plague the Obamacare site. According to white-hat hacker David Kennedy, the site can be easily hacked, allowing criminals to compromise computers and steal people's private information. White-hat hackers examine systems, searching for security flaws. But instead of criminally exploiting whatever flaws they find, they report them so that the systems can become more secure. Kennedy is chief executive of , a security company. On a , Kennedy offered some harsh words about the Obamacare Web site. After noting the well-publicized performance problems, "we basically started poking and prodding and looking at the security, and we found that it was pretty bad all around… Putting your information on there is definitely a risk." What could happen to people who use the site should it be compromised? Kennedy warns of "everything from hacking someone's computer so when you visit the website it actually tries to hack your computer back, all the way to being able to extract email addresses, users names—first name, last name—[and] locations."
BlackBerry’s chief operating, marketing and financial officers are leaving as recently appointed CEO John Chen makes his mark on the struggling mobile vendor. Chief Operating Officer Kristian Tear, Chief Marketing Officer Frank Boulben and Chief Financial Officer Brian Bidulka all are leaving BlackBerry, the company announced on Monday. James Yersh, the former controller and head of compliance, will take over the top financial spot. No replacements were named for Tear or Boulben, who both were hired by ousted CEO Thorsten Heins in May 2012 as BlackBerry geared up for the and a renewed consumer marketing effort. BlackBerry 10 didn’t launch until the following January, and the company has since moved away from the consumer business. “I look forward to working more directly with the talented teams of engineers, and the sales and marketing teams around the world to facilitate the BlackBerry turn-around and to drive innovation,” Chen said in a press release. Departing CFO Bidulka, who worked at BlackBerry for eight years, will remain as a special adviser to assist with the transition for the rest of the company’s fiscal year.
Parts of HealthCare.gov, the two-month-old insurance-shopping website run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, crashed for about an hour Monday, just days before agency officials say the site will be running smoothly for the “vast majority” of users. The site, a key part of 2010’s Affordable Care Act insurance reform legislation, also experienced “periods of latency and slowness” Sunday, said Julie Bataille, communications director for the HHS Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Government officials, including HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and President Barack Obama, have promised that the site, which allows uninsured U.S. residents to shop for and compare health coverage, would be working well for the majority of people by the end of this month. The outage in the insurance application and enrollment tools on the website Monday was due to “parts of the system not communicating effectively on the back end,” Bataille said during a press briefing. The federal data-services hub portion of the website, where health insurers are linked to federal agencies to determine an applicant’s eligibility for insurance, remained in operation during the outage of the other parts of the site, she said.
The holiday week has officially begun and retailers aren't wasting any time rolling out hot deals. In a true pre-Black Friday offer, Dell has dropped the price of their popular discounted a massive a $119. Scroll down to get these and the rest of today's hottest deals. ). with free shipping (normally $129.99).