No two recessions are the same, and the shakedown hitting the U.S., indeed the global economy, is very different from the one experienced in 2000-2002. That was a powerful combination of the Silicon Valley getting hit directly from the dot-bomb implosion and the overall U.S. economy shattered by the events on September 11, 2001.
This time, the industries hardest hit are banking and housing, and tech has merely been caught in the blast radius. The lack of credit, draconian decisions by credit card issuers and uncertainty about jobs has people keeping their wallets closed and limiting purchases to the essentials.
Vendors are trying their best to get product moving. The PC sector has taken to cutting prices as much as it can without actually losing money. However, customers are still not motivated. PC sales fell to just 1.1 percent year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter.
So, can the release of Windows 7 get PC sales moving again? Even in prerelease form, Windows 7 has done something remarkable; it's generated real, positive excitement on the blogosphere and Web sites for its stability and performance. There is also some anecdotal evidence that lots of people are willing to buy a Windows 7 machine when it debuts.
The clearest statement came this week from Brian Gladden, chief financial officer of Dell (NASDAQ: DELL), on a conference call with analysts to discuss the firm's fourth quarter and fiscal year.
"We're starting to get pretty excited about Windows 7 and think it will be an important catalyst for growth," he told analysts on the call.
Then Gladden said the one thing Microsoft probably doesn't want to hear: "Having said that, it will likely push some purchases back until it comes out."
Analysts interviewed by Random Tech Stuff are cautiously optimistic the release of Windows 7 can help drive PC sales. The questionable economic situation is a black cloud in everyone's crystal ball, forcing all of them to temper their sentiments.
These sentiments were also impacted by the fact that Microsoft still has not given a release date for Windows 7. It continues to maintain the party line of a January 2010 release date. Random Tech Stuff has learned otherwise -- that the company internally has set a target date of June 2009. Judging by the solid condition of the beta and numerous accolades heaped on it, that June target seems increasingly likely.
As you’ve no doubt heard, Apple released a beta version of Safari 4 earlier this week. Among the new features in this pre-release is a major overhaul of the program’s interface. While Windows users seem to be quite pleased with many of these interface changes, as the Windows version now looks much more like a native Windows application, Mac users are voicing mixed reactions. Perhaps the most controversial change in Safari 4 for the Mac is a new approach to tabbed browsing that places tabs at the top of the window—replacing the traditional title bar—rather than in a dedicated tab bar.
I’ve been using Safari 4 since early Tuesday, and while that’s admittedly a short time, it’s long enough to get a feel for how these tab changes affect both browsing and window management. Here’s a quick look at the good, the bad, and the in between.
(If you prefer Safari 3’s approach to tabs, it turns out you can change a hidden setting to use that interface. Rob Griffiths covers a number of other ways to tweak Safari 4's interface.)
The good
While Safari 4’s tab interface is generating some criticism, it does provide benefits compared to Safari 3:
The address bar, toolbar buttons, search field, and bookmarks bar now appear within each tab, rather than at the top of the Safari window. This makes logical sense, since the functions these items perform are specific to the currently-visible tab, rather than to all tabs.
By essentially combining the tab bar and the title bar, Safari 4 gives you a bit more vertical space for Web-page content. It’s a small bit—two or three lines of text on a typical Web page—but it’s there.
The new “handle” that appears in the upper-right corner of each tab makes it more obvious that you can drag tabs to rearrange them. (On the other hand, these handles look like Mac OS X resize handles, rather than items used to move objects. And hiding the handle, as well as each tab’s close button, for non-active tabs lessens the effectiveness of the change).
Assuming you have the bookmarks bar hidden, moving the tab bar to the top of the window—along with other changes, such as moving the reload button into the address field—makes the “browsing” area of Safari’s window look more like Mobile Safari, increasing interface consistency between the two.
Almost there...
Given that the title bar has been replaced by the tab bar, Apple got Safari's behavior mostly right when it comes to moving a window when you can see only the top of it. Despite what you might expect, you can click (almost) anywhere on the tab bar and drag the window around without selecting the tab on which you clicked. This is the right approach, as it means that when a Safari window isn't frontmost, the tab bar acts like a traditional title bar.
Unfortunately, I had to write "mostly" and "almost" in the previous paragraph. It turns out the behavior of a background Safari window differs depending on where on a tab you click-drag. If you click-drag on the center of any tab, the window moves as expected. But if you click-drag a tab's move handle—which is invisible until your cursor is directly over it, so it's easy to accidentally hit—you switch windows, the clicked-on tab is selected, and that tab moves instead of the entire window. Alternately, if you click-drag on the tab's close circle—also invisible until just before you hit it—nothing happens at all. There's a logic here once you figure it out, but it's so obscure that I think the typical user will simply wonder why Safari doesn't seem to behave consistently.
The bad
The benefits of this new approach to tabs don’t come without costs. After a couple days using Safari 4, it’s clear there are drawbacks, as well:
The loss of a window-wide title bar is a departure from two decades of Mac OS interface standards. You no longer have a distinct title bar for grabbing and moving a window. Instead, to move a Safari 4 window, you grab a tab. This works, but it’s a little sad to see such inconsistency from a company that, with a few exceptions, has embraced interface consistency as a key to ease of use.
By replacing the traditional title bar with tabs and a New Tab button, Safari 4 is the new poster child for “click-through” problems—the phenomenon where clicking on a background window not only brings that window to the front but also passes your click through to the window, potentially performing another action. Specifically, if you click on the “title bar” of a Safari 4 window that’s currently behind other windows, that click also activates the particular tab or button on which you clicked, bringing a particular tab to the front or, more disruptively, creating a new tab. The result is that you must now be cognizant of where in the title bar of a Safari window you click. The corollary is that if you don't want to accidentally select another tab, the size of the target for your bring-forward click is inversely proportional to how many tabs you have open.
The only way to move a tab in Safari 4 is to grab the tiny handle in the tab’s top-right corner. The reason for this is obvious: because top-mounted tabs replace the traditional window title bar, grabbing any tab’s title replaces the “grab the title bar to move the window” action. So Apple had to come up with a new way of moving tabs. Unfortunately, the small size of this handle makes it more difficult—and more RSI-inducing—to perform this action.
These are actually two different Safari 4 windows.
If you’ve got a window without tabs in front of a window with tabs, the resulting appearance can be confusing, as you can see in the image to the right.
In Safari 3, you could control/right-click on the title of the current window to browse higher levels of the current Web page’s site; this feature is gone in Safari 4, since the tab and title bar are one and the same and tabs already have their own contextual menu.
As Daring Fireball's John Gruber pointed out, it’s no longer as easy to drag a URL to a Safari window to create a new tab for that URL. With Safari 3, you could just drag a URL to any open area of the tab bar. Now you must drag the URL to a tiny, tiny sliver along the left-hand edge of the New Tab button. And since there’s no distinct indicator that you’re dragging a URL onto that button, rather than onto the right-most tab, it’s far too easy to accidentally drag the URL onto that tab instead—which, of course, replaces the tab’s contents.
If you tend to click on tabs more often than you use the bookmarks bar, the new interface requires more mousing. (Since the tab bar isn’t at the very edge of the screen—you’ve still got the menu bar above it—there’s little Fittsian advantage to placing the tab bar at the top of the window.)
Finally, there are areas where Safari 4’s melding of the title bar and the tab bar just doesn’t look right. For example, as shown to the right, there’s no separator between the left-most tab and the area of the title bar containing the close, minimize and zoom buttons. This makes it appear as if those buttons affect only the left-most tab, when they’re actually window-wide controls.
Work in progress
Keep in mind that we're talking about a beta version of Safari 4, and the first publicly available beta at that. So it’s possible many of these behaviors could change as Apple tweaks the program for its official release. In fact, there’s evidence Apple used feedback on beta versions of Safari 3, first released back in 2007, to refine the final product, released several months later. (You can submit suggestions and bug reports for Safari 4 by clicking on the Bug button in the toolbar.) So no one should make final judgements about Safari 4 based on a couple days’ use of the beta. But at the same time, I think there are valid interface complaints that go beyond “it’s different.”
Of course, an interesting question is, “Why did Apple make these changes to tabs?” Jason Snell thinks the Safari team was spurred by Google’s Chrome. Frequent Macworld contributor Andy Ihnatko speculates that it’s a step towards making Safari more suitable for a possible tablet Mac. I think both theories have some merit, although I also think the Safari team was trying to make tabs and their features more obvious to people who may not use them frequently. I’m hoping that between now and the final release of version 4, Apple can accomplish that goal while addressing some of the beta’s shortcomings.
Rumors of a search deal between Yahoo and Microsoft surfaced once again Wednesday, when Yahoo's Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen said the Sunnyvale company was not opposed to doing a deal with Microsoft if the price was right and Yahoo was able to retain control of its users' data.
Jorgenson's remarks, at an investor conference, helped boost Yahoo's stock 2 percent in after-hours trading. In regular trading, Yahoo fell 2 percent to close at $12.48.
Still, no one expects a deal to be announced immediately. Yahoo Chief Executive Carol Bartz, who was hired in January, has yet to assemble her team. She is in the midst of charting a major reorganization, likely to be announced in the next few days, that will create more centralized management for the freewheeling Internet icon.
"These things go in steps," said Jason Helfstein, an analyst at Oppenheimer. In addition to figuring out the future of Yahoo's search business, Helfstein noted, Bartz must find a way to increase the value of display advertising, the banners and graphical boxes that appear on Web pages.
Yahoo has long talked about the value of combining search advertising and display advertising. This week it revealed a new advertising service that determines which display ads to show on a page based on what the person reading that page has searched for recently. Earlier this month, Yahoo also began showing small display ads, including video, alongside search results.
But it's too soon to tell if such initiatives will improve Yahoo's financial performance.IDC, a market research firm, says display advertising could fall as much as 18 percent in the first quarter of this year. However, Karsten Weide, an IDC analyst, said the decline will not be as severe for Yahoo, thanks to its ability to effectively target display ads.
Indeed, Yahoo's performance last quarter shows that the company may have finally found some solid ground. While IDC estimated that display advertising fell 7 percent across the board, Yahoo's display sales were off only 2 percent.
Even more encouraging, Yahoo has stopped losing market share in search. According to comScore, Yahoo delivered 21 percent of U.S. Internet searches in January, vs. 63 percent for Google and 8.5 percent for Microsoft. Compared with the prior month, Yahoo was up half a point, and Google was down half a point.
Meanwhile, Helfstein said he expected a number of resignations as Bartz, who was hired in January, puts her team in place. In recent weeks, former Yahoo president Sue Decker and her head of communications Jill Nash both resigned. Gerald Horkan, a senior vice president handling corporate strategy, also left a few weeks ago. Marco Boerries, who headed Yahoo's mobile initiative, left Sunday, and Neeraj Khemlani, the vice president in charge of Yahoo News, resigned Monday to become special assistant to Hearst Chief Executive Frank A. Bennack Jr.
Microsoft (MSFT) has gone and done it, they've filed suit in U.S. District Court claiming Linux violates their patents.
The case centers on portable GPS device maker Tomtom, which uses Linux in its device. Despite Microsoft claiming for years that parts of Linux infringe on its intellectual property, the case is believed to be the first time Microsoft has tried to prove a case against Linux in court.
No word yet on the finer points of the dispute, all we know so far is Microsoft claims eight patents were infringed. TechFlash surfaced the story:
Five of the patents in dispute relate to in-car navigation technologies, while the other three involve file-management techniques. Gutierrez said Microsoft has reached licensing agreements with with other in-car navigation vendors over the same patents, and it remains open to "quickly resolving" the TomTom dispute through licensing.
Microsoft has said previously that Linux and other open-source programs violate more than 200 of its patents -- elevating the tension that has long existed between Microsoft and the open-source community. Asked if this TomTom case is the start of a broader legal campaign over those alleged violations, Gutierrez said no.
"Microsoft respects and appreciates the important role that open-source software plays in our industry and we respect and appreciate the passion and the great contribution that open-source developers make in our industry," Gutierrez said. He said that respect and appreciation is "not inconsistent with our respect for intellectual-property rights."
We're expecting fireworks before this one is done: It pits the unstoppable force of Linux advocacy versus the immovable object of Microsoft tenacity.
Apple Inc.’s directors, after taking a back-seat role for years to Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs, were forced to respond to investors yesterday as they pushed for an update on Jobs’s health.
Apple’s co-lead directors, Arthur Levinson and Bill Campbell, each answered questions at the company’s annual meeting on how the board has handled disclosures about Jobs’s health, succession planning and executive pay at Apple. In past years, Jobs has dominated the meeting, with board members sitting quietly in the first row of the audience.
“The dynamism of him controlling the meeting has changed,” Scott Adams, a representative of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said in an interview after the meeting. His organization owns 18,218 Apple shares. In the past, “Jobs would not allow questions to go to directors.”
Standing up to address a packed room, Levinson, the CEO of Genentech Inc., said yesterday that “nothing has changed,” since Apple’s disclosure on Jan. 14 that Jobs was taking a five- month medical leave.
“He certainly remains the CEO -- he’s responsible and deeply involved in all strategic matters,” said Levinson, who’s served on Apple’s board since 2000. “If there’s new information that we deem important to disclose, that will happen. At this point we feel we’ve met all disclosure obligations and responsibilities.”
Apple’s Disclosures
Corporate governance experts have faulted Apple’s board, which includes former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt, for not talking about Jobs’s health sooner and in more detail after concern about his weight loss last year caused movements in the stock price. Jobs, a cancer survivor, missed the annual meeting for the first time in more than a decade.
While giving shareholders updates isn’t a hard and fast rule, Apple’s board will probably be compelled to talk more about Jobs’s health if anything changes significantly, said Jahan Raissi, a partner at Shartsis Friese LLP in San Francisco. He was a former senior counsel in the enforcement division of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“If in two months it comes out that something changed and people knew two months ago and they didn’t say anything, there could be hell to pay,” Raissi said in an interview. “If they don’t say anything more, then it’s reasonable to believe that the company doesn’t know any different information.”
Apple fell $1.97, or 2.2 percent, to $89.19 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares have gained 4.5 percent this year.
Biggest Assembly
Yesterday’s gathering -- held in the same auditorium at Apple’s Cupertino, California, headquarters where Jobs typically introduces new products -- was the biggest public assembly of directors at an annual meeting in the past three years.
Levinson and Intuit Inc. Chairman Campbell, seated in the front row, were flanked by four other independent directors: Gore, J. Crew Inc. CEO Millard “Mickey” Drexler, Avon Inc. CEO Andrea Jung and former International Business Machines Corp. finance chief Jerome York. The only board members absent were Jobs and Schmidt.
Last year, Jobs was joined by Gore, Schmidt, Levinson and Campbell. In 2007, Levinson, Campbell and Schmidt also attended.
On Jan. 5, Jobs said treatment for his weight loss was “relatively simple.” Nine days later, he announced he would take leave after learning his health issues were “more complex” than he originally thought.
SEC Probe
The SEC started an investigation into the disclosures to determine whether investors were misled, a person familiar with the matter said last month. The review doesn’t mean investigators have seen evidence of wrongdoing. Apple general Counsel Daniel Cooperman declined to comment on the SEC investigation yesterday.
Jobs, who co-founded Apple in 1976 and was ousted in a management coup in 1985, returned to lead the company in 1997. One of the first things he did was to replace all but two of the board members. His picks included Campbell, a former Apple executive, and York, an adviser to Tracinda Corp. CEO Kirk Kerkorian.
“It’s a very secretive culture, a very closed culture,” said Conrad Mackerron, director of corporate social responsibility for As You Sow, an environmental advocacy group in San Francisco. The group, which met with Jobs two years ago to talk about Apple’s environmental policies, submitted a shareholder proposal asking that the company provide more details on its effort to cut carbon emissions. “It’s hard to talk in an open manner.”
No Mobile Phones
Only shareholders were allowed into the meeting hall and able to ask questions. Reporters, and latecomers, watched the 75-minute event on video in a separate room. Apple banned the use of mobile phones, personal computers, cameras and recording devices. Apple typically doesn’t make a transcript of the event available.
Campbell, 68, used his time at the microphone to talk about the board’s decision to vote against a “say-on-pay” proposal. Campbell said the board wanted to retain the flexibility to reward executives as “we see fit.”
“You can sense there’s more disclosure,” in that board members were forced to answer questions, said Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray & Co. in Minneapolis, who has recommended investors buy Apple’s shares since June 2004. “It’s a good thing that Apple is more transparent.”
Investors still want more information, said Andy Hargreaves, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Oregon.
“If I was a shareholder, I would have been upset if I heard them say, ‘He was fine, it’s a hormone imbalance’ and then nine days later, hear him say ‘I’m taking leave,’” said Hargreaves, who rates Apple shares “outperform.” “That’s misleading at best. It’s possible that things change that quickly. That’s why the lack of disclosure is disconcerting.”
While the PlayStation 3 continues to be regarded as the runner-up in online console gaming, the system's growing library of free to play online titles has helped PlayStation Network (PSN) grow to double every year, and the growth continues.
Last year, Microsoft said it had reached the 17 million subscriber mark for Xbox Live, but more recent numbers are not yet available. The company made a strong push early this year to attract more users to the online gaming service by dropping the price of an annual subscription to $30 from the customary $50.
Though direct competitors, it sometimes appears that Sony is in a different boat from Microsoft altogether. While Microsoft has to move to attract console owners to its online service, Sony has to use the online service to attract users to its console.
When considering this, it's no surprise that nearly 95% of PS3 owners are also PSN members (20 million PSN members out of 21 million consoles sold), while only 66% of Xbox 360 owners are Xbox Live subscribers (est. 18.5 million users to 27.93 million consoles).
Google announced that priced applications would start appearing in the Android Market almost two weeks ago and now I spent some time browsing through the Android Market on my T-Mobile G1. Paid apps started actually appearing just about a week ago. Once you are in the Android Market you simply press the Menu button and select Change view to toggle between all, free, or priced applications in both the Applications list or Games list. There are currently 227 applications (ranging from 99 cents to $34.99) and 148 games (ranging from 99 cents to $9.99) for a total of 375 priced applications in the Android Market.
I currently have just about 50 free applications/utilities loaded on my G1 and receive low memory notifications every day that force me to remove an application or find some data cache to clear to continue working. Thus, at this time I cannot even purchase and install a priced application even if I wanted to. Browsing through the list of 375 priced applications, I cannot honestly say there are any that compel me to make a purchase on my G1 at this time. The fact that I have no real available memory doesn’t help either as I am uncertain what will happen if I purchase and then uninstall an application and am not in a position to waste lots of my money right now.
The only two priced applications I have so far, TeleNav GPS Navigator and TouchDown were loaded outside the Android Market.
Some of my favorite applications that give me all the functionality I currently need are available for free and include imeem Mobile, Shazam, ShopSavvy, Twidroid, CadreBible, fBook, PhoneFlix, Skype Lite, Truphone, Last.fm, Opera Mini, and Toggle Settings.
Have you purchased any applications on the Android Market? If so, what ones do you recommend I consider? Is anyone else experiencing these major low memory issues like me?
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told stock market analysts during a conference call that Windows Mobile 7 should be released in 2010. While the software is third in OS market share behind Symbian and RIM, it still is a money losing venture for the guys from Redmond. But the executive said that with the continuing growth of the smartphone segment of the cellphone industry, Windows Mobile should continue growing even with a down economy. Many analysts cite the smartphone segment as being the only part of the wireless phone business that continues to grow even in the face of the world wide recession. Ballmer stated that Windows and Windows Mobile were two sides of a single project and to expect more sharing of functions, like the browser, between the two. He also said that there would be no Microsoft phone citing the firm's desire to stick to the licensing model of doing business.
Apple has just launched a new service called Pass for its popular iTunes music store. It's like a season pass for a favorite artist, in this case the electro band Depeche Mode. Fans who pay $18.99 for this first iTunes Pass immediately get two Depeche Mode singles, Wrong and the "Black Light Odyssey Dub Remix" of the new track Oh Well.
Then, on April 21, they’ll receive Depeche Mode’s new album called Sounds of the Universe. Between now and when the pass expires in 15 weeks, fans will also receive videos, remixes and other content, some of it exclusive. All the material is automatically downloaded (in the DRM-free iTunes Plus format) into iTunes. Subscribers receive an email letting you know it’s there.
It's worth noting that the press release announcing iTunes Pass came from EMI Music, not Apple. Before thinking this is Apple’s entree into the music subscription business, which is something Steve Jobs has pooh-poohed in the past, note that iTunes Pass is quite different.
Under an all-you-can eat music subscription plan at a place such as Rhapsody, you have access to the material only as long as you keep paying a fee. With iTunes Pass, you own the content that has been downloaded, even after the pass expires.
It’s a safe bet Apple will soon extend iTunes Pass to other performers. In the release, Apple Vice President Eddy Cue says, “iTunes Pass is a great way for artists to give exclusive music and video, on their own schedule, directly to their fans. iTunes customers are going to love getting additional content directly from their favorite artists right when they make it available."
But Apple isn’t saying who those artists are, much less when the material will be available.
Apple also announced the public beta of Safari 4, which is available today for both Windows PCs and Macs. It incorporates a “Top Sites” visual preview feature, as well as the clever Cover Flow feature (for flipping through your Web history and bookmarks) that is familiar to Mac and iTunes users.
I just started testing the new Safari, and it looks positive at first glance. I'll let you know what I think once I've spent more time with it.
Microsoft Corp. will turn Windows 7's background picture black and put up persistent notices on the screen if users don't activate the new operating system, a company manager said yesterday.
The Windows 7 beta, the public preview Microsoft launched Jan. 10 but has since stopped offering, exhibits much of the same behavior as Windows Vista if it is not activated within 30 days, said Alex Kochis, senior product manager for Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program.
"If you do not activate the software within the grace period, you will receive persistent notifications, including a message from the system tray every 60 minutes that reminds you to 'Activate Windows Now,' " said Kochis in a long entry to the WGA blog. Also on-screen, he said, is a permanent notice that the copy of Windows is "non-genuine," Microsoft's term for pirated or not-yet-activated versions of the operating system; a similar message appears whenever the user launches the Control Panel, which houses Windows' settings and options.
"While you can change the plain black background to any background you choose, if changed, the background will reset to a plain black background every 60 minutes," noted Kochis. "Also, you will not be able to receive optional updates from Windows Update unless the copy of Windows is properly activated."
Several of those on-screen elements -- notably the black desktop and the always-on-screen "non-genuine" warnings -- are shared with Windows Vista, which was revamped with Service Pack 1 to soften the impact of not activating the operating system. Before SP1, Vista used a so-called kill switch that dropped the operating system into what Microsoft called "reduced-functionality mode," in which nothing worked except the Internet Explorer browser for only an hour at a time.
Other bits, however, appear to be new to Windows 7, including the notice that pops up when the Control Panel is launched and the blocking of some updates.
Kochis also spelled out the warnings that Windows 7 puts in front of users as the 30-day grace period slowly shrinks. If the user doesn't activate within the first three days of use, for example, a message reading "Activate Windows Now" and the number of days remaining appears in on the Windows 7 taskbar.
A pop-up asking the user to activate appears daily through the 27th day, said Kochis, at which point it switches to an every-four-hours schedule until the final, 30th day, when it changes to an hourly timetable.
Although Kochis did not mention it, others have noted that like Vista, Windows 7 can be run for up to 120 days, not just 30, without activating the operating system, by using the same "slmgr -rearm" command that gained notoriety after Vista's debut. Several blogs have posted instructions on how to use this legal method to extend the life span of Windows 7, including My Digital Life.
Kochis noted, however, that nothing is set in stone. "The beta isn't necessarily the final experience that will appear in the released product and that based on feedback some of the specific elements of the product activation experience could change," he said.
A member of the Android team has told VentureBeat that Apple has apparently asked that Google not implement multi-touch in Android, a request which Google had complied with. Multi-touch is the technology that allows a touch display to register simultaneous input on different parts of the screen. First popularized by Apple's iPhone, it has since appeared in the form of multitouch trackpad on new MacBooks.
In the past, one of the chief complaints about the G1 Android-based smartphone was its lack of multi-touch--now we know why. Of course, with the inevitable launch of the Palm Pre, pressure for Android to implement what seems to be the de facto feature for phones with large screens can only be mounting.
Apple today launched the first beta of Safari 4, the new version of its web browser for both Windows and Mac OS X computers. Safari 4 brings a lot of new features, including full history search, a smart address field, and full-page zoom. Apple also claims that Safari 4 runs much faster due to its new JavaScript engine.
The Safari 4 Beta is available for download from Apple's Web site; it will set you back about 107MB of disk space. I gave Safari 4 a spin, and while I noticed quite a few elements 'borrowed' from Google's Chrome browser, I was impressed with Apple's offering.
One of the most noticeable changes is the new Top Sites feature, a page that displays your most visited or favorite sites. It can be configured as either your home page or as a page you see every time you open a new tab. Chrome offers a similar feature, but Apple's iteration offers more eye candy, with a 3D display and its iPhone-like ability to rearrange sites. Pages that have been updated since you last visited them, will be marked with a blue star in the corner.
Safari 4's title bar also gets a Chrome-like look, with new tabs displayed there, instead of in a traditional tabs bar under the address field--making better use of your screen real-estate. Tabs can be rearranged, or you can drag them out and create new browser windows. And, as in previous versions, Safari 4 can merge all of your open windows into one multi-tabbed window.
Your browsing history is now brought to life with Cover Flow, so you can flick through your recently visited Web pages like you do with your album art in iTunes. The new Full History search feature can prove to be extremely useful, as it goes through all of the pages you have previously browsed and the text they contain. If you know you saw a certain term somewhere, but you can't remember where, you can simply search for it, and all pages containing it in their body text and name will be displayed.
The Smart Search Field in Safari 4 is now integrated with Google Suggest, and one you start typing, the field suggests search strings. This means you'll no longer need Safari plugins, like Inquisitor, to get this kind of functionality. The Full Page Zoom feature lets users zoom in and out on a page (by using keyboard shortcuts or menus) without distorting a page's layout or losing quality. Mac users were able to perform a similar task before, but now it's available to both PC users, too.
As for speed, Apple claims Safari 4 is the world's fastest browser. While I can't verify that claim, I can say that the new browser, running JavaScript 4.2, surely feels faster and page-loading time is indeed shorter. Safari 4 also includes HTML 5, a technology that allows wed-based applications to store information locally without an Internet connection.
I really like the new version of Safari. It definitely feels faster--an improvement that alone should give headaches to Microsoft and Mozilla. Add in the other nifty features and eye-candy Safari 4 brings, like Cover Flow, and this browser should give them plenty to think about.
Even though some of Safari 4 new feature seem like they are borrowed from competitors' applications, it clearly sets itself apart as a top-class Web browser. Meanwhile, if you would like to browse the Internet, iTunes style, you can download the Safari 4 beta from Apple's site. After you do, come back and tell me what you think.
Microsoft is investigating a new vulnerability in Excel that could allow remote code execution if a user opens an infected file. The company said that this vulnerability affects versions of Office for Windows and the Mac.
The vulnerability was first discovered by Symantec engineers in Japan on Tuesday morning. Symantec said the vulnerability specifically affects the older Excel .xls format, not the newer .xlsx format. Of course, Excel 2008 will open the older files, so the vulnerability still exists.
According to Microsoft, once successfully executed the attacker could gain the same user permissions as the local user.
Symantec added detection for the vulnerability to its software products, which will be detected as a Trojan horse with the name Trojan.Mdropper.AC.
Microsoft said it would provide an update for customers when it finishes investigating the issue. Microsoft noted that Office 2004 and 2008 for Mac were both affect by the vulnerability.
Microsoft Corp. will finish Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) next month, according to a Web site that has accurately predicted other moves by the company.
TechARP.com, a Malaysian Web site that has reported on Microsoft's plans to offer free upgrades from Windows Vista to the newer Windows 7, said today that Microsoft will reach IE8's "release to manufacturing" milestone, also known as "RTM," in March.
"Microsoft will RTM Internet Explorer 8 in March 2009, most likely sometime during the last two weeks," the site said, citing unnamed sources. "This is because Microsoft plans to announce the final details of the IE8 RTM schedule and available language versions by March 5, 2009."
In development parlance, RTM means that the software has been finished and that the vendor is ready to ship it to partners, release it to the public, send it to duplicators for retail distribution, or all of the above.
Microsoft declined to confirm or deny the TechARP account. "Out timeline is driven by the quality of the product," said a spokeswoman today in an e-mail reply to a request for comment. "Microsoft is deliberate in our approach to releasing new products, and we feel a strong obligation to our customers to do so in a responsible manner that ensures they are getting the safest, most reliable product possible."
TechARP said that once Microsoft declares IE8 has reached RTM, it will offer it to computer makers, which can then add it to machines they ship with either Windows Vista or the older Windows XP operating systems. At the moment, the former comes with IE7, while the latter is bundled with IE6.
IE8 is also slated to be a cornerstone of Windows 7, the successor to Vista.
TechARP had no information on when Microsoft would post the final version of IE8 for public download. But the site's late-March RTM timetable meshes with past IE release schedules.
In 2006, there was a gap of eight weeks between IE7's first release candidate (RC1) and the public posting of the browser. A similar eight-week stretch from Microsoft's delivery of IE8 RC1 in late January 2009 would put the final build's availability at around March 23.
IE8 includes new Web standard compatibility features, performance improvements, a revamped address bar and private browsing tools.
While Adobe's CFO recently said Microsoft's Silverlight plug-in has recently "fizzled out," Microsoft has big plans ahead for its rich Internet application platform and continues to get some key customer wins.
"We're not seeing any slow down at all," Chris Swenson, Microsoft senior strategy manager for the .Net platform, said in an interview. "We're ahead of our deployment targets, we're ahead of our sales targets. In every key metric, we're ahead of the game."
Within one month of Silverlight 2.0's release in October, Microsoft says there were more than 100 million successful installations of the plug-in on consumer machines. Based on worldwide surveys of its developers, the company estimates more than 500,000 developers have at least toyed with Silverlight.
This week, Microsoft announced that CBS Sports would be using Silverlight to stream college basketball games during the NCAA tournament. CBS already is using Silverlight for a number of college sports broadcasts online. The Presidential Inauguration Committee also used Silverlight for the official Web video stream of the inauguration of President Barack Obama in January, including support for a prerelease version of Moonlight, the Linux version of Silverlight. Other major customers include Netflix, Blockbuster, AOL, and the NBC Olympics site.
Microsoft is looking for new avenues to make Silverlight ubiquitous. The Novell-led Mono project announced the availability of Moonlight 1.0 a few weeks ago. Moonlight has been compiled for most major Linux distributions, including Fedora Core, Open SUSE, Novell SUSE, Red Hat, and Ubuntu. An Eclipse project called Eclipse4SL is also working on developing Silverlight tools for Eclipse.
It's also relying on old tactics, like using Silverlight in Microsoft Web pages or to power Microsoft Web applications. For example, Microsoft uses Silverlight in its MSN Toolbar and in places like a presentation on the economic downturn on MSN Money's Web site. Upon the release of Windows 7, hardware vendors will be able to opt to include it in standard configurations. The next version of Office will include a Silverlight-powered rich Web application for editing and sharing documents.
However, Microsoft still has a long way to go if it ever hopes to catch Adobe's Flash technology. While Adobe brags that some version of Flash is now installed on 99% of all Internet-enabled PCs, Microsoft's most recent estimate -- the company plans to announce new penetration numbers at its MIX Web development conference next month -- was that Silverlight is installed on about 25% of all Internet-enabled personal computers.
"We anticipate further motion practice in the trial court, followed by -- if unsuccessful -- an appeal to the Ninth Circuit," said Jeffrey Tilden, a partner in the Seattle law firm Gordon Tilden Thomas & Cordell LLP, when asked by ComputerWorld whether his team would proceed with the case.
The appeal would be heard by the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which hears any appeal cases coming from California, Oregon, Washington, and six other states.
The original lawsuit was brought by Dianne Kelly who purchased a PC described as "Vista Capable" in November 2006, right before the new operating system hit the market. And while Judge Pechman's decision regarding the class-action status does not end the case, it means each plaintiff would have to sue Microsoft separately, making it impossible for individuals to jump on the lawsuit bandwagon without hiring their own attorneys. As of right now, there are six plaintiffs alleging they represent many millions of duped consumers, at a cost to consumers of nearly $8.52 billion.
Microsoft was, of course, extremely satisfied with the decision. "We're pleased that the court granted our motion to decertify the class, leaving only the claims of six individuals," said Microsoft spokesman David Bowermaster to ComputerWorld in an e-mail late yesterday.
If the attorneys make the decision to appeal the ruling by Judge Pechman, it won't be the first time the case has made its way to the Ninth Circuit. In March, Microsoft appealed the judge's decision to give the case a class action designation. And in April, the Ninth Circuit rejected Microsoft's request to have Pechman's ruling overturned.
Yesterday marked day one of iPhone sales in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
By most accounts it was a pretty resounding success—Ali S. Al-Dakhee, Mobily's Youth Segment Manager told the Saudi Gazette: "In just a few hours of launch the number of walk-in customers and those who applied online reached 25,000."
Still, the phone is pretty expensive, especially when compared to its American cousin—an 8GB post-paid phone will run you 2,255 Saudi riyals ($601), and that's before the 99 Saudi riyal ($26) monthly fee. A prepaid will only cost slightly more, at 2,400 Saudi riyals ($639).
Over in the UAE, things weren't quite as smooth, according to one account in Shufflegazine. Reporer Magnus Nystedt went to iStyle at the Dubai mall to buy an iPhone. After some paperwork hassles, he finally was able to walk out of the store with a phone.
Nystedt also found out that the phones appear to be unlocked, as he tried two different SIM cards in the phone without having to jailbreak/unlock. He also reports that company reps told him that Arabic support is "coming soon," and that at least in the UAE there is no prepaid option.
MacNN reports that "an 8GB model costs anywhere between 0 and 2,646 AED ($720), while a 16GB phone is priced between 375 and 3,090 AED ($102 to $841). The discrepancy is based on accompanying plans, which range between 199 and 643 AED ($54 to $175) per month."
ArabianBusiness.com adds: "[The lack of Arabic language support] would be rectified and introduced within three months, said a spokesperson of Mobily, the Saudi affiliate of Etisalat." Of course, we'll have to wait and see if that pans out, but if Arabic language support around the corner, could that mean Persian language support isn't far behind?
it shouldn't surprise many testers that Microsoft has shrewdly closed the upgrade channel for users who will -- probably sooner this year than later -- be making the switch to Windows 7. Many who had chosen to steer clear of Windows Vista and hang on to Windows XP -- by all rights, a decent operating system, at least for Service Pack 3 users -- are pondering the nightmare scenario of having to upgrade to and validate (which usually means, pay for) both Vista and Windows 7, if it so happens that Windows 7 proves to be desirable or simply necessary.
This led us to thinking: Windows Vista can run without being purchased and activated, albeit for a limited time (usually 30 days). During that time, it behaves as though it were a fully operational trial edition (except for the Ultimate SKU, where several of the "Extras" aren't available except after validating). But it doesn't take a month to install an operating system; so what if a valid XP user could simply borrow the promotional edition of Vista, if you will, to make the skip over to Windows 7?
You can't download a trial version of Vista any more that runs on a physical machine; the trial edition now is a pre-configured virtual hard drive (VHD) that lets you test the applicability of your existing software in a Virtual PC environment. So you can't make the hop to Windows 7 via a downloadable version of Vista. And although you can download a real, physical trial version of Windows Server 2008 (which, after all, does have the Vista kernel), you can't install it as an upgrade of Windows XP...just Windows Server 2003.
So it might seem pointless, at first, to say that the first tool you need to make an XP-to-Win7 upgrade is a copy of Vista. But the key here is that you don't need to activate Vista after you've upgraded from XP to Vista, before you begin the upgrade from Vista to Win7. This could give hope to XP users who do plan to purchase Windows 7; all they need to do is borrow a friend's legitimate copy of Vista.
For Random Tech Stuff's test (which used Virtual PC), we intentionally used a very old, non-updated Windows XP Professional virtual machine, with only Service Pack 1 installed. But very importantly, Office 2007 was also installed. Because this was an old VHD, we had to activate both XP and Office. But doing so at least ensured us of an antique-like system in good working order, with real working applications whose settings would need to survive the upgrade as well. For the heck of it, we attempted a few tricks to see if Windows Server 2008 could be made to install as an upgrade. Those tricks failed, but not surprisingly. We also double-checked for the availability of an evaluation version of Vista. No such version is officially available from Microsoft's servers at present.
We had a legitimate, promotional Windows Vista Ultimate disc that we received from a Microsoft conference. We used this to upgrade our XP-based VM to Vista Business. That was successful, but then we encountered a little problem that may only be encountered these days in the virtual world: Our (virtual) hard disk was too small. Microsoft tools are unable to expand the size of an already-created VHD, but thankfully a third-party utility did the trick.
When installing Vista Business, we did not enter any serial number, opting to do that "later." When you opt to omit the serial number, the setup program asks which version of Windows you "purchased." Here is where we entered Vista Business, because we're not allowed an upgrade path between XP Professional and Vista Home Basic or Home Premium -- only Ultimate. And for this purpose, we don't really need Ultimate.
Probably because we used such an old VHD to begin with, with a small initial size (20 GB), the upgrade-to-upgrade process did manage to consume the entire day. Just getting Windows 7 onto the system isn't enough -- we wanted to make certain it could be legitimately activated. Would the lack of any Vista activation preclude our ability to activate the latest Windows 7 public beta?
As we learned late today, after waiting through a long installation process...it was no problem. We entered a legitimate serial number after the installation process was mostly complete, and told the Setup routine to automatically activate Windows after the next reboot, and it did. (We had some trouble with the Virtual Machine Additions driver, but that would only affect virtual machines anyway, not physical systems.)
And what's more, Office 2007 -- which had run in Windows XP without trouble earlier the same day -- ran without a hitch in Windows 7 Build 7000. That's about five years of operating system evolution in one day's time, without negative impact to our applications.
We cannot guarantee that this installation system behavior will remain the same in the final Windows 7 release build. But this test presents, at the very least, some hope that with about a day's work and a lot of patience, Windows XP users will be able to escape the fate of their software setups being rendered outmoded should Windows 7 indeed live up to Microsoft's many promises.
In addition to its chips MIPS has a lot of analog IP in the areas of “digital consumer, home networking, wireless, communications and business applications.” The company said most of its developers are already using Linux.
Fair enough. But this got me wondering whether it’s possible for the Linux Foundation to get too big. Oracle is already a platinum member, Cisco a gold, Dell a silver. What if Microsoft wanted in? Or Apple?
At what point does the desire for growth crimp your mission?
This is not an immediate concern to me. One look at the group’s new beta Web site shows they value two-way collaboration. Blogs are now very prominent on the page, including a piece on that bugaboo of every coder, writer and open source maven — selling.
But Andrew Grant’s piece illustrates some of my concerns. “Consider how F/OSS can wear the clothes (but not the practices) of conventional vendors,” he writes. I don’t want you to talk, Mr. Gates. I want you to die (in the marketplace sense).
While Linux is not, as some still insist on claiming, “anti-capitalist,” it does stand for values in the market, values that are still hard for many enterprises to adopt. The problem is no longer with vendors, but with customers who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk.
This hurts them more than it does us.
Even joining the Linux Foundation itself is no substitute for enabling honest collaboration with other companies on shared goals. Too many still worry this is exchanging precious bodily fluids — next you’ll want to fluoridate the water. (Above, Sterling Hayden as Gen. Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.)
In a way you will. The need for collective action against the lack of a Moore’s Law of software is not going away. Open source is the best process for making use of increased complexity.
But if everyone is nodding their heads in agreement on that, but still thinking open source is only free as in beer, then open source can still fail.
The story as we all know is that Microsoft (MSFT) is a distant third in terms of query market share compared to Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO) and would like to close the gap and become more relevant in the online search space. More query market share (a.k.a. Volume) ultimately leads to more advertisers, which ultimately leads to more revenues and profits. The key question is whether Microsoft should throw more cash at the business by hiring talent, buy Yahoo! as a whole, or buy Yahoo’s search business, to accelerate the process of closing the gap with Google. Here Are The Facts:
U.S. Search Market Share – 8.5% vs. 64% for GOOG and 21% for YHOO. According to December 2008 comScore data, Microsoft has an 8.5% share of the U.S. search query market compared to Google at 64%, and Yahoo at 21%. That share is down from 11% in January 2007, compared to Google’s which grew from 53% in January 2007. Yahoo’s share was down from 26% one year ago.
Globally, Microsoft has a 3% share of the search market, compared to 66% for Google and 14% for Yahoo. So adding international into the mix, the situation looks worse for MSFT.
Second In Terms of Unique Users. Surprisingly, Microsoft is second in terms of Unique users globally, with 650 million unique visitors to its sites, compared to Google at 775 million, and Yahoo at 565 million. Thus, MSFT only has 15% less unique visitors than Google, and Microsoft has 15% more unique visitors than Yahoo.
What Microsoft Should Do
Given that online search represents close to half of online advertising revenues and will likely become a larger percentage over the next three years, if MSFT is serious about having a presence in online advertising, it will need to develop a more meaningful presence in the search business. With a less than 10% share in the U.S. (3% globally) compared to the market leader Google, which has 64% share (66% globally), Microsoft will have to do something rather drastic to close that gap.
Microsoft has already redeveloped their search and advertising platform, dubbed adCenter, which has and continues to receive good reviews from search engine marketing firms and advertisers for its high ROI. The problem is that Microsoft is not getting the volume penetration that they need to make the business competitive and profitable even though they capture only 15% less unique visitors than Google. Advertisers with fewer resources will often go to Yahoo and Google to post ads and overlook Microsoft even though the returns are higher at Microsoft.
The rather simple solution of getting more users to search on Microsoft is a rather big question of how to achieve this. Clearly, investments and strategies in the past have not allowed MSFT to close the gap with Google. Since MSFT achieves 15% less traffic to its sites than does Google, MSFT should start by converting that traffic to search users. Strategies should be employed to keep the users on the MSFT sites to conduct searches (Yahoo! faces the same problem).
Offers like the cash back program and other couponing and discount strategies should help provide a lift but will not make a dent in closing the “3% to 65% gap.
So that brings us back to MSFT’s only major game changing alternative, and that is to acquire the second player in the space or acquire the second player’s search business (my view remains that MSFT should acquire all of Yahoo). Acquiring Yahoo or Yahoo’s search business would instantly bring MSFT’s share up to 30% in the U.S., about half of Google’s, and close to 20% globally, about a third of Google’s. That would then allow management to focus more on internal strategies (listed below) that can drive incremental share. They can start by trying to convert the existing traffic to both YHOO and MSFT to search users. That would go a long way to closing the gap. That alone would add another 10-15 percentage points to MSFT’s share over time, making them much more relevant in the space.
Organic Strategies to Grow Share
There are a few organic strategies Microsoft could employ that would help it grow share:
Change the mindset about search. The focus has been too much on generating revenues when the goal should be on improving the user experience and providing a differentiated product. MSFT’s number one problem is volume. If they improve the user experience then users will come. If users come then advertisers will come. If both users and advertisers come then monetization improves and revenues and profits grow. It is that simple. Stated differently, to make headway in online advertising, then MSFT will need to significantly penetrate online search. To do so, they will need a steadfast commitment to online search from the CEO on down.
More Effective Marketing Strategy Centered on Search. This should be done to convince users that the online search experience and relevance is on par with Google’s. No cute ads like Ask.com which was ineffective and confusing. Just a plain ad that has the aim that search relevancy is on par with Google (provided the claim is true). Several ways to do this: a) through word of mouth – this can be filtered through the press by attending more search related industry trade functions; b) through a viral outlet like YouTube; c) through banner ads on Facebook and other web properties; d) go straight to MSFT users, which already has the number 2 web property in the world. The aim is to convince users that they do not need to jump off the MSFT pages to Google to conduct searches. In a nutshell, change user behavior through knowledge that their search engine is as relevant to Google and that the user experience is as compelling.
Need To Focus On Search Innovation. For the past 4 quarters, Google released 100 search monetization improvements each quarter. Point is they are constantly improving the search product and is letting the world know that or shows it to the world. MSFT should do the same.
Change the Brand. “Live” confuses everyone and is difficult to find. Plus the marketing effort behind Live Search was ineffective. Change the Live name to something else. Use either MSN or Microsoft Search as the brand. No need to deviate from the solid brands of those two.
Develop More Relationships But Be Careful Not To Overspend. Agreements with Sun (JAVA), Dell (DELL) and HP (HPQ) to include the Live Search Toolbar on new PCs, and the much-ballyhooed Live Search Cashback, which gives Web users rebates for purchasing products from participating Microsoft vendor partners through the Live Search site, are good examples. Others like Verizon (VZ) and Facebook are important in that they create brand recognition. Management should go after MySpace if Google drops it. But management must be careful not to overspend or enter into deals that are uneconomical.
In all, if Microsoft buys Yahoo and in addition follows the recommendations above to grow organically, they will develop meaningful share in online search and as consequence develop a meaningful presence in online advertising.
This is the first in a series of discussions on Microsoft’s Online Services Business (OSB). In subsequent posts, I will discuss strategies for the company in branded advertising/ad agency/ad networks or what they describe as their online advertising platform or the newly created PubCenter, portal and information content products, communications and social networking, and cloud computing efforts.
My reasoning for focusing on Microsoft is because I believe they do have a competitive presence in the Internet space and it needs to be documented, given that it is largely ignored by Wall Street analysts in favor of other parts of the business model.
There’s a pretty good article over at GigaOM that touches on the Open vs Closed argument of technology. Specifically, it pits Android and iPhone against each other because of the obvious contrasting strategies and philosophies behind their parent companies, Google and Apple.
We can’t deny that the iPhone is wildly successful in spite of (or because of?) their closed, proprietary nature. It’s essentially the dilemma that iPhone users have been trying to find the balance to–the iPhone’s closed nature creates a clean, seamless and synergetic user experience but it often comes at the expense of the freedom of choice. You have to trust Apple enough to play nice and take a leap of faith with the direction of the iPhone.
But does that leave Google free and clear? According to GigaOM: hardly. The point has been driven before but Android isn’t married to a specific hardware form factor, any philosophical software, or well, anything, for that matter. Google has made it loud and clear that Android is open source and that it can be shaped however the user base intends to shape it. But does that openness come at the expense of the user experience? Google can’t remain fully “open” for fear of fracturing that holy grail of user experience. In a sense, GigaOM is advising Google to remain open with limits; implementing a sort of theoretically open playground that would still necessitate rules and fair play.
And though we believe Android is unique and its ceiling is higher than its competitors because of that “openness”, we tend to agree with GigaOM: that Google needs to set “parameters” with Android because mobile platforms are all about predictability and user friendliness and less about openness. In a sense, being open is good, being less than fully “open” is better.
The general public wants a phone to act and react a certain way, and without a certain amount of consistency in the platform–it can create a jagged experience that turns off many. Sure, a lot of people complain about the iPhone’s stringent app approval process but there’s certainly a lot more who are happy with just how easy and simple everything else works. It’s going to be dangerous territory for Android to tread because the tech savvy will be undoubtedly saddened if Google closes its openness but the more general public may see it as a heck of a lot more friendly.
GigaOM sums it up best:
The reality is that openness is just an attribute -– it’s not an outcome, and customers buy outcomes. They want the entire solution and they want it to work predictability. Only a tiny minority actually cares about how or why it works. It’s little wonder, then, that the two device families that have won the hearts, minds and pocketbooks of consumers, developers and service providers alike (i.e., BlackBerry and iPhone) are the most deeply integrated from a hardware, software and service layer perspective.
We know it’s a lot to digest but we want to know what do you guys think. Open or closed? Android or iPhone? Does it even matter?
It was reported last week that Telstra’s Sol Trujillo had his HTC Touch Diamond running Windows Mobile 6.5 lifted off his person during MWC. And today APC is reporting that the device was remotely wiped of both OS and user data once the theft was realized according to an anonymous higher up at Microsoft. We’ve contacted Microsoft as well and will update if we hear otherwise.
I’m not really sure how I feel about this. Microsoft was able to completely wipe the device remotely? Hmm…
Microsoft released last week to testers what is believed to be the release candidate for Vista's second service pack, which means they are right on schedule to make a public launch of the pack by early April.
The Vista Service Pack 2 started its testing phase last October and is without a doubt the last big update it will push to the OS before it releases Windows 7 later this year. The service pack will update both Vista and Windows Server 2008, and will require SP1 as a prerequisite to avoid making it cumulative and therefore much larger in size.
Besides bundling all post-SP1 updates and security fixes, SP2 is expected to add a number of features including: Windows Search 4.0, Bluetooth 2.1 support, Blu-ray media recording, Via 64-bit CPU support, Windows Connect Now for Wi-Fi connections, improved power management policy, and improved audio and video performance for streaming high-definition content, among others.
The Android operating system for mobile clients, developed mainly by Google, has an impressive security framework. Every application declares the system resources it requires (location, WiFi state, internet access, camera, sms, etc). The permissions are displayed to the user before the application is downloaded and installed from the Android market. The user can make an informed decision on whether the application should be installed by reviewing its permissions. Take a look at the permissions used by Google maps on the Android:
However, there is a flew in this framework. Let us take the case of location permission, which is pretty important to most people. Who wants their location delivered to other people without their knowledge? One might think that an application need to ask for a location permission (either ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION or ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION) in order to do that, but that’s not true. If an application asks for permissions for the WiFi state (ACCESS_WIFI_STATE ) and has internet access, it can use the skyhook service (which is available for the Android) in order to retrieve the phone’s location. Skyhook provides very accurate location according to WiFi networks, in many urban areas in the U.S., Europe and Asia. It is very easy to see how can a user be misled by this situation.
The problem that lies at the heart of this flaw is the difference between two types of security. The engineers of the Android platform view security as access right to system resources. On the other hand, users have a different way of viewing security, which boils down to the question is something undesirable had happened. A simple solution to these types of flaws is by incorporating a feedback mechanism into the Android Market. Right now, users’ comments and rankings play an important role in finding applications. Adding some semantics and specific security-based feedback may be helpful.
LogMeIn previewed a new version of its remote control tool, Rescue+Mobile, for Android smartphones at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
The software could offer salvation for the growing number of smartphone owners outsmarted by the profusion of settings and options the latest devices offer. Change the wrong one by mistake, and you may disable key functionality of the device with no idea how to restore it.
"Smartphone devices are getting deployed so widely, they are not all tech savvy users any more. And they are going to need support," said Kevin Bardos, LogMeIn's vice president of product development.
Rescue+Mobile allows tech support staff to take control of a smartphone -- with the owner's permission -- in order to verify and change settings, and also to chat with the owner to explore the problem. All operations are logged to a file on the phone.
Using a companion application on their PC, support staff can extract and review an impressive amount of information from the phone, including the remaining battery life -- important if you're about to embark on a lengthy repair operation -- and details of how most of the options are set. They can juggle several support conversations at once, queue up future operations, and even reboot the phone at a distance if necessary.
"Wireless carriers are seeing a jump in customer satisfaction as a result of the remote control," said Bardos. Call times are shorter, and there's an increased chance of solving users' problems, he said.
LogMeIn, with offices in Boston and Budapest, initially developed Rescue to allow remote troubleshooting of Windows PCs, later adding a Macintosh version. The company ported the software to Windows Mobile devices about 18 months ago, and introduced a version for phones running Symbian OS at Mobile World Congress last year. In December, it added a version for the BlackBerry.
The nature of the Android platform means that Rescue+Mobile is unlikely to appear in an online apps store in the near future.
"Android is an open source solution, so in return they have quite a tight security model. They don't have a public API for keypad injection," said Bardos.
That means downloadable applications can't easily fake keypresses on the phone, as LogMeIn must if it is to offer full remote control. Instead, the company will offer the software to carriers and phone manufacturers for integration before the phone goes on sale, allowing them to link into the Android software at a deeper level, he said.
The company has no plans to develop an iPhone version of its Rescue software because of shortcomings in Apple's iPhone SDK (software development kit), said Bardos. "The iPhone SDK doesn't allow applications to run in the background, so until they change their security model it isn't going to happen," he said.
However, LogMeIn does offer an iPhone app that can remotely control a PC.
Next week, Windows 7 beta users will get a variety of updates, only they aren't really updates.
Instead, Microsoft said it will be sending the patches to test the operating system's updating mechanism.
The company stressed the updates won't actually add new features or update anything.
Brandon LeBlanc explained the nature of the updates in a blog posting Thursday (note that the emphasis is his):
Starting February 24, we will be releasing up to 5 test updates to PCs running the Windows 7 Beta (Build 7000) via Windows Update. These updates allow us to test and verify our ability to deliver and manage the updating of Windows 7. We typically verify servicing scenarios during a beta.
Windows 7 Beta users will be notified that new updates are available beginning February 24 through Windows Update. Even if the user has Windows Update configured for automatic update - these test updates will not install automatically. Users will need to manually install the test updates through Windows Update.
These updates do not deliver new features or bug fixes. The test updates simply replace system files with the same version of the file currently on the system.
Some Xbox Live players are finding that winning has its drawbacks.
Microsoft said it is investigating reports that people are using malicious software to disrupt Xbox Live players' Internet connections in malicious attacks.
"In our continued effort to help provide a safer and more secure experience for our community of more than 17 million members, we are investigating reports of a malicious Web site that attempts to lure Xbox LIVE members into providing personal information," Microsoft said in a statement on Friday.
"Phishing is an unfortunate and common threat on the Internet, and this problem is not related to the Xbox LIVE service," the statement said. "We encourage people to only do business with trusted Web sites and never enter personal information on unfamiliar sites."
Malicious software is being used by attackers to do things like temporarily shut down a game player's console or even an entire game with a denial-of-service attack targeting the IP address, according to Chris Boyd, director of malware research at Facetime Communications, the BBC News reported on Friday.
Sophisticated hackers are selling their Xbox Live attack services to others via the Internet underground for as little as $20, the report said.
Microsoft says it made an accounting error when it laid off some employees last month and now feels the best way to correct the error is with what will likely add up to a public relations blunder.
The software giant, which recently laid off 1,400 employees, sent letters (see image below) this week to some of those former workers letting them know that their severance payouts were a bit too "generous" and respectfully requested that the former employees pay back that money, according to a report Saturday on TechCrunch.
"An inadvertent administrative error occurred that resulted in an overpayment in severance pay by Microsoft," the letter states. "We ask that you repay the overpayment and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience to you."
A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that the authenticity of a letter posted on TechCrunch, but declined further comment, saying it was "a private matter between the company and the affected people."
The company declined to specify how many of these letters were sent out, and it's unknown how much the overpayments total, but it did indicate that some laid off employees were also undercompensated.
The letter failed to provide an explanation for the accounting error but did manage to add--with underlined emphasis--a veiled threat of monetary punishment if the money wasn't repaid, at least in the form of a tax impact.
Since the App Store launched, there hasn't been much that has really tempted me to jailbreak my iPhone. I don't think Mini vMac for iPhone actually will either, but just that fact that it exists at all is a trip for the nostalgic Macheads out there. Mini vMac is an open source Mac Plus emulator that has now been ported to the iPhone (a regular OS X version exists as well).
It emulates a 4MB Mac Plus; as the video above shows, it allows you to scroll to show the full display and even load Mac OS disk images and run classic Mac software. It's safe to say that this will never make to the App Store because it violates Apple's rules against emulators.
Mini vMac for iPhone requires a jailbroken iPhone, and can be loaded by adding the namedfork.net repository to the Cydia installer as described on the main page. You'll also have to round up a Mac Plus ROM image and disk images of any applications you want to run.
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