Author: Eva Glass

Eva Glass first rose to prominence in The INQUIRER. She continues to work behind the scenes to dig out the best stories.

Windows 9 out next year

Posted on September 26, 2014 by - News, Products

Microsoft campusYou may not have upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7, never mind Windows 8 – but pretty soon you’ll have Windows 9 to think about.

Microsoft will release something it calls  a technical preview of Windows 9 at the end of this month.

The word on the street is that Windows 9 will include the start menu – and it might not be called Windows 9.  The beta is due to be supplied with a single beta.

According to PC Advisor, the preview version will come between the second quarter and the third quarter next year. There will be versions available for smartphones, for PCs and for tablets.

Web site Winbeta said that Microsoft is going to dump the so-called “charms bar”, an annoying menu that comes in from the right hand side of the screeen with buttons to search, share and the like.

The word on the street appears to be that Windows 9, or whatever it’s called, will use 64 bit processors only, although that could present a  problem for heaps of people.

Blackberry loses $207 million

Posted on September 26, 2014 by - News

blackberry-juicerThere’s still a way to go for Blackberry even though it launched a new smartphone earlier this week.

The company turned in a loss of $207 million for its second financial quarter.  That’s way less than the $965 million it made in the same quarter last year.

The Canadian company said revenues for the quarter amounted to $916 million – with 46 percent representing hardware, 46 percent services, and eight percent for software and other sales.

Blackberry shifted 2.4 million smartphones to end users and cut down its channel inventory.

John Chen, CEO and chairman of the company said: “We delivered a solid quarter against our key operational metrics and we are confident we will achieve break even cash flow by the end of financial year 2015. “Our workforce restructuring is now complete.”

It said it hoped to maintain its strong cash position in the future and will look for opportunities to “prudently invest in growth”.

Big data is riddled with myths

Posted on September 26, 2014 by - News

server-racksMarket research company Gartner enumerated what it described as five big data myths.

The company said that companies tended to believe that their competitors were ahead of them in the adoption of big data.  But its survey showed that while 73 percent of organisation intending to invest or planning to invest in big data, most organisations are still in the “very early” staged of adoption.

biggie
Only 13 percent of the companies it surveyed had actually deployed anything. And companies face a challenge how to obtain value from big data.

The second myth is that many IT folk believe the large volume of data held means faults with individual flaws don’t matter.  But, said Ted Friedman, a VP at Gartner: “Although each indiviidual flaw has a much smaller impact on the whole dataset than it did when there was less data, there are more flaws than before because there is more data.”  The impact of poor quality data remains the same, he said.

Myth three  is that big data technology removes the need for data integration..  But most information users rely heavily on scheme on write – meaning data is described, content is prescribed and there’s agreement about the integrity of data.

The fourth myth, according to Gartner, is that you don’t need a data warehouse for advanced analytics.  But that’s not necessarily true – many advanced analytics projects use a data warehouse during an analysis.

And, finally, so-called “data lakes” aren’t going to replace data warehouses.  A data lake is defined as enterprise wide data management that analyses different sources of data in their native file formats.  Data lakes lack the maturity and breadth of features in established data warehouse technologies.

US more likely to hack you than the Chinese

Posted on September 26, 2014 by - News

1220aTwo security experts, Jordan Robertson and Greg Martin set up an online honey pot to see which country was more  like to attack it and was surprised to discover that the US was more likely to be an aggressor than the Chinese.

Writing for Bloomberg, the pair  wanted to find a way to show the global nature of attacks against industrial-control systems used in electrical grids, water systems and manufacturing plants. For obvious reasons, attacks against critical infrastructure are among the biggest concerns in cyber-security.

Martin and Robertson  configured the honeypot to look like an enticing industrial-control computer to hackers and traced who attacked it.

The fake control systems were made to look like they were located in the U.S., the U.K., Amsterdam, Brazil, Tokyo and Singapore. The pair wanted a variety of locations to show that systems everywhere are under attack.

Over a three month period, the US was by far the biggest source of attack traffic, trying to hit the honeypot more than 6,000 times, nearly double China with 3,500, Russia, more than 2,500.

The Dutch and France were also carrying out statistically significant amounts of attacks on the honeypot.

The attacks were mostly reconnaissance missions, in which hackers often use less obfuscation, Martin said. However, it does mean that the idea of China being the leading hacking country is a myth and that crown belongs to the United States, which appears to have a policy of hacking everyone.

Google tells News Corp to get lost

Posted on September 25, 2014 by - News

OgleA senior VP at Google has released a detailed rebuttal to an attack on its business practices by Rupert Murdoch of News Corp.

In her Dear Rupert letter, Rachel Whetstone said that Google is on the side of publishers “which used to be controlled by a relatively small number of media organisations”. Ouch.

Google, she said, also invests in training journalists in its Google for Media programme.

She claimed  that far for being a platform for piracy, as Murdoch alleged, Google had done more than practically anyone else to tackle online piracy, by removing 222 million web pages from Google Search due to copyright infringement last year.

She said Google is not the gatekeeper to the web, and has plenty of competition from other companies including Amazon, Kayak, Expedia and Yelp.

She revealed that Google changed its search algorithms 500 times a year. She defended the Android operating system.

She denied that Google is commoditising the ability of specialist publishers to generate advertising revenue.

She rebutted News Corp’s claim that “the shining vision of Google’s founders has been replaced by a cynical management”.

She has a lot more to say too.

BT: business doesn’t trust the cloud

Posted on September 25, 2014 by - News

Every silver has a cloudy liningA survey commissioned by BT showed that 70 percent of businesses worldwide are adopting storage and web apps in their organisations.

But they’re far from confident about cloud security, the survey revealed.

Over three quarter of the IT decisions makers surveyed said security is the main problem about using cloud services.  Half of the respondents said they were “very” or “extremely” anxious about security surrounding their cloud services.

Half think enterprise cloud apps and services are too expensive. Half think trusting third parties a problem while as many as 40 percent think all cloud services are inherently insecure.

Why is BT interested in this? Well, you’ve guessed it –  BY has its own portfolio of cloud products and services which is – yes, you’ve guessed it again, inherently secure.

The survey was carried out for BT last July with 640 IT decision makers in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and other countries.  The companies each has 1,000 plus employees.

Blue LEDs life extended

Posted on September 25, 2014 by - News

blooScientists said they have made a breakthrough and extended the lifetime of blue organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) by 10 times.

The discovery, made by scientists at the University of Michigan, could lead to longer battery life for smartphones and lower power consumption for large screen TVs.

Three colours are provided in OLED displays but the improvement in efficiency could lead to blue OLEDs being five to 20 percent efficient soon.

Right now, blue OLEDs have a shorter lifetime because high energies are needed to produce blue light.

But the team sandwiched a thin film of light emitting material between two conductive layers one is for electrons and one for holes. The holes represent the absence of an electron and light is created when electrons and holes meet.  The team changed the distribution of the two and found they’d extended the life of the blue OLED 10 fold. The discovery was made in collaboration with commercial venture Universal Display Corp.

Broadcom says people will still buy non 4G Wi-Fi

Posted on September 25, 2014 by - News

alleyneBroadcom Chief Executive Scott McGregor claims high-end smartphone makers will keep using his company’s Wi-Fi chips even though it is no longer pursuing 4G technology.

The outfit said in July it was winding down its money-losing cellular baseband chip business after struggling to compete against larger rival Qualcomm.

While getting out of baseband reduces costs and lets Broadcom concentrate on its better-performing networking and broadband businesses, it leaves the chipmaker at a competitive disadvantage flogging its Wi-Fi chips in the smartphone market.

McGreggor admitted to Reuters  that Broadcom was “definitely at risk,” but the reality of it remains to be seen.

 “The higher-end smartphone space is most likely to stay with Broadcom because that’s where they care most about the features and capabilities we offer.”

Broadcom currently makes Wi-Fi chips for Apple, Samsung and other high-end handsets. But without baseband technology, Broadcom’s Wi-Fi chips may be less attractive to low-end smartphone makers, who typically choose platforms that integrate both Wi-Fi and baseband in order to save money.

Apple and other manufacturers making top-tier phones could also eventually opt to combine Wi-Fi and baseband as technology improvements make it possible to squeeze more and more features onto single chip.

McGregor said steady improvements in Broadcom’s Wi-Fi technology, like increasing range, reducing interference and using wifi to determine precise locations, were reasons for manufacturers to keep buying Broadcom’s chips.

Shares of Broadcom have surged 26 percent since the company said in June it was deciding how to get out of baseband technology, which was costing about $600 million a year in research and administration costs.

Blackberry goes square with Passport design

Posted on September 24, 2014 by - News, Products

blackberry-juicerMobile phone company Blackberry officially released its Passport device, which has a square touch screen and a touch enabled QWERTY keyboard.

It said the unit follows the design of real passports.

The device uses Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for the display and stainless steel to make it that bit more rugged.

The screen is 4.5-inches square using a 1:1 aspect ratio and a 1440 x 1440 pixel HD display. It has 32GB of storage and a 13 megapixel camera.

The keyboard lets you perform touch functions on the keyboard, scroll web pages, and leaving the full screen space for viewing.

It comes with Blackberry 10.3 operating system along with Amazon Appstore and Blackberry Blend.blackpass

It claims that it has long battery use – and for a very active user provides up to 30 hours of life.

The unit comes with speakers and a quad microphone system/  It’s available now, worldwide.

Smartphones beat tablets on mobile sales

Posted on September 24, 2014 by - News

smartphones-genericA report by Monetate said data showed that mobile commerce continues to grow at a fair old pace.

Figures for the second quarter of 2014 available today showed that mobile commerce traffic rose by 120 percent compared to the same quarter in 2013 on smartphones. Tablet traffic grew by 35 percent and desktop traffic flatlined.

Even though mobile devices now generate 16 percent of all ecommerce traffic, revenue is less than four percent.  And mobile customers are more fickle with a 50 percent higher bounce rate, and a 30 percent lower “add to cart” rate.

Further, people using smartphones are 10 percent more likely to abandon a transaction.

“Mobile commercial traffic is increasing dramatically as consumers become more comfortable shopping via mobile [phones],” said Lucinda Duncalfe, CEO of Monetate.  “But the low conversion rates imply that brands need to create more relevant persnalised mobile experiences to take advantage of the opportunities.”

IBM, which contributed to the survey, said companies need to rethink their mobile strategies.  Jay Henderson, strategy director at IBM ExperienceOne said: “It’s a fairly complex process that involves reworking sites, using data to improve nagivation and deepen connections.”

The survey analyses a random sample of over seven billion online episodes.

IT as a service makes the grade

Posted on September 24, 2014 by - News

Clouds in Oxford: pic Mike MageeA survey performed by Canalys says that 96 percent of respondents, mostly based in the distribution and reseller segments,  said they now offer “IT as a service”.

That includes managing customer assets on premises, or using hosting or public cloud services.

Vendors use the channel to sell their products and while reselling products is the most important set of sales for two third of channel partners, these types of sales are growing.

Rachel Brindley, research director at Canalys said that 58 percent of the firms surveyed think that managed services is more profitable than just selling software and hardware.  And by 2017, two third think IT as a service will represent more than a quarter of revenues.

But the channel isn’t stuck in the cloud. They fear that cloud providers will bypass their traditional value added businesses.

“Vendors developing go to market strategies for the cloud must ensure they are not increasing competition with their established partners but recognise this is typically delivered as part of a hybrid IT offering,” said Alex Smith, senior analyst at Canalys.

SMEs targeted by malware

Posted on September 24, 2014 by - News

skullkSmall and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are under attack by malware crooks, according to antivirus firm Bitdefender.

Bitdefender said that some SME employees in the UK are being hoodwinked into downloading trojans by suggesting the people have violeted company policy.

Apparently, the attacks grew last week, with .ARJ compressed files using the Zbot or Zeus malware.  British companies affected appear to be companies that offer military clothing or products to the defence or security industry.

Zbot/Zeus has a password stealing component intended to grab user names and passwords, email and FTP credentials.

The attack comes with a malicious email that opens an .rtf document that has information about policy violation.  In the background, the malware attempts to connect to Zbot infected websites.

Bitdefender has supplied a screen shot of a typical email.
zbot

iPhone 6 Plus only costs $215 to make

Posted on September 24, 2014 by - News

blue-appleA unit at research company IHS has torn apart an iPhone 6 Plus and shows that though you’ll have to pay $100 more to buy 0.8 inches of screen, it only costs Apple $16 more to make.

That gives Apple an even bigger margin on this model than on others. That will please Apple shareholders.

The bill of materials of an iPhone 6 with 16HB of memory is $196.10, and the additional screen size makes the bill of materials $215.60.

Andrew Rassweiler, a senior director at IHS, said: “Apple has always been adept at offering higher end iPhone models with enhanced desirable features and then pricing those versions for maximum profitability.

“In the past, the premium versions of iPhone offered higher memory configurations for additional profit. While Apple continues this memory strategy, the company is also taking a similar with the iPhone Plus, structuring its pricing to add bottom line profits on models that have a very desirable feature: a large phablet sized display.”

IHS thinks that Apple is second sourcing the microprocessor, the A8, between TSMC and Samsung factories.  The A8 chip in these latest models costs $20, compared to $17 for the previous versions that used an Apple A7 chip.

Here’s a breakdown of the component costs for the iPhone 5S and the new phones, courtesy of IHS:
Bill of materials iPhone 6 Plus

Private Dell goes up-market

Posted on September 24, 2014 by - News

michael-dell-2Now that it no longer has to worry about pesky shareholders, Michael Dell is changing its cunning plan and is moving up-market.

ITWorld has noticed that Dell is adding new hardware and software features that could make an otherwise mundane PC or tablet more attractive to customers. In a move which copies Apple, Dell hopes to establish a reputation as an innovator and establish a fan base among those who will pay more.

The example touted is Dell’s 8-inch Venue 8 7000 tablet, which made an appearance at the Intel Developer Forum, it’s the world’s thinnest tablet at 6 millimeters thick and includes Intel’s RealSense 3D depth-sensing camera. The camera can determine size, distance and contours of objects, which could enhance videoconferencing or make it easier to capture a 3D image for 3D printing.  It is nicely designed, something that is not normally associated with Dell’s tin box image.

Kirk Schell, vice president of the commercial PC product group said that the privatization has helped tune out distractions and helped the company focus on improving products.

The upshot is that now Dell is not reporting to Wall Street, it can be more competitive and boast some industry firsts, such as bringing wireless charging capabilities to tablets with a dock for Venue 8.

Dell was among the first to introduce a 5K screen with the UltraSharp 27 Ultra HD, which can display images at a 5120 x 2880 pixel resolution and will become available later this year.  Dell also has its own gaming console, the Alienware Alpha Steam Machine, which will compete against Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4. The Steam Machine ship in November with Windows 8.1 as the default OS. Users in the future will have the option to install the Linux-based SteamOS, which is being developed by Valve, the world’s largest independent game distributor.

Dell is likely to continue making low-cost PCs, at least in the short term, but it seems that its interest is moving away from that market.

It is investing in architects, human factor engineers, material scientists, software people. You can and should differentiate, Schell said.

Scotland gets its own domain

Posted on September 23, 2014 by - News

scotEven though the referendum for Scotland to become an independent state got the thumbs down last week, today domains with the .scot suffix will be available.

Both the NHS Scotland and the Yes Scotland and Better Together have already registered .scot domains, now anyone will be able to sign up to use the suffix.

According to a report in the Daily Telegraph, John Swinney, financial secretary of the Scottish government, the primary address for the Scottish government will become www.gov.scot in the next few months.

And a survey said that 71 percent of Scottish consumers are more likely to buy goods and services from firms using .scot addresses. That’s likely to result in a rush for businesses to sign up for Scottish addresses.

But you don’t have to live in Scotland to register the .scot domain – you can pay your £20 or £30 if you feel you or your business have an affinity with the country.