Apple iPhone: Skype unveils app

VoIP service Skype has finally launched an app for Apple's iPhone that allows handset users to make cheap calls via the internet.

The iPhone app will be joined by one for BlackBerry handsets, which will be available from May, Skype said.
Skype has been a noticeable latecomer to the App Store, which features several other VoIP applications.

One of those, Fring, uses Skype's API (application programming interface). People can make free Skype-user-to-Skype-user calls, or use SkypeOut, a paid service where people can call landlines and mobiles via Skype.

The iPhone Skype application can only be used over Wi-Fi and not over cellular networks, a condition demanded by operators so as to not damage voice revenue. A spokeswoman would not reveal further details, saying the mobile application will have the "core capabilities" of the desktop application.

Skype does not yet have a native application for BlackBerry devices, although third-party developers again have utilised Skype's API. One of those services is IM+ for Skype, which enables chat, free calls to Skype users and SkypeOut. Skype did not provide the application's May launch date.

Skype's application for the Windows Mobile OS has been available for several years

Source: PC Advisor

"60 Minutes" freaks out over Conficker

I love "60 Minutes," but sometimes it just makes you scratch your head. Isn't anyone working there who has any sophistication when it comes to technology? Lesley Stahl just finished a 15-minute freakout on the dangers of the Conficker virus, dangers which many information experts say have been blown way out of proportion ... especially by reports like the one that just aired on "60 Minutes." The segment producer would have done well to read the much less hysterical Conficker FAQ from CNet ... that's now appearing on the "60 Minutes" Conficker's story page. (CBS owns CNet.)

I'll leave it to the interwebs' approximately 10 million computer experts to dissect Stahl's script line by line (my favorite: "I hear 'Jaws' music!"). But as a media guy, I couldn't help but notice that CBS has had millions of dollars thrown at it by Microsoft Windows for a new ad campaign running during the NCAA tournament. And yet, I waited in vain for any mention in the "60 Minutes" story of the fact that the only computers capable of being infected by the dreaded Conficker virus were PCs running Windows.

Just to amuse myself, I started doing a variation on the old fortune-cookie game -- you know, where you tack on "...in bed" at the end of random sentences, usually after having one too many drinks? Tonight, I hit the pause button on the TiVo and finished Stahl's sentences with "... on a PC." Even Mrs. TVB thought it was kinda funny. (For a while. Then, annoying.)

Hey, I don't want to totally discount the idea that CBS is doing a public service here. Maybe tonight, a lot of 50-plussers will update their security software or lock up that wi-fi they've been sharing with the neighborhood. I suppose that's all for the good. Still, I wonder if anyone bothered to inform Lauren, the 30-trying-to-look-like-22-year-old featured in those Windows ads, that her $700 Windows box could get infected with Conficker -- but a Mac, or a PC with non-MS-manufactured Linux as the operating system, can't?

Source:

Review: Apple's Mac Mini

In the four years since the Mac Mini was introduced, the versatile little box has been updated four times, with the latest permutation finally showing up this month.

I say "finally" because the Mini -- Apple Inc.'s lone foray into the low end of the computer market -- has gained something of a cult status among its fans, and they were rather annoyed that their favorite Apple computer had been neglected since August 2007. In fact, a lot of them had given up on ever seeing a new Mini, assuming the diminutive machine had been left for dead.

Certainly, when I bought a Mini last August, I figured it was a mere matter of days before Apple either pulled the plug on the device or morphed it into something different. I was wrong on both counts. Apple didn't kill off the Mini; it simply waited another seven months before rolling out the latest version -- along with an updated line of iMacs and refreshed Mac Pros.

Since its debut in 2005, owners have found all kinds of uses for the little Mini, sticking it in cars for mobile computing of a different sort or hooking it up to their TVs as an inexpensive media center. Some have even used it as a computer.

Count me among those with a Mini hooked up to a high-definition television, where it dutifully serves as sort of a glorified Apple TV. Not only can I use it to surf the Web, but I can also watch videos, catch TV shows downloaded through iTunes and do big-screen video chats with iChat (and my own iSight Web cam). Versatile indeed.

More firepower, same shape
With the latest updates, Apple has added some solid firepower under the hood, while leaving the Mini's basic nature intact. The price still starts at $599 -- there's a $799 model, too -- but it now boasts better graphics, faster DDR3 RAM, a SuperDrive that's now standard in the lesser model, 802.11n Wi-Fi, five USB ports, a FireWire 800 port and a MiniDisplay Port. The stock processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo running at an even 2 GHz, though you can opt for a marginally faster 2.26-GHz chip if you want to spend another $150. (My advice: don't worry about the faster processor. The Mini isn't really about speed. It's about price and convenience and, as I said earlier, versatility.)



Expect the Mini to be marginally faster than the previous iteration, more so with tasks that hit the graphics processor. Apple cites overall performance that's five times better than the 2007 model, and the company notes that the Mini will now support one of its 30-in. displays. (It certainly did just fine powering the 24-in. LED display that Apple sent over with the review unit I've been using for the past couple of weeks.)

The Mini is about price, value
Given the Mini's place in Apple's hardware lineup, I'm focusing on price and value. It is, after all, the cheapest Mac available.

Given the economic downturn, every dollar counts, and it would have been nice if Apple acknowledged that with a price drop. But Apple's M.O. is to deliver more in hardware and keep its pricing intact -- and that's exactly what it did this time around. In fact, if price is the main consideration, the entry-level model offers a nice advance over the previous model in what you get for your money -- with one caveat. The $599 model comes with a paltry 1GB of RAM.

In this day and age when RAM is cheap, 2GB makes more sense. Sure, Mac OS X will run on 1GB of RAM, but you're selling the hardware short if you go cheap on memory. Spend the extra $50 Apple charges for 2GB. Of course, if you're handy with a putty knife and want to pry off the Mac Mini's case and add the RAM yourself, you can. You might save a few dollars, and maybe you can do the job without scratching your brand-new computer or breaking off one of the pins that keeps it together.

But really, who wants a scratched and dented Mac?

Your other alternative is to bring the price up to $649 for a built-to-order 2GB Mini. This one already has a dual-layer SuperDrive, so it can read and burn both CDs and DVDs. And by going with 2GB of RAM, you allow the Nvidia chip to use up to 256MB of video RAM. (It only takes half that amount if your Mini has 1GB.)

Next, you're going to have to figure out if 120GB is enough to hold your music collection and video library. If so, you're ready to buy. But wait! Given the just-announced ability to rent or buy hi-def movies through iTunes, that 120GB isn't going to last long if you're planning to go the Mini-as-Apple TV route.

So add another $100 for a 250GB drive, and you're looking at $749 for your new "entry-level" Mini. That's just a hop, skip and a jump from the $799 model, which boasts a 320GB drive and comes with 2GB of RAM standard. (All three drives are 5,400-rpm models, so don't expect to be burning any barns.)

The moral of the story? If you need extra storage space, forget about the $599 model. Your best buy is the $799 version -- assuming your wallet will allow it.

Watch the options
Now let's look at the cost equation from the other end. Start with the $799 model, opt for the 2.26-GHz processor and double the RAM to 4GB. You've just blown past the $1,000 mark -- $1,049, to be exact -- and you're pushing awfully close to the bottom of iMac territory.

No doubt that's exactly the plan on Apple's part. Because for $1,199, the entry-level price for the newly revised iMac line, you get a solid all-in-one computer/screen combo.

In other words, if there's still any money left in that wallet, you might want to stretch for the iMac.

When looking at the cost equation, it's best to think of the Mini as the anti-iMac. The iMac is a stylish all-in-one Mac. Everything you need is in the box. The Mini is a stylish, headless Mac. No screen. No keyboard. No mouse. To get the best value out of it, you're going to want to have at least a monitor already in hand.

I'll make it simple: If you buy a $799 Mini like the one Apple offered for this review and buy the cheapest Apple display -- it's not really cheap at $899 -- you'll spend $1,698. That's more than enough to buy a 24-in. iMac with money left over.

That said, you can certainly find a much cheaper display somewhere other than Apple -- just make sure it's a DVI monitor so you don't have to buy an adapter. (The Mini comes with an included MiniDisplay-to-DVI adapter in the box.) But even the cheapest monitor will push the bottom-line price toward $1,000 if the $799 Mini is your starting point, and that takes us right back to whether an iMac is a better buy if you can afford it. (It likely is.)

Or if you see the Mini as a media center, why not do what I did: get a cable that connects the Mini to your TV and use that as your monitor. Paired with a wireless keyboard and mouse, it makes quite the spiffy combo.

Final thoughts
In short, the new Mini packs a moderate processing punch, much-improved graphic response, runs quiet as a mouse, offers plenty of ports for peripherals and still makes sense economically -- as long as you're judicious about which model you buy and which options you spring for. Just make sure you get 2GB of RAM if you're buying the $599 model, and if you need more room to grow, cough up the necessary money for the $799 version. Given Apple's decision to make high-definition movies available via iTunes, that's the model I'd get if I were buying from scratch.

Source: Computer World

Union fears IBM layoffs may reach 16000

IBM won't disclose plan, but union fears as many as 16,000 may lose their jobs
IBM's not-so-secret layoffs may have reached 4,200 today, according to Alliance@IBM, which believes that thousands of other employees will be losing their jobs as well before the cuts end.

IBM isn't discussing its job actions and that has made the union the primary source of information about the layoffs. The union's Web site has been so busy with traffic that its server was knocked offline this afternoon from the load, according to Lee Conrad, a former IBM employee who is now the national coordinator of Alliance@IBM.

Conrad said that about 1,200 employees who work in IBM's systems technology group at sites around the country have been laid off, and about 200 in the research division were let go as well. These reports bring the total layoff count at IBM to about 4,200.

Last week, the union said that about 2,800 employees were laid off in two IBM units: its software group, and sales and distribution operations.

Conrad said IBM's level of secrecy was mystifying.

"IBM should be as forthcoming as all the other companies," said Conrad. "We just simply don't understand why they are keeping it a secret and neither do the employees."

IBM will confirm that more employees were notified today of cuts, but IBM spokesman Doug Shelton said that the firm will not provide specific numbers or locations for the job cuts.

"This is an ongoing process that we do throughout the year to match skills and resources with our client needs," said Shelton. "We don't think it's necessary every time we do that to make an announcement about it."

The number of job cuts may change as well because employees have the opportunity to try to find a job elsewhere in the company, he said.

The layoffs are occurring in a number of locations, according to Conrad and local news reports. Fox News 44 in Colchester, Vt., reported layoffs in Essex Junction.

In East Fishkill, N.Y., The Times Herald-Record reported that layoffs there may be close to 700.

In Rochester, Minn., there was a report of layoffs, as well as reports of layoffs at the company's operations at Research Triangle Park, N.C.

Conrad said Alliance@IBM has heard reports that as many as 16,000 employees may lose their jobs. He said some of the employees who are getting cut have been training workers from IBM facilities in Brazil, India and other places to take over their jobs.

Others have been cut on the basis of performance reviews, and some because of a general job action. The Alliance@IBM is a Communications Workers of America local that doesn't have enough members to gain official recognition as a bargaining unit.

It's hard to know how many of the job cuts occurring at IBM, or at any of the other firms that have announced cutbacks, are because of the economy or part of the gradual shift of some types of work to overseas locations.

Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, or WashTech, a labor group in Seattle, said Monday that Microsoft's India operations were not being reduced in size as part of its plan to cut 5,000 jobs, something Microsoft confirms.

But the vendors have also been hit by the general economic downturn as business customers delay equipment purchases and other upgrades.

Source: ComputerWorld

Novell Desktop Linux Ready for Enterprise

With its SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11, Novell is backing up its claim that the Linux distribution is ready for businesses to use. For enterprises looking for a Linux alternative to Microsoft Windows, Novell's SLED 11 is a solid option, with features and support options the address concerns for larger companies. It offers strong basic features and interoperability with key Windows tools. However, Novell's desktop Linux OS is too limited in the software packages it offers, especially when compared with its community-centric relative, OpenSUSE.

For the past few years, Novell's Linux platform advertisements—aimed, presumably, at corporate IT managers—have carried the slogan: “Your Linux is Ready.” Novell's tagline is particularly apt when applied to the company's line of desktop Linux offerings, the latest of which, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11, began shipping the week of March 23.

After all, since Novell's big, Red-Hatted Linux rival has approached the desktop as more of a research project than a commercial product, it's been left to Novell to satisfy all the checklist items that an enterprise IT manager might demand in order to brand a Linux desktop “ready.”

Based on my tests so far of SLED 11, I've found Novell's new Linux offering to be a solid desktop operating system with a set of features and support options that are well tuned for enterprises—particularly those looking to integrate the Linux desktop into a Microsoft-centric infrastructure.

As far as appearances and hardware support are concerned, SLED 11 is extremely close to the OpenSUSE 11.1 release that I reviewed in February. What sets SLED 11 apart from its community-centric sibling—beyond the fact that Novell offers no paid support options for OpenSUSE—is that SLED 11 ships with a noticeably smaller range of ready-to-install software packages. This SLED limitation was my primary complaint about the last major Novell enterprise desktop release, SLED 10, when I reviewed it nearly three years ago.

To be sure, SLED 11 ships with all the desktop Linux basics, such as the Firefox Web browser, OpenOffice.org productivity suite, and Evolution mail and calendaring client. What's more, the versions of these applications that ship with SLED come sprinkled with Microsoft interoperability pixie dust. Firefox comes with support for version one Silverlight content via the Mono-based Moonlight; OpenOffice.org sports enhanced MS Office file format and macro compatibility; and Evolution boasts Exchange MAPI and PST file support.

And yet, as with SLED 10, it didn't take long during my tests of version 11 to bump up against missing software packages. For instance, I am accustomed to using the text editor nano to tweak configuration files on Linux systems, and SLED 11 lacks this package.

I could adjust my habits to use a different application, or—as I found suggested on one of Novell's forums in response to a user seeking out nano or its work-alike pico—I could download the source code and compile my own package. However, these are needless workarounds that take time away from the task at hand and, in the compile-your-own case, leave SLED in a less manageable state.

If Linux desktops are to remain consigned to restrictive, locked-down environments such as call center workstations, then a constrained selection of software packages shouldn't be a problem. However, unlike Red Hat, which sells a very spare desktop version of its Enterprise Linux for just this sort of environment, Novell is pitching SLED 11 as a mainstream desktop option.

I would like to see Novell reorganize its desktop Linux efforts more along the lines of what Canonical and the Ubuntu Linux project have done. The core of every Ubuntu release is comprised of packages for which Canonical offers explicit support. Available for installation alongside these packages is a separate—and much larger—repository of community-supported software packages.

Novell's SLED 11 is available via subscription, with Basic, Standard and Priority subscription plans that differ in cost and support services. All three plans include access to maintenance updates and security patches during the subscription terms, and cover support for an unlimited number of virtual machines.

Basic subscriptions include 30 days of telephone and e-mail-based support and cost, per system, $50 for one year or $125 for three years. Standard subscriptions cost $125 for one year and $324 for three years, and include telephone and e-mail support over the full support term. Priority subscriptions cost $220 for one year and $590 for three years, and improve upon the Standard plan's 12/5 support hours with 24/7 support.

Novell's support pricing for SLED 11 compares well with that of Canonical's Ubuntu Linux, which costs $250 per desktop per year for the equivalent of Novell's Standard support plan, and $900 per year for the equivalent of Novell's Priority support. On the other hand, support for Ubuntu Linux is optional, as the distribution is available for free download, with security and bugfix updates that are accessible to anyone.

Beyond differences in support costs, SLED ships with a handful of applications included in its price that would add cost to an Ubuntu desktop, such as support for MP3 and DVD playback. These features are available freely on Ubuntu or any other Linux desktop, but due to patent encumbrances, the open-source implementations of these functions are of murky legality.

What's more, according to Novell, the client software for Likewise Enterprise, which enables companies to use Microsoft Active Directory and Group Policy to handle identity and management tasks on Linux desktops, will be available through SLED's software repositories in a few weeks at no additional cost. Likewise Enterprise pricing begins at $59 per seat, so its inclusion in SLED means a nice price savings for companies that wish to bring Novell's Linux desktop under a Microsoft management structure.

SLED 11 also compares favorably with Windows Vista on price, at least when you consider Windows Vista Enterprise with Software Assurance. Microsoft is secretive about its Software Assurance pricing for Windows, but Novell is citing Vista Enterprise prices that start around $333 per desktop per year.

Source: eWeek

Conficker Worm to activate April 1

The Conficker worm is scheduled to activate on April 1, and the unanswered question is: Will it prove to be the world’s biggest April Fool’s joke or is it the information age equivalent of Herman Kahn’s legendary 1962 treatise about nuclear war, “Thinking About the Unthinkable”?

Conficker is a program that is spread by exploiting several weaknesses in Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Various versions of the software have spread widely around the globe since October, mostly outside the United States because there are more computers overseas running unpatched, pirated Windows. (The program does not infect Macintosh or Linux-based computers.)

An estimated 12 million or more machines have been infected. However, many have also been disinfected, so a precise census is difficult to obtain.

It is possible to detect and remove Conficker using commercial antivirus tools offered by many companies. However, the most recent version of the program has a significantly improved capacity to remove commercial antivirus software and to turn off Microsoft’s security update service. It can also block communications with Web services provided by security companies to update their products. It even systematically opens holes in firewalls in an effort to improve its communication with other infected computers.

Given the sophisticated nature of the worm, the question remains: What is the purpose of Conficker, which could possibly become the world’s most powerful parallel computer on April 1? That is when the worm will generate 50,000 domain names and systematically try to communicate with each one. The authors then only need to register one of the domain names in order to take control of the millions of zombie computers that have been created.

Speculation about Conficker’s purpose ranges from the benign — an April Fool’s Day prank — to far darker notions. One likely possibility is that the program will be used in the “rent-a-computer-crook” business, something that has been tried previously by the computer underground. Just like Amazon.com offers computing time on its network for rent, the Conficker team might rent access to its “network” for nefarious purposes like spamming.

The most intriguing clue about the purpose of Conficker lies in the intricate design of the peer-to-peer logic of the latest version of the program, which security researchers are still trying to completely decode.

According to a research addendum to be added Thursday to an earlier paper by researchers at SRI International, in the Conficker C version of the program, the infected computers can act both as clients and servers and share files in both directions. The peer-to-peer design is also highly distributed, making it more difficult for security teams to defeat the system by disabling so-called super-nodes.

Conficker’s authors could be planning to create a scheme like Freenet, the peer-to-peer system that was intended to make Internet censorship of documents impossible.

Or perhaps the Conficker botnet’s masters have something more Machiavellian in mind. One researcher, Stefan Savage, a computer scientist at the University of California at San Diego, has suggested the idea of a “Dark Google.” What if Conficker is intended to give the computer underworld the ability to search for data on all the infected computers around the globe and then sell the answers? Malware already does this on a focused basis using a variety of schemes that are referred to as “spear phishing,” in a reference to the widespread use of social engineering tricks on the Net.

But to do something like that on a huge scale? That would be a dragnet — and a genuine horror story.

Source: NYTimes

Google removes naked children Street View images

Google has been forced to remove photographs of naked children from its Street View service over the weekend as a row over internet privacy escalated into one about public safety.

The Independent on Sunday alerted the internet search giant after finding images of the toddlers, playing at a family summer picnic in a garden square in north London, captured permanently on the revolutionary mapping system. Britain's privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, is considering an investigation into Google if more images of naked children are found to have been picked up by its cameras and made available.

Google has had hundreds of requests for images to be removed since it launched Street View on Thursday, including pictures of members of the public leaving sex shops or vomiting in the street. But the pictures of children suggest the service could be exploited for more sinister purposes.

The new mapping service, which covers more than 22,000 miles, covers 25 UK cities including Belfast allowing millions across the world to take a ‘virtual stroll’ through our streets.

It also emerged that Tony and Cherie Blair are among hundreds of people who have demanded that close-up photographs of their homes be removed. The Blairs' home in Connaught Square, west London, was blacked out on Friday after nearly 24 hours on the web. Pictures of Downing Street were also taken down, although it is not a private address and the location is photographed by millions of tourists every year.

The images of the children were taken last summer and show a typical scene of garden square life in a quiet side-street — a location many families would deem semi-private and where they would have a reasonable expectation of privacy. The IoS is not naming the address, but the square is yards from a Cabinet minister's home, although the children are not related to that minister.

The images of the garden square were removed by Google within an hour of the company being informed yesterday. The picture had been found by this newspaper in only 10 minutes, suggesting there could be many similar images on the website.

The Tory MP Edward Garnier said: “The right to privacy, and not to become the victim of some corporation's profit-making activities, is clearly something that needs to be protected.

“We all have an expectation that our privacy should not be invaded or exploited for commercial purposes.”

A spokesman for the Information Commissioner's Office said: “We will consider the IoS story carefully. Images of children must be blurred. If what has been uncovered is systemic, we will take up the matter with Google.”

A spokeswoman for Google said: “We will remove these pictures as quickly as possible.”

Source: Belfast Telegraph

Apple Premium Pricing Buys More Than a Logo

I did not plan to take time out of my weekend to defend Apple, but Jeff Bertolucci's missive "Ballmer Is Right: Mac Users Do Pay Dearly for Apple Logo" is just wrong. Not in the facts, mind you, just the analysis.

Jeff compares a low-end MacBook portable to a similar Dell laptop. He concludes that the MacBook, at $999, costs $359 more than the Dell. Jeff never actually states an opinion on the relative value of the two machines--the headline does that work--but it seems clear enough where he's coming from: The Mac isn't worth the extra coin.

Still, he does give the MacBook some credit:

"Apple enthusiasts will counter that Mac users don't have to fuss with security worries, and that's true, at least for now," Jeff writes. It's worth mentioning that Apple has enjoyed a pretty long "now" in avoiding Windows-scale security headaches for, well, as long as there's been a Microsoft Windows."

"They'll point out that Macs don't come with the crapware that infests so many Windows PCs," he continues. "And they'll make the valid observation that the MacBook's preinstalled software, including iLife, is superior to the so-so apps, including Microsoft Works, that ship with most consumer Windows PCs.

"Fair enough. But are those advantages worth a $300-plus premium? In this economy, many consumers may think not."

Jeff is right about the apps. Apple hardware comes with high quality apps that Windows users have to pay extra for. That chips away at the price premium.

I find Mac users to be more productive than Windows users because they spend less time "messing" with the computer and solving (or not) various Windows hassles. In a business environment, this saving of staff time can offset the Mac premium so quickly it will make your head spin. Ease-of-use saves money.

In addition, many people will happily pay $300 to not be subjected to Windows Vista. Others, like me, do not find Vista that objectionable (and are liking Windows 7) but still believe Mac OS X is worth a premium.

For people who buy Macs--home users, small businesses, various professionals--the cost premium is clearly worth it. Although I have long been critical of Apple's premium pricing, after Jeff laid his example out for me, I find it hard to complain.

Another example: Which would most people rather own, an Apple MacBook Pro or Dell's Adamo laptop, complete with Vista Home Premium. That is a discussion I cannot believe serious people are having.

Of course, and this is where Jeff makes sense: You can only pay the premium if you have the money. As people economize and substitute real dollar savings for an improved experience, Mac sales are suffering.

I don't think the premium pricing Jeff cites is excessive at all, but I agree that if people don't have the money, they can't pay the premium. Moreover, customers who need a new machine right now may substitute the Dell they can afford for the more expensive Mac.

Source: PCWorld

Rich Media Search Engine Optimization Technigues

A variety of technologies and platforms are used to create rich Internet applications (RIAs), including Ajax, Curl, JavaFX, Microsoft Silverlight, and the Adobe Flash Platform. It's no secret that RIAs present challenges for search engines. Understanding the importance of this issue, Adobe has partnered with Google and Yahoo! to get to the heart of the issue and to come up with solutions that can not only work with the Adobe Flash Platform but also provide insight and fundamentals that can influence future technological advances.

In fact, a similar issue arose a few years ago with the PDF format. At the time, search engines had trouble recognizing the content contained in these documents. Now, search engines can crawl and index PDF files rather easily. The point is that eventually this issue will be solved, and Adobe, Google, and Yahoo! are leading the charge.

Last year Adobe announced a major breakthrough with the release of optimized Adobe Flash Player technology (since dubbed "Flash Player for Search Engines"), which is essentially a "headless" version of Flash Player that can change states of SWF content and gain access to the text content residing within. For a quick overview of how Flash Player for Search Engines works, please watch Duane Nickull's video blog post about it.

While Adobe, Google, and Yahoo! continue to collaborate to solve the problem, there are things you can do today to improve the relevance of your SWF content in search results. This article explains what the issues and challenges are and how to overcome them, whether you are a developer, designer, content owner, website owner, project manager, or even an SEO expert.

For example, suppose you've got a site built using Adobe Flash technology. You've received rave reviews on the slick design, smooth animation sequences, and overall powerful user experience. It does a great job of establishing a unique brand experience, it was developed for easy updates, and it is just flat-out cool. Schedule, budget, and content challenges were overcome and now everyone is basking in the glory. This article will help you answer one of the most important questions, and one that few people ask at the onset of a project: "Oh, by the way, does the site work with search engines?" Sound familiar?

This question usually arises only when the work is completed and your client begins searching for terms related to their brand, only to find that the site ranks much lower than expected. Most of the time, creating a search-friendly site was not part of the scope, nor was it considered or discussed when establishing the information architecture, design, and functional specifications.

Considering all the different criteria that need to be considered and prioritized when developing RIAs—client expectations, design decisions, content requirements, functionality decisions—it is very important in the planning stages to outline exactly how your RIA will comply with search. You will benefit in the long run if you spend the time up front to create a search-friendly RIA. The goal of this article is not to add another discipline to juggle, but to provide you with search best practices that can be integrated into the development cycle. Yes, it can be done.

To make best use of this article, you should be familiar with Adobe Flash technology and rich Internet applications, and have an advanced understanding of web development techniques.

Source: Adobe

TomTom fights back, not over Linux

TomTom, sued earlier by Microsoft for patent infringement related to GPS technology and TomTom's implementation of Microsoft's FAT, or file allocation table, technology in Linux, is fighting back. Unfortunately, its countersuit relates to four of its GPS patents that it claims Microsoft infringes, not the Linux patents that have the open-source community up in arms.

Neither side, in other words, is backing down. Despite my earlier concern that TomTom couldn't afford to fight Microsoft's allegations, it looks as if TomTom has found both the money and the will to fight.

I just wish that it were fighting over FAT, not GPS.

Both sides have engaged exceptional counsel, as Groklaw notes, but I doubt that the case will ever get to trial. Very few lawsuits ever make it so far, and the counsel on both sides will get paid handsomely to resolve the case at the lowest possible cost, which invariably means an out-of-court settlement.

That, too, doesn't work in favor of open source. I think that it's fair to say that open source would benefit--whatever the outcome--from seeing Microsoft's patents put on trial as they relate to Linux. Not only does TomTom's countersuit ignore the Linux-related patents, but given the likelihood that the suit will settle, it's likely that open source will be hurt, not helped, by the FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) ignited by the lawsuits.

As The 451 Group's Jay Lyman notes, Microsoft's suit against TomTom really isn't about Linux or open source, but both are collateral damage. I don't believe that the TomTom lawsuit is the first salvo in a Microsoft-sponsored legal battle against Linux, as some claim.

It's a lawsuit, one that involves Linux, but which ultimately will only likely hurt Linux by not tackling it head-on. Instead of clarity, we're only likely to get cloudiness from the TomTom lawsuit. That's a pity.

Source: CNET

Microsoft IE8 Released in 25 Languages

Microsoft plans to make its Internet Explorer 8 browser available on Thursday, along with a company-commissioned report claiming IE8 is more secure against malware than rival browsers from Mozilla and Google.

Users will be able to download IE8 in 25 languages at 12:00 noon Eastern Daylight Time on Thursday from Microsoft's IE Web site and its online download center.

Microsoft has been preparing users for IE8 for a good year now, stressing performance improvements, better support for Internet technology standards, the addition of new features to help people keep track of most visited sites and favorite sources of information, and of course, security, as highlights of the new browser.

According to the report Microsoft released Thursday, based on research conducted by NSS Labs, IE8's Release Candidate 1 was 69 percent effective at catching malware before it did damage to a user's system. Mozilla Firefox 3.07 came in second with a 30 percent effectiveness rate, with Apple Safari's 3 in third place with a 24-percent rate and Google's Chrome 1.0.154 in fourth place with 16 percent effectiveness rate

NSS Labs said in the report that the data was collected from tests conducted in just over 12 days from Feb. 26 through March 10 in its labs in Austin, Texas. During the course of the test, the company said it monitored connectivity to ensure the browsers could access the live malware sites being tested, and performed 141 discrete tests. The margin of error of the tests was 3.76 percent, according to NSS Labs.

Amy Barzdukas, a senior director at Microsoft, acknowledged that it might be a conflict of interest for Microsoft to sponsor a report in which IE8 came out on top in terms of security. However, she encouraged people to "look closely at the results" before making a judgment call on the validity of the report.

IE8 will be included as part of the Windows 7 OS. However, for the first time since adding browser technology to its operating system, Microsoft will give users the ability to turn off IE8 as a feature in the system.

This decision was outlined in a blog post on the Engineering Windows 7 blog. Microsoft is under pressure from an ongoing antitrust case in the European Union to give users more browser choice in Windows.

Source: PCWorld

Linux losing netbook ground

Linux is losing ground on the netbook front, but there lies opportunity for it in smaller, dedicated Internet-enabled appliances, said an Ovum analyst.

Laurent Lachal, open source research director at the U.K.-based analyst firm, said in a research note, Linux is not doing as well in terms of market share, compared to when it made its debut on the netbook market.

Lachal said: "After a strong start, Linux netbooks have now been overtaken by Windows netbooks and Linux is lagging increasingly behind in terms of sales."

While the first netbooks came with Linux OSes, manufacturers started finding Windows-based devices more popular, with customers finding they could not get accustomed to the Linux interfaces.

In the Philippines, Asus dropped Linux on all of its Eee PC models in the country because Filipinos were not taking to the Linux OS well.

But Linux could find its market as an OS for smaller, handheld Internet-enabled appliances such as Apple iPod Touch, said Lachal. The iPod Touch is a device similar to the iPhone but without telephony capabilities.

Linux, having had more success and a longer history as a phone OS, may be more suitable for such devices, said Lachal.

He added that Linux-based Android could be better positioned in this segment, with "increasing support" from the developer and ISV (independent software vendor) communities.

Google's recent revenue-sharing announcement for the Android app market is also expected to help raise developer interest in the platform. The increased variety of apps may also make Android more attractive to consumers

Source: ZDNet

Hadoop Free Software Program Finds Uses Beyond Search

In the span of just a couple of years, Hadoop, a free software program named after a toy elephant, has taken over some of the world’s biggest Web sites. It controls the top search engines and determines the ads displayed next to the results. It decides what people see on Yahoo’s homepage and finds long-lost friends on Facebook.

It has achieved this by making it easier and cheaper than ever to analyze and access the unprecedented volumes of data churned out by the Internet. By mapping information spread across thousands of cheap computers and by creating an easier means for writing analytical queries, engineers no longer have to solve a grand computer science challenge every time they want to dig into data. Instead, they simply ask a question.

“It’s a breakthrough,” said Mark Seager, head of advanced computing at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “I think this type of technology will solve a whole new class of problems and open new services.”

Three top engineers from Google, Yahoo and Facebook, along with a former executive from Oracle, are betting it will. They announced a start-up Monday called Cloudera, based in Burlingame, Calif., that will try to bring Hadoop’s capabilities to industries as far afield as genomics, retailing and finance.

The core concepts behind the software were nurtured at Google.

By 2003, Google found it increasingly difficult to ingest and index the entire Internet on a regular basis. Adding to these woes, Google lacked a relatively easy to use means of analyzing its vast stores of information to figure out the quality of search results and how people behaved across its numerous online services.

To address those issues, a pair of Google engineers invented a technology called MapReduce that, when paired with the intricate file management technology the company uses to index and catalog the Web, solved the problem.

The MapReduce technology makes it possible to break large sets of data into little chunks, spread that information across thousands of computers, ask the computers questions and receive cohesive answers. Google rewrote its entire search index system to take advantage of MapReduce’s ability to analyze all of this information and its ability to keep complex jobs working even when lots of computers die.

MapReduce represented a couple of breakthroughs. The technology has allowed Google’s search software to run faster on cheaper, less-reliable computers, which means lower capital costs. In addition, it makes manipulating the data Google collects so much easier that more engineers can hunt for secrets about how people use the company’s technology instead of worrying about keeping computers up and running.

“It’s a really big hammer,” said Christophe Bisciglia, 28, a former Google engineer and a founder of Cloudera. “When you have a really big hammer, everything becomes a nail.”

The technology opened the possibility of asking a question about Google’s data — like what did all the people search for before they searched for BMW — and it began ascertaining more and more about the relationships between groups of Web sites, pictures and documents. In short, Google got smarter.

The MapReduce technology helps do grunt work, too. For example, it grabs huge quantities of images — like satellite photos — from many sources and assembles that information into one picture. The result is improved versions of products like Google Maps and Google Earth.

Google has kept the inner workings of MapReduce and related file management software a secret, but it did publish papers on some of the underlying techniques. That bit of information was enough for Doug Cutting, who had been working as a software consultant, to create his own version of the technology, called Hadoop. (The name came from his son’s plush toy elephant, which has since been banished to a sock drawer.)

People at Yahoo had read the same papers as Mr. Cutting, and thought they needed to even the playing field with their search and advertising competitor. So Yahoo hired Mr. Cutting and set to work.

“The thinking was if we had a big team of guys, we could really make this rock,” Mr. Cutting said. “Within six months, Hadoop was a critical part of Yahoo and within a year or two it became supercritical.”

A Hadoop-powered analysis also determines what 300 million people a month see. Yahoo tracks peoples’ behavior to gauge what types of stories and other content they like and tries to alter its homepage accordingly. Similar software tries to match ads with certain types of stories. And the better the ad, the more Yahoo can charge for it.

Yahoo is estimated to have spent tens of millions of dollars developing Hadoop, which remains open-source software that anyone can use or modify.

It then began to spread through Silicon Valley and tech companies beyond.

Microsoft became a Hadoop fan when it bought a start-up called Powerset to improve its search system. Historically hostile to open-source software, Microsoft nevertheless altered internal policies to let members of the Powerset team continue developing Hadoop.

“We are realizing that we have real problems to solve that affect businesses, and business intelligence and data analytics is a huge part of that,” said Sam Ramji, the senior director of platform strategy at Microsoft.

Facebook uses it to manage the 40 billion photos it stores. “It’s how Facebook figures out how closely you are linked to every other person,” said Jeff Hammerbacher, a former Facebook engineer and a co-founder of Cloudera.

Eyealike, a start-up, relies on Hadoop for performing facial recognition on photos while Fox Interactive Media mines data with it. Google and I.B.M. have financed a program to teach Hadoop to university students.

Autodesk, a maker of design software, used it to create an online catalog of products like sinks, gutters and toilets to help builders plan projects.. The company looks to make money by tapping Hadoop for analysis on how popular certain items are and selling that detailed information to manufacturers.

These types of applications drew the Cloudera founders toward starting a business around Hadoop.

“What if Google decided to sell the ability to do amazing things with data instead of selling advertising?” Mr. Hammerbacher asked.

Mr. Hammerbacher and Mr. Bisciglia were joined by Amr Awadallah, a former Yahoo engineer, and Michael Olson, the company’s chief executive, who sold a an open-source software company to Oracle in 2006.

The company has just released its own version of Hadoop. The software remains free, but Cloudera hopes to make money selling support and consulting services for the software. It has only a few customers, but it wants to attract biotech, oil and gas, retail and insurance customers to the idea of making more out of their information for less.

The executives point out that things like data copies of the human genome, oil reservoirs and sales data require immense storage systems.

Source: NYTimes

Desktop Linux: vendor-sponsored survey finds

The survey was conducted by IDC. About 300 "senior IT executives" were surveyed via the web, according to Novell. Those surveyed reportedly represent manufacturing, financial services, retail industries, and government. All respondents worked for companies with 100 or more employees.

Some 55 percent had Linux server operating systems in use, 39 percent had Unix server operating systems in use, and 97 percent had Windows server operating systems in use. According to IDC, half said they plan to accelerate their adoption of Linux this year.

Additional key survey findings, as cited and interpreted by Novell, include:

40 percent of respondents said they plan to deploy additional workloads on Linux over the next 12-24 months.

49 percent said Linux would be their primary server platform within five years.

The most-selected reasons for not adopting Linux were lack of application support, and poor interoperability with Windows

67 percent of respondents stated that interoperability and manageability between Linux and Windows is one of the most important factors when choosing an operating system.

The retail industry showed the greatest potential for acceleration in Linux adoption with 63 percent of respondents planning an increase on the desktop and 69 percent considering the same on the server. The government sector lagged.

Almost 50 percent of respondents plan to accelerate adoption of Linux on the desktop, especially for basic office functions, technical workstation users, and higher education/K-12.

Nearly half of respondents stated that moving to virtualization is accelerating their adoption of Linux. Eighty-eight percent of recipients plan to evaluate, deploy or increase their use of virtualization software within Linux operating systems over the next 12-24 months.

From a regional perspective, Asia/Pacific is the most bullish on increasing Linux adoption, as 73 percent of respondents said they would increase deployments on the server and 70 percent on the desktop. In the Americas, 66 percent of respondents said they are either evaluating or have already decided to increase adoption of Linux on the desktop and 67 percent on the server.

The economic crisis has had the biggest effect on the Americas, and in financial services and government. More than 62 percent of respondents said that their budget has been cut or that they are only investing where needed.

To show, or to know?

When I worked in IDC's fledgling West Coast market research branch in 1987, one of our founders was fond of saying that some research truly aims to answer a question or resolve an unknown. Other research is crafted to achieve the desired result. "Some research is to know, and other research is just to show," she once told me.

Vendor-sponsored surveys, of course, generally fall into the "to show" category. It's hardly surprising that a Novell-sponsored study would validate the company's own strategies with regard to Linux.

Still, it's hard to "show" what isn't really there, if the research is done correctly. And IDC is certainly one of the best.

Markus Rex, GM of open platforms at Novell, stated, "The feedback confirms our belief that, as organizations fight to cut costs, Linux adoption will accelerate. Companies also told us that strengthening Linux application support, interoperability, virtualization capabilities, and technical support will all fuel adoption even more."

IDC's Al Gillen, software program VP, sated, "Economic downturns have the tendency to accelerate emerging technologies, boost the adoption of effective solutions, and punish solutions that are not cost competitive. This survey confirms that Linux users view it favorably, and this view places Linux in a competitive position to emerge from this downturn as a stronger solution."

Source: Desktop Linux

Apple: The cell phone 'Soup Nazi'

Everybody loves the iPhone, but follow Apple's strict rules or it's 'No soup for you!'

Maybe I'm a pathetic Seinfeld fanboy, but it occurred to me this week that each smartphone handset maker is exactly like a restaurant in the popular '90s TV series.

Research In Motion, or RIM, which makes the BlackBerry line of phones, is like Seinfeld's neighborhood coffee shop. RIM phones simply work. Nothing fancy, but they're very popular, functional and great for every day.

Like Babu's restaurant, Palm would be popular if it didn't constantly change the menu, fail to innovate and offer people what they don't want.

And then there's Apple. The company is just like the "Soup Nazi" (see YouTube video)" when it comes to both product quality and customer service.

Apple's iPhone is great. Most people love it. Like the Soup Nazi's soup, the iPhone is hot, tasteful and appealing. But buying one can be very unpleasant, just like buying soup from the Soup Nazi.

'You want bread? Three dollars!'
My son decided this week to convert from his BlackBerry Bold to the iPhone 3G. He was already an AT&T customer. Light on funds, he sold his Bold on Craigslist to raise money for the new iPhone.

After waiting 45 minutes, he told the AT&T rep he wanted to buy an 8GB iPhone 3G. He was told that in one month he would qualify for an upgrade, and thereby save $200. He was also told that once he upgraded, he would have to renew his contract for two years. Even if he paid the $200 and upgraded immediately, the contract would be reset.

The iPhone is the only phone that I'm aware of that resets the contract for an "upgrade." Isn't that why they call it an upgrade? You have your contract, and you're simply upgrading the phone associated with that contract.

But Apple is different. Apple is special. Apple is ready to send potential customers packing if they don't play by arbitrary rules that no other handset maker requires.

Of course, a new customer off the street gets the discounted price and the iPhone, both without waiting. My son could have pretended to be a new customer, but he'd have to pay an early termination fee on his contract and lose his phone number.

He didn't like this arrangement, but really wanted an iPhone. So he decided to accept the one month wait and the requirement that his contract would start over. But he needed a phone. So he bought an unlocked HTC G1, the first Google Android phone, to use with his AT&T account for the next month. His intention was to sell it after the month was over.

It turns out he likes the HTC G1, and now intends to keep it instead of buying an iPhone. In terms of actual hardware, he prefers the iPhone. But HTC let him just buy a phone and use it immediately without penalties, contract resets or other hassles. It seems to him that it actually wants his business, so he's sticking with HTC.

This experience reminded me of what my wife went through when she decided to buy an iPhone to replace her malfunctioning BlackBerry, an event I blogged about back in September.

Initially, the AT&T store rep told my wife (erroneously, it turns out) that she was ineligible to upgrade to an iPhone at any price. After spending several hours both at the store and on the phone with AT&T, it turns out that she was only eligible to upgrade to any phone in the entire AT&T inventory without penalty -- except, of course, the iPhone. That would cost an extra $200.

Like my son did, she felt that the whole attempt to move over to an iPhone was so unpleasant, and Apple so arrogant, that she decided instead to just get a new BlackBerry.

Some commenters have claimed, by the way, that these are AT&T incompetencies and policies, not Apple's. But you'll note that while Apple lost two customers, AT&T didn't lose any. At minimum, what is Apple doing about this unacceptable state of affairs? And why is the iPhone exceptional in so many ways?

'No soup for you! Come back 18 months!'
An even more extreme example was reported on the Consumerist blog.

A guy named Ronny bought an 8GB iPhone recently. He loved it so much he returned it and bought a 16GB iPhone within 30 days of his initial purchase, which Apple and AT&T allow. Later, he lost the phone. He knew and accepted that he'd have to pay the full, undiscounted price for a replacement iPhone.

But guess what? AT&T refused to sell him one at full price or at any price. Because the company's system shows that he's been through three phones, he's been flagged as an evil doer, an unlocker. It informed Ronny that he would be welcome to come back and buy an iPhone in 18 months!

Can you think of any other company that refuses to sell its product to a loyal fan based on a flimsy assumption that he's breaking its rules?

What does Apple gain?
I'm not the first person to notice the resemblance of Apple and the Soup Nazi. The comparison has been made based on the experience of some developers wanting to write applications for the iPhone.

A podcast called "The Typical PC User Podcast" complained in one episode back in 2005 that an Apple Store manager acted like the Soup Nazi when he wanted to return his iPod because it got scratches, even though he didn't abuse it in any way.

Like the Soup Nazi, the line of loyal customers for the iPhone goes out the door and down the street. Apple's arrogance and hostility doesn't seem to hurt them -- yet.

So whatever happened to Seinfeld's Soup Nazi, anyway? Well, he angered one customer -- Elaine -- so badly that she sought revenge by publishing his soup recipes. So he packed up and moved to Argentina.

The morale of the sitcom for Apple is that when you abuse your customers, some of them will seek revenge when the opportunity presents itself, instead of simply being what they wanted to be in the first place: Happy iPhone customers.

Source: Mike Elgan - ComputerWorld

Google: JaikuEngine now open source

Yesterday, we (Google) flipped the switch and moved Jaiku to App Engine. Today, we are open sourcing the Jaiku code base under the Apache License 2.0. The code is available as JaikuEngine on Google Code Project Hosting as of now. Anyone can set up and run their own JaikuEngine instance on Google App Engine.

So, developers, start your JaikuEngines. As Google will no longer be actively developing jaiku.com, the future of Jaiku is in your hands. Point your browser to the project and join the jaikuengine-discuss group to learn more and get started.

As a 20% project, Mika has open sourced the Jaiku Mobile client (dual-licensed MIT and GPLv2). Users of the client may have noted already that the current build will no longer connect to the server now that Jaiku is hosted on App Engine. We'll let you know when the new build is ready for download!

Source: jaikido

Apple: New iPhone Software

Apple, under increasing competition from mobile-phone makers trying to match the success of the iPhone, will give a "sneak peek" of new software for the device next week.

An invitation-only event Tuesday will showcase a software-development kit for the new operating system, called iPhone OS 3.0, Apple said Thursday in an e-mail. The company will host the meeting at its headquarters in Cupertino.

Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs released a software kit last year after developers clamored for a way to create games and other programs for the iPhone. Apple set up the App Store in July to distribute the programs and now offers more than 15,000 applications. Smart-phone rivals Research In Motion and Microsoft are copying that strategy.

"We expect significant new features to be announced, which could include universal search capability or possibly a redesigned user interface," said Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis. He expects Apple to introduce a new iPhone model this summer.

Source: MercuryNews

Google Launches Google Voice

Google re-launched its phone management service GrandCentral today renaming it Google Voice. The service keeps most of the original core GrandCentral features and adds voicemail transcripts, conference call functionality, and archived searchable SMS text messages.

Acquired by Google in 2007, the new GrandCentral (now Google Voice) offers you a single phone number to ring your home, work or mobile phones, a central voicemail inbox accessible over the Web and call screening capabilities. One of the core advantages of this service is that your Google Voice phone number can act as your master phone number - allowing you to program it on the fly to forward calls to whatever existing phone numbers you have.

Google Voice is still in closed beta stage but the company expects to open the service up to the public within the coming weeks. Google Voice will be free to use and users will also be able to place free U.S. calls through the service. International calls can be made for a small fee (lower than Skype's or your wireless carrier) with credits purchased via Google CheckOut. Also, Google Voice will remain a solely U.S. based service.

The new interface of Google Voice is designed like a central inbox for all your voice communications needs, much like Gmail is for email. You will be able to route all your calls through a single number (obtained upon registration) that can ring your home, work and mobile phone simultaneously. A central voicemail inbox is available as well, which can be accessed via Web or any of your phone numbers.

You can also use your Google Voice number to send and receive SMS messages, which will be forwarded to your mobile phone. Text messages are then archived and you can search through them. Same is applied to your global voicemail inbox, as Google Voice transcribes your voice messages (not very accurate at times) and then they get archived and become searchable.

Google Voice also lets your blacklist and screen your calls. Using Google Contacts, you can create groups and decide who can reach you, on which number and whether they are directed to voicemail straight away or put through to you. Google Voice's voicemail feature also allows you to screen calls by listening in to someone as they leave you a voicemail message and then pick up from there.

Source: PCWorld

Google making Adsense ads more interesting

Google plans to make Adsense ads more "interesting". Here is what they said:

At Google, we believe that ads are a valuable source of information — one that can connect people to the advertisers offering products, services and ideas that interest them. By making ads more relevant, and improving the connection between advertisers and our users, we can create more value for everyone. Users get more useful ads, and these more relevant ads generate higher returns for advertisers and publishers. Advertising is the lifeblood of the digital economy: it helps support the content and services we all enjoy for free online today, including much of our news, search, email, video and social networks.

That's why Google has worked hard to create technology that makes the advertising on our own sites, and those of our partners, as relevant as possible. To date, we have shown ads based mainly on what your interests are at a specific moment. So if you search for [digital camera] on Google, you'll get ads related to digital cameras. If you are visiting the website of one of our AdSense partners, you would see ads based on the content of the page. For example, if you're reading a sports page on a newspaper website, we might show ads for running shoes. Or we can show ads for home maintenance services alongside a YouTube video instructing you on how to perform a simple repair. There are some situations, however, where a keyword or the content of a web page simply doesn't give us enough information to serve highly relevant ads.

We think we can make online advertising even more relevant and useful by using additional information about the websites people visit. Today we are launching "interest-based" advertising as a beta test on our partner sites and on YouTube. These ads will associate categories of interest — say sports, gardening, cars, pets — with your browser, based on the types of sites you visit and the pages you view. We may then use those interest categories to show you more relevant text and display ads.

We believe there is real value to seeing ads about the things that interest you. If, for example, you love adventure travel and therefore visit adventure travel sites, Google could show you more ads for activities like hiking trips to Patagonia or African safaris. While interest-based advertising can infer your interest in adventure travel from the websites you visit, you can also choose your favorite categories, or tell us which categories you don't want to see ads for. Interest-based advertising also helps advertisers tailor ads for you based on your previous interactions with them, such as visits to their websites. So if you visit an online sports store, you may later be shown ads on other websites offering you a discount on running shoes during that store's upcoming sale.

Our advertisers and publisher partners have been asking us for a long time to offer interest-based advertising. Advertisers need an efficient way to reach those who are most interested in their products and services. And publishers can generate more revenue when they connect advertisers to interested audiences.

This kind of tailored advertising does raise questions about user choice and privacy — questions the whole online ad industry has a responsibility to answer. Many companies already provide interest-based advertising and they address these issues in different ways. For our part, we're launching interest-based advertising with three important features that demonstrate our commitment to transparency and user choice.

Transparency - We already clearly label most of the ads provided by Google on the AdSense partner network and on YouTube. You can click on the labels to get more information about how we serve ads, and the information we use to show you ads. This year we will expand the range of ad formats and publishers that display labels that provide a way to learn more and make choices about Google's ad serving.
Choice - We have built a tool called Ads Preferences Manager, which lets you view, delete, or add interest categories associated with your browser so that you can receive ads that are more interesting to you.
Control - You can always opt out of the advertising cookie for the AdSense partner network here. To make sure that your opt-out decision is respected (and isn't deleted if you clear the cookies from your browser), we have designed a plug-in for your browser that maintains your opt-out choice.

To find out more about what Google is doing in this important area, please visit our Public Policy blog and Privacy Center.

Keyword advertising has been so successful because it's useful to users, advertisers and publishers — everyone's interests are aligned. We believe that interest-based ads will create the same virtuous cycle, by giving users more relevant ads, while generating higher returns for advertisers and publishers.

Source: Google

Windows 7 summer release

Although slumping PC sales will certainly hurt Microsoft, the software maker's year could be better than expected, according to one financial analyst.

In a research note on Monday, Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Aggarwal projected that Microsoft will finalize the code for Windows 7 by June or July and also suggested that a search deal with Yahoo is likely to happen sooner rather than later. And, although it won't be here this year, Aggarwal said that the next version of Office, code-named Office 14, should come early next year.

Officially, Microsoft has said only that it will have Windows 7 on the market by next January, the three-year anniversary of Windows Vista's mainstream launch. However, the company has been aiming to have it out in time to be on PCs that ship during this year's holiday shopping season. PC industry sources told CNET News last month that Microsoft continues to push toward that goal.

The release of Windows 7 should allow Microsoft to make $1.5 billion in additional revenue, Aggarwal said, with nearly $1 billion coming from the upgrade market and as much as $680 million possible if Microsoft is able to increase the number of premium versions of Windows being used on Netbooks.

Even with a sluggish PC market, that makes the company's shares a good investment, Aggarwal wrote in the note. "We are recommending Microsoft as our top large cap pick because at the current level risk-reward appears to be very compelling," Aggarwal said.

Clearly not all is rosy, Aggarwal noted. "There is no doubt that the trends with PC shipments and Netbooks will get worse for at least the next 2 (quarters) but both of these concerns are now largely reflected in the stock price," he said.

Source: CNET

Google / Linux Netbooks Coming Soon

People have been speculating about Google getting into the desktop business ever since Good OS, an Ubuntu-based Linux built around online Google applications showed up in 2007. Then, the rumor-mill really got churning when it was shown that Google mobile operating system, Android, would work just fine as a desktop operating system. Just because something can be done, though, doesn't mean a company actually going to do it though. On March 3rd, though, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, "What's particularly interesting about netbooks is the price point. Eventually, it will make sense for operators and so forth to subsidize the use of netbooks so they can make services revenue and advertising revenue on the consumption. That's another new model that's coming."

Making money from online advertising. Hmm... Now what company, with a name that starts with 'G' and ends with 'e,' do we know that's the absolute tip-top at making money from online advertising? Could it be Google!? I think so.

The idea of selling netbooks cheaply with a service contract is already being tried. Dell and AT&T offered a Dell Mini 9 for $99 with an AT&T Data Connect contract. I have no doubt you'll see similar mobile phone like discount netbook pricing from other PC companies and telecoms soon. Look for these offers to start showing up everywhere later this year or early next year, as high-speed WiMAX networking starts to come into its own.
It makes perfect business sense for Google to jump into this business. Netbooks continue to be the one bright spot in computer sales and Google already has a Linux that will work on them. Google, of course, also has many online applications that work perfectly on a netbook. Making it even more attractive, Google is making it possible to use their applications, such as GMail, without a Internet connection.

Now take all this, combine it with putting data and applications on the cloud and Google's online advertising savvy, and I see a business model that, even in this grim economy, can't help but make money.

We've gone from pure speculation, to speculation based on facts, and now Google's CEO is talking about how much sense this kind of idea makes. I hereby predict that we'll see the first netbooks with an official Google Linux desktop on them by the second half of this year. It will happen that quickly because Google won't want to give Microsoft a chance to regroup with Windows 7 from its Vista disaster.

In 2010, the big desktop operating system battle will be between Apple, on the high-end, Google and the other Linuxes on the netbook and other low-priced systems, and Windows getting squeezed in the middle. If I were a betting man, I'd put good money on it.

Source: ComputerWorld

Save money with Google Tip Jar

Google wants to save us money, so the savy search giant created Tip Jar. Here's what Google has to say about it:

Ideas are everywhere, but how do we know which ones actually work? At Google, we put a lot of stock in both the wisdom of crowds — the idea that lots of people responding to a given question can collectively find the best answer — and the value of community. We believe that people working together can help one another through even the most difficult times.

As we all navigate today's choppy economic waters, we'd like to put these beliefs into practice. That's why we created Tip Jar (www.google.com/tipjar), an experiment powered by Google Moderator that we hope will help you discover the most effective ways to save money. There are lots of money-saving tips scattered across the web, but even if you found them, it would be hard to know which ones were worth trying. Tip Jar gathers tips in one place and invites people — i.e., you, me and everyone else — to rank them in order of usefulness and even add their own tips to the list. Over time, the best and most useful tips will rise to the top.

Source: Google

Office 14 crawling toward beta

Just because Office 14 won't be fully released until next year doesn't mean consumers will have to wait that long to try out the products.

In an interview this week Senior Vice President Chris Capossela said that Microsoft will offer more details on the beta "relatively soon," noting that Office has traditionally made its products available to millions of testers well before the final version ships.

"That's been true of the suite," he said. "That will certainly be true of the suite this time and of the Web apps."

With Office 14, Microsoft has said it will offer desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote as well as versions that can run online in a browser, be it Internet Explorer, Safari, or Firefox. As previously noted, that means that for the first time Office will also work on both Linux and Apple's iPhone. CEO Steve Ballmer told financial analysts last week that Office 14 would not come out this year.

Microsoft has already started testing some of the components that make up the Office 14 wave of products. Capossela wouldn't go into too many specifics about when Office 14 would ship, but said Microsoft hoped not to be too far beyond its typical cycle which sees new versions roughly every three years.

"I don't think Office 14 is going to be wildly different," Capossela said. "Office has had a pretty predictable ship rate and I think we will continue with that."

The last version of Office, Office 2007 was finalized and made available to large businesses in late 2006 and had its consumer launch with Windows Vista in January 2007.

As for the new Web-based products, Capossela reiterated that they are already being tested "with a small set of people."

"We will look to expand that number relatively soon," he said. The final version, though he said, won't come until the desktop version of Office 14 is also done. "In terms of when things will be completely done we'll take the beta name off when the wave is completely done," he said.

For businesses, though, Capossela said Microsoft is competing plenty well with its current suite, Office 2007. Although the company had some high-profile customers consider a move to Google Apps, Capossela said that the pressure has actually waned some.

"The bloom is off the rose I would say when it comes to Google in the enterprise," he said. "Last year there was a nice halo effect for their brand for their business offerings."

But he said, the actual business adoption of Google's productivity software has been low. "I think the reality is Google isn't an enterprise company. Microsoft wasn't an enterprise company a long time ago and it took us years to earn the credibility."

Capossela pointed to the fact that many of Google's products, even the ones it sells to businesses are still in beta form.

"Businesses don't bet on beta," he said. "Google has been in beta for their stuff for I don't know how long...Companies have a very hard time paying for software that says it's in beta."

But customers, he said, do see Web-based productivity software as a way to expand the number of workers who get access to software. That's particularly true in industries like manufacturing and hospitality, where many employees don't have their own PC.

"Certain industries lend themselves much more to a lightweight, deskless (approach)," he said. "There's no PC (that) they have there as part of their daily job but there is an opportunity to provide them with more technology."

No word on Web apps pricing
Microsoft already has a cheaper "deskless" option for companies that want to provide such workers access to both Exchange e-mail and to a SharePoint portal server. The company hasn't said exactly how it will price access to the new Office Web Apps, but it has said that customers that want to provide certain workers only with Web-based Office access will be able to do so.

"This will become a lot clearer when we finalize our packaging," Capossela said.

In the time that Microsoft has been building Office 14, cost-sensitivity has increased as the economy has deteriorated. Although Capossela said Microsoft is still building the same product it set out to, he acknowledged that the company has changed its messaging somewhat.

"We change the way we talk to customers to be much more focused on how we can take costs out," he said. But, at the same time, Capossela said that businesses want to hear about more than just ways to save.

"I do think that beyond the cost savings there is a thirst for the new styles of productivity that take into account collaboration," he said. Many businesses see the amount of time and energy workers put into social networking and personal blogs.

"A lot of IT people see that energy going outside of the business space," Capossela said. "How do you actually put that into more of a business context?"

Office, particularly SharePoint, already has tools for turning a portal into more of a companywide social-networking site. The company has said it wants to extend that with the new version, although Capossela declined to offer any new details on what shape that might take.

Source: CNET

Facebook users suffer viral surge

Facebook has been targeted by malicious hackers seeking to steal valuable data from members.

The social network site has been hit by five separate security problems in the last seven days, say security experts.

By creating fake messages padded with details of Facebook members the thieves are capitalising on the trust and social links that drive the network.

Security firms warn that the popularity of social networking sites makes them a tempting target for hi-tech thieves.

Trust network

"It's been a pretty bad week for social networking in general," said Rik Ferguson, senior security advisor at Trend Micro.

In the last week, said Mr Ferguson, Facebook had been hit by four malicious applications as well as a new variant of the Koobface virus that first targeted members of the social site in December 2008.

The rogue applications on Facebook all try to steal saleable information from the profiles of those who open it up, said Mr Ferguson.

One malicious application tried to trick people into adding it by claiming that their friends were having trouble looking at their profile. If the application is added it spams itself to every Facebook friend that a member of the site has.

Mr Ferguson said the way that Facebook is built can make it tricky for members to spot malicious or rogue applications.

A lot of security software looks for malicious activity on a user's own machine, he said. By contrast, when Facebook members add an application it is servers operated by the social site that link to the third-party computers hosting that program.

So far, said Mr Ferguson, the rogue applications on Facebook have been scary and a nuisance more than anything else.

"It's almost as if the applications we have seen this week are a proof of concept," he said. "It would be much better for them to generate rogue applications that did not look like rogue applications."

Mr Ferguson said he expected more sophisticated programs that hid their malicious intent to debut soon on social network sites.

He said it was time for Facebook to review its policy of approving applications. Currently, it only vets them after they are offered to members and have been reported as causing problems.

In a Radio 1 Newsbeat interview with Mark Zuckerberg in late February, the Facebook founder rejected a call to vet all the applications showing up on the site.

He said: "Our philosophy is that having an open system anyone can participate in is generally better."

A spokesman for Facebook said members should be vigilant and never give out their password. He said Facebook did a lot of work behind the scenes to keep the site safe.

If anyone was unlucky enough to fall victim they should visit the Facebook security pages and follow the steps that lays out to get help, he said.

Writing on his blog, Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at anti-virus software developers Sophos, said: "One of the problems is that Facebook allows anybody to write an application and third party applications are not vetted before they are released to the public.

"Even as Facebook stamps out one malignant application, it can pop up in another place."

Hitting Facebook users alongside the rogue applications has come a sophisticated variant of the Koobface virus that debuted in December 2008.

The new variant uses a Facebook message to try to get people to visit a fake YouTube page and install the malware. To make it look more plausible, said Mr Ferguson, the virus posts the image from a Facebook member's profile on the video page.

Once installed the malicious program hunts for cookies on a victim's computer and uses the details it finds in the small text files to log into other social sites that person may be a member of.

"This is not just restricted to Facebook," said Mr Ferguson, "it's a growing trend. Though I'm surprised it's taken so long for social sites to be targeted."

Source: BBC