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Yahoo CEO: "Google Is Going To Have A Problem"

2010-05-03T22:07:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that Google has, on a very steady basis, dominated its competition and managed to return big profits. And Carol Bartz may be in no position to question the company's methods. But Yahoo's CEO nonetheless chose to point out a potential weakness this week, and she may be on the right track.

Does Carol Bartz have enough credibility to criticize Google? Tell us what you think.

Bartz told Jonathan Fildes, "Google is going to have a problem because Google is only known for search. It is only half our business; it's 99.9% of their business. They've got to find other things to do."

Also, in terms of how Google will be judged as it attempts to find those other things, Bartz observed, "Google has to grow a company the size of Yahoo every year to be interesting."

The 99.9 percent figure is obviously an exaggeration. Still, if you figure that Google has a market cap of around $169 billion and Yahoo's market cap is closer to $24 billion, the second remark doesn't seem too inaccurate.

So as Bartz indicated, that puts a lot of pressure on Google to succeed at something other than search. Whether that something's Android, Google Apps, the TV Ads program, or a different product doesn't matter, but in this light, Yahoo's rather scattered network of properties starts to look a little more attractive.

UPDATE: A regulatory filing has revealed that Carol Bartz received $47.2 million in compensation for her work in 2009, which is far more than either Eric Schmidt or Steve Ballmer collected.

Source:

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/04/29/yahoo-ceo-google-is-going-to-have-a-problem

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Adobe 'Moving Forward' Without Apple

2010-05-02T22:36:00.000-07:00

All the back-and-forth on the Flash issue is getting a little ridiculous. Whichever side you happen to support in the issue, what really matters is giving customers what they want. That's what Adobe says it is going to do -- with or without Apple.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs penned a missive yesterday on Flash and why Apple doesn't support it in devices such as the iPhone and iPad. Later, Adobe's CEO fired back via an interview conducted by the Wall Street Journal. Thursday night, Adobe's CTO published his own thoughts. Here's what Kevin Lynch had to say:

Clearly, a lot of people are passionate about both Apple and Adobe and our technologies. We feel confident that were Apple and Adobe to work together as we are with a number of other partners, we could provide a terrific experience with Flash on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

We have already decided to shift our focus away from Apple devices for both Flash Player and AIR. We are working to bring Flash Player and AIR to all the other major participants in the mobile ecosystem, including Google, RIM, Palm (soon to be HP), Microsoft, Nokia and others.

We look forward to delivering Flash Player 10.1 for Android smartphones as a public preview at Google I/O in May, and then a general release in June.

If you read through Jobs' thoughts, and then compare them to Adobe's it is clear that business and technology are the two issues at hand. Each company has its own set of beliefs about Flash, and they can't come to terms on how to work together. This happens all the time. Technology and business will always clash -- and some times that comes at the expense of the end user (in this case, iPhone and iPad users).

Apple's desire to control its iPhone business and the overall experience surrounding iPhone OS devices is being over-vilified in my opinion. The notions of openness, competition, and the greater good can be debated all day long. In case anyone forget, Apple is a for-profit company. If people have a problem with its business model and products, they have plenty of choice in the market.

For More Read....

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/04/adobe_moving_fo.html;jsessionid=VGZKKH2WKBRE5QE1GHOSKH4ATMY32JVN

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Microsoft Credits Windows 7 for Record Earnings

2010-04-29T22:59:00.000-07:00

Exceptionally strong sales of Windows 7 helped drive Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) to another record quarterly performance, company executives said today.

For the third quarter of Microsoft's fiscal 2010, ending March 31, the company turned in revenues of $14.50 billion, up 6 percent from the same period a year ago, while earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter came in at $0.45, a gain of 36 percent.

Analysts polled by Thomson Financial in advance of the announcement had expected Microsoft to turn in revenues of $14.38 billion and EPS of $0.42 for the quarter.

Microsoft cited operating income for the quarter of $5.17 billion, and net income of $4.01 billion -- increases of 17 percent and 35 percent, respectively, over the third fiscal quarter of 2009.

Adjusting for $300 million in deferred revenues due to the company's "tech guarantee" program reserves for pre-sales of Office 2010, Microsoft's revenue for the quarter came in at $14.81 billion, an increase of 8 percent overall.

In advance of Microsoft's announcement, analysts expected to see the company's earnings again buoyed by strong sales of Windows 7 to consumers -- and possibly the early signs of adoption of the new system by enterprise customers.

That proved to be the case with consumer sales of Windows 7 -- both on new PCs and as packages of the new system.

"More than 10 percent of all PCs worldwide are running Windows 7 today, making Windows 7 by far the fastest-selling operating system in history," the company said in a statement.

A similar story may be in the works for enterprise customers, with Microsoft suggesting that traction in that market -- which typically takes far longer than in the consumer space -- is ratcheting up.

"Business customers are beginning to refresh their desktops and the momentum of Windows 7 continues to be strong," Kevin Turner, Microsoft's chief operating officer, said in a statement.

Read the full story at Datamation:

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/features/article.php/3878191/Microsoft-Credits-Windows-7-for-Record-Earnings.htm

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Businesses Should Know About These New Local Features from Google

2010-04-28T22:10:00.000-07:00

Facebook made some of the biggest news of the week with the anouncements from its developer conference, as far as online business goes, but Google had some significant news about local search that may have taken a backseat, but should not be ignored.

The Google Local Business Center is now called Google Places, as the company aims to rebrand the product around the Place Pages it introduced last fall. Place Pages are the pages for business listings that are found in Google local searches. They contain relevant information about a business from various places on the web, such as reviews and images, as well as other info the business puts up after claiming their listing.

Is Google's rebranded local business center a step in the right direction? Tell us what you think.

Google Places, the company says, is "just the beginning of what’s to come from our efforts to make Google more local."

New features that come along with the name change include:

1. Service areas - Businesses who travel can show the geographic areas that they cover. Those without a storefront can make their address private.

2. Advertising with Tags - For 25 bucks a month, businesses (in certain cities) can use Tags to highlight their listings on Google.com and Google Maps. These are yellow markers that let you promote important aspects of your business. They can be used for thins like coupons, photos, and other select features. They don’t affect the rank of search results, but they give customers more information and may prove beneficial. You can expect Google to increase the number of cities where this option is available.

3. Business photo shoots - Businesses (again, in certain cities) can request a free photo shoot from Google to have the interior of their business photographed and added to their Place Page. We've seen Google do this in the past. Now we know what they're doing (learn more here). You can upload your own photos as well.

For More Read....

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/04/20/google-local-business-center-now-google-places

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iPad buyers targeted by Windows malware

2010-04-27T22:23:00.000-07:00

As if to prove the Apple iPad's crossover appeal to PC users, spammers have launched a malware campaign to reel them in using the promise of extras for the new device.

According to BitDefender, the spam campaign invites its would-be victims to download an updated version of iTunes with the promise of a preliminary update that will give prospective iPad users "best performance, newer features, and security."

[ Read Galen Gruman's report on iPad security and IT's foolish double standard. | Stay ahead of advances in mobile technology with InfoWorld's Mobile Edge blog and Mobilize newsletter. | Get the best iPhone and iPad apps for pros with our business iPhone apps finder. ]

Following the embedded link leads to a piece of malware identified by the company as Backdoor.Bifrose.AADY, a data stealer which sets out to steal software keys and serial numbers from installed programs as well as login passwords for email, online storage accounts and IM services.

The iPad has, infamously, not even been launched in the U.K. even though U.S. users have had access to the new computer for some days. U.K. users are also being asked to pay a premium. Ironically, the malware won't affect Apple's Mac users at all and is PC only.

Bitdefender announced a Mac antivirus product a week ago while admitting that Mac malware is not exactly a common issue. It looks as if even Mac products can now be used to attack PC users.

Source:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/security-central/ipad-buyers-targeted-windows-malware-948

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The Secret of Search Engine Optimization

2010-04-26T22:12:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, search engine optimization (SEO) is an important key to gaining more traffic and visitors to your website. Resorting to phone directories, dictionaries or newspapers for a quest for information is become obsolete. Nowadays, whenever people are trying to find out something, you can be sure that there is only one place that they head to. Yes, and that is search engines. How would you love to improve your business’s presence and awareness? Then you should do your utmost to make sure that your website is found on search engines.

That is the aim and objectives of search engine optimization. Basically, search engine optimization was designed to help you incorporate your website to an improved or higher ranking position within numerous search engines. If your website can grab a space on the first page of Google, and eventually up to the number one spot on the list or results; you will notice increase in traffic to your website at an alarming rate. This leads to a better business prospect and new customer than before.

So how can you use search engine optimization for the better? The concept behind SEO is simple yet, there are many brainstorming component and procedures to follow. Search engine optimization is constantly changing. It is dynamic not static. This means you should do your utmost to stay on top, amidst the latest trends. Only than will you be successful.

The very first step is to do a research on your market. Dig deep to determine the type of keywords and phrases that your potential customers will use when searching for information related to your products or service. There are special keywords related to the particular industry in which you do business, or a more general market. You need to know these keywords. Keywords work hand in hand with search engine optimization, so do you best to find the most popular and widely used keywords. Avoid taking competition to the extreme.

For More Read...

http://www.articlecache.com/articledetail.php?artid=141315&catid=362&title=The+Secret+of+Search+Engine+Optimization

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Obama pays tribute to fallen West Virginia miners

2010-04-25T21:44:00.000-07:00

Beckley, West Virginia (CNN) -- President Obama paid tribute Sunday to 29 workers killed in an explosion at a West Virginia coal mine earlier this month, saying they died "in pursuit of the American dream."

"All the hard work; all the hardship; all the time spent underground; it was all for their families. ... It was all in the hopes of something better," Obama said during a memorial service for the fallen miners in Beckley, West Virginia.

Obama and Vice President Biden, who were among a group of dignitaries who spoke at the service, met with the workers' families privately before the ceremony.

In his eulogy, delivered from behind a row of 29 white crosses, Obama sought to comfort those loved ones.

"We have been mourning with you throughout these difficult days," he said. "Our hearts have been aching with you."

Biden offered similar words of comfort, saying the fallen miners "represent, what I believe is the heart and soul and spine of this nation," and adding "a nation mourns them."

The April 5 blast at the Upper Big Branch Mine was the worst U.S. mine disaster in nearly 40 years.

Obama ordered a review earlier this month and blamed mine officials for lax regulation and lack of oversight.

On Sunday, he said: "We cannot bring back the 29 men we lost. ... Our task ... is to save lives from being lost in another such tragedy. To do what must be done, individually and collectively, to assure safe conditions underground."

West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, who was a constant presence during the recovery efforts at the mine, also spoke at the service, telling the crowd of mourners that it was the day "to begin the healing process."

Manchin said each of the 29 men, like their fathers and grandfathers, had not only a strong commitment to their work, but also "a deep, patriotic pride that the work they did and the energy they produced made America strong and free."

He called on Americans to "say a prayer for every coal miner working today," and to "not only thank them -- but to honor them for their work and their patriotism."

He also made a vow: "After today, we turn our focus on their legacy," he said. "I don't have the answers about why this has happened, but I promise you we will find the answers."

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, echoed that vow during his remarks at the service, saying: "We will pass legislation to meet the requirements of those answers. And we will do it for you, the miners of West Virginia and America."

"West Virginia, all of West Virginia, is in pain, and not without some anger," Rockefeller added. "But we will find our solace and bind together as a community because that is what West Virginians do."

The somber service began with Manchin accompanying families as they lay helmets on top of 29 crosses.

A photo of each of the men killed in the disaster was displayed on large screens, and the crowd applauded for each one.

The service closed on a stirring note, as one by one, each of the headlamps on the symbolic helmets were lighted while a chorus sang "This Light of Mine."

Source:

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/04/25/west.virginia.mine.obama/index.html

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Microsoft launches SQL Server R2

2010-04-22T22:40:00.000-07:00

Fast, in-memory analysis and centralized management are highlights, but will it make BI more accessible to business users

Few surprises were contained in the recent official announcement on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, but the occasion did give the company a chance to stoke interest in SQL Azure cloud services and anticipation of the Parallel Data Warehouse edition of SQL Server expected to launch later this year.

Plans for an upgrade of SQL Server 2008 were first announced in October of 2008, and the community technical preview (beta) became available last November. Thus, customers know what to expect.

Highlights include in-memory analysis capabilities provided by PowerPivot add-ins for Excel and SharePoint, and master data management and complex event processing capabilities aimed at ISVs and developers. The PowerPivot add-ins will enable desktop users to do rapid analysis on up to millions of rows of data with the aid of "slicer" controls used to cut across multiple dimensions. These analyses can then be published for others to see through SharePoint. That combination ensures managed self service, according to Microsoft.

"It's self-service because companies can empower end users to do more analyses on their own in the familiar Microsoft Office environment," said Tom Casey, Microsoft's general manager of business intelligence. "It's managed because IT professionals can easily make data available for reports and analyses while governing who has access to data and monitoring who is using which analyses."

One drawback of the PowerPivot add-ins is that they only work with Excel 2010 and SharePoint 2010, which are currently available in community technical preview releases but won't formally launch until next month. Critics describe PowerPivot for Excel as little more than an in-memory upgrade of the pivot-table capabilities already available in the spreadsheet tool.

As such, the add-ins will enable power users to quickly crunch more data, but it won't make developing BI insight any easier or more accessible to spreadsheet novices. For that, developers and Microsoft partners must still create business-process-specific applications and interfaces in Excel.

"There's no doubt PowerPivot is useful and will be successful, but it's not a revolution in BI," said Anthony Deighton, senior vice president of products at QlikTech, a Microsoft rival that introduced in-memory analysis capabilities several years ago. "Microsoft BI still requires application-style development, but many companies just don't like deploying Excel applications."

Microsoft SQL Server R2 also includes several upgrades aimed at streamlining administration. New application and multi-server management capabilities, for example, enable database administrators (DBAs) to centrally manage all instances of applications running on any number of servers. Artifacts such as tables, views, and stored procedures can be grouped, deployed, and managed using unified policies and procedures.

Source:

http://www.informationweek.in/Software/10-04-22/Microsoft_launches_SQL_Server_R2.aspx

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Drug-dealing spammers hit Gmail accounts

2010-04-21T21:55:00.000-07:00

Google is investigating a growing number of reports that hackers are breaking into legitimate Gmail accounts and then using them to send spam messages.

The problem started about a week ago but seems to have escalated over the past few days.

"The Gmail team takes security very seriously and is investigating the reports we've seen in our user forums over the past few days," Google said Tuesday in an e-mailed statement. "We encourage users who suspect their accounts have been compromised to immediately change their passwords and to follow the advice at the following page: http://www.google.com/help/security/."

Gmail accounts are often compromised after phishing attempts or via malicious programs, which can seek out and log online credentials from a hacked computer.

It isn't clear what's behind this wave of Gmail compromises. But in forum posts, Gmail users note that the hackers appear to be sending spam via Gmail's mobile interface -- which gives mobile-phone users a way to check their Gmail accounts -- and wonder if there may be a bug in the mobile interface that is allowing criminals to send the spam.

Most of the victims are reporting that their accounts were accessed via the mobile interface when the spam was sent. They are reporting any security problems on their machines. Gmail users can check to see how their accounts were accessed at a given time by clicking on a "Details" button at the bottom of the Gmail page.

Google says there's no Gmail bug. "Our investigation has not given any indication of a bug in Gmail, either in the mobile interface or otherwise," the company said. "Spammers may sometimes use a mobile interface to access accounts they have already compromised because it's simpler for bots to use this method at large scale."

The New York Times reported Monday that Google's centralized login system, code-named Gaia, was compromised by hackers in late December. But this seems unrelated to the Gmail problem because of the different nature of the two incidents -- the December attack was a sophisticated attempt to steal data and intellectual property from Google; the Gmail spam is hardly sophisticated. It's being used to flog Canadian pharmaceutical Web sites that promise to send cheap drugs to U.S. customers.

For More Read...

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9175857/Drug_dealing_spammers_hit_Gmail_accounts

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Facebook? Twitter? Microsoft tops social media use

2010-04-20T22:04:00.000-07:00

Twitter and Facebook are the bane of many bosses, but a new survey has found that employees at Microsoft Corp are the most social media-savvy in the world.

The survey, the first by sales and marketing contact database NetProspex, ranked the top 50 companies based on their social network membership, frequency of social media posts on Twitter and other blogs, and the friendliness or connectedness of a sample of employees for each organization.

The NetProspex Social Index was determined after an analysis of more than 100,000 business executives from the Fortune 1000 companies in the first quarter of 2010.

"This report shows that in today's business environment, employees throughout many of the country's largest corporations are using social networks," Gary Halliwell, CEO of NetProspex, said in a statement.

"This presents a new opportunity for sales and marketing prospecting and lead generation, as strategies adapt to encompass the landscape of social networks."

The survey found that almost half of companies analyzed have employees throughout their organization on social networking sites, with Microsoft leading the way.

Not surprisingly, the list was dominated by technology and software companies, while online retailers such as Amazon.com and eBay claimed two of the top five rankings.

Google and Walt Disney Corp rounded out the top 5, while Microsoft's rival Apple ranked number 10.

Microsoft's tech-savvy ranking comes almost a week after the company launched two new phones -- the Kin One and Kin Two -- aimed at the youth market and which will enable users to use Facebook, MySpace and Twitter accounts with ease.

Source:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63J1D520100420

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Facebook to push promo Pages to users

2010-04-19T22:00:00.000-07:00

Facebook will try to spur members to become fans of more of its site's Pages, which are profiles that organizations, companies and public figures set up to promote themselves and their brands, the company announced Monday.

Facebook will do this by suggesting specific pages that are related to information people have posted about themselves on their profiles, such as the city in which they live and the type of music and movies they like.

People will have the choice of accepting all Pages recommendations with one click or consider each suggestion individually, according to Alex Li, a Facebook software engineer.

"Once you make your choice, any text you'd previously had for the current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests sections of your profile will be replaced by links to these Pages," he wrote.

Previously, members could subscribe to Facebook Pages by clicking a button labeled "Become a Fan," but that button now reads simply "Like." When someone clicks on a "Like" button, Facebook adds that Page in the contextually relevant section of their profile "Info" section.

One thing to consider on the privacy front is that Facebook Pages are public and available to anyone on the Internet, so posting a comment or photo on them makes the content visible to the Web at large. These Pages also display a small sample of their "fans'" photos and names.

In addition, Facebook has added a new type of profile page to its site called "Community," meant for people to virtually gather around a shared interest or topic.

"Community Pages are still in beta, but our long-term goal is to make them the best collection of shared knowledge on a topic," wrote Li in an official blog post.

For More Read....

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9175801/Facebook_to_push_promo_Pages_to_users

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Intel To Introduce System-on-Chip Products

2010-04-18T22:15:00.000-07:00

Intel Developer Forum has unveiled its latest Intel system-on-Chip (SOC) products for embedded applications. The upcoming Tunnel Creek System-on-Chip (SoC) is suited for IP phones, printers and in-vehicle-infotainment systems for cars.

According to a company statement, the new research will allow homes and small businesses to better use and manage energy. The forthcoming SoC product features an Intel Atom processor core that, for the first time, will let other companies create PCI Express compliant devices that directly connect to the chip. This offers new flexibility for embedded applications.

Intel is committed to focus our technologies on innovative new applications in China, said Doug Davis, corporate vice president and general manager of Intels embedded and communications group. Were cooperating closely with local companies in China to provide smarter and better connected computing solutions for cars, homes, businesses that provide infrastructure to power a more mobile and faster Internet experience, he added.

During his address Davis disclosed details on a future Intel product code-named Tunnel Creek. This SoC for embedded applications will use a standard interconnect to the processor. The highly integrated SoC combines an Intel Atom processor core, the memory controller hub, graphics engine and video engine into one chip.

The chip will also enable companies to connect their own custom-built silicon to the Intel chip as long as it is a PCI Express compliant. The flexibility in this highly integrated one-chip solution helps reduce bill of materials and saves on board real estate for embedded applications.

Intel Chief Technology Officer and managing director of Intel Labs, Justin Rattner, said the companys goal is to apply Intel technology in ways that empower consumers and small businesses to make better energy choices.

Source:

http://www.itvarnews.net/news/10631/Intel-To-Introduce-System-on-Chip-Products.html

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Google sees fake AV threat

2010-04-15T21:52:00.000-07:00

Fake anti-virus software is on the rise and currently accounts for about 15 percent of all malware detected, according to a forthcoming report from Google.

Fake anti-virus software purports to be software than can find and remove malware. But in fact it's malware, the very thing it's supposed to eliminate.

Fake AV software typically pretends to scan the victim's computer and to find some form of malware, at which point it seeks payment from the victim to remove the non-existent malware. Whether or not there's a payment, the fake AV software may install more malware.

Computer users often come into contact with fake AV software through spam Web sites and online ads, which explains why Google is interested in the topic.

Beyond its general concern with maintaining user trust and security, Google wants to make sure that online ads don't become such a pervasive means of malware delivery that users reject legitimate marketing as a risk.

In a blog post, Google security engineer Niels Provos said, "[T]he Fake AV threat is rising in prevalence, both absolutely, and relative to other forms of Web-based malware."

Google's forthcoming report, slated for presentation later this month at the Workshop on Large-Scale Exploits and Emergent Threats (LEET) in San Jose, Calif., says the company found 11,000 domains involved in distributing fake AV software over the past 13 months.

The report, "The Nocebo Effect on the Web: An Analysis of Fake AV distribution," says that fake AV attacks represent 60 percent of the malware found on Web sites that include trending keywords -- popular search terms that generate visitor traffic.

It also says that fake AV software is responsible for 50 percent of all malware delivered via online ads, five times more than a year ago.

In a related note, Google's Postini Q1 spam report indicates that despite several high profile botnet takedowns, spam volume as a percentage of total e-mail volume remains steady.

"This suggests that there's no shortage of botnets out there for spammers to use," said Gopal Shah, from Google's Postini team, in a blog post. "If one botnet goes offline, spammers simply buy, rent, or deploy another, making it difficult for the anti-spam community to make significant inroads in the fight against spam with individual botnet takedowns."

Source:

http://www.informationweek.in/Security/10-04-15/Google_sees_fake_AV_threat.aspx

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Twitter snags over 100 million users, eyes money-making

2010-04-14T22:05:00.000-07:00

The popular Internet service hopes to snag hundreds of millions more users in coming years by making the service easier, integrating Twitter directly into Web sites and focusing more on customizing the service for mobile devices.

At the company's first conference for Twitter developers on Wednesday, Chief Executive Officer Evan Williams said generating revenue was among the key priorities going forward -- a change of tone for a firm that had previously said it focused mainly on improving the user experience.

The comments come a day after Twitter rolled out a new advertising program dubbed "Promoted Tweets," its first attempt to make money from its service and a milestone on the path toward an initial public offering.

"Money is important," Williams said during a special talk at the event devoted to monetization. "It takes a hell of a lot of money to run Twitter. There has to be a very solid revenue stream underneath this to fuel it."

But co-founder Biz Stone stressed that while the company was not philosophically opposed to floating shares to the public, he stressed that a public offering was not on the radar for the time being.

"At this point we have 175 people and we just yesterday announced our revenue strategy. We're not talking about an IPO, Stone told Reuters at the event, which was attended by about 1,000 people.

While the fledgling advertising program unveiled this week now has just five advertisers in a trial run, Stone said in an interview that the company believed the new ad service represented one of the primary businesses that would finance the company's operations going forward.

"We are pretty confident that this is going to work out to be a profitable, sustainable, real business for us," Stone said in an interview on the sidelines of the event, which saw Black-Eyed Peas front man will.i.am interviewed about his Twitter views.

COMMERCIAL AIMS

Twitter executive Dick Costolo also cited commercial accounts, which Twitter is currently testing with a couple hundred companies, as the second main money-making pillar.

Twitter, which allows users to send short, 140-character text messages, or Tweets, to groups of so-called followers, is one of the Web's most popular social networking services, along with Facebook and LinkedIn. The social networking services are increasingly challenging established Web players, like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, by competing for users time online and for advertising dollars.

For More Read:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63D46P20100415

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How to Redesign Your Web Site

2010-04-13T22:44:00.000-07:00

Tips for Redesigning Your Web site

Web site redesigning can be as simple or as difficult as you make it. Here, we look at some methods to ease the redesigning process.

Pick A Reputable Web site Design Company

In order to get the best results, choose a reputable, well thought of company. This is important, not just from a design aspect, but to ensure that they can meet your needs. They should be concerned with what you're looking for, rather than how they feel. This is crtical to your success.

Develop a Good Style

One of most important considerations is the overall appearance of your Web site. Regardless of what you choose to do, an overall style is very important. It can determine several different things, such as the font(s) you decide to use and the graphics to include.

Think About Content

Content is key. Make sure that the information is legitimate, believable, easy to read and understand.

Make It Keyword Rich

Good SEO is also important, not only in design, but execution. Make sure you research your keywords.

Compare Web Sites in Search Engines

As previously mentioned, good SEO is important. If you don't know what keywords to use, make use of keyword search tools like Wordtracker. Once you have those keywords, compare them with Web sites that contain keywords that place well using natural search.

Keep Your Site Current

Keep your content current. To do so, one strategy is to check out the content on other Web sites. This will help keep you on track. Of great importance is checking out the trends, to see if anything new has been developed.

Easy to Navigate

Make sure your site is easy to navigate. Nothing is more frustrating than navigating a site where it's easy to get lost. This will negatively impact your profitability since potential customers are unlikely to stick around if it's too difficult to find what they want. Simple and direct navigation is key.

Make Sure It's Eye-Catching

One of the most important things that any Web site needs to do is grab attention. If yours doesn't, a site redesign may be in order. Carefully consider your message, then work on finding/creating a layout which matches that, yet is appealing to the viewer.

Develop Credibility

There are several ways to develop credibility. One method is to give as much information about your business as possible. Another option is to consider adding a discussion forum where all of your customers can recommend your services and share the experiences which they have had with your services.

Source:

http://www.webreference.com/authoring/newsite/

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Step by Step Guide in Building a Website

2010-04-12T22:41:00.000-07:00

Here are simple steps to start building your own website

1. Choose and register your domain name

Firstly, you need to choose and register a domain name to build a website. It will be the address or URL of your website. Website needs to be storing its files and database and so it needs to a web hosting. You have to choose best web hosting company depending on your needs.Then you have to do some technical task on your hosting account. You have to add your domain to your hosting account if you buy domain from different company. And if you buy domain from same company sometimes hosting company do this work.

2. Design Your Web page

Now you have to design your web pages using web designing software or by coding using notepad. Then you have to upload your web pages to your ftp using ftp uploading software. You don't need to spend more time to design it at first as you can edit it or improve it later. Choose easy and best software to design the pages.
You can put good images, video, sound or other staff depending on your website type.

3. Learn how to build a sales page

Sales pages are important pages for online business. You can make different sales page for different type of business. You can make a sales page easily with the software. And if you can develop the pages that will be best.

4. Learn to create website header graphics

Header images are most important factor for a website. If your site's header is attractable, you will get more visitors.There are many sites or software to make header for websites. You have to make header size adjustable to your website.

5. Creating your web page banner

Banner is also an important thing to promote a site. Site must need a good banner to attract people. You can make 460x68 or 125x125 or other sized banner. You can use website to make banner or other graphics software. Or You can make flash banner. All you can using free software or websites. There is many site by which you can make good banner.

Source:

http://ezinearticles.com/?Step-by-Step-Guide-in-Building-a-Website&id=4075128

Professional Web Design Chicago, Web Design Firms

Website Design - The Three Most Important Elements

2010-04-11T22:13:00.000-07:00

When it comes to website design, there are three very important elements that must influence the process of developing a site which can be viewed on the Internet.

1. Customer Satisfaction.

Although this should be common sense customer satisfaction does not always take a front row seat in the priority department for many agencies. It seems that in the era of our fast paced society a lack of customer satisfaction is the status quo. Companies often rush from completing one job to the next and in the process they somehow skip steps, miss promised timelines, or fail to meet agreed upon priorities. Which comes to my next point.

2. Listening to the Customer's Needs

The old adage that the customer is always right has been somewhat lost. Clients generally have an idea of what they want to achieve with their websites. Usually, for businesses, it is to bring in new business or increased revenue. What they often do not know; however, is how to accomplish this online in the form of their website. This should not really be a surprise, because often this is not an area of expertise for many entrepreneurs or company executives. This also does not mean that the web development firm hired to complete the website should just run ahead without consulting the client on their needs.

It takes a practiced skill to help the client identify what they want to accomplish online and what the look and feel of the website should be. This initial groundwork will certainly go a long way in understanding the overall goal of the site, and how to best achieve this within best design and development practice.

3. The Ability to Communicate with the Client

This skill of helping the client identify what they want to accomplish online can be best identified as communication. It is the process of exchanging information through various means to accomplish an understanding or shared meaning of ideas. The ability to do this well only comes with skill and practice. A good analogy of this process would be the traveller looking for directions in a foreign place using a different language. The traveller is like the website design firm looking for directions from the local: the client. Like the local who may or may not know the directions, the client may or may not know what they are looking for in their website. A good project manager in the web design firm will use all their skills to gather the information, and help the client along in their journey of conveying what they want in their website.

These skills may include interpersonal projection, asking for clarification, using probing questions to seek further details, and evaluating and explaining the process thoroughly. The client needs to know sooner than later what is possible with the budget specified, and how modifications during the website design process can increase the cost to develop the website.

Although there are many other elements that contribute to excellent website design, web designers or their project managers must be able to provide these three main aspects for the web design project to be on a successful track.

Source:

http://ezinearticles.com/?Website-Design---The-Three-Most-Important-Elements&id=3683811

Professional Web Design Chicago, Web Site Design

Microsoft to Fix 25 Holes in Windows, Office, Exchange

2010-04-08T22:54:00.000-07:00

Microsoft will issue 11 security bulletins in next week's Patch Tuesday to fix 25 vulnerabilities in Windows, Microsoft Office, and Exchange, including two holes for which exploit code is in the wild.

Five of the bulletins address critical vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to take control of the computer, five are rated important, and one is rated moderate.

With the updates, Microsoft will be closing two outstanding security advisories that have been worrisome because code to exploit the vulnerabilities is available publicly.

One of the advisories is 981169, which involves a vulnerability in VBScript that could allow the remote execution of code and a complete takeover of the system. Disclosed on March 1, it affects older versions of Windows running Internet Explorer.

The other advisory to be closed is 977544, which involves a hole in Server Message Block (SMB) protocol that could allow a denial-of-service attack and that dates back to November.

Software affected by the updates: Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7, Server 2003, Server 2008, Office XP, Office 2003, 2007 Microsoft Office System and Exchange Server 2000, 2003, 2007, and 2010.

Also on Tuesday, Adobe Systems will release its latest security updates for Reader and Acrobat via a new update system. Adobe has quarterly security update releases that coincide with Patch Tuesdays.

Source:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20002053-245.html

Chicago Web Design Firms

News site Web design: What works? What doesn't?

2010-04-08T00:17:00.000-07:00

Nora Paul and Laura Ruel introduce a new OJR column examining the latest research how readers use news websites.

The tenth anniversary year of the start of many Web-based news sites was the occasion for reflection about how far (or not) we’ve come and speculation on how best to proceed forward. Here we are in 2007 and it’s time to do a measured look at where we are right now.

For the past ten years the features on news websites have evolved and expanded. Thanks to software developments like SoundSlides audio slideshows have proliferated on news sites, expanding experimentation with "multimedia." The "We Media" mantra has given rise to collaborative community reported news both within and outside mainstream news organizations. RSS feeds have changed the notion of mass product distribution to personalized news channel delivery. The aggregation of news stories on a given topic coupled with additional information (along the lines of Seattle P-I’s Transportation page or Lawrence Journal-World’s Legislation page) is moving news websites away from "your daily newspaper on the computer screen" to a valuable aggregation of community information.

Experimentation with individual story forms continues. The slideshow is getting a remake with the "flipbook" style of choreographed image display set to music (as with the MSNBC "Iraqi Kurdistan" video.) The packaging of series stories with multiple media elements is getting cleaner and more elegantly designed (the Orphans & Angels piece from Florida Today is a good example.) Flash and Google maps interfaces are being used to navigate the user through data and information (take a look at AZ Star’s Sealing Our Border interactive map and the Boston Globe campaign contributions map.)

How the success of these experimentations and evolutions are being measured is still an issue. Page views, time spent on the page, where people enter in from and where they go after can all be measured. But what do we know about how these news features and forms change attitude toward the news product, or how effective the form is at informing, or if a new design is a more effective way to get people to engage fully with the carefully constructed package?

Research into Story Design Effectiveness is happening in newsrooms and universities. In the case of newsroom research, the findings are regarded as competitive intelligence and not readily shared with the industry. In universities, the findings are written in academese and not readily understood by the industry.

In this column, we will ferret out the research and findings about story form effectiveness and profile the people and places who are trying to understand current practices and guide more informed design decisions. Creating stories that engage, inform, and get people to come back for more must be part of the media’s mix of offerings. We hope, in the coming months, to engage and inform you about story design research.

Source:

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/070110paul/

Professional Web Design Chicago

AOL Wants Out of Bebo

2010-04-06T22:52:00.000-07:00

Two years after buying Facebook rival Bebo, AOL is looking to unload the social networking site.

AOL paid $850 million for Bebo in 2008, at the time it was one of the largest social networking sites in the United Kingdom. At the time, AOL said the acquisition was part of a strategy to gain a foothold in the social media market and to help it grow internationally.

In a message to employees Tuesday, AOL said it is no longer committed to Bebo and would seek a buyer or close it.

Read more: AOL wants out of Bebo - Washington Business Journal:

The memo, from AOL Ventures Executive Vice President Jon Broad, said in part, “Bebo, unfortunately, is a business that has been declining and, as a result, would require significant investment in order to compete Polaris Pool Cleaner Parts in the competitive Social Networking Space,” the AOL memo said. “AOL is not in a position at this time to further fund and support Bebo in pursuing a turnaround in Social Networking.”

AOL is actively seeking a buyer for the business and says it will complete its strategic evaluation by the end of May. Bebo’s future may include either a new owner, or a shutdown by AOL this year.

Since its split from former parent Time Warner, AOL has been accelerating its transformation into an advertiser-driven content provider.

While that transformation has led to acquisitions of smaller companies and their technologies, it has also led to thousands of job cuts.

AOL (NYSE: AOL) reported a profit in its first quarter as an independent company, with net income of $1.4 million compared to a net loss of nearly $2 billion a year earlier.

Read more: AOL wants out of Bebo - Washington Business Journal:

Source:

http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2010/04/05/daily25.html

Chicago Web Site Design Company

Cheap Wordpress Themes: 5 Semi-Premium Designs for Business Websites

2010-04-05T23:32:00.000-07:00

We’ve talked about Premium Wordpress Themes ad infinitum on TutorialBlog. But, sometimes you need a cheap WordPress theme that you can get online and looking good in less than an hour. What do you when you (or your client) want it all … and your budget is under $25?

You call in reinforcements!

Take the pain out of working under an impossible budget by making it easy. Your “client” will be pleased as punch with any of these semi-premium WordPress themes and you’ll still have money left to buy a fancy coffee from your favorite java dealer.

What is a semi-premium theme you ask? These themes may not have everything as the expensive, bells-and-whistles-included brand of premium themes. That could mean fewer choices on the theme options screen or only a single page template or fewer plugins pre-built into the site. However, in most areas a good semi-premium theme has everything you need to build a quality website, quick and easy.

Elegant Themes is a WordPress theme club that specializes in Polaris Pool Cleaner Parts semi-premium themes. Buy in for $20 a year, and you’ll get full access to all their themes and support. The thing to note here is that buying into the theme club is a personal license, not a development license. So, pay the $20 to buy a license for your friend’s site and if you want to come back and use another theme buy a new license for yourself. It’s a shame that Elegant Themes doesn’t offer a developer’s membership, but even if you’re buying multiple memberships the price is still right!

For most “business websites” or “corporate website” projects a semi-premium theme is the best option. Small businesses need to be online, but the return on investment just isn’t there to spend several thousand dollars on a website. Install a simple, semi-premium theme and your client will have all the functionality they need at a price they can afford. Here are 5 great themes from the Elegant Themes Clubs that are perfect for a quick, quality corporate or small business website.

BusinessCard Wordpress Theme

BusinessCard is a simple jQuery-powered, one-page theme for presenting clean and concise information. BusinessCard has 5 color choices, enhanced javascript effects and a fully functional photo gallery with slideshows and lightbox built in.

TheCorporation Wordpress Theme

TheCorporation is a sleek theme for business sites with a jQuery slider and templated homepage. The theme has six candy-coated color choices that add a sense of modern sophistication while still maintaining the expected level of professionalism.

Basic Wordpress Theme

Basic has a more traditional “Blog-Style” feel that can be useful for corporate sites that have a lot of information to present. The theme features a very clean, easy-to-read layout with four color schemes. A built in advertisement widget can be used to promote in-store promotions or important company business.

TidalForce Wordpress Theme

Tidalforce features a smooth blue design that will appeal to many businesses. The tabbed layout is easy to navigate. This theme has the fewest add-ons of any of the business themes mentioned in this article. However, for some clients, less is definitely more.

PureType Wordpress Theme

PureType is a sophisticated CSS-based design without images. The result is a strong type-based layout. The theme comes with three widget-ready areas, two layout options and more, all managed from the Theme Options Page. The main reason I added this theme to the list are the color palettes. PureType has three color schemes that will stand out from the pack of gray and blue corporate sites with class and style.

Chicago Website Design

Microsoft Plans 64GB Zune HD

2010-04-05T02:10:00.000-07:00

Microsoft plans to start selling a 64 GB version of the Zune HD Portable Media Player this month and is cutting prices of the smaller models.

The company announced Wednesday that it will start taking orders for the 64 GB model April 12 through the online Zune Store. The media player will cost $350, which is nearly $50 less than the competing iPod Touch from Apple. The new Zune HD will be available in all the colors and custom etching available with the rest of the product line.

In addition, Microsoft said it would immediately cut the estimated retail price of the 16 GB and 32 GB Zune HD to $200 and $270, respectively. On Wednesday, Microsoft was offering to cut $20 more for a limited time.

Microsoft sells the Zune HD at less than the iPod Touch. The latter device comes in 8 GB, 16 GB and 64 GB versions at $199, $299 and $399, respectively. Nevertheless, Microsoft has failed to make a dent in Apple's commanding lead in the portable media market with the Zune HD, which was released in September 2009.

While the Zune HD has had many positive reviews, its biggest disadvantage when compared to the iPod Touch is the lack of an online application store where third-party developers can offer software to extend the usefulness of the device. Apple's App Store has been very successful in driving sales of the iPod Touch and iPhone.

The Zune HD features a touch-screen interface powered by organic, light-emitting diode (OLED) technology and Nvidia's Tegra HD graphics processor for fast action. It also includes a Quickplay menu that puts consumers a click away from favorite tracks, videos, and other content.

Microsoft plans to release soon a 4.5 firmware update for the Zune HD.

Source:

http://www.techweb.com/article/showArticle?articleID=224201002&section=news

Web Design Firm Chicago

Global CIO: After Oracle Windfall, He's On A New Mission

2010-04-02T04:19:00.000-07:00

Jeff Rodek shook up the software world in 2007.

He was chairman of Hyperion when Oracle bought the company for $3.3 billion, setting off a frenzy of deals for the largest Business Intelligence Companies, as SAP soon acquired BusinessObjects and IBM bought Cognos.

Since then, Rodek's been on a much different, some might say thankless, mission: to get business people to use all those tools and information a better way.

"There's so much data out there that they're swamped in data, but they lack insights," Rodek says.

Enter business performance management. BPM. Rodek's goal, working with the Fisher School of Business at his alma mater Ohio State University, is to make BPM a discipline that's widely accepted in businesses, and an idea that goes way beyond buying analysis and reporting tools. (Here's a BPM description from the school's Center for Business Performance Management.)

To Rodek, BPM means giving people in accounting, supply chains, marketing, IT, and every other part of the business relevant data so they know what to do in their jobs, and how they're doing. "In many ways it's all about the culture needed, and the processes and technology to help you manage better," he says. It ties in planning, modeling, analysis, and operations, and gives people just the key performance indicators they need. (My colleague Doug Henschen has done excellent coverage of this trend, profiling

One problem with BPM as a discipline is it sounds a lot like:

a) Just plain management, or

b) What ERP was supposed to deliver.

"For a long time, a lot of executives thought 'If I spend $200 million on an ERP system, don't I get that?'" says Rodek, who was Hyperion CEO as well as chairman for almost five years, from 1999 to 2004, before giving up the CEO role. In recent years, there's been more recognition that something like BPM--providing insights from data so they're part of daily business decisions--goes beyond those ERP Transactional Systems.

Ohio State this year started granting certificates in BPM that business students can earn along with their MBAs by taking BPM courses and doing real-world projects. "It'll be a very nice salary offered to students," predicts Rodek. The certification's developed through the Fisher school's Center for Business Performance Management, which is also reaching out to other business schools to develop curriculum and to companies to provide input. (And funding. Hyperion and Oracle provided initial funding for the Center.)

BPM faces the same problem in academia that it does in companies: It doesn't rest in just one area, crossing accounting, finance, IT, operations, and more. So add that to the thankless task facing Rodek--getting professors to change how they teach. "The beauty and the beast of academia is it's not very fast to change," says Rodek, who's a senior lecturer at the Fisher school.

Scoff if you want at BPM as just another three-letter acronym. But the reality is that people and companies need these frameworks, and we need people like Rodek and fellow academics to help shape them. We need common language to rally change.

The U.S. auto industry embraced total quality management--yep, TQM--in the '90s to conquer systematic quality problems and lower costs. That couldn't happen by telling everyone "Make better cars and car parts." People needed tools and processes and culture change to get there.

BPM's similar. We might want to manage better, to use data smarter. But we need to know how.

Source:

http://www.techweb.com/article/showArticle?articleID=224201088&section=news

Professional Web Design Services

Why The Social Media Aggregator has Croaked

2010-04-01T02:36:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, they were everywhere: fresh, Design-Savvy start-ups, taking everything you might ever want to know your friends were doing on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Digg, and goodness knows what else.

Social Network feed aggregators--FriendFeed, Socialthing, Plaxo's Pulse--have been part of the dizzying array of Web Apps ever since it became evident that the average Internet user was using more than one of these nifty Social Media Services and just might want to have them all in one place. But they've been on the way out for some time: FriendFeed sold to Facebook, and Socialthing to AOL, both brands buried within their sprawling new owners. And earlier this week, another small start-up in the space, the well-regarded Streamy, announced that it had closed its doors; one co-founder departed for Facebook, the second for social-gaming powerhouse Zynga.

The demise of Streamy is one more sign of something that was already evident: Facebook--and to a lesser extent, Twitter--has completely won this game.

FriendFeed and Socialthing, the two aggregators that made notable exits, were built by solid engineering and design teams who have since moved on to greener pastures--FriendFeed's team is in-house at Facebook now, and Socialthing's founders are tackling new projects. But outside of the relatively small crowd of the Web's hard-core early adopters, the vast majority of these start-ups proved to have little mainstream appeal. It had nothing to do with who was behind them, but rather the core concepts; the average Web user simply doesn't use enough social-media services to have any desire to use something that will drag hundreds of contacts' minute Web activities into one place.

Through Facebook Connect, you can pull your Digg votes and Flickr photos onto your Facebook profiles--that is, if you're using Digg rather than Facebook's own "sharing" to promote the news you read, and Flickr rather than Facebook's own photo uploads. And for Twitter users, many of their contacts already tweet out links to new blog posts, photo galleries, and other various developments on the Web. For the smaller crowd that uses Twitter for news gathering, it's become a very simplified aggregator in itself.

And that early-adopter crowd, too, now has less reason to want to use a more complex aggregator. The pack of Social Networking Services has thinned out, and you're no longer going to encounter a frustrated blogger who absolutely needs to keep in touch with contacts on Jaiku and Pownce as well as Twitter. Now it's down to Facebook and Twitter, more or less, and any Twitter client can pull the two together. That's plenty for just about all of us.

If there's any kind of elephant in the room, it's Google Buzz, which uses Gmail's interface to pull in Twitter-like chatter as well as activities across other Google properties like Google Reader. But it experienced a massive contact-importing privacy blunder right out of the gate, and there are concerns that it will favor content coming through Google-owned channels over third-party services (which aren't yet integrated)--say, a geo-tagged Buzz post as opposed to a Foursquare check-in. It still has potentially huge muscle, but its Facebook-killing potential is less forceful than many thought.

Right now, people are talking about aggregation in the context of geolocation, one of the few niches of social media that's still legitimately spread out over different services like Foursquare, Gowalla, and Brightkite. There's no obvious winner yet, which has led some to suggest that the space needs an aggregator to pull "check-ins" from disparate services into a user's single, universal feed. But if the past is any indicator, the end result will be that this space will clean itself up and in a few months to a few years, no such aggregator will be needed.

And at the same time, the general social-feed aggregator may finally have found a far smaller niche where it can succeed: As part of the lead-up to the South by Southwest Interactive Festival that begins next week in Austin, Texas, an aggregation start-up called Cliqset began to promote its partnership with social-media company Mashable on its "Austin Real-Time" site. It's a hub that pulls together all varieties of digital content gushing out of the event, from Foursquare and Gowalla check-ins to Twitter posts and Picasa photos. If you're an outsider looking in, or a SXSWi attendee nursing a midday hangover from a hotel room, then yes, you want everything to make you feel immersed in the experience. But as something you'll follow for the rest of the year? Of course not.

In other words, we don't want the floodgates to be open all the time. But in the right time and place, they have their role. The social-network aggregator was an outcropping of the enthusiasm surrounding the novelty that was social media a few years ago, and the impatience over so much competition in the space. But these things mature, and the winners emerge, and that competition starts to fade.

If anything, the overzealous explosion of social aggregation start-ups a few years ago is a sign that even in the urgent, someone-else-will-beat-you-to-it climate of the Web, sometimes things will just shake out over time.

Source:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10462172-36.html

Professional Web Design Chicago

China Yahoo Accounts Reportedly Hacked

2010-03-31T02:43:00.000-07:00

Also Reports of Google's Chinese Search Engine Being Intermittently Blocked as Censorship Row Continues

Yahoo e-mail accounts belonging to foreign journalists appeared to have been hacked and Google's Chinese Search Engine was intermittently blocked Tuesday, the latest troubles in China's heavily censored Internet market.

The Yahoo Inc. accounts of at least three journalists and an analyst became inaccessible over the last few weeks. They were greeted with messages saying, "We've detected an issue with your account'' and were told to contact Yahoo, they said Tuesday. Yahoo techs told one of the four that his account had been hacked and restored his access, but it was not clear if the other instances were related.

Sensitivity about Internet security has run high since Google Inc. announced in January it might leave China after a series of cyber attacks and complaints about censorship. Last week, Google made a partial retreat, shutting down its mainland-based search engine and redirecting those queries offshore, to the freer Chinese territory of Hong Kong.

Analysts have been watching closely to see if China retaliates for Google's high-profile departure from the mainland search engine market.

Many redirected queries appeared blocked Tuesday on the Hong Kong-based search engine. Searches for benign terms were met with results on Chinese competitors such as Baidu.com and Soso.com, however, an error page would pop up when typed into Google.com.hk.

Dozens of China-based Twitter users posted updates saying they were having the same problem. But it wasn't immediately clear what was causing the glitch.

Zhou Shuguang, a Beijing-based writer who blogs under the name "Zuola,'' said he tried to search the word "pest'' using several search engines. Only Google.com.hk returned an error message.

"The connection was reset,' it says. It's the same for all the terms I put in,'' said Zhou. He thought it might be a technical problem but if it isn't fixed in a day or so, "then maybe it means China has blocked it.''

Beijing-based Google spokeswoman Marsha Wang said she would look into the reports but didn't immediately respond.

It was not clear where problems with the Yahoo e-mail accounts originated from. All four people affected are professionally focused on China and related issues. They said they had heard of other colleagues having similar problems, including one journalist who lost his Yahoo account entirely in January.

Clifford Coonan, China correspondent for The Independent and the Irish Times newspapers, said he received the "issue with your account'' notice when he logged in Tuesday. Another reporter said she received repeated error messages from Yahoo last month.

The Western analyst said he was locked out of his account for four or five days, until he spoke with a Yahoo representative Monday who went through the security questions and restarted it.

"He said somebody had hacked into my registration details,'' said the analyst, who would not give his name citing the sensitivity of the issue. The analyst said he was concerned hackers may have also accessed his inbox.

Yahoo officials in Asia and London declined to comment, referring queries to headquarters in Sunnyvale, California.

"I'd just be interested to see if anyone in the business community or outside of journalism and academia has had the same problem, then it might be less sinister,'' Coonan said. "It's obviously annoying but if it's just journalists and academics, that's scary.''

Source:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/30/tech/main6347092.shtml

Professional Web Design Chicago

Twitterers Go Offline for Charity

2010-03-29T23:35:00.000-07:00

Thousands of Twitterers worldwide put their fingers to rest and gathered offline on Thursday in the name of charity.

People in over 200 cities worldwide participated in the second annual "Twestival" which this year aims to raise funds for education.

"It's a pretty viral phenomenon that happened," said Sarah Prevette, lead organiser for Twestival Toronto.

The event is organised by thousands of volunteers globally, and local businesses fund the parties, where social media enthusiasts dance, mingle and network.

Funds raised for Twestival, via corporate sponsorship, ticket sales or celebrity eBay auctions, will benefit Concern Worldwide, which offers basic education programmes in impoverished nations.

"Education is that one tool that we can give someone, and knowledge really does empower and that was something that really struck a chord with volunteers globally," said Prevette. "It only costs $74 to send a primary school child to school for a year in these nations."

The first Twestival event raised over $250 000 for clean water projects in Uganda, Ethiopia and India.

According to Twestival's Web site, over 4 000 people purchased tickets to Thursday's events.

Source:

http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31625:twitterers-go-offline-for-charity&catid=147:internet&Itemid=68

Chicago Website Design

Google Sheds New Light on Broadband Plans

2010-03-28T22:39:00.000-07:00

Company moves forwards with Fibre Network.

Google has posted an update for its planned high speed Fibre Broadband Network in the United States.

The company said that it would be announcing the targeted market for the first tests of the network by the end of the year. The initial test will cover a total group ranging from 50,000 to 500,000 people.

The project was first announced by Google in February. The company is planning to issue the 1Gbit/s fibre networks in target markets as a way of testing out open broadband networks. In addition to the experimental service, the company is also going to make its broadband cables open to other service providers.

Since the announcement, interest in the project has been high. Google said that some 600 community groups had expressed interest in participating in the project, while more than 190,000 individuals have looked into participating.

Some cities, such as Topeka, Kansas and Rancho Cucamonga, California have jokingly pledged to change their names to "Google, Kansas" and "Rancho Googlemonga" should the company choose their cities for the project.

Going forward, the company said that it will begin visiting perspective sites and speaking with local leaders and community groups before making its final decision later this year.

"This enthusiasm is much bigger than Google and our experimental network," wrote Google product manager James Kelly in a blog posting.

"If one message has come through loud and clear, it's this: people across the country are hungry for better and faster internet access."

Share:

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/170709,google-sheds-new-light-on-broadband-plans.aspx

Chicago Web Design

Web Design Firms' Role in Designing

2010-03-26T02:10:00.000-07:00

Have you ever thought about the pace at which the modern day web world has evolved and has attained its present status? If yes, it's good for you to be a part of the current trend, and if not, it's beneficial for you to have some detailed ideas about the entire online processes.

Whether it's for professional or personal requirements, it's essential now to have one's own site. It's through the medium of a website, now businesses are done at speed of mind across the globe. The advantage of web business making can't just be limited to this only. It's beyond our imagination to be more precise.

Websites help in ecommerce services eating, making use of customer redressal cells, make payments for their purchased stuffs and what not! If you are also planning to jump into the thriving world of online business, then it's wise on your part to have a complete study about your business strength and capabilities before making any commitment. As the competition in the field is very high and there are no limits of competitors, you should be able to target the right customers with the right inventory of products or services. Here, the assistance of a Web Design Firms needs special mention for sure.

A Professional Web Design is a place where you can have a one-stop-solution for all your web based requirements. Right from the conceiving of a website to its design and development, from web page integration to SEO Services offerings, in every segment value deals can be availed from such a company.

As more and more people are now heading for web based businesses, the role and responsibilities of a web design studio or firm have also been perceived in a more value-based manner. In order to satisfy every client in an individualistic manner, such a firm now used the most trusted web design software programs and tools, no matter for what you opt for their services.

Ready made design packages are also available these days. They come comparatively cheaper than the customized or bespoke design packages. It all depends on you and your business what you will seek as per your budget and requirements.

Google Alerts Users of Suspicious Gmail Log-In Activity

2010-03-24T23:59:00.000-07:00

Google Introduced a New Security Feature for Gmail today. It notifies the user when a suspicious log-in activity is detected on their account. This notification will come in the form of a message saying ""Warning: We believe your account was last accessed from…" along with the geographic region that Google can best associate with the access. Engineering Director Pavni Diwanji explains on the Gmail Blog:

To determine when to display this message, our automated system matches the relevant IP address, logged per the Gmail privacy policy, to a broad geographical location. While we don't have the capability to determine the specific location from which an account is accessed, a login appearing to come from one country and occurring a few hours after a login from another country may trigger an alert.

By clicking on the "Details" link next to the message, you'll see the last account activity window that you're used to, along with the most recent access points.

Gmail will allow users to change their passwords from the same window if they choose, or they can click "dismiss" if they are sure the log-in activity was legitimate.

Google intends to extend the feature into Google Apps after enough feedback is gathered.

Source:
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/03/24/google-alerts-users-of-suspicious-gmail-log-in-activity

Web Design Firms

Amazon Takes on Apple, Barnes & Noble with Kindle App for iPad

2010-03-23T02:08:00.000-07:00

Amazon announces that more than 450,000 Kindle books will be available for the iPad when Apple's tablet arrives on April 3

Amazon.com introduced its e-book shop and reader app for the iPad Monday, entering the battle for e-books dominance against Apple's own iBooks store and Barnes & Noble's e-reader iPad app.

Amazon.com announced that more than 450,000 Kindle books would be available through its Kindle app for the iPad, when Apple's tablet arrives on April 3. The app will use Amazon's Whispersync technology to automatically synchronize the last page you read on other compatible devices, such as iPhones or Kindle e-readers.

The Kindle app for the iPad has been tailored to the size, look, and feel of the tablet, according to Amazon.com, and it lets you customize the background color and font size for the book's text. You can also adjust screen brightness from within the app.

Like the PC and Mac counterparts, the Kindle app for iPad will remember the last page you read and sync it with Amazon.com's servers, so if you continue reading on an iPhone, BlackBerry, or Kindle e-reader, you can pick up where you left off. Bookmarks, notes, highlights and annotations are also synced.

Amazon.com has also integrated the Kindle bookstore into the iPad app, which includes most of the New York Times bestsellers, alongside Amazon.com's own book collection of nearly a half million titles. Amazon.com says availability for some of these titles might vary for non-U.S. customers.

Similarly to Apple's own iBook store and app for the iPad, the Amazon.com Kindle app also uses page turn animations to replicate the look of turning a page in a book, and offers free book samples (the first chapter) before you decide to buy. If you purchase a book from the Kindle iPad app, you will be able to read it also on Kindle-compatible devices.

Alongside stiff competition from Apple's own iBooks store and software on its own tablet, the Kindle app will also have to battle Barnes & Noble's eReader app for the iPad, also expected to be available around April 3.

Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble have their own hardware e-book readers as well, the Kindle and the Nook, on which they sell e-books. Also, both have iPhone apps for reading books purchased from their respective stores.

An interesting tidbit from Amazon.com's announcement of its iPad app is that the company said that the app would be available "for tablet computers, including the iPad."

It's unclear which other tablets will get dedicated Kindle apps, considering the upcoming Hewlett-Packard slate was showed running the Kindle PC app. A possibility would be Dell's Streak tablet, running on Google Android, which is expected to incorporate many of Amazon.com's services.

Source:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobilize/amazon-takes-apple-barnes-noble-kindle-app-ipad-395

Professional Web Design Chicago

Unity Pacific Ocean Cable Close to Completion

2010-03-21T23:24:00.000-07:00

Connect Google's Japanese and US data Centers.

Google is reported to be almost ready to start using a new high-speed internet cable under the Pacific Ocean to increase lit cable capacity by around 20 percent.

The new cable, dubbed Unity, will give Google a direct connection to the Asian market from the US to potentially handle 7.68 Terabits/s and offer Asian internet users faster browsing speeds.

The project was funded to the tune of US$300m ($327m) by Google and a consortium of six Asian telecommunication firms known as The Unity Consortium.

The six firms are Singapore Telecommunications, Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, Google, KDDI Corporation and Pacnet.

Google said in a statement today that the growing demand for access to information had made investment in the new pipeline a necessity.

"As the economies of Asian countries continue to grow, data traffic and the use of the internet expands. Google is a global company and is committed to providing the best quality of user experience, regardless of geography," it said.

The new underwater cable will offer connections between Google's Japanese and US data centres, enabling it to offer improved services to Asian customers and guarantee it access to a large amount of new bandwidth to help it meet growing user demands.

The pipe's completion comes at a time when Google looks set to pull out of Asia's biggest market, China, something it probably didn't envisage doing when it first announced the Unity project two years ago.

Source:

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/170060,unity-pacific-ocean-cable-close-to-completion.aspx

Chicago Website Design

Judge Approves Facebook's Settlement Offer in Beacon Case

2010-03-19T00:03:00.000-07:00

Facebook will spend $9.5M to set up privacy foundation under the deal

A federal judge has approved a proposed settlement by Facebook in a class-action lawsuit involving its now defunct Beacon behavioral tracking service.

Under the settlement, Facebook will pay $9.5 million to set up a privacy foundation to fund projects promoting the cause of online privacy in return for the lawsuit against it to be dropped.

In approving the settlement, Judge Richard Seeborg of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California overturned several objections that had been raised by some members of the class-action in response to the Facebook offer.

In a 12-page ruling, Seeborg called Facebook's proposed settlement "fair, reasonable, adequate and proper and in the best interests of the Settlement Class."

The dispute stems from a lawsuit filed in August 2008 against Facebook by several users of the social networking site. The suit alleged that Facebook and Beacon affiliates such as Blockbuster and Overstock.com had violated several federal privacy laws, including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Video Privacy Protection Act, when they shared data about Facebook users with each other.

In response, Facebook last September extended a settlement offer under which it said it would spend $9.5 million to set up a privacy foundation focused on online privacy issues. As part of its settlement offer, Facebook said it would shut down the Beacon service entirely.

Privacy advocates welcomed the company's decision to shutter Beacon. But earlier this year, consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, of Washington D.C, and some Facebook users asked the court to reject the offer.

In their complaint, the groups said that the proposed settlement did nothing to compensate victims whose privacy may have been compromised by Beacon. Other than formally disbanding a program that Facebook had voluntarily already discontinued, the settlement offered little else the groups complained.

They also argued that the settlement would give Facebook a direct role in drafting the mission and bylaws of the proposed foundation and in appointing board members. The complaint noted that one of the three initial directors of the foundation would in fact be a Facebook employee and chief lobbyist.

Facebook, meanwhile, claimed that the opposition to its settlement offer stemmed from a complete lack of understanding of the proposal . The company insisted that the proposed privacy foundation would be an independent entity run by three well known and respected privacy advocates.

In his ruling, Judge Seeborg expressed similar sentiments. Those objecting to the proposed settlement had not shown "any substantial reason to doubt the independence of two of the three directors," he wrote. It is reasonable to expect that the Facebook director would be opposed to any actions taken by the privacy foundation that would directly harm Facebook, the judge said.

However, that does not mean that the foundation will end up being a "mere publicity tool for Facebook," or be under its direct control, he said. He also rejected the objection that class members were due any monetary compensation. The chances of class members receiving any compensation if the case was to go to court are "speculative at best" given the circumstances of the case, he wrote.

A Facebook spokesman expressed satisfaction over the ruling. "We're pleased that Judge Seeborg has approved the settlement after carefully considering all opinions," he said in a statement. It added that Facebook will be releasing additional details on the foundation over the next several months.

Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld .

Source:

http://www.itnews.com/internet-based-applications-and-services/15658/judge-approves-facebooks-settlement-offer-beacon-case?page=0,0

Professional Web Design Chicago

Viacom-YouTube Secrets To Be Exposed in Lawsuit

2010-03-17T23:12:00.000-07:00

A legal tussle pitting media conglomerate Viacom Inc. against online video leader YouTube is about to get dirtier as a federal judge prepares to release documents that will expose their secrets and other confidential information.

The information expected to be unsealed Thursday will include some of the evidence that Viacom and Google-owned YouTube have collected to prove their respective points, but have kept under wraps so far during their 3-year-old dispute over copyright law.

The sensitive material is emerging now because Viacom and YouTube are citing some of the documents as they try to persuade U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton in New York to decide the case without a trial. Stanton isn't likely to decide on a so-called summary judgment for several more months.

Each side will likely be pointing to things that the other might find embarrassing.

The evidence is expected to provide insights into the early strategies of YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen and how they responded to copyright complaints that quickly accumulated a few months after the Web site's 2005 debut. The documents also could reveal whether other media suitors tried to buy YouTube before Google acquired the site for $1.76 billion in 2006.

Viacom, the owner of Paramount Pictures and cable TV channels that include Comedy Central, sued YouTube in 2007 seeking more than $1 billion in damages.

Viacom alleges that YouTube built its early success by rampantly infringing on copyrights. YouTube maintains it follows the copyright laws governing the Internet.

Viacom seems particularly interested in sharing some of the documents that it gathered from YouTube and Google. The company, based in New York, argued for a quick release of the records shortly after it and YouTube filed their motions for summary judgments.

YouTube's lawyers unsuccessfully tried to persuade Stanton to keep the documents under seal until this summer.

One of the biggest disputes in the case is how YouTube monitored its site for copyright violations before Google bought it.

Viacom contends YouTube's employees realized copyright-protected video was being illegally posted on the Web site, but routinely looked the other way because they knew the professionally produced material would help attract a bigger audience and encourage return visits.

YouTube lawyers have contended there was no way to know whether copyright-protected video was coming from pirates or from movie and TV studios looking to use the Web site as a promotional tool. If a studio issued a notice of a copyright violation, YouTube says it promptly removed the specified clip as required under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The 1998 federal law generally protects service providers such as YouTube from copyright claims as long as they promptly remove infringing material when notified about a violation. The outcome could hinge on whether Viacom can prove YouTube knew about the copyright abuses without formal notice from Viacom.

Although other content producers also initially complained about copyright abuse at YouTube, many media companies have since struck revenue-sharing deals with the Web site.

YouTube won over much of the professional media by developing technology that automatically detects video and audio claimed by its copyright owners.

Source:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100318/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_viacom_youtube;_ylt=AgOPiIY4__hzc83BxBstPiwjtBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTJtcjdob3BpBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwMzE4L3VzX3RlY192aWFjb21feW91dHViZQRjcG9zAzEEcG9zAzIEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDdmlhY29tLXlvdXR1

Chicago Website Design

Microsoft Loses $106 Million Patent Verdict to VirnetX

2010-03-16T22:46:00.000-07:00

A jury in Texas said the patent infringement was willful.

A court in Texas has ordered Microsoft to pay communications software maker VirnetX US$105.75 million after a jury found it guilty of willful infringement of two patents belonging to the company.

In a case that began over two years ago, VirnetX accused Microsoft of infringing the two patents, which are related to communications security, at the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

The willful nature of the infringement means Microsoft faced treble damages in the lawsuit, according to court documents. The original complaint was filed by VirnetX on Feb 15, 2007.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to questions about the case.

VirnetX built its patent portfolio from a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency security project, according to the company. It expects Microsoft to appeal the decision.

Source: http://www.itworld.com/legal/101164/microsoft-loses-106-million-patent-verdict-virnetx

Chicago Web Site Design Company

Good Website Design Supports Search Engine Marketing

2010-03-16T00:15:00.000-07:00

Your Search Engine Marketing efforts are geared toward bringing more visitors to your website. Once there, it is the job of your website to convert such visits into sales. How can your website do this if it does not have an optimized Professional Web Design? By optimized, we mean a design that is user-friendly and leads the user to purchase your products or services.

A website offers information to the visitor using a combination of graphics, text and, in some cases, video and audio. It can be a one-page website or a collection of web pages linked to each other to form a whole.

Like all other projects, web design needs careful planning for its design layout and contents. This will also be the basis for easier website expansion later.

It is very important that the main objective of the website be identified clearly in the planning stage. Who is the target audience of the website and what action do you want that audience to do? Only when these are clearly defined will you be able to plan the design of the website effectively.

Of course, anyone from around the world can view your website. You also have to make sure, therefore, that your website appeals to a wide audience even while it is especially targeted to your preferred primary audience.

Your business website's look should reflect the image you want to project for your company. It should contain the company's profile and products and services. Upon arriving at your website, your visitors should immediately see what you can do for them and why you are their best choice over your competitors. Your website should have rich content, an attractive visual design and an intuitive interface. Your content should be original and informative to your visitors. It is important that this content is written with search engine optimization in mind, with all the appropriate keywords and key phrases in place.

Most websites are made up of several web pages. Each web page should have its own objectives. The web pages should be titled based on your keywords and key phrases.

From the home page and all other pages of the website, the visitor must be able to see what other pages are available and what links to click to get there. Graphic icons can be used with text to aid navigation and interaction. Make sure, though, that the graphics do not take too long to load. Stick with small file sizes. Do not make your visitor rely on the "back" and "forward" buttons of the web browser. Your own menu should be on every web page, with links to all other web pages. These links should change to a distinctly different color once a link has been visited so that the visitor knows where he has already been and where he has not yet visited.

A very useful tool in planning the website is the storyboard. The storyboard is the counterpart of an outline for the website. It contains the general objective of the website and its primary target audience. It also includes all the individual web pages and their respective objectives. All the minor objectives should be working in support of the general objective of the entire website. With the storyboard, everything is placed in their proper places. You avoid having a confusing website. You also avoid duplicate content as well as missing out on some important details. At a glance, you immediately see what you have or do not have. This can also make your site mapping much easier. It saves you much time and effort.

With proper planning and preparation, you are on your way to the best Professional Web Design Chicago to support your Search Engine Marketing Campaign.

Facebook, Twitter most used Social Media Sites in E-Commerce

2010-03-14T23:31:00.000-07:00

Ecommerce sites tend to use Facebook and Twitter above other Social Media Sites in their Digital Marketing Campaigns.

This is according to a new survey by Practical eCommerce, which shows that 78 per cent of the US online retailers it polled use Facebook, while 75.6 per cent utilise Twitter for social media marketing purposes.

Almost three in ten retailers cited other social networking sites, including LinkedIn, YouTube, MySpace and Google Buzz.

About 11 per cent of respondents revealed that they do not make use of any social media sites at all.

Nearly seven in ten retailers said they intend to up their social media online marketing activity in the future, with 26.8 per cent to keep their campaigns the same.

When asked how social media had helped their businesses, over half said it had had a beneficial effect.

A recent study by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth found that Fortune 500 companies are increasingly utilising social media marketing.

The number of firms found to be using blogs and social networking websites like Twitter increased significantly between 2008 and 2009, according to the research.

Source:

http://www.bluhalo.com/news/view/7769/facebook-twitter-most-used-social-media-sites-in-ecommerce

Professional Web Design Chicago

HP Aims for 'amazing' with AD Campaign

2010-03-11T23:31:00.000-08:00

Printers aren't exactly synonymous with pizazz, and that can be a drag for a tech company that wants to be known as more than just a printer maker. Which brings us to Hewlett-Packard's new marketing campaign.

The company, which also happens to be the PC market leader, is embarking on a new effort designed to juice up its image among people who may see it only as a traditional printer manufacturer.

Developed by the ad agency 72andSunny, HP's new tagline "Let's Do Amazing" will drive a new series of TV spots and digital media ads set to debut March 13. The ads are being geared not just toward consumers and businesses but also to HP's employees, many of whom are new to the company.

The promotion will feature stories from businesses such as UPS and the Venetian Hotel and celebrities such as rapper Dr. Dre and photographer Annie Leibovitz, all talking about the things they do with HP products and services.

"HP has expanded significantly over the past five years to become the largest technology company in the world and yet most customers do not see the breadth and depth of what we do," said Glenna Patton, vice president of Brand Strategy and Experience Design for HP, in a statement. "'Let's Do Amazing' celebrates HP's roll-up-your-sleeves culture of do-ers who don't just talk and don't just think--and will stop at nothing short of amazing to innovate and deliver for customers."

More than 20 of HP's usual ad agencies fought to grab the business for this promotion before the company finally chose 72andSunny. The eight-week campaign is likely costing HP around $40 million, according to The Wall Street Journal, (subscripion required) citing a person familiar with the matter.

Source:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10467642-92.html

Professional Web Design Chicago

WhitePages.com Halts AD Networks Over Malware

2010-03-10T22:51:00.000-08:00

WhitePages.com has stopped ad networks from delivering ads to its site after they were found to contain fake Antivirus Malware.

"On Monday morning WhitePages received reports from users [about] malware in the form of a fake antivirus upsell program that we believe originated (against our terms) from a third-party advertising network serving ads on our website, in addition to other websites," a WhitePages spokeswoman said in an e-mail late Tuesday.

"We immediately suspended the networks in question at which time the reports from users subsided," she wrote. "We are working diligently to prevent this from happening in the future."

A representative for the Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works said on Tuesday that officials were looking at WhitePages.com and Drudge Report as possible sources of malware that had affected Senate computers the day before.

Matt Drudge denied the accusation on his site and accused the committee of politicking. But several CNET readers reported that they too had been hit with the malware when they visited the Drudge Report Web site, a conservative news aggregator that sometimes authors stories too.

Web sites that have ad networks serve their ads are susceptible to malware being distributed on their sites without their knowledge or involvement. Visitors to the Drudge Report, The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and other Web sites were found to be delivering ads containing malware last year.

The Drudge Report did not return an e-mail seeking comment Wednesday.

Source:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10466753-245.html

Chicago Web Design Firms

Affordable Web Design for Greater Business Impact

2010-03-09T21:16:00.000-08:00

Website design needs to be done under professional assistance as it's one of the crucial factors that can assist you have your solid web presence in the most noticeable manner ever possible. At a time when the entire world is in the hunt for a complete web based offer environment, it's become the order of the day to coin the most rewarding business interfaces, and in this regard nothing can be as rewarding as a user-friendly website.

Professional Web Design has been such a breather for everyone who has an eye for jumping into the thriving e-business. Gone are the days when businesses were done manually. You need to run to a shop or outlet physically, browse through the product ranges carefully, and then have these purchased in cash.

But the scene is entirely different today. You have plastic cards with valuable information embossed on them and by putting those information using the web over a secured server, you can get your product delivered to you right at your doorstep without any hassles. What have made the entire process so easy and exciting for you? The city based Chicago Web Site Design Company need to be given full credit for that.

These companies offer very cost effective web design and development packages at zero headache. If you are confident of what you want to do, and you have that 'will', then you are sure to rise! Rest will be taken care of by your promoter or web service provider.

A Professional website Design Firm offers 360 degree web solutions for all types and sizes of clients. It doesn't matter whether you are into financial services or travel business, your web requirements will be easily fulfilled by such a firm at very reasonable cost. So, why wait further at a time when low cost website design is available to you.

It just a matter of sound knowledge input and business acumen. Rest is all profitable, profitable in a sense that leads you towards better market strength and impressive customer acquisition and retention. So, by now what do you think about the current web developmental pace? Isn't it too amazing?

Google Admits its SEO Could use a Little Work

2010-03-08T22:22:00.000-08:00

Google has published a detailed, 49-page report that rates the search engine optimization (SEO) on its various properties including the Google Search home page. The result? It's failing in a number of categories.

On the bright side, the company says it plans to use this information to better its own SEO, and that to help others, the company has shared some of the metrics it's used.

The report covers 100 of Google's products. The company is also planning a follow-up that will cover international localizations.

Among the items under scrutiny, one of the biggest areas of failure for the company is in "search result presentation," where the company scored a 33/100 or lower in three different categories, the lowest being "title tag format and length." This is how much information appears in the large, blue search result links as well as the text descriptions that appear below them. The report points at several ways to fix this, including the use of "descriptive words and phrases in your page's title tag."

Another low point of the report is the company's score on the destination sites where images of logos led. These are the Google product logos that tend to reside in the upper left hand corner of the screen. The report found that well over half of these simply linked somewhere they were not supposed to, including 404 pages. Google's solution, which is SEO friendly, is to use 301 redirects across the board; that way all the links go to the same place, and the Search Engine can re-index the page in the proper location.

Not all the report was bad though. Google scored well in offering a clear main page result (or only having one or two links that lead to the main product page), as well as having proper use of headline tags and internal anchor text.

Source:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20000121-248.html

Professional Web Design Chicago

Google Buys DocVerse

2010-03-07T22:31:00.000-08:00

The acquisition means Google and Microsoft will both be offering online components for Microsoft Office

With its acquisition of DocVerse, announced Friday, Google is offering an online component to Microsoft Word before Microsoft does so itself.

DocVerse, a company founded by two former Microsoft employees, lets Microsoft Office users share and edit their documents online. The software is an Office plug-in that tracks and synchs changes that people make to a document so that multiple people can work on a file without having to send the file back and forth and try to keep track of changes.

The functionality sounds similar to that which will be included in Office 2010, the newest version of the software expected to become widely available on May 12. Office 2010 will let users store, edit and share documents online.

In a blog post, Google said it still believes that the Web is the best place to create and share information, via its Google Docs offering. "But we recognize that many people are still accustomed to desktop software. So ... we're also making it easier for people to transition to the cloud, and interoperate with desktop applications like Microsoft Office," Jonathan Rochelle, group product manager at Google, wrote in the blog post. "With DocVerse, people can begin to experience some of the benefits of Web-based collaboration using the traditional Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint desktop applications."

Google plans to link Google Docs with the DocVerse offering, according to DocVerse's founders. "Our first step will be to combine DocVerse with Google Apps to create a bridge between Microsoft Office and Google Apps," wrote DocVerse's Shan Sinha, founder and CEO, and Alex DeNeui, founder and CTO, in a blog post.

The move could step up the competition between Google and Microsoft for users. People who have existing versions of Office could decide to use DocVerse rather than upgrade to Office 2010 in order to get the online sharing capabilities.

It is not clear when a new product from DocVerse that integrates Google Apps will become available.

Source:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/google-buys-docverse-860

Chicago Web Designing Firms

Mail.ru Removed Yandex Search but Google Is Not Getting the Market Share Anyway

2010-03-04T01:30:00.000-08:00

Some of you may remember that late last year the blogosphere was engaged in an animated discussion over decision of Mail.ru, one of the leading online portals in Russia, to replace search technology by local Yandex with that of Google.

Yandex (which is the leading search engine in Russia with a market share much higher than that of Google) has been the search technology of choice for Mail.ru for the previous 3 years but expiration of the contract provoked new negotiations with potential search partners. Rumors are that eventually Google search technology was selected because Google chose to provide unbranded search results - something Yandex was not willing to offer insisting on an attribution.

In addition to use of Google’s search engine itself, Mail.ru also opened its pages to Google AdSense,- hence becoming one of the major publishers for the advertising network in Russia. This extra income was probably the reason for Google to be willing to provide unbranded search technology where Yandex did not want to.

Another appealing factor that probably influenced the decision for Google was the market share in web search held by Mail.ru: its 10% previously served by Yandex were expected to be going directly to Google now - thus increasing the international search giant market share in Russia from its previous 23 per cent to 33 per cent which is much better comparable to 59 per cent that Yandex is supposed to have once Mail.ru switches the search providers.

The Google-powered search (without attribution but still) was supposed to appear on Mail.ru in January 2010 as officially declared in a press release issued by Mail.ru and Google in December. But now that we are half into January already, many of us here in Russia (me included) have been checking Mail.ru search once and again to see the results coming from Google instead of Yandex - and never getting what we expected and thinking that the delay was due to the lengthy holiday vacations.

But now it looks like the only thing that Google has acquired via this much-discussed deal is an increase in revenue due to a huge extra number of AdSense impressions - but the market share will probably remain the same for Google. The thing is that Mail.ru is obviously using another search provider, its own development named gogo.ru - and no Google is to be seen other than in ads.

The conditions of the deal had it that Mail.ru will be able to combine Google search with its own gogo in order for the company to continue developing its own technology. And now Mail.ru is happily using gogo - testing it under heavy loads as Mail.ru representatives claim - monetizing the search pages with AdSense and keeping Google as a backup in case gogo is unable to withstand the heavy load.

The worst part (for Google, I mean) is that Mail.ru representatives now claim that the currently used gogo (absolutely in compliance with the agreement between Mail.ru and Google), actually demonstrates impressive results - much better than expected - so they will probably keep Google as a backup engine and the international giant will not see any increase in its market share due to this deal at all - even if they initially hoped to.

Of course there are people here who already think that Russian authorities may be involved in the entire situation - and insisted on use of a local search engine instead of allowing the international company to grow its market share substantially here. But to me this seems to be unlikely and what it really looks like is Mail.ru funding development of its own search technologies using Google money - and not even violating any terms of the agreement with Google.

Source:

http://profy.com/2010/01/13/mailru-removed-yandex-search-but-no-market-share-for-google/

Chicago Web Site Design Company

Hedge fund offers $1.8 billion for Novell

2010-03-02T21:46:00.000-08:00

Elliott Associates has offered to acquire software maker Novell.

The acquisition offer, delivered in a letter to Novell's board of directors, is valued at $1.8 billion, or $5.75 per share. Elliott Associates already owns 8.5 percent of Novell's shares, which it began buying up in January.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Elliott Associates told Novell's board that the stock has "meaningfully underperformed" and called recent acquisitions and changes in strategies "unsuccessful." The hedge fund says its experience in restructuring and acquisitions will "deliver maximum value to shareholders."

Novell confirmed that its board had received the letter and "anticipates that its Board of Directors will review Elliott's proposal in consultation with its financial and legal advisors," the company said in a statement issued Tuesday evening.

Shares of its stock jumped 26 percent, to $6, in after-hours trading on the news.

Novell is certainly a long way from its heyday. At one time, its Netware operating system was widely used on corporate servers. It also had ambitions to rival Microsoft, acquiring the WordPerfect suite of desktop applications, a tough competitor to Microsoft's Office suite. But Novell, perhaps as much as any company, learned what it's like to compete with Microsoft and lose. When Windows NT hit the market in the 1990s, Novell began a slow decline. Several CEOs came and went, including Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

In fact, Schmidt saw early success at Novell's helm, even briefly moving the company's executive offices from Utah to San Jose, Calif. Schmidt pushed the company to release Netware 5.0 well ahead of Microsoft's Windows 2000. But once Windows 2000 debuted, Schmidt and the rest of Novell didn't have a good response, and the company's decline continued.

After Schmidt left, the company returned to its Utah roots and enthusiastically embraced open-source software. Again, it was outmaneuvered by other software companies, most notably Linux distributor Red Hat.

Source:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-10462638-260.html

Professional Web Design Chicago

Firefox Loses Browser Share Third Month Running

2010-03-01T22:13:00.000-08:00

Meanwhile, Google's Chrome continued its climb for the 16th straight month and Microsoft's IE hit yet another record low in browser share

Mozilla's Firefox lost share in February, the third consecutive month that the browser has slipped, according to metrics data published today.

Google's Chrome, meanwhile, continued its climb for the 16th straight month.

Firefox lost about 0.2 of a percentage point last month to end with a usage share of 24.2 percent. It was the third month in a row that Mozilla's browser fell in the rankings posted by Web measurement vendor NetApplications.com. Previous dips in Mozilla's share were one-month blips; this is the browser's first sustained decline in NetApplications' numbers.

Since the end of November 2009, Firefox has dropped nearly half a point, representing a fall of 2 percent of its total share.

NetApplications is not the only metrics company to note Firefox's slump. The most recent data from Irish vendor StatCounter, for example, shows an even larger drop of 1.2 points -- or 3.6 percent of its total share -- since November.

The slide came even as Mozilla converted a sizable chunk of its Firefox 3.5 user base to the newer Firefox 3.6, the upgrade that shipped in late January . Last month, Firefox 3.6's share surged by nearly 4 percentage points to 5.1 percent. Meanwhile, Firefox 3.5's share fell 2.5 points to 14.6 percent, and the even older Firefox 3.0 dipped by 1.6 points to 3.6 percent, its lowest share since the month it was released in 2008.

As Firefox slid, Google's Chrome again boosted its share, although the increase was smaller than in the two months before. Chrome ended February with a 5.6 percent share, up 0.4 of a percentage point. Chrome has doubled its share in the last six months.

Internet Explorer (IE) lost a half percentage point last month to finish with a share of 61.2 percent, yet another record low for Microsoft 's browser. The upside is that IE's decline in February was under its 12-month average drop of 0.6 of a percentage point, and the smallest in a year. Microsoft may, in fact, find some comfort in NetApplications' numbers: IE's slide may be slowing. In the last three months, IE lost 2 percentage points, while during the three-month period immediately before that the browser slipped by 3.4 points.

Apple 's Safari posted a slight decline to 4.4 percent for February, while Opera Software's desktop browser essentially remained flat at 2.4 percent.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft's nearly-nine-year-old IE6 again fell in NetApplications' usage measurements, ending last month at 19.8 percent, down 0.2 of a percentage point. The newer IE7 lost more than four times more share, falling 0.9 of a point to 13.6 percent. IE6's decline was well under its torrid pace of the previous four months, when it lost more than a point per month.

But IE6 continues to get the hook from notable Web sites. Last week, YouTube announced it would stop supporting the aged browser starting March 13; as of that date, the popular video site won't guarantee that new features will work in the browser.

On Thursday, a Denver Web design firm will hold a funeral for IE6 . Aten Design Group was forced to change the location of the mock event after it received more RSVPs than its small office could accommodate. "Even more people want to see IE6's cold, dead body than we imagined," the company said on the ie6funeral.com site it set up.

IE8 captured only a sliver of its siblings' losses: IE8 ended February with a share of 22.5 percent, up just 0.1 of a point, the smallest increase since January 2009, two months before the browser's official release, and at a point when only a release candidate was available to the public.

When NetApplications accounted for IE8's "compatibility view" -- a feature that lets users display sites as rendered by the older, and often Web standard-incompatible IE6 and IE7 -- Microsoft's newest browser owned a 25.8 percent share, making it the most popular single edition of any browser by a six-point margin.

IE's losses could pick up this month with the broad introduction of a browser ballot in the European Union beginning this week. The ballot was mandated by an agreement Microsoft reached last year with EU antitrust regulators nearly two years after Norwegian browser maker Opera filed a formal complaint. The ballot appears on Windows PCs where IE is set as the default browser, and lets users download and install rivals, including Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari and others.

Although Firefox has traditionally been the browser to reap the most reward from IE's persistent decline, Chrome now occupies that place. Over the last 12 months, Chrome has outgained Firefox by more than 2:1, posting an increase of 4.1 points to Firefox's 1.7 points. If Chrome keeps up the pace of the last three months, it will break the 10 percent mark in October, 11 months ahead of a goal it set last year.

NetApplications.com measures browser usage share by collecting systems data from the computers that visit the 40,000 sites it monitors for clients.

Source:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/firefox-loses-browser-share-third-month-running-205?page=0,0

Chicago Web Design Firms

Users urge Facebook Accountability

2010-02-26T01:05:00.000-08:00

Cyber Attacks on Facebook pages set up to pay tribute to two murdered Australian children prompted calls for the social networking site to be more accountable for its users.

Social media experts say it is natural that people who use sites such as Facebook or MySpace as a major form of communication should turn to these sites with personal tragedies.

These memorial sites often attract thousands of friends and well-wishers, as in the case of the pages set up after the deaths this month of Elliott Fletcher, 12, and Trinity Bates, 8.

Students from Brisbane College in the state of Queensland flocked to a memorial site set up after Fletcher was stabbed in a schoolyard fight two weeks ago, but it was defaced with offensive comments and images including child pornography and bestiality.

The same happened to a site set up in memory of Bates, who was taken from her bed in Bundaberg, Queensland, with her body found in a nearby storm drain. A teenager accused of her murder was also revealed to be a Facebook friend of her parents.

Queensland premier Anna Bligh has appealed to the owners of US-based Facebook to find ways to stop a recurrence of these types of "sickening incidents".

"To have these things happen to Facebook pages set up for the sole purpose of helping these communities pay tribute to young lives lost in the most horrible ways adds to the grief already being experienced," Bligh wrote in a letter to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg which was released to the media.

"I seek your advice about whether Facebook can do anything to prevent a recurrence of these types of sickening incidents."

A spokesman for Bligh said the premier had yet to receive a response from Zuckerberg.

Facebook spokesperson Debbie Frost said the site had rules to check content and reviewers were quick to respond to any reports of hate or threats against an individual, pornography, or violent photos or videos, and would remove the content, and either warn or disable the accounts of those responsible.

"Facebook is highly self-regulating, and users can and do report content that they find questionable or offensive," Frost said in a statement.

She said in the tragic case of Elliott Fletcher, Facebook responded to reports of vandalism from others users and the police by removing the groups and disabling the accounts of the people responsible but that was about all the action possible.

"It is simply not possible to 'prevent' a person with a sinister agenda from undertaking offensive activity anywhere on the Internet where people can post content. Nor is it really possible in real life," Frost added.

Detective superintendent Peter Crawford of Queensland police said people should think twice before setting up such social networking groups. As well as memorial sites, Facebook pages popped up vilifying the man accused of murdering Bates.

"I would say anybody thinking about putting these sites up in the future need to realise that they're going to attract these kinds of people," Crawford told radio station Fairfax Radio 4BC.

"The reality is once you open these sites up to open access to anyone on the Internet, you are going to attract unsavoury people and clearly that's occurred again."

Source:

http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=30783:users-urge-facebook-accountability&catid=219:reuters

Chicago Website Design

Microsoft Rolls out Cloud for U.S. Federal Users

2010-02-24T22:36:00.000-08:00

Microsoft on Wednesday announced a suite of hosted cloud services that will be delivered from a facility dedicated to U.S. Federal Government users.

Microsoft made the announcement at its Redmond, Washington, headquarters during its annual U.S. Public Sector CIO Summit.

The services available in Business Productivity Online Suite Federal include Exchange, SharePoint, Office Live Meeting and Office Communications, and are hosted from special facilities in an effort to meet the particular needs of federal agencies.

"It's a separate, dedicated infrastructure in secure facilities," said Rob Markezich, corporate vice president of online services at Microsoft.

Physical access to the site will be controlled with biometric systems, and the only people who will be able to access the facility will be U.S. citizens, he said. "We've heard quite often from customers in the U.S. that to meet certain regulations that was a requirement," he said.

Those workers will also be required to undergo "rigorous" background checks including fingerprinting, he said.

Other users including state agencies can use the federal service, but its use costs more than Microsoft's standard BPOS service, which complies with many of the rigorous standards that most state agencies require, he said.

Judging from the questions from the audience at the event, federal agencies may be interested in the concept but worry about a component that is out of Microsoft's control: Internet connections to the cloud. "The more that's in the cloud, the more bandwidth you need," one conference attendee said during a question and answer period, complaining about connections from commercial Internet providers. "What's the strategy for helping us get to the cloud reliably?"

Microsoft allows some existing cloud customers to use a dedicated network connection to its data centers, Markezich said. "But I don't have anything to announce" regarding such access to the dedicated federal cloud service, he said.

Even if that option becomes available, dedicated lines come with additional costs that often-strapped government agencies likely don't have. Other attendees asked if government programs like E-rate, which helps connect schools and libraries to the Internet, or Internet 2, a consortium of universities that works with the government to build networks, might help fund such dedicated connections. Microsoft said it has begun investigating whether that might be a possibility.

The company will also have to satisfy government agency liability concerns, particularly around security violations. Without describing the details, Markezich said that Microsoft specifies the terms of its liability for data in its contract. "The principle we use is it's your data, we don't look to make money on it other than the service fees you pay us," he said. The contract describes how Microsoft protects data and what happens if it becomes unavailable or compromised, he said.

Microsoft also announced all of the government certifications that its standard BPOS service now complies with, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, International Organization for Standardization 27001, Federal Information Processing Standard and Trusted Internet Connections.

The federal service supports all of those plus the rigorous International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Customers can buy service contracts now, with migration to the hosted suite expected to occur over the next several months, Markezich said.

Source:

http://www.thestandard.com/news/2010/02/24/microsoft-rolls-out-cloud-u-s-federal-users

Professional Web Design

Mobile Broadband Making Inroads

2010-02-24T02:04:00.000-08:00

While the report that 35% of Americans don't have access to high-speed Internet in the home created many headlines over the past week, what hasn't attracted as much attention is the finding that 15% of the country's adult population now uses Mobile Wireless Broadband on laptops.

The statistics were published in a survey released by the FCC as it prepares to submit its National Broadband Plan to Congress. Mobile broadband, for which users must pay a fee, is relatively new, so the 15% usage figures indicate that the wireless phenomenon is catching on and is likely to increase rapidly as more robust 4G networks are deployed.

Survey respondents were asked whether they used "a service with your laptop computer that is called wireless broadband, allowing you to access the Internet virtually anywhere? This is usually a service that you have to pay a monthly fee for, either by itself or as part of another communications bill. This is NOT what is called Wi-Fi."

With 4G wireless broadband increasingly being deployed, the 15% usage figure will surely grow as Sprint-Nextel steps up rollout of its WiMax network and Verizon Wireless prepares to deploy its LTE network later this year. Sprint, which is deploying its 4G network through its majority-owned Clearwire carrier, is already offering broadband wireless via data cards. Verizon Wireless will begin offering data cards later this year when it debuts the LTE service in 25-30 markets.

In releasing the survey, the FCC underscored the fact that some 93 million Americans still don't have access to high-speed Internet at home. The FCC, under new chairman Julius Genachowski, has pledged to bring high-speed Web access to more Americans at affordable rates.

The FCC survey, conducted among 5,000 adult Americans last October and November, found that 70% of users get their broadband in a bundle of services.

Source:
http://www.techweb.com/article/showArticle?articleID=223100408&section=news

Chicago Website Design

EPIC Takes Buzz Privacy Battle to FTC

2010-02-22T22:43:00.000-08:00

Privacy advocates are on the warpath against Google Buzz, the new social networking tool that has riled Gmail users. Ironically, it's in part because of the very social technologies Google and others provide that users are now as vocal as they are, noted privacy lawyer Parry Aftab. In the end, she quipped, such companies "may find that they've created a monster."

Just a week after the launch of Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Buzz, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on Tuesday filed a complaint with the FTC charging that the new service violates federal consumer protection law.

"This is a significant breach of consumers' expectations of privacy," said Marc Rotenberg, the group's executive director. "Google should not be allowed to push users' personal information into a social network they never requested."

In its complaint, EPIC urges the trade commission to require that Google make the Buzz service fully opt-in. It also asks that Google stop using Gmail users' private address book contacts to compile social networking lists, and that it give its users "meaningful control" over their personal data.

Two Rounds of Changes

Buzz is Google's first step onto social networking ground. It facilitates the instantaneous sharing of information like status updates, links and videos among Gmail users. For that reason, it is widely viewed as an attempt to take on the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

The service began to encounter resistance almost as soon as it was released, as criticisms emerged of Buzz's effect on privacy. Such was the outcry, in fact, that Google has already tweaked the Buzz service twice in the days since its release.

Last Thursday, the first round of changes gave Gmail users a "more visible option" to hide the people they follow on their public profile, for example, as well as the ability to block anyone who starts following them.

The second set of tweaks, announced Saturday, refined things further, including making the process of following people more explicit.

'Unfair and Deceptive'

For EPIC, however, those changes apparently weren't enough.

"Google Buzz still allows people to automatically follow a user; the burden remains on the user to block those unwanted followers," the group argues in its complaint.

EPIC further notes that Buzz's welcome screen "does not make clear that the user must create a profile that would be public and indexed by search engines." In addition, "users are still unaware that showing the user's connection means showing connections publicly to everyone, and having them publicly indexed by search engines."

Overall, "Google is engaging in unfair and deceptive acts and practices," EPIC concludes, requesting that the FTC conduct an investigation into the service.

A Problem of Communication?

"We designed Buzz to make it easy for users to connect with other people and have conversations about the things that interest them," Google said in a statement. "Buzz was launched only a week ago. We've already made a few changes based on user feedback, and we have more improvements in the works. We look forward to hearing more suggestions and will continue to improve the Buzz experience with user transparency and control top of mind.

"We also welcome dialogue with EPIC and appreciate hearing directly from them about their concerns," Google added. "Our door is always open to organizations with suggestions about our products and services."

CEO Eric Schmidt, meanwhile, suggested in remarks at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Tuesday that it was simply a problem of communication, but that no personal information was in fact disclosed, according to a report in The Guardian.

'It Should Be a Free-Standing Service'

Privacy groups, however, aren't so sure.

"We recommend that all current Buzz users immediately turn off the public list, and review their friend list before making it public again," wrote Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl on Tuesday, for example.

"We are somewhat troubled by the manner in which Google implemented Buzz," Paul Stephens, director of policy advocacy with the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, told the E-Commerce Times. "I don't think the process that a user normally goes through would necessarily make it clear to them that they were revealing information such as their email contacts."

Google needs to "take another look" at Buzz, Stephens said.

In particular, "it should be a free-standing service," he suggested. "It's presumptuous to assume, based on the mere fact that someone happens to have Google email account, that they'll want to participate in Google Buzz."

'Lots of Miscommunication'

If nothing else, the complaint underscores the care with which such new technologies must be introduced, Parry Aftab, a privacy lawyer and executive director of WiredSafety, told the E-Commerce Times.

"We've seen in recent years lots of miscommunication, involving Facebook, Google and lots of others, when they add or change services," Aftab explained.

As a result, "we see lots of knee-jerk reactions from people who assume they are at risk," she noted. "It shows how concerned people are about their personal information and keeping control of it."

'Engage Users Earlier'

In the case of Buzz, "the biggest problem has been Google's failure to recognize how carefully these new technologies need to be communicated to the public," Aftab concluded.

In such cases, companies need to "engage users earlier, let them know exactly what you're doing, and make sure you do exactly what you tell them," she advised.

Ironically, it's in part because of the very social technologies Google and others provide that users are now as vocal as they are, Aftab pointed out. In the end, she quipped, such companies "may find that they've created a monster.

Source:

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/69364.html

Professional Web Design Chicago

Steady growth for Twitter, despite hiccups

2010-02-21T23:05:00.000-08:00

Fans of microblogging service Twitter are apparently impervious to repeated outages and technical problems--and their enthusiasm is spreading.

Research firm Hitwise on Tuesday reported that traffic to the Twitter site increased 500 percent the week ending July 5, 2008, compared with the same period last year. That's a significant jump for a service that's continually up and down--and still lacking a clear revenue stream.

What's more, many users of the service appear to be unruffled by Twitter's technical issues. The share of returning visitors has averaged approximately 53 percent over the past four months, according to Hitwise.

Twitter also still has a leg up over its few rivals in the microblogging space. Twitter traffic last week was 12 times higher than that of Plurk and 24 times higher than FriendFeed, Hitwise says. So even though Tweeters may be getting restless, not all of them are abandoning the service in favor of similar finds.

"Despite user complaints about outages, Twitter has remained the most popular among the micro-blogging services," Hitwise said in a statement.

Earlier Tuesday, rumors escalated that Twitter was in the throes of buying Summize, a Twitter search engine. Neither Twitter nor Summize have commented on speculation of a possible merger.

Source:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-9985999-93.html

Chicago Web Site Design Company

Oh Google, why do you do us wrong?

2010-02-18T23:20:00.000-08:00

Nexus One support screwups, the Google Buzz fiasco, killing music blogs -- it seems like Google can't do anything right any more

So far, 2010 is shaping up to be the year Google discovered it had feet of clay -- and those feet have been spending a lot of time in Google's mouth.

(Also: This blog is shaping up to be all about Google, Apple, and Microsoft. Maybe we should rename it Notes from the GoogAppSoft -- or not.)

First, there was Google's disastrous foray into direct-to-consumer sales with the Nexus One phone, in which Google learned that, yes, you actually have to talk to customers when they're ticked off; they're not willing to wait until somebody gets around to responding on an online forum. Though Google has gotten slightly better at dealing with complaints over problems with 3G connections and phone delivery, it still hasn't figured out what "customer service" actually means.

Then, Google Buzz: a nice idea, if you spend all your time on the Googleplex and have no life and no secrets. Otherwise, it's just a bit too friendly with the information of relative strangers. Google has revised its Buzz product at least three times since it was introduced last week, trying to quell the privacy storm that followed; it still has a ways to go on that one, too.

On top of those comes a so-far little-reported incident that's been tagged Musicblogocide 2010. Earlier this month Google deleted years' worth of archives from six popular music blogs hosted on Blogger.com -- just wiped them from the face of the InterWebs. The reason? It had received multiple DMCA takedown notices from record companies alleging these sites were sharing music illegally.

Under the DMCA (otherwise known as Congress's boundless gift to copyright holders), a service provider like Google can escape liability for violations only if it acts immediately to remove any offending sites or files. The copyright holder doesn't have to prove the violations are genuine, and the service provider doesn't even have to notify the sites beforehand -- it can wipe first and notify later.

The problem? Some of the sites claim they had permission to share those music files. Worse, others say Google didn't ever notify them -- or if they were notified, the information was so vague that it was impossible to find out where the alleged violations occurred.

The only recourse for a site that's been hit with a DMCA takedown is to file a counternotification -- essentially a claim of innocence -- which Google then must forward to the copyright holders. If the copyright holders don't take legal action against the alleged infringers within two weeks, their sites must be restored.

That's kinda hard to do if 1) you've never been notified, or 2) you have no idea what you allegedly did wrong. In one case, Google has admitted its notifications were insufficient and restored the site. As for the others, it's sticking by its policies and saying the bloggers should have filed counterclaims.

Meanwhile, Bill Lipold, owner of the I Rock Cleveland blog, has been publicly haranguing Google and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (essentially an international version of the RIAA) on Google's own public support forums. He's reproduced emails from record companies stating he had the right to publicly distribute their music. On his new, non-Google-hosted blog, he points out that at least one of the files in question had been removed from his site more than two years previous, which would have been easy enough to check:

If at this point you're drawing the conclusion that neither the IFPI nor Google know exactly what they're doing in these matters, you're not alone. If at any point during the DMCA claim process a human being had clicked on the link and looked for the infringing content they wouldn't have found an mp3, but a 404 with the message, "Sorry, dude. The rockin' has stopped. Please be aware that downloads from I Rock Cleveland are only available for a limited time. You can find more Rock 'N' Roll at I Rock Cleveland."

Google isn't to blame for the DMCA, one of the most spectacularly abused pieces of digital legislation ever created. But it does seem to be getting more aggressive about DMCA enforcement.

Like I Rock Cleveland, most of those other sites have found new homes (so much for the effectiveness of DMCA takedowns). But Google is taking most of the heat for this, and a big part of that is because of how it reacted. It all stems from Google's attitude of "we'll respond if and when we feel like it, and only indirectly via our blog or online forum." It's another symptom of Google's self-centeredness -- the same thing that caused its failure to provide actual customer support for the Nexus One, as well as the entire Google Buzz fiasco.

The G-folk can't seem to see beyond the boundaries of the Googleplex. As Google becomes less of an Internet company and more of a consumer goods company, that myopia is only likely to get worse.

Does Google deserve the beating it's been getting (here and elsewhere)? Weigh in below or email me: cringe@infoworld.com.

This article, "Oh Google, why do you do us wrong?" was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Robert X. Cringely's Notes from the Field blog.

Source:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/oh-google-why-do-you-do-us-wrong-012?page=0,0

Chicago Website Design

Looking Back at Six Months of Yahoo Search

2010-02-17T22:39:00.000-08:00

The last six months have gone by in the blink of an eye for the Yahoo! Search team. Since the summer of 2009, we’ve launched an amazing amount of new improvements in Yahoo Search to deliver a more personally relevant search experience. Now it’s even easier to find and explore what matters most to you. We made a short video to showcase what we’ve done in the last six months. Here are some of the highlights:

All-new Yahoo! Search

On Sep 22, 2009, we launched a completely redesigned Yahoo! Search in multiple markets around the world. The new page design aligns the experience across our new Homepage, Mail, and the search results page. This dynamic and integrated experience better understands what you are looking for so you can get things done quickly on the Web.

By rebuilding much of the foundational code for the SRP design and core functionality completely from scratch, we deliver a faster Search page with many exciting new features:

* SearchMonkey structured data: You can explore results from key sites and narrow results using different types of SearchMonkey structured data, making it easier to see richer results from an increasing number of sites.
* Search Scan, Safe Search, and Search Pad: You can quickly access search features that make your online lives safer and easier, including Search Scan/SafeSearch (which helps protect you from viruses, spyware, and spam while you search) and Search Pad, our note-taking and research application.
* Query assistance: We’ve extended our powerful query assistance into the left-hand column of the page to allow you to easily explore and discover concepts related to your query.
* Image and video search refiners: We also apply this same design framework to our Image and Video Search experiences, where the left-hand column provides powerful ways to explore the things you care about most; including travel destinations, music artists, movies, TV shows, and celebrities.

If you haven’t tried it yet, let us take you on our tour that explains all of the features we delivered with this new experience.

Structuring the Web

We launched Yahoo! SearchMonkey in May 2008. Throughout 2009 we’ve continued to accelerate the adoption of structured data across the Web and empower developers to innovate in search. In May 2009, we shared with you the key milestones with Yahoo! Search BOSS and SearchMonkey: At that time, we had over 70 million enhanced SearchMonkey results viewed by users every day; and we increased the adoption of RDFa structured data by 413 percent since October, 2008.

By August 2009, we had expanded our coverage for enhanced results to multiple structured object formats including Video, Documents, Games, Products, Local Businesses, Event, Discussions, and News.

Great Assistance across Yahoo!

In November 2009, we extended our Search Assist features from the Web search boxes to the search box at the top of nearly every property on Yahoo! The new features take you directly to the information you need, whether it is real-time stock quotes or movie trailers. This also includes enhanced search suggestions and ways to easily navigate to your Yahoo! property of choice.

Discover Breaking News on Yahoo!

Starting in November 2009, we began including relevant photos, videos, and tweets about a breaking news story within the Yahoo! News Shortcut on our Search results page. By including more of this real-time content, we make it easier for you to find all the information you need about an unfolding news event in one place.

Local Searches Made Easier

We’re focused on making it easier to search for local businesses. Starting in December 2009, we display more Yahoo! local business shortcuts when you search for a business, even if you don’t include your location in your query. We also began providing new functionality directly within the local shortcut to refine results by neighborhood or nearby city right on the search results page. This further enhances an already great shortcut that provides more of the information you care about most directly on the search results page; including ratings, reviews, photos, and directions.

Twitter in Web Search

In addition to our News shortcut that was already showing tweets for breaking news topics, in December 2009 we started integrating recent tweets from Twitter directly as a dedicated shortcut on our Web search results page when you search for buzzy topics. By providing this Twitter shortcut, we make it easy for you to see tweets about topics that may not be in news headlines.

Great Multimedia Search

Building on the great feedback we received, we added even more entertainment refiners within our Image and Video Search experiences. These new refiners help you explore your favorite TV shows and movies, celebrities, or the albums and songs from your favorites music artists. By tapping into the “Web of Things,” we have created intelligent contextual refiners to narrow down your search intent intuitively.

Shashi Seth joins Yahoo! Search

Finally, a very exciting change for Yahoo! Search happened just last month when Shashi Seth joined us as the Senior Vice President for the Yahoo! Search Products team. We’re sure that Shashi will help us keep the ideas flowing as we continue to make Yahoo! Search better and incorporate Yahoo! Search into all Yahoo! products.

We’ve been working hard to not only make it even easier for you to find the information you need, but also to enable you to discover more than you ever expected when you use Yahoo! Search. We’re continually focused on improving the Yahoo! Search experience, so check back often as we bring you more enhancements in the coming months.

Source:
http://www.ysearchblog.com/2010/02/10/looking-back-at-six-months-of-yahoo-search/

Chicago Web Site Design Company

Nokia and Intel Launch New Mobile Operating System

2010-02-17T03:40:00.000-08:00

Nokia and Intel will merge two of their mobile operating systems into Meego, a Linux-based, open operating system for everything from advanced smartphones to netbooks, connected TVs and tablet computers, the companies said at a joint press conference on Monday.

The new operating system will combine the best features from each operating system, including the Moblin core and the UI (user interface) toolkit from Maemo. Intel developed Moblin, and Nokia developed Maemo. The first version of MeeGo will ship during the second quarter.

The first devices based on the operating system are expected to arrive during the second half of 2010, according to Renée James, senior vice president and general manager at Intel's Software and Services Group.

The operating system will support both Intel's Atom and ARM architectures. The MeeGo source code, along with the build system and developer tools will be released in the coming weeks, according to a FAQ on the MeeGo website.

The MeeGo code will be hosted by the Linux Foundation, and anyone who wants to develop an application for MeeGo will use the Qt framework. The use of Qt will let users develop an application once and then run it on multiple platforms, according to Kai Öistämö, executive vice president for devices at Nokia.

So far, Nokia is the only company that has said it will ship phones with MeeGo. However, more hardware partners and operators will announce support and product plans for MeeGo in the coming weeks, James said.

The arrival of MeeGo will not change Nokia's plans for Symbian. That operating system will still be used on cheaper smartphones, according to Öistämö.

Source:

http://www.thestandard.com/news/2010/02/15/nokia-and-intel-launch-new-mobile-operating-system

Professional Website Design Services

If Google Wave Is The Future, Google Buzz Is The Present

2010-02-16T01:33:00.000-08:00

Google has a problem. Despite having their hands in just about everything online, they’ve never been able to tackle what is a key part of the fabric of the web: social. Yes, they have Orkut and OpenSocial, but no one actually uses them. Okay, some people use them, but not in the meaningful social ways that people use Facebook or even Twitter. Today, Google may have just solved their social problem.

Google Buzz is easily the company’s boldest attempt yet to build a social network. Imagine taking elements of Twitter, Yammer, Foursquare, Yelp, and other social services, and shoving them together into one package. Now imagine covering that package in a layer that looks a lot like FriendFeed. Now imagine shoving that package inside of Gmail. That’s Buzz. If Google Wave is the future, Google Buzz is the present.

FriendFeed Reborn. On Growth Hormone.

Fundamentally, Buzz is a stream of status updates, pictures, links, and videos from your friends. You can “like” these items and you can comment on them. And if you use Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader, or Twitter, you can also automatically have those items imported into your stream. And Buzz will recommend items you might like based on your friends’ activity.

Yes, again, it sounds a lot like FriendFeed. But it has a critical component that FriendFeed never had prior to its acquisition by Facebook: a massive installed user base. Maybe you missed the key bit of wording above: it resides inside of Gmail. Rather than trying to build its own new social service from scratch, Google is making Buzz a key part of their email service (right below the Inbox tab) that 176 million unique visitors each month, according to comScore.

Source:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/09/if-google-wave-is-the-future-google-buzz-is-the-present/

Chicago Web Site Design Company

Are iPhone Hackers Lying in Wait?

2010-02-15T01:39:00.000-08:00

Most iPhone owners really don't care about security, according to a new survey by ESET, an anti-malware software vendor.

"We don't see in-depth defense among smarphone users," James Abrams, director of technical education at ESET, told CIO.com amidst a throng of iPhone owners milling around on the Macworld Expo showroom floor in San Francisco.

It's likely these iPhone owners won't take security seriously until the iPhone has a Toyota moment, when a simmering problem finally bubbles over and splatters them right in the public eye. "It wouldn't surprise me if that moment is still a couple years off," Abrams said.

ESET commissioned a survey of a more than 1,000 smartphone owners-35 percent iPhone, 32 percent Blackberry, and the rest a mix-and released its findings yesterday. The key finding: a majority of people don't take security seriously.

Among iPhone and Blackberry users, 55 percent don't lock their smartphone. Some 40 percent of all smartphone users said they're concerned with malicious software infecting their device, while only one in four said they actually use antivirus software, including iPhone owners.

Can iPhone owners even run anti-virus software? "None of the iPhone users should have reported that they are using antivirus as Apple will not approve such software for the iPhone, even though Apple has had to pull spyware off of their App Store," Abrams wrote in his blog. Such is the fallacy of surveys.

Nevertheless, Abrams worries that unsuspecting iPhone owners will have their day of reckoning perhaps in two years. Why so long? He figures hackers are lying in wait, ready to exploit the iPhone.

Hackers might be waiting for Apple to unlock the iPhone for different networks. Or they want iPhones to get into more people's hands. Perhaps they're waiting for a banking iPhone app that they can target. "Hackers don't target for fun," Abrams said, comparing them to the guy who created a worm for jailbroken iPhones as a joke.

Mobile online banking attracts hackers, Abrams said. The ESET survey found one in four users make purchases using their smartphones. Nearly one in three accesses banking websites or apps. "Combined with access to email and social networking accounts is what makes the devices attractive to hackers and other criminals," Abrams wrote.

"It is the adoption of commerce that will create the irresistible opportunity for those with malicious intent," he said.

Source:

http://www.itnews.com/smartphones/14307/are-iphone-hackers-lying-wait

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Google to Add Social Features to Gmail

2010-02-12T01:44:00.000-08:00

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google is trying once again to capture some of the momentum surrounding social networking companies like Facebook and Twitter by adding new features to Gmail, its popular e-mail service.

Later this week, Google will introduce add-ons to Gmail that let users post and view messages about their day-to-day activities, according to a person at Google briefed on its plans. This simple tweak to Gmail will allow Google to mimic the status updates that have driven much of the success of Facebook and Twitter, as people return to the services again and again to check out what their friends and co-workers are doing.

To date, Google has allowed users to post only a brief message about their status through its Chat system, which is linked to Gmail. The new features would allow a more vibrant back-and-forth among Gmail users.

It is not clear whether Google will link the new Gmail features to rival social-networking services.

The Gmail move signals that Google remains serious about becoming a social media force at a time when some of Silicon Valley’s younger start-ups have stolen some of its thunder.

“It might look like a minor feature advance, but this is another blow in the war against Facebook,” said Jeremiah Owyang, a partner at Altimeter Group, a technology consulting company.

Google has a full-blown social networking service called Orkut that has proved especially popular in Brazil. It also has a Web browser add-on called Sidewiki that lets people jot down and share information about a Web site, and a Profile service where people can post information about themselves.

These efforts have done little to put Google on center stage when it comes to social networking. Google, in fact, finds itself in a similar position to Microsoft, as a company struggling to figure out how to move into new areas by stretching its traditional strongholds and brand.

Microsoft, a rival to Google in several areas, has invested in Facebook. “You can see the factions starting to line up,” Mr. Owyang said.

Analysts remain skeptical as to whether a new twist on Gmail will do much to elevate Google’s position in the social networking realm. That said, the market remains relatively new, and there is room for companies to challenge the likes of Facebook, they said.

Google is also expected to create strong ties between Gmail and its YouTube video site and Picasa photo gallery service.

Source:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/technology/companies/09social.html?ref=technology

Web Designers Chicago

Macworld 2010 Refocuses For New Era, Without Apple

2010-02-10T21:44:00.000-08:00

Attending a Macworld Expo without Apple may seem like going to a rock concert to see the opening acts, but despite lacking the rock star presence, the show will go on nonetheless.

It was just prior to last year's conference, Apple announced that 2009 would be the last year it participated in the annual gathering, which has been held in San Francisco since 1985. This year's Expo, which has been rebranded Macworld 2010, will feature no keynote from Apple executives and no Apple booth on the show floor in Moscone Center's North Hall.

But while Apple's absence will certainly change the dynamic of the event, it hardly means that the show won't go on. There's plenty to do throughout the five-day event, which runs from Tuesday February 9 through Saturday February 13, even without Apple around.

Walking the floor

"It's going to be a smaller show this year," acknowledged Paul Kent, vice president and general manager for Macworld 2010. Last year's exhibition spanned both Moscone's North and South halls. "Many vendors decided to sit on the sideline and see what Macworld without Apple would look like. It's really up to those vendors, going forward."

The exhibition hall, open from February 11 to February 13, remains one of Macworld 2010's strongest draws, with more than 250 vendors, including the Mobile Application Showcase, the largest collection of iPhone developers ever assembled, and the Indie Developer Pavilion, a special area for independent Mac developers of all sizes. Plus, more than 60 vendors are introducing new products at the show. There's no question, said Kent, that the product experience remains a very central part of the show. "The three pillars of Macworld are product discovery, conference education, and the social experience."

Kent freely admits that rebounding from Apple's departure may be a two-year process, but he remains optimistic about the future. "I anticipate the vendors are going to come back in droves."

Naturally, it will help if the conference attendance is high. While the exact figures won't be known until the dust clears, there are more than 30,000 pre-registrations for the event. By comparison, Macworld Expo saw attendance of 45,572 in 2007, and a 10 percent increase over that in 2008. Attendance figures for last year's event, however, were not disclosed. Kent noted that he expects a packed house this year, including the more than 700 members of the media that have registered.

Headline acts

In addition to the exhibition hall, this year's show will have a number of feature presentations that Kent hopes will educate, inform, and entertain attendees. "You don't replace a Steve Jobs keynote," said Kent. "But we do know how to build very content rich events here."

On Thursday, New York Times tech columnist David Pogue will host a session called Late Night with David Pogue, featuring surprises guests and musical performances and noted writer and director Kevin Smith will hold a Q&A session on storytelling, technology, and filmmaking.

Source:

http://www.itnews.com/business-issues/14171/macworld-2010-refocuses-new-era-without-apple

Web Site Design

Judge Dismisses Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage Suit

2010-02-09T21:40:00.000-08:00

A judge dismissed a lawsuit that was filed against Microsoft over its much-criticized Windows Genuine Advantage program in 2006.

The judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington on Thursday dismissed the case with prejudice, leaving each party to pay its own lawyer fees. In a statement, Microsoft said it was pleased the case was “resolved successfully.” It did not say whether it agreed to any kind of settlement arrangement.

The suit essentially characterized WGA as spyware, charging Microsoft with failing to describe the tool’s functions before downloading it onto the plaintiffs' computers. WGA was designed to determine whether a user’s version of Windows was pirated. It sent regular information back to Microsoft about user’s hardware and software and warned users of piracy violations.

“Contrary to the express statements Microsoft made in the inadequate disclosures that were provided, the software collected and communicated private identifying information from consumer’s computers and sent that information back to Microsoft on a daily basis,” the complaint read.

In January, the plaintiffs failed to have the suit certified as a class action, a blow to their case.

Shortly after the suit was filed, amid a storm of criticism, Microsoft released a new version of WGA with a reduced schedule of reporting user information back to the software giant. Months later it changed WGA again so as to not cut off users of Windows XP who had uncertain licenses. Those users were being labeled as having illegitimate software and were periodically asked to reinstall or buy a new version, even though in many cases the software was legitimate.

WGA caused other problems as well. Once, after a worker accidentally loaded software onto the live system, Windows XP and Vista users were told via the WGA system that they had pirated copies of their software. The problem lasted more than a day before it was fully corrected.

Source:

http://www.itnews.com/windows/14114/judge-dismisses-microsoft-windows-genuine-advantage-suit

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Apple Offers 'Find Out How' Tutorials as Podcasts

2010-02-08T21:55:00.001-08:00

For some time, Apple has given the Designated Family Tech Support Personnel among us a small reprieve with its "Find out how" selection of tutorial videos. While they don't really tackle inevitable questions like "was deleting ~/Library/Keychains a bad idea?," they serve as succinct primers for The Way of the Mac and Apple's various apps and services. Now, if your tech-blossoming family and friends prefer to gobble their media in a subscription format, Apple has finally created iTunes Store podcast channels for its "Find out how" series.

Organized by application, service, or topic, the nine "Find out how" podcasts that Apple has published so far cover MobileMe, iWork '09, iWeb '09, and of course, Mac Basics (search for "Apple find out how" to see them all). There are around ten to 20 episodes in each of these podcasts, though for some series it seems that not all episodes have made the transition from Apple's site to their podcast counterpart. While the iMovie podcast has a few more episodes than Apple's website, the Mac Basics podcast is short around ten or so episodes.

It's nice to see Apple making these useful tutorials available in more ways, and hopefully future videos will continue to keep the attention of aspiring i-everything users. They may not make a dramatic dent in the number of family tech support hours that some of us clock, but every little bit certainly helps.

Source:

http://www.itnews.com/mac/14049/apple-offers-find-out-how-tutorials-podcasts

Web Site Design

Facebook's Photo uploader Gets an Overhaul Too

2010-02-07T22:25:00.000-08:00

Hot on the heels of a visual face-lift, Facebook on Friday announced that the prototype version of its photo uploader, which was introduced in mid-November of last year, will soon be rolling out to all users.

Unlike the existing version of Facebook's photo uploader, the new uploader requires the installation of a browser plug-in. This inconvenience is rewarded with the option to leave Facebook entirely, while the photos continue to upload in the background. Previously, users would have had to leave that window or page running while the uploader did its magic.

Facebook also said the new uploader supports a few extra photo formats, though it did not specify which ones. The company has, for some time now, had unofficial support for a handful of alternate formats, including raw images. However, on its official spec sheet the company says only .jpg, .gif, .bmp, and .png files will work.

Facebook currently gets 2.5 billion photo uploads per month. To put that in perspective, the company hit the 10 billion mark in October of 2008, a whole three years after first introducing the photo-sharing feature in 2005. In other words, any small change that makes it easier for people to get their photos onto the social network could end up having a big effect on how fast Facebook's photo collection will continue to grow.

If you can't wait for Facebook to activate the uploader on your account, you can do it yourself. Just head over to Facebook's prototype page, and turn it on.

Source:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20000051-248.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

Chicago Web Design Firms

Apple Extends iTunes Web Previews to Apps

2010-02-04T21:43:00.000-08:00

Just a few months after introducing its browser-based iTunes Preview pages for music, Apple has expanded the feature to include items from the App Store.

Now, when a user clicks an iTunes link for an iPhone or iPod Touch app, they're taken to a page with a similar layout to what they'd see when browsing the iTunes Store in Apple's iTunes software. But instead, it's in their browser. This allows users who don't have iTunes installed to see more information about an app without having the software installed. That said, preview pages attempt to launch iTunes each time you load them.

As mentioned in previous coverage, there are a few shortcomings to these preview pages compared to the sales pages in iTunes proper. These include only being able to see a handful of user reviews and other purchases by customers. Users are also unable to make a purchase, add the app to a wish list, and share it on Twitter or Facebook.

Despite these limitations, the iTunes Preview program is a strong hint that Apple is on its way towards taking its iTunes Store business outside of conventional software and onto the Web. Though Apple has not yet extended the preview program out to all its content, including movies, TV shows, podcasts, and audiobooks.

Source:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20000041-248.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

Web Design Firms Chicago

Facebook Comes Out Swinging at Critics of Settlement Offer In Beacon Lawsuit

2010-02-03T22:10:00.000-08:00

Facebook has come out swinging at those opposing a settlement offer it made last year in a privacy lawsuit involving the social networking company's controversial Beacon behavioral tracking service .

Under the offer made last September, Facebook said it would pay $9.5 million to set up a privacy foundation to fund projects promoting the cause of online privacy in return for the lawsuit against it to be dropped. It also said that it would formally drop the Beacon service.

But in complaints filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California last week, opponents of the settlement called it meaningless. In documents filed with the court they argued that all Facebook was doing was paying itself to fund a privacy foundation over which it would exercise undue control.

In response, a Facebook spokesman said yesterday the objections were false and called the settlement "fair" and in the interest of the members of the class-action suit.

The dispute stems from a lawsuit filed in August 2008 against Facebook. It alleged that Facebook and Beacon affiliates such as Blockbuster and Overstock.com had violated several federal privacy laws, including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Video Privacy Protection Act, when they shared data about Facebook users with each other. As part of its settlement offer, Facebook said it would shut down Beacon.

However, in a complaint filed last week in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, of Washington D.C, and some Facebook users asked the court to reject the offer.

In their complaint, the groups said that the proposed settlement did nothing to compensate victims whose privacy may have been compromised by Beacon. Other than formally disbanding a program that Facebook had voluntarily already discontinued, the settlement offered little else the groups complained.

"At the heart of the proposed settlement is the foundation that Facebook will pay itself to establish," one of the complaints noted. The settlement also "improperly" gives Facebook a direct role in drafting the mission and bylaws of the proposed foundation and in appointing board members.

In fact, one of the three initial directors of the foundation is a Facebook employee and chief lobbyist, the complaint noted. "In exchange for what amounts to worthless "relief," all class members will release all Beacon-related claims against Facebook and the Beacon merchant partners," the compliant said.

In e-mailed comments, Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt blasted such objections. "The suggestion that Facebook would pay itself is absurd, misunderstands how foundations work, and totally disregards the bylaws of this foundation and the enforcement powers of the court," Schnitt said.

The bylaws of the proposed foundation make it clear that its purpose is to fund and sponsor programs to educate users, regulators and enterprises on online privacy issues, Schnitt said. He added that the foundation will be an independent entity run by three well known and respected privacy advocates.

Source:

http://www.itnews.com/social-media/13874/facebook-comes-out-swinging-critics-settlement-offer-beacon-lawsuit

Chicago Web Design

BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) Best Practices: Six Tips

2010-02-02T21:35:00.000-08:00

BlackBerry Messenger, Research In Motion's (RIM) mobile IM application that uses unique "PIN" codes associated with every BlackBerry to connect RIM smartphone users, isn't new. But due to the BlackBerry platform's rising popularity, BBM--which you can think of as a mobile version of AIM or Google Talk that only works with BlackBerrys -- is suddenly getting a lot of attention. And not all of it is positive. In fact, Web-security-software-maker McAfee recently posted a warning about BBM spam and hoaxes on its TrustedSource blog.

To me, BBM is a valuable tool that I use every day for immediate contact with important colleagues, associates and family members. But the app can subject BlackBerry users to unnecessary risk if used improperly or without a certain degree of caution.

Here are half a dozen BBM best practices to help ensure that you get the most of your BBM experience while avoiding any potential trouble.

Add New Contacts Sparingly

This is the most important point in my post, so I'll say it again: Add new contacts sparingly.

I know I'll catch some flak from some of you loyal BlackBerry users out there who seem to be playing a game in which the goal is to gain as many BBM contacts as quickly as possible. But the value in BBM, for me at least, is that it's not just another IM service--I have BeeJive for that.

BBM users add new contacts in a few ways: 1) You can share your unique PIN with others and have them invite you, or vice-versa; 2) you can add new contacts by sharing e-mail addresses associated with your BlackBerry smartphone; and 3) you can "scan" other BBM users' unique PIN-barcodes with your BlackBerry's camera--assuming you're using the latest BBM version (5.0).

I only connect with colleagues, family and friends who I want to be able to communicate with instantly, at any time. And when I connect with someone on BBM, I mostly expect him or her to respond to my message as quickly as possible. And I know most of them expect the same in return.

So, to the point: Do NOT share your BlackBerry PIN or barcode with just anyone; Do NOT post your PIN or barcode on your public Twitter account or any other social network; Do NOT include your BlackBerry PIN or barcode in your fixed e-mail signature.

Are you getting the idea here? Good. Furthermore, you don't have to accept all BBM invites you receive. (More on that coming up in the BlackBerry Groups section.) Don't worry about hurt feelings or bruised egos. Your BlackBerry will thank you.

On that note: There's really no right or wrong way to use BBM. But there are smart and effective methods of employing the service. Adding tons of contacts defeats the purpose of BBM for me and diminishes the app's overall value.

Backup BBM Contacts Regularly

As with any computer or handheld, it's a very good idea to backup your BBM--and your entire BlackBerry--regularly. If your smartphone is associated with a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES),

Source:

http://www.itnews.com/smartphones/13801/blackberry-messenger-bbm-best-practices-six-tips

Professional Web Design Chicago

Google Nexus One Users Report T-Mobile Service Outage

2010-02-01T21:39:00.000-08:00

T-Mobile customers who use the Google Nexus One smartphones are reporting widespread data outages on their devices.

The outages are being reported at multiple online sites, including Twitter, where T-Mobile staff are directing affected customers to the carrier's message boards.

Google Nexus One vs. Motorola Droid: Breaking down the basics

According to ZDNet writer Matthew Miller, T-Mobile is sending users messages on their devices telling them that they need to sign up for data plans, despite the fact that they are already T-Mobile data subscribers. Miller says that he personally has "the unlimited Android web plan" and that it "worked just fine until this morning." A Gizmodo reader reported encountering the same problem when he tried to use his Nexus One to surf the web this morning.

Neither HTC nor Google has publicly commented on the reported outage or have given any indication of how they plan to fix it.

The data outage for the Nexus One comes just months after T-Mobile Sidekick users were plagued with a massive outage that initially was thought to have wiped out significant portions of their personal data.

The Google Nexus One first came to T-Mobile earlier this year as the first official phone released by Google. Designed by handset manufacturer HTC, the Nexus One is due to be released on the Verizon network sometime over the next few weeks.

Source:

http://www.itnews.com/smartphones/13678/google-nexus-one-users-report-t-mobile-service-outage

Professional Web Design Chicago

MySpace Accepting Submissions For App Contest

2010-01-31T21:02:00.000-08:00

MySpace has opened the submission period for its Developer Challenge, a contest in which the company will award US$50,000 in prizes for new applications and for innovative uses of the social networking site's application programming interfaces.

External developers have until Feb. 24 to enter the contest, which includes a US$10,000 award in each of five categories: best new MySpace application and the most innovative uses of the real-time stream API, open search API, photo upload API and mobile API.

The panel of judges will include MySpace COO Mike Jones and Google Engineering Director David Glazer, MySpace announced on Monday. The winners will be announced at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco in March.

To be eligible, contestants must be legal residents of the U.S., Canada (excluding Quebec), U.K., or Australia and be at least 18 years of age. Developers can participate as individuals or as part of a team of no more than three members.

Judges will evaluate applications and use of APIs according to four general criteria: originality, technical achievement, entertainment value and innovation.

MySpace also will host a free event called MySpace devJam on Jan. 14 at its San Francisco office to help developers get started on their applications for the contest, a company spokeswoman said via e-mail.

The developer contest comes on the heels of MySpace's decision about a month ago to open its users' public activity stream data to external developers via a new set of APIs.

MySpace wants developers to use these status updates and action notifications in external applications and in Web sites. MySpace has about 110 million members worldwide. They generate about 46 million status updates and action notifications every day.

Once the most popular social networking site in the world, MySpace lost that position to Facebook, but a new management team is trying to refocus MySpace so it can recover lost territory.

Source:

http://www.itnews.com/social-networking/12497/myspace-accepting-submissions-app-contest

Web Design Firms Chicago

T-Mobile USA finishes upgrade to HSPA 7.2

2010-01-29T21:55:00.000-08:00

T-Mobile USA has completed its deployment of a faster 3G technology across its national network, reaching more than 200 million U.S. residents with the high-speed data and voice system while getting ready to upgrade some areas to even higher speeds later this year.

The nation's fourth-largest carrier had promised last year it would finish rolling out HSPA 7.2 -- High-Speed Packet Access with a theoretical top speed of 7.2M bps (bits per second) -- by the end of 2009. The carrier announced Tuesday it had achieved that goal. The news came out just before Google introduced the Nexus One handset, which will be sold by Google and run on T-Mobile's network. The Nexus One supports HSPA 7.2.

While most mobile operators look toward LTE (Long-Term Evolution) as the next major generation of mobile data networks, 3G technology continues to evolve with higher performance and greater efficiency. Both AT&T and T-Mobile have said they will deploy LTE in 2011, a year later than Verizon Wireless, while upgrading on the 3G path in the meantime. AT&T said last year it would have HSPA 7.2 in at least six markets, including Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami, by the end of 2009. The new technology will reach 90 percent of AT&T's network by the end of 2011, the company said last October.

While AT&T continues to roll out HSPA 7.2, T-Mobile this year will begin deploying HSPA+, which is designed for speeds of 21M bps or more. The carrier did not provide any details on the timing or location of its HSPA Plus deployments this year.

Verizon Wireless, which uses a different 3G system from AT&T and T-Mobile, plans to launch commercial LTE service this year. LTE has been demonstrated at speeds of more than 100M bps downstream. Real-world speeds on all mobile networks depend on local conditions and typically are shared among many subscribers.

Source:

http://www.itnews.com/mobile-handsets/12542/t-mobile-usa-finishes-upgrade-hspa-72

Web Site Design

2009 in Review: The Year in iPhone

2010-01-05T21:11:00.000-08:00

In 2008, the iPhone grew up, evolving from its status as the "it device" of the moment into a burgeoning ecosphere. In 2009, that "it" device went thermonuclear. The iPhone software turned 3.0, the barrier of entry dropped to $99, and the App Store hit 100,000 applications and an astounding two billion downloads. With all of that, it's hard to believe that Apple's iconic cell phone is still weeks shy of the third anniversary of its unveiling. As 2009 comes to a close, we wrap up the year in iPhone by the numbers.

3.0

If the iPhone OS 2.0 update turned an amazing device into a world-beating platform by allowing third-party apps, then iPhone 3.0 was all about sanding off the software's rough edges and turning it into a full-featured experience.

Apple made no secret about iPhone 3.0, holding an event in March, months prior to its eventual launch, to show off the catalog of new features and developer APIs that would define the next-generation of iPhone software. With Steve Jobs on medical leave, the presentation fell to the capable team of Greg Joswiak and Scott Forstall, who ran through iPhone 3.0's high points, as well as yet another series of interminable developer demos.

While end users got some nice additional features in 3.0, such as the much anticipated cut, copy and paste, the long-run impact of the update has been more about what lies under the hood--it was the iPhone's equivalent of Snow Leopard. Developers got the ability to communicate with hardware through the dock-connector port or Bluetooth, peer-to-peer networking, in-app purchase, and the long-awaited push notifications. The testament to iPhone 3.0's importance is the number of programs on the App Store that require it.

Not all was rosy with this latest software update: while two of the features most demanded by consumers--support for Multimedia Messaging (MMS) and tethering--were promised by Apple for 3.0, MMS didn't arrive until September, three months after 3.0's release, and tethering remains imprisoned in an oubliette of AT&T's devising to this day.

3GS

With the iPhone 3G only a year old, it might seem surprising that Apple would roll out a brand new model, but that's just what it did at June's Worldwide Developers Conference. This time it was Phil Schiller stepping in as maestro for the proceedings, which included unveiling the iPhone 3GS. If the name, with its 'S' for speed, was a bit of a head-scratcher, its performance was anything but. Though outwardly it looked the same as the iPhone 3G, it was unquestionably a horse of a different color on the inside.

Source:

http://www.itnews.com/smartphones/12381/2009-review-year-iphone

Chicago Web Design Firms

Apple Wins Appeal of iPod Hearing Loss Case

2009-12-31T21:13:00.000-08:00

A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld a lower court ruling that said Apple's iPod music players do not pose an unacceptable risk to users' hearing.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth District affirmed a 2008 decision by a California district court to dismiss a long-running lawsuit that claimed iPods endangered users' hearing. iPods, said the original 2006 lawsuit -- which eventually boasted three plaintiffs and sought class-action status -- were defective because they could play music at unsafe volumes above 115 decibels (dB).

The district court disagreed, saying that any dangers of hearing loss from playing music too loud were "obvious" and "unavoidable." The plaintiffs then appealed.

Yesterday's appellate court ruling essentially repeated the arguments raised by the lower court. "The district court did not err," said Senior Circuit Judge David Thompson, who wrote the court's opinion. "The plaintiffs admit that the iPod has an 'ordinary purpose of listening to music,' and nothing they allege suggests iPods are unsafe for that use or defective. [Their] statements suggest only that users have the option of using an iPod in a risky manner, not that the product lacks any minimum level of quality."

Additionally, said Thompson, the plaintiffs failed to prove injury had actually occurred. "The plaintiffs do not allege the iPods failed to do anything they were designed to do nor do they allege that they, or any others, have suffered or are substantially certain to suffer inevitable hearing loss or other injury from iPod use," added the court's opinion.

iPod sound volume has been of interest to others beyond the plaintiffs. Last September, the European Commission ordered all makers of portable music players to add a default volume setting of around 80 dB, as well as a health warning to all new devices within the next two years. Before that, the EU had set a maximum volume limit of 100 dB on all portable music players sold in its member countries.

Apple already includes a warning with all iPods that reads in part, "Permanent hearing loss may occur if earphones or headphones are used at high volume."

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld . Follow Gregg on Twitter @gkeizer , send e-mail at gkeizer@ix.netcom.com or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed .

Source:

http://www.itnews.com/mac/12419/apple-wins-appeal-ipod-hearing-loss-case

Chicago Website Designers

For Google, The Meaning Of Open Is When It’s Convenient For Them

2009-12-30T21:36:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Google published a long manifesto on the “meaning of open” in the form of an email to all employees republished as a blog post. In it, senior VP of product management Jonathan Rosenberg, makes an eloquent argument for why open systems always win and urges Google’s employees to always strive to be open when designing products. An open Internet spurs innovation and brings more consumers on board, which ultimately means more searches and increased use of Web applications.

The gist of his argument is that a bigger, better Internet is good for Google. He writes that Google employees should resist the impulse to create closed products and systems, and even makes a swipe at Apple for doing so (bold added for emphasis):

. . . open systems win. This is counter-intuitive to the traditionally trained MBA who is taught to generate a sustainable competitive advantage by creating a closed system, making it popular, then milking it through the product life cycle. The conventional wisdom goes that companies should lock in customers to lock out competitors. . . . a well-managed closed system can deliver plenty of profits. They can also deliver well-designed products in the short run — the iPod and iPhone being the obvious examples — but eventually innovation in a closed system tends towards being incremental at best (is a four blade razor really that much better than a three blade one?) because the whole point is to preserve the status quo. Complacency is the hallmark of any closed system. If you don’t have to work that hard to keep your customers, you won’t.

It all sounds great and Google certainly is a champion of open systems with Android and Chrome and countless other projects. Google is making a very public effort to claim the mantle of openness. But the battle for this mantle has been going on for a long time. Two years ago, I wrote a post titled “Who Is The Opennest Of Them All?”. What I noted then bears repeating:

But don’t be fooled. Companies are very selective about the areas where they choose to be open, and they very rarely open up their core source of profits voluntarily. . . . So the next time a company touts how open it is, ask yourself how that will help it make more money. Don’t confuse openness with altruism.

Google is only open when it is convenient for them. Google will never open up the source code to its search algorithms or its advertising system, or share the core data which gives it a competitive advantage in those areas because that is where it makes all of its money. Again, I pointed this out in that post two years ago:

Just because industry pressures and increased interconnectedness are forcing companies to embrace open technologies, don’t confuse openness with profitability. Open standards tend to be good for spurring the adoption of new technologies, but not so good for generating profits directly. That is why companies choose to be open along axes where they don’t compete. Google, for instance, is a big proponent of open standards in social networking, mobile networks, Web applications, and practically everywhere —except the one place it makes money. Its advertising system is a black box. You also never hear any talk coming out of Google about opening up the search algorithms that drive all of those advertising revenues. In contrast, Google has no problem championing open standards in industries that it is hoping to disrupt (by commoditizing existing business models with open standards, and making money with advertising instead).

Rosenberg realizes there is an incongruity between what he is saying and what Google is doing. He takes a stab at rationalizing this huge exception to Google’s embrace of everything open:

While we are committed to opening the code for our developer tools, not all Google products are open source. Our goal is to keep the Internet open, which promotes choice and competition and keeps users and developers from getting locked in. In many cases, most notably our search and ads products, opening up the code would not contribute to these goals and would actually hurt users.

Maybe, but it is more likely it would hurt Google. The company has good reasons for keeping those things closed tight. Opening up those black boxes would make it easier to spam search and game AdWords and give competitors valuable data to make their own search engines and advertising systems better. If it opened all of that stuff up, it would have to work harder to keep its customers.

And really nobody should begrudge them the right to keep products they’ve spent a lot of time, energy, and money building to themselves. But don’t give us this song and dance about how everything should be open and how Google is the opennest company in the world. Google has nothing to lose if operating systems, mobile phones, browsers, books, news, and every other industry becomes open and free, as long it can make money from search and advertising. That is exactly why Google is so disruptive. It can offer products for free that other industries charge for, as long as those products result in more searches or other advertising opportunities.

There is nothing wrong with this strategy. The fact that Google is pushing openness in so many industries is generally a good thing for startups and consumers alike. But Google should just be honest and say that they think everything should be open—except for search and advertising.

Source:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/22/google-open-when-convenient/

Chicago Website Designers

Nokia Hits Apple With Latest Patent Complaint

2009-12-29T21:26:00.000-08:00

The legal back-and-forth between Nokia and Apple over patents, and who might be abusing them, continued Tuesday as Nokia lodged a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission.

In its complaint to the USITC, the Finnish company alleges that Apple infringes seven Nokia patents "in virtually all of its mobile phones, portable music players, and computers."

The alleged patent infringement is connected to key features in Apple products including user interface, camera, antenna, and power management technologies. Their value to Nokia, the company says, comes in allowing better user experience, lower manufacturing costs, smaller size, and longer battery life for Nokia products.

In October, Nokia filed a lawsuit against Apple in U.S. District Court in Delaware regarding 10 patents related to wireless handsets, which Nokia says Apple has refused to license. Every iPhone model since the original, introduced in 2007, infringes on those patents, Nokia has charged.

Apple filed a countersuit earlier this month, charging Nokia with infringing 13 Apple patents related to the iPhone.

"While our litigation in Delaware is about Apple's attempt to free-ride on the back of Nokia investment in wireless standards, the ITC case filed today is about Apple's practice of building its business on Nokia's proprietary innovation," Paul Melin, general manager of patent licensing at Nokia, said in a statement.

"Nokia has been the leading developer of many key technologies in small electronic devices," Melin said. "This action [Tuesday's complaint to the USITC] is about protecting the results of such pioneering development."

Apple was not immediately available to comment on Nokia's filing with the U.S. International Trade Commission. The USITC is an independent federal agency that looks at issues including unfair trade practices involving patent, trademark, and copyright infringement.

Nokia says that over the past two decades it has spent some 40 billion euros ($57.5 billion) on R&D and has amassed "one of the wireless industry's strongest and broadest IPR portfolios, with over 11,000 patent families."

In November, research firm Strategy Analytics reported that Apple had surpassed Nokia in quarterly mobile phone profits, bringing in $1.6 billion from the iPhone, compared with Nokia's $1.1 billion in cell phone profits.

Source:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10422670-37.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

Chicago Web Site Design Company

Amazon: E-book Sales Surpass Paper on Christmas Day

2009-12-28T21:11:00.000-08:00

With so much enthusiasm—aided by a good dose of marketing and technological evolution—surrounding e-book readers, it was bound to happen sooner or later: sales of electronic books topped their paper-based cousins for the first time this past Christmas day, according to Amazon.com

In a press release on its site, Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos mentions that the Kindle was the “most-gifted product”in the company’s history; although the release makes no mention of actual sales numbers, it does note that the Kindle sales surpassed both the 8GB iPod touch and Garmin’s Nuvi 260W GPS device to claim the top spot in the electronics category (and in overall sales).

Given the timing of the event, it’s likely that the spike in e-book sales recorded by Amazon was due primarily to the high number of gift recipients who opened up the brand-new Kindles they found under their Christmas trees; nonetheless, this milestone could represent a watershed event for the inexorable rise of e-book readers in general, and the Kindle in particular.

The company also reported that December 14 was Amazon’s busiest day of the holiday shopping season: on that Monday, Amazon processed sales of 9.5 million items worldwid—or about 110 per second on average. Perhaps more impressively, the e-tailing managed to deliver a Kindle that was purchased by a Seattle-area customer on Christmas Eve within three hours of sale.

Amazon’s Kindle 2 and Kindle DX were just two of several devices that Macworld reviewed in its comprehensive e-book reader review roundup earlier this month.

Source:

http://www.itnews.com/entertainment/12369/amazon-e-book-sales-surpass-paper-christmas-day

Web Designers Chicago

High tech: What is the Cloud in Web 2.0?

2009-12-23T21:20:00.000-08:00

The “cloud” has become the buzzword of the year and just like phrases such as Web 2.0, extreme programming and agile development, most people in the business world are looking for a clear definition of what, exactly, the cloud is.

Similar to a rain cloud, the Internet cloud has no specific point or boundary - it’s just “out there.” Many use the word cloud as a synonym for the Internet as in, “We don’t store your data on our local servers, but rather, we store you files in the cloud.” But it’s more than that.

There are a couple ways to think of the cloud.

First, in the cloud, your servers and data have no specific location. Ten years ago, someone could point to one server and say that’s where a particular e-mail was stored. Today, with services like Gmail, the subject line of an e-mail might be stored on one server, the body of the e-mail on another server, and the e-mail’s attachments stored on yet another server all while each server’s data is redundantly copied to multiple locations.

Second, using cloud-based computer services removes many of the technical requirements for knowing the details of the underlying infrastructure. For example, a corporation can use Google Apps to set up free e-mail, for up to 50 employees, with more than seven gigabytes of storage per account.

With this service, which is a white-labeled version of Gmail, a company can be up and running with a new corporate e-mail system within an hour. Ten or 15 years ago, this task would have required purchasing and maintaining a dedicated e-mail server or, at the very least, calling a hosting company and having an engineer set up the hardware. Whereas, today, you can simply click through some forms on the web, without human intervention, to configure a cloud service.

There are many cloud-based services and Amazon leads the pack with more than a dozen different web services collectively branded as Amazon Web Services. Amazon’s cloud storage (called Simple Storage Service or S3) and their cloud computing service (called Elastic Compute Cloud or EC2) are their two oldest and most popular services.

Amazon thinks of these services as “pay by the drink” meaning that there are no setup fees or contracts. A customer can literally be billed as little as a nickel or a dime each month. When using S3, Amazon charges 10 to 20 cents for each gigabyte of storage and bandwidth. EC2’s costs start at 12 cents per hour to run a Windows Server with admin access or as little as 8.5 cents per hour to run a Linux system with root access.

Many companies use cloud systems as their primary configuration while others use it as a backup. Companies, such as SDNN, run their entire website, 24/7, using cloud computing servers while others turn on cloud computing servers as a testing environment, for a few days, and then turn them off when they’re done and only incur a $5 or $10 bill.

No company is too big or too small to realize the benefits of using cloud-based services. One of the biggest strengths of cloud services is that they can be accessed via an API, which allows other computer systems to interface directly without human intervention. This means that cloud web services can be configured and monitored by automated systems and additional servers can be brought on line or turned off as needed.

With cloud computing services, users no longer need to worry about procuring, configuring and maintaining the underlying hardware. Rather, they can focus on the higher level services that are most important to their business.

source:

http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2009-12-08/blog/giving-em-the-business/high-tech-what-is-the-cloud-in-web-20

Chicago Website Designers

Apple Thrives Despite Jobs Being away

2009-12-22T21:57:00.000-08:00

2009 was a year for the record books for Apple.

Besides recording three of the most profitable quarters in company history and ending the year with $36 billion in the bank, Apple had its biggest iPhone opening weekend ever this summer.

And most of this happened without Chief Executive Steve Jobs. Last year's questions over his physical appearance were answered when he announced in late January he'd be taking a leave of absence to deal with a medical problem that he found out was "more complex" than a hormone imbalance. Jobs declined to be more specific about his condition, which led to discussion of how much of executives' private lives we should be privy to. By late spring it was revealed he underwent liver transplant surgery. Chief Operations Officer Tim Cook handled the reins for six months. By July, Jobs was seen back on the Cupertino campus. His first public appearance came a short time later at Apple's September iPod event.

Like most years, 2009 was punctuated by a series of signature Apple product launch events, though this time the majority were simple refreshes of hardware. In software, Apple saw the release of the latest iteration of its operating system, Mac OS X 10.6, a refreshed iTunes 9, and an updated iPhone OS--now with copy/paste and multimedia messaging. And as has been true for each of the past two years, the release of the iPhone 3GS was a spectacle in itself.

Meanwhile, developers have flocked to Apple's mobile platform, with more than 100,000 apps currently available in the App Store. But Apple's gatekeeping policies have tempered excitement for some developers. Early in the year those creating applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch began complaining about a lack of transparency in the App Store review policy. Grievances regarding Apple's inconsistent practices, lack of communication, and playing favorites grew more vociferous as the year wore on. The last straw seemed to be when Apple rejected Google Voice, the popular service from its one-time close partner, prompting the FCC to get involved. As a result, Apple was forced to open up a bit and we got a glimpse of how the App Store review process works.

That wasn't the only word the federal government wanted to have with Apple. Along with several other Silicon Valley giants, Apple was accused of agreeing not to hire each other's employees and a Department of Justice investigation is still ongoing.

In other legal news, Apple wrapped up its suit against Psystar. The Florida-based company was found to have violated Apple's copyright in selling Mac OS X preinstalled on non-Mac hardware, and the two came to a preliminary settlement. But a new drama unfolded with smartphone competitor Nokia, which sued Apple for not paying royalties on a copyrighted smartphone technology.

Unfortunately for the most passionate of Apple fans, two of the year's most anticipated products from Apple never came to fruition. Looks like we'll have to wait until 2010 to see if the mythical Apple tablet or the Verizon iPhone finally appear.

source:

http://news.cnet.com/2702-13579_3-419.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

Chicago Web Design

Select Flickr photos to sell via Getty License

2009-12-21T21:19:00.000-08:00

Flickr on Tuesday entered a partnership with Getty Images to offer its users a way to potentially make money off their photography.

The Yahoo-owned photo-hosting community will be a new resource for Getty, which can now contact Flickr members directly through the site and ask them if they want to share one or more of their images for use in a special Flickr-branded Getty collection.

Flickr members interested in getting their images featured in the special Getty gallery will have to simply wait to be contacted. Otherwise, Getty and Flickr are encouraging aspiring photographers to post their content on the Getty-owned iStockphoto, which also happens to have been a hotbed for Flickr photos in the past.

Flickr-hosted images that have been chosen to be included in the new collection will get a special link to the Getty page where they can purchase a license to use the shot.

In order to get paid and allow their images to be used, Flickr members must sign a Getty Images contributor contract, which stipulates that the photographer is the owner, and has any necessary model releases and originals. It also outlines the various rates based on size and intended commercial usage.

Those rates, not yet available, are likely to follow some of Getty's standard rates. As part of the deal, the only transaction is being shared directly between the photographer and Getty, meaning Yahoo will not be getting a share of that fee. According to Yahoo's rep, "Getty and Flickr have a separate business relationship."

The move is a special deal for Flickr, which currently does not allow for commercial transactions on the site outside of using partners for services such as photo printing. It's long been expected that Flickr would get around to implementing a system like this, if only to take advantage of the size of its collection, which averages thousands of user uploads every minute.

Update: Changes have been made to this article since it first posted regarding the link to the Getty purchase pages on Flickr as well as the nature of the business partnership between Getty Images and Yahoo.

Source:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-9985516-2.html?tag=mncol;title

Web Design Firms Chicago

Mobile Internet to Dominate Within 5 Years -- Study

2009-12-20T21:17:00.000-08:00

The mobile Internet is growing faster than its desktop counterpart ever did, and more users may go online via mobile devices than desktop PCs within five years, according to a new study by investment firm Morgan Stanley.

The intriguing prediction is one of many in the firm's massive "The Mobile Internet Report," a 424-page epic that someone, somewhere is bound to read in its entirety. For the rest of us, the executive summary will do just fine. If you're interested in perusing the full report, you'll find it here.

The report states we're "now in the early innings" of mobile Internet development, which is growing faster than previous tech cycles, including the evolution of the desktop PC. Given the rapid adoption of smartphones, including (obviously) the Apple iPhone and a growing number of devices using Google's Android mobile operating system, Morgan Stanley's conclusions shouldn't surprise anyone.

The study also points out that mobile Net growth is global phenomenon, not one confined to the developed world, which was typically the case with prior tech trends. But despite the worldwide focus, U.S. companies including Apple, Google, and Amazon are taking a leadership role. Furthermore, "a host of relatively young, but seasoned world-class technology veterans," including Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, are leading the mobile push, the report states.

Five key tech trends are converging to spur mobile Net growth, including 3G (and soon 4G) broadband, the popularity of social networking, online video, VOIP services such as Skype and Vonage, and "awesome mobile devices" that do tasks that until recently were the sole domain of your desktop or laptop PC.

The short term looks especially bright for Apple, but challenges await.

The "mobile ecosystem" of the iPhone, iPod touch, iTunes, and various accessories and services will continue to bloom over the next two years. After that, however, Google Android, competition from emerging markets, and wireless carrier limitations may pose a threat to Apple's market share, the report predicts.

There's little doubt the mobile Internet will dominate in the coming years--just look how far mobile handsets have come since the debut of the iPhone in 2007. Toss in a growing selection of rapidly improving smartphones, a new breed of wireless-ready tablet devices, e-readers like the Amazon Kindle, and faster 4G networks, and it's easy to see that mobile is the future of the Net.

Source:

http://www.itnews.com/mobile/12122/mobile-internet-dominate-within-5-years-study

Chicago Web Design

Facebook Privacy Complaint Ignites War of Words

2009-12-17T22:21:00.000-08:00

A high-profile electronic privacy group filed a federal complaint against Facebook on Thursday -- and now, Facebook is lashing back.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) called upon the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Facebook's recent changes to its users' privacy options. The changes, rolled out earlier this month, have been criticized by some for opening up previously masked personal details to the public eye.

"These changes violate user expectations, diminish user privacy, and contradict Facebook's own representations," EPIC's complaint (PDF) alleges.

EPIC's Facebook Complaint

The EPIC complaint -- supported by the Center for Digital Democracy, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, and seven other advocacy organizations -- takes issue with Facebook's newly "public" treatment of such data as users' names, genders, cities, and profile photos. By default, EPIC points out, this information is now disclosed to search engines as well as to third-party Facebook applications.

The concern, according to EPIC, revolves around how this information could be used against a user's interests.

"More than 100 million people in the United States subscribe to the Facebook service," Marc Rotenberg, EPIC's executive director, said in a prepared statement. "The company should not be allowed to turn down the privacy dial on so many American consumers."

(Rotenberg was not immediately available to speak via phone for this story.)

Facebook's Response

Facebook, in response, says it's already spoken with the FTC and other regulators about the changes. A representative from the company notes that the revised privacy policy also adds a series of more detailed options for users, including the ability to specify different settings for every photo, link, or status update posted onto the social network.

"We've had productive discussions with dozens of organizations around the world about the recent changes," Andrew Noyes, Facebook's manager of public policy communications, said in a prepared statement. "We're disappointed that EPIC has chosen to share their concerns with the FTC while refusing to talk to us about them."

Privacy Perspectives

Other members of the privacy community are divided when it comes to EPIC's complaint. Berin Szoka, a senior fellow with the Progress and Freedom Foundation, questions whether getting the government involved is the right step to take.

"I think we're already seeing the marketplace pressures that Facebook faces move us toward a better balance between the benefits of sharing and granular control," he says. "We're concerned about the idea that the government would be in the driver's seat about these issues."

Source:

http://www.itnews.com/privacy/12159/facebook-privacy-complaint-ignites-war-words

Web Designers Chicago

The Best Holiday iPhone apps

2009-12-16T21:12:00.000-08:00

The holiday season can be stressful: the shopping, the spending, even the parties can be incredibly stressful.

Luckily, all you Apple (AAPL) iPhone users have more than 100,000 apps to help your holiday season go a little smoother. Yes, there's the obvious "Better Christmas List" app or the “Asking Santa” app, but maybe before it gets too close to the yuletide cheer, you should make a trip to the iTunes app store. That'd be one way to make the trip to your in-laws a little more bearable. All in all, a happy app holiday!

Make your shopping experience easier — and more affordable

Everyone's trying to find the best deals this time of year. And besides tackling someone on Black Friday or being glued to your laptop on Cyber Monday, you can look for apps that can help your shopping. Try Red Laser, priced at $1.99. All you do is take a picture of a product barcode, and it'll recognize the product and search for prices on Google (GOOG) and TheFind. So instead of buying something marked-up, you can see where you can get the item for the cheapest.

Stop using a checkbook and start using an app

There are more than enough apps to help you keep track of your finances. Mint.com, for instance, has caused a small revolution in the iPhone and digital community, showing you how much you're spending and how much you’re actually making. Mint.com is like having a digital version of your loving, but overbearing, scolding mother living in your inbox and iPhone. But for the holidays, try BudgetCare for $1.99. It's especially tailored for individual transactions. So this way if you just want to track your holiday expenses, it's a bit easier to sort through.

I'll be home for Christmas…on Wednesday at 5:32 p.m.

Many of us will be traveling for the holidays, and let's face it, we might enjoy the in-flight movie, but what we all care about is our destination — and whether we'll be home in time to make the holiday festivities. So rather than being preoccupied, you can stay occupied by checking your flight status in real-time with FlightTrack. For $4.99, you can check whether you'll have any delays, if they've switched gate numbers or if you just want to see which other planes are flying in the air with you.

Eggnog, anyone?

So you're finally home and you're in charge of drinks. No fear! Here comes (the free) Mixologist: Drink Recipes to the rescue! You've got almost 8,000 recipes at your disposal. Pick the liquor, pick the spritzer and shake it up–your iPhone, that is. And then you can pick up the real shaker and be the life of the party! This is one holiday app that keeps on giving.

Watch those calories!

Now that the party has really gotten started, it's easy to get stuck eating hundreds of obligatory holiday feasts. That really doesn't do much for your diet though — nor your pant size. So maybe it's best not to completely pig out and use an app that'll give you a handle on your eating. With livestrong.com's $2.99 Calorie Tracker app, you can search a food item, add it to your database and then you can search for the appropriate workout to burn those calories you just added to your system. Might as well get a head start on that New Year's resolution.

Let's make some Christmas cards

And no holiday would be complete unless you took some crazy photos and made them your Christmas card for next year. But why wait until next year, when you can dress them up and send them now? For $2.99, with the Grinch edition of the Dr. Seuss Camera, you can take a picture of your holiday antics, lay some Grinch illustrations on top of the faces you and your nephew are making and then send those greetings out to your loved ones right away. Who said the Grinch ruined Christmas?

Source:

http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/12/14/the-best-holiday-iphone-apps/?section=money_technology

Chicago Website Designers

ERP Vendor offers to Take over MySQL

2009-12-15T21:10:00.000-08:00

French ERP (enterprise resource planning) vendor Nexedi made a public bid Monday to take over stewardship of the open-source MySQL database from Sun Microsystems, offering a symbolic €1 in return.

Oracle announced plans to buy Sun in April. The deal has been held up for months while European regulators conduct an antitrust review, which has reached a climax in recent days. A main concern of the E.U. has been the fate of MySQL if owned by Oracle, which holds a major chunk of the database market with its own proprietary platform.

If the deal is approved, it will leave Nexedi and end-users in an uncertain place, according to a letter that company CEO Jean-Paul Smets sent to the E.U. Monday.

Nexedi's open-source ERP5 product is based on MySQL, which has enabled the vendor to support a number of storage platforms and use the MySQL Cluster technology to handle large amounts of data, according to the letter.

But the pending acquisition of MySQL by Oracle "has changed the situation," the letter states.

"MySQL has become a liability to Nexedi. Our competitive advantage in the field of business applications has decreased because of the acquisition of MySQL by Oracle," Smets wrote.

"There are no competing open source relational databases which can match the performance of MySQL Cluster for very large data sets," Smets added. But Oracle's "poor track record" with past acquisitions means "the risk is very high that Oracle will destroy the value of MySQL and of its underlying open source technologies in order to promote its own proprietary technologies, both in the field [of] database and in the field of business applications," he wrote.

Nexedi is asking the E.U. to ask Oracle to sell off MySQL to a third party "which offers reasonable guarantees to develop it commercially under an open source business model." It is offering €1 to "relieve Oracle from what has become both a negative asset in its merger and acquisition strategy, and a negative asset to the open source and Free Software communities."

On Monday, Oracle sought to ease concerns about MySQL under its ownership by issuing a press release listing 10 "commitments" to the database. They include a pledge to continue releasing MySQL in the future under the General Public License, to increase spending on research and development, and to create a customer advisory board. The commitments would be valid for five years after the purchase is completed.

Smets was unmoved by Oracle's gesture.

"I usually do not believe in commitments from companies unless they can be enforced by something tangible such as a contract, a jurisdiction, cash handed to someone, etc," he said via e-mail.

Oracle and Sun did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The E.U. is expected to make a final decision on the merger by Jan. 27, but in recent days has signaled it will approve the deal.

Source:

http://www.itnews.com/business-issues/11936/erp-vendor-offers-take-over-mysql

Chicago Web Design

Adobe Probes New in-the-wild PDF Bug

2009-12-14T21:27:00.000-08:00

Adobe confirmed late on Monday that hackers are exploiting a vulnerability in the most up-to-date version of its PDF viewing and editing applications.

"This afternoon, Adobe received reports of a vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.2 and earlier versions being exploited in the wild," said David Lenoe, the company's security program manager, on the Adobe's product security incident response team (PSIRT) blog. "We are currently investigating this issue and assessing the risk to our customers."

Computerworld searched security mailing lists and sites, including Bugtraq, Full Disclosure and milw0rm.com but turned up no reports of exploits in the wild.

An Adobe representative described why, saying, "The reports came to PSIRT directly from partners in the security community," Adobe's Wiebke Lips said. "As of this moment, I have not seen any public reports aside from the Adobe PSIRT blog post that just went live."

Both Lenoe and Lips promised that Adobe would publish more information of the bug in Reader 9.2 and Acrobat 9.2 when they have details from its investigation.

Adobe updated Reader and Acrobat to versions 9.2 in mid-October, when it patched nearly 30 vulnerabilities in the popular programs.

The company has struggled this year to keep up with a rising tide of Reader and Acrobat flaws. In March, Adobe quashed a PDF bug that attackers had been using for more than two months , patched Reader and Acrobat again in May to block another zero-day and fixed a Flash-related PDF flaw in July.

The update to 9.2 was the fourth during 2009 that plugged at least one hole already being used by hackers, a vulnerability often described as a "zero-day" to indicate that a patch was not available when attacks started.

Several months ago, Adobe committed to delivering Reader and Acrobat security updates every three months as part of a renewed effort to lock down its software. According to that schedule, Adobe should be patching its PDF programs next month.

Last week, Adobe updated Flash Player to patch seven vulnerabilities.

Source:

http://www.itnews.com/antispam/11965/adobe-probes-new-wild-pdf-bug

Custom Web Design Chicago

Report: PS3 Design Cost Finally Nearing break-even

2009-12-13T21:32:00.000-08:00

Since its launch three years ago, Sony's PlayStation 3 has always been more expensive than its rivals, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii, in large part because the components in the PS3 cost so much to assemble.

At launch, for example, the console cost Sony about $805 to build, according to technology research firm iSuppli, with the highest-priced version selling for $599.

But now, a new iSuppli report issued Friday suggests that Sony may finally be nearing the break-even point with the PS3. It said that its teardown analysis service estimated that the design cost of the new 120-gigabyte PS3 Slim comes in around $336, while it sells for $299 in the U.S.

That means that while Sony is still losing about $37 per unit--plus somewhat more for marketing, royalties, box contents, and other expenses--it is for the first time closing in on breaking even with the console itself.

A Sony representative said Friday the company has a policy never to comment on the cost structure and breakdown of its hardware.

According to iSuppli, its 2008 analysis of the PS3's component costs showed that the then-$399 console was losing at least $50 per unit. So it's notable that even at the lower price, Sony is losing less money. Further, the analysis firm suggested that with component costs dropping rapidly, Sony could soon find itself making money on the PS3.

To be sure, companies like Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are willing to subsidize the cost of their video game consoles because they make their real money on sales--and royalties--of games. The more consoles they can put in consumers' living rooms, even if they take losses on them, the more they can make on the games.

But Sony took a beating in the media in the early days of the PS3 because it was losing so much on each PS3, not to mention that the high cost of the console made it an unattractive buy.

Now, with the August release of the PS3 Slim, and its reduced price, the console is finally coming close to matching its rivals' sales numbers. In September, the PS3 even won its first-ever month, as measured by total console sales. In November, however, the benefits of a great deal of pent-up demand for a lower-priced PS3 seemed to have been played out, and once again, the PS3 came in third, trailing the Wii and the Xbox.

Still, the PS3 was only marginally behind the Xbox in units sold in November, and there certainly seems to be renewed enthusiasm for the console at the lower price.

And when Sony finally sees a profit on each PS3 sale, there will no doubt even be smiles in the company's board room. Stay tuned to see when that actually happens.

Source:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10414022-52.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

Professional Website Design Services

Web Host Webfusion Buys Hosting Assets of XCalibre

2009-12-10T22:20:00.000-08:00

(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- UK Web hosting provider Webfusion (www.webfusion.co.uk) announced on Thursday it has acquired the hosting assets of XCalibre Communications (www.xcalibre.co.uk) to "strengthen its entry level managed hosting business".

The acquisition, for an undisclosed sum, will let Webfusion to extend its offering and provide XCalibre customers with a wider selection of products, along with 24-hour support.

Webfusion recently began promoting the new Microsoft WebsiteSpark initiative, which helps smaller Web design and development companies in launching or growing their business.

The remaining XCalibre business will transfer to Flexiant. Webfusion has partnered with Flexiant to offer the FlexiScale cloud computing platform on a trial basis in hopes that FlexiScale will eventually be offered as a service to Webfusion customers.

"XCalibre has an excellent portfolio of hosting products and we are delighted to partner with them," says Thomas Vollrath, managing director of Webfusion. "The acquired Xcalibre customer base will benefit from an increased product set and more choice in entry level managed hosting packages. We look forward to the opportunities to widen our portfolio and present these customers with a greater choice of hosting and web security solutions."

Customers of XCalibre Communications have now been transfered over to Webfusion. The company says that there will not be any changes to control panels or services offered.

Source:

http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/121009_Web_Host_Webfusion_Buys_Hosting_Assets_of_XCalibre

Professional Website Design Services

Google Sues Over Alleged Work-at-home Scams

2009-12-09T21:47:00.000-08:00

Google is taking legal action to stop companies from allegedly using the search giant's name to trick people into paying for supposed work-at-home kits advertised online and in e-mails.

The company filed a lawsuit on Monday in federal court in Salt Lake City against Pacific WebWorks and other, unnamed defendants alleging trademark infringement and dilution, unfair competition, federal cyberpiracy, and violation of consumer sales practices. The lawsuit can be amended to add the names of additional defendants as they are uncovered.

"This action seeks to stop a widespread Internet advertising scam that is defrauding the public by misusing the famous Google brand," the suit says. "The scam victimizes unsuspecting consumers by prominently displaying the famous Google mark, by suggesting sponsorship by the plaintiff Google Inc., and by urging consumers to obtain a kit supposedly showing them how to make money working from home with Google."

A call to Pacific WebWorks seeking comment on allegations of fraud was not returned on Monday.

People are targeted either via online ads, pop-up ads, or promotional e-mails that promise information on how to make money by working at home. The ads typically display the Google brand prominently and include a link to a site with what looks like legitimate news articles, blog postings, or social-networking posts and sites featuring testimonials from people claiming to have made thousands of dollars per month from the program.

Consumers are asked to pay an "instant access" fee for access to a members-only portal or a "shipping and handling fee" for a DVD that supposedly explains how to make money through the program, according to the lawsuit. Many victims who pay the fees, typically a few dollars, either do not get DVDs, they receive DVDs that contain viruses or they get access to an unrelated free site, such as Google's online help center, the suit says.

The defendants are part of a network that reuses Web sites and shares tools to perpetuate the scams with little effort, the lawsuit alleges. For instance, the same templates are used to generate fake testimonials, blogs, and news stories, often ones that are customized to the location of consumers, the lawsuit alleges.

There are numerous affiliates but Pacific WebWorks is believed to be one of the main operators behind many of the schemes, said Jason Morrison, a search quality engineer at Google.

"These scams play upon some powerful methods of persuasion. Not just by using Google's logo, but we often see 'as seen on CNN, Fox News and ABC,'" he said in an interview. "I don't know if people understand how easy it is to copy an image file on a Web page. They also try to use social proof by creating a fake blog, with a photo of the blogger from his wedding, the new car he bought, and explaining how he lost his job. They go to great lengths to string people along."

Google works to remove the fraudulent ads from its search results and ad network and to keep new fraud sites from popping up in the index, but new ones are created all the time, according to Morrison.

He suggested that people do some Web research before answering any ads and look to see if consumers have complained online about the company, as well as be skeptical of any offers that sound like they are too good to be true. Victims should contact their bank or credit card company and report fraudulent-looking results found in Google searches here and fraudulent-looking ads here.

More information from Google about the scams is in this Google blog post.

This isn't the first action taken against alleged work-at-home scams. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission obtained an injunction and asset freeze in Nevada against a group of sites operating a scam using the "Google Money Tree" name this summer. Some fraudulent sites were removed, but thousands remain, Google said.

Last month, a class action suit was filed in state court in Illinois against Pacific WebWorks by Barbara Ford, who is described as "elderly, retired and on a fixed income."

Ford claims she clicked on an ad on her AOL home page with a fake news article describing how one woman made $5,000 a month with the program. She alleges she paid $1.97 for a "Google Business Kit" and that her credit card was also charged $79.90. She called the company to request a refund and never received one, according to the lawsuit.

There also are a number of complaints listed about Pacific WebWorks on the Rip Off Report Web site.

Source:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10410831-245.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

Web Site Design

Start-up Taps Cloud Computing for Sales & Training

2009-12-09T00:38:00.000-08:00

A start-up that used the vague name IT Structures while it was in stealth mode so its purposes couldn’t be divined broke cover Monday as CloudShare and claimed to be the first business-oriented cloud computing company.

The little rascal comes to market with some chi-chi customers that are reportedly pushing it further into the cloud than it intended to go.

Its idea was to use the cloud to demo its software, have potential customers try it “hands-on” and then, if they went for it, have the widgetry installed on their premises.

But it’s not working out that way. They like it just fine on CloudShare’s hybrid cloud and are content – if not insistent – about leaving it that way, according marketing VP Kevin Epstein.

Customers, which include VMware, Cisco, SAP, Websense and Alcatel-Lucent, use the software to train up their sales engineers on their own software or appliances as well as demo their software to the ultimate end users who can play with it to their hearts’ content before deciding to deploy or not.

The mini-sites created bear the sellers’ own branding and collateral materials

CloudShare says its customers have delivered over a million VM demo, proof-of-concept and training hours so far, representing six quarters of consecutive double-digit usage growth. It describes them as moving from experimenting with simple hosted QA labs on public clouds to using CloudShare to turn their complex IT environments into cloud-based services.

The start-up reckons its achievement demonstrates the practical, revenue-oriented, immediately useful nature of its SaaS platform. Solution providers and ISVs can deploy multiple, independent, dashboard-controlled copies of their enterprise-class environments in minutes as opposed to the days or weeks such things used to take – not to mention the time and expense of copying gigabytes of data and shipping machines and people around.

Besides a close-to-immediate ROI, the widgetry promises faster sales cycles, faster training and insight into customer behavior. And it gives vendors a way to keep an eye on who resellers are pitching and their hit rate.

The start-up says its functionality includes extensive workflow, hierarchical access and analytic monitoring. The high-speed environment-creation process that lets users create new production-grade replicas in minutes is patented. Its whiteboarding, screen sharing and self-service capabilities let users share their own prototypes and environments.

It describes itself as the next step in the sales cycle after WebEx because of its whiteboard skills. It also calls itself a Salesforce for VMs.

CloudShare won’t identify the public cloud it’s using as part of its hybrid infrastructure but it does have a partnership with Salesforce.com and plug-in that will let Salesforce users launch CloudShare demos on AppExchange. (See http://CloudShare.com/sfplugin.)

Epstein said the company expects to have some kind of relationship with Amazon and Rackspace down the road. It underscores that it doesn’t want to be in the hosting business although it’s maintaining its own data center as a private cloud for customer use.

CloudShare, or its previous incarnation, has been around for almost three years and has gotten a $6 million A round from Gemini Capital and Sequoia Capital. It says it’s not looking for more money right now. It’s got somewhere between 25 and 50 employees, but it’s shy about saying exactly how many. Headquartered Menlo Park, California, its R&D center is in Tel Aviv.

Source:

http://web2.sys-con.com/node/1211772

Web Design Firms Chicago

Boxee Beta is Cleaner, Better, Still Closed

2009-12-07T21:41:00.000-08:00

On Monday, the media-viewing app Boxee is going into a closed, private beta test. This app has been in private alpha testing for about a year and a half, and has won praise while generating some frustration among its test users. At first, for example, it was a great interface to the Hulu service, but Hulu made its content unavailable to Boxee users (there's a less-elegant workaround baked into the current product). AppleTV users who hacked the app into their system have also hit speed bumps--the app won't work on the newest updates of the AppleTV product.

Boxee soldiers on, gaining fans and adding content from other sources. I recently covered the Boxee version of Clicker, for example, which shows us how the Boxee platform might some day do a credible job of replacing users' TiVos or cable boxes.

The Boxee experience is improving, too. Monday's new beta has a completely redone interface that is far superior to the alpha's. The idea of the slide-out toolbar menus, an anachronistic throwback to Windows and Mac desktop operating systems, is thankfully gone, replaced by a more visible and consistent interface.

The app also gets new features. If you tell Boxee your Facebook and Twitter IDs, it will scan your friends' posts continuously, and tell you what they're talking about in a new "recommended" column on the Boxee home screen.

The home screen also shows your queue, which can include content that pops up based on shows you're subscribed to. It also has a "featured" column that Boxee can use to promote new content, included paid placements--a new revenue stream for the company.

Boxee can also now search the entire Netflix online inventory. Previously, you could view your online Netflix shows and see a smattering of new ones. Now you can see and stream everything, assuming you're a paying user.

There are also new content partners: The Escapist (which makes the Zero Punctuation video), and SuicideGirls. (I wasn't aware until I got the beta demo that Boxee supports adult content; the NSFW feeds don't appear until you disable the parental controls.)

The new Boxee begins to address my biggest gripe about the system, which is that it can be hard to find content from the multitudinous streams that feed into the platform. A new TV menu combines content from the user's hard drive as well as subscription and streaming sources, and it has a useful search feature. There's also an improved table of contents for shows. But Boxee still doesn't have a global search to find everything it can play, so in some cases you need to know which "application" (Boxee content stream) has a show you want to watch. Boxee VP Andrew Kippen did tell me it's an ongoing goal to improve the search process on the platform.

Kippen says the company recommends the Mac Mini as the best platform for the app at the moment. There are also OS X and Linux versions, and a Windows port, but it's for 32-bit installations only. The Linux port will be used in the dedicated Boxee hardware, details of which are being announced shortly. In the meantime, Roku has a somewhat competitive hardware-based product now shipping, and it has the additional benefit of offering access to a user's Amazon streaming-video account, which Boxee doesn't do.

Boxee is still closed to most new users. Everyone, even existing alpha users, has to sign up for the beta lottery to try it out. The beta will open to all around the Consumer Electronics Show time frame, in January.

Source:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-10410159-250.html

Web Design Firms Chicago

Citysearch Gets Real-Time Fever, Lets Biz Owners Log In, Update Twitter Remotely

2009-12-07T01:32:00.001-08:00

The rush to incorporate real-time status updates has even hit IAC’s Citysearch. Starting today, business owners will be able to create and manage their Twitter accounts directly from a Citysearch page. A restaurant, bar or health clubs’ most recent three tweets will show up alongside their ratings, reviews and other info; Citysearch is also pulling in replies and other tweets that include the business’ Twitter handle.

Citysearch is only the latest company to work on back-end integration with Twitter: Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) recently brokered data-sharing deals with the service for search, and LinkedIn also added Twitter support. For Citysearch, adding remote Twitter access is part of an ongoing effort to become the most comprehensive online resource for local businesses—particularly in the face of more competition from Yelp, and now, even Google.

“This is another way for us to help businesses manage—or even just create—their social identities, because it gives them one place to respond to reviews, update Facebook and post to Twitter,” said Kara Nortman, Citysearch’s SVP, publishing.

While there’s no financial gain for Citysearch (or Twitter) from the integration right now, Nortman hinted that the company had its eyes on a potential “premium” social media offering in the future: “Down the road, we think about rolling out enhanced features—business owners could pull content out of tweets for example, and highlight it on their page,” she said. “But we’re focused on keeping everything free right now.”

I asked Nortman about potential ad clutter—since Citysearch runs ads on its local business listings, and business owners can create sponsored tweets from third-party services like 12seconds—but she said the company had no plans to “interfere or restrict” the users’ access to Twitter. Meanwhile, she acknowledged that including tweets on business pages would have SEO benefits, particularly with the big search engines making it a point to index tweets.

Source:

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-citysearch-gets-real-time-fever-lets-biz-owners-log-in-update-twitter-r/

Web Design Firms Chicago

Citysearch Gets Real-Time Fever, Lets Biz Owners Log In, Update Twitter Remotely

2009-12-07T01:32:00.000-08:00

Facebook’s Killer Feature: The Mutual Friends List

2009-12-03T21:38:00.000-08:00

2009 has been a busy year for Facebook. The Social Networking Service just reached a whopping 350 million users. It redesigned its site, then redesigned those redesigns (say that three times fast). And as Mark Zuckerberg, the site’s founder and chief executive, announced Tuesday, the company is getting ready to release a new set of privacy policies in the coming weeks.

Facebook has also been on the receiving end of some heavy criticism this year for an array of privacy issues and a perceived desire to look and act more like Twitter. Some of these concerns are valid, and some are just the growing pains of a five-year-old company in a market that continues to change and adapt at breakneck speeds.

All of that aside for a moment, I believe that Facebook has one important, underutilized feature that no other site can replicate or compete with: the “mutual friends” list.

When you go to an individual’s Facebook Page, the list sits in a little box on the left of the page, visually displaying who you know in common. For me, this often-overlooked feature has become an integral part of my Facebook experience. Sure, I still go to the site to update my status and peruse my news feeds, but I use Mutual Friends more than anything else.

This feature enables me to supplement the real world with additional digital information. When I go to a meeting or party, I take a minute to look up who’s attending and quickly explore friends we might share. It’s the perfect digital icebreaker. Increasingly, when I go to a conference and meet someone new, I’ll sneak into the hallway and look them up, too. Or, if they seem unencumbered by potential privacy concerns, we pull out our phones, and using Facebook’s mobile application, look each other up.

Last year, for example, I met Wired columnist Steven Levy at a conference in Boston. After a few minutes chatting about mundane tech stories, we quickly pulled out our laptops, zipped along to Facebook.com and sat for an hour discussing who we knew in common.

Of course, the “mutual friends” list has its drawbacks. Maybe I don’t want you to know we are both friends with the same political activist. Then there are the random acquaintances you’ve collected over the years — they’re not really friends, even though they send you messages that say “Hi, we have 10 friends in common so we must be friends!”

Still, for me, the Mutual Friends list has become an integral part of my digital life.

And five years after the site’s launch, this feature is something only Facebook really offers. It would be close to impossible for Twitter to do, since its service is built on a find-and-follow mentality. I follow people I’m not friends with, and in turn, people I’ve never met follow me.

What about Google’s Gmail? Its address book, although a prodigious resource, stores every e-mail address you’ve ever encountered, including those random Craigslist purchasers and every spammer who made it over the drawbridge and through its filter.

LinkedIn, the business social connection site, is Facebook’s closest competitor in the mutual-friends arena, but it generally connects people based on work affiliations, whereas Facebook tends to include personal friends, family and professional connections.

As the Facebook community continues to grow by over 600,000 people a day, there is a lot of potential for Facebook to move beyond who we know in common to what we know in common. As I update my status with movies I’ve seen, books I’m reading or news articles I like, these features could help make all kinds of conversation — not just introductory ones — a lot more engaging.

Source:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/facebooks-killer-feature-the-mutual-friends-list/

Professional Website Design Services

MySpace Music Arrives in The UK

2009-12-02T21:35:00.001-08:00

MySpace Music, one of MySpace’s bright spots in an otherwise dreary picture, has just jumped across the pond and into the laps of UK’s music fans.

The News Corp-owned company has just launched MySpace Music in the UK, bringing the music portal and its audio and video content to the island nation, as well as iTunes download options. It’s even bringing over the MySpace Music Charts, launched just a few weeks ago. This will be the fourth nation to have MySpace Music, after the US, New Zealand, and Australia (Australia).

To kick things off, the social network is also launching a marketing campaign called “Get Real Close.” It involves videos, playlists and exclusive content for UK users, starting with artists like Lost Prophets, 50 Cent, Kasabian, and Alicia Keys.

The move is no surprise and continues the evolution of MySpace (MySpace) from social network to content hub. Pushing the strongest elements of MySpace and phasing out the old is the only way MySpace can make a comeback.

Source:

http://mashable.com/2009/12/02/myspace-music-uk/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+(Mashable)

Chicago Website Design

Computing Over The Cloud: Datacraft

2009-12-01T21:20:00.000-08:00

Cloud computing can be defined as a style of computing where massively scalable IT-enabled capabilities are delivered 'as a service' to external customers using Internet Technologies.

Is India Ready For Cloud Computing?

The cloud-computing model is changing the way the IT industry looks at user and vendor relationships. As service providers, vendors must partner with service providers to deliver their technologies indirectly to users.

User organisations will watch portfolios of owned technologies decline as service portfolios grow. The key activity will be to determine which cloud services will be viable, and when. Although it is unlikely that users will completely abandon on-premises models, or buy complex mission-critical processes as services through the cloud in the next few years, there will be a movement to consume services in a more cost-effective way.

The key characteristics of cloud computing include, delivery of capabilities "as a service," delivery of services in a highly scalable and elastic fashion, using Internet, web — technologies and techniques to develop and deliver the services, and designing for delivery to external customers.

Any idea who invented cloud computing?

The final characteristic warrants some additional examination. Cloud computing services are designed based on an assumption that the service provider will deliver capabilities to the third parties who act as consumers.

A core characteristic of cloud computing is the division of concerns between the cloud service provider and the cloud service consumer. The consumers of a service need only care about what a service does for them, not how it is implemented. However, to be successful, the provider must implement the service in such a way that it can deal with a global-class delivery environment and serve a wide range of consumers with a common service model.

In the early stages of cloud computing, consumers may need to examine implementation models to ensure that they are dealing with a strategically viable provider. Cloud computing services can be divided into five categories used as a foundation to build solutions plus a sixth category that deals with control and security.

System Infrastructure: Virtualized system software (such as server personalities, compute, storage and networking) on which the consumer can run any sort of application. Web-Based provisioning — via a browser form, programmatic calls or automated response to an application load — is used to provide dynamic access to these resources. Minimal Web standards exist at the system infrastructure layer and provisioning models are generally vendor-specific.

Application Infrastructure: A set of services that parallels the traditional middleware and development technologies. Services must be built to exploit Web-centric architectures and global-class design principles. A new category called "application platform as a service" is emerging, with vendors providing global-class, Web-Centric Rapid Application Development (RAD) environments.

Applications: Applications that are designed for global class delivery and delivered as a service using web-centric architectures to a browse are considered cloud application services. This generally requires creation of a multi-tenant architecture in which a single application instance supports many organizations (each of which may have multiple users) but provides a unique view for each organization.

Customizations and extensions, as well as data, are isolated between tenants/organizations by default, but may be selectively shared (for example, salesfore.com). Cloud application services should be built using Web architectures and may expose components or interfaces for mashable access, control or extension.

Information: Content access and search services or Information services delivered as feeds via RSS/ATOM or other web models.

Business Process: Any business process (including payroll, printing and e-commerce) delivered as a service via the Internet with provided via web-centric interfaces and WOA access mechanisms.

Management and Security: Services to manage the access, consumption, delivery, and service levels associated with cloud services. While these have some similarity to the operations management tools used inside an enterprise the demands of global class cloud based applications will require additional capabilities.

Cloud computing is heavily influenced by the Internet and web and the vendors that have sprung from this phenomena. Users evaluating cloud computing should focus first on the consumer/provider relationship and the nature of the services being provided. Evaluation of enabling technologies and their impact on the cloud services and/or their applicability to in-house infrastructure and application models is a related, but separate exercise.

A more sophisticated approach to running applications in the cloud would be for the consumer to build a solution on a global class application that is elastic, scalable and delivered as a service using internet and Web Technologies. It may also uniquely exploit cloud-centric distributed and parallel processing capabilities. The resulting application would be considered a cloud application service.

Full exploitation of the cloud would use cloud based services to support the entire process of building, storing, running and managing the application. This approach is being championed by a new crop of RAD and database vendors that provide turnkey environments — aka application platform as a service (APaaS) — that build on the scalability of cloud-based infrastructures.

What services will be consumed via cloud/web platforms?

The most prevalent cloud-based application service is SaaS, where an application is delivered from the Internet/Web via a browser to an end user. Where these applications are built using Web architectures and expose components or interfaces for mashable access, control or extension, they are also part of the Web/cloud platform.

Web-based techniques and technologies (for example, REST, XML, RSS/Atom and Python), and vendor-driven (for example, Google GData) or community-driven (for example, Accord) standards, define a rich interoperability model. Extended data models and APIs driven by individual vendors emerge "at the edge" and collapse into common, open multivendor standards over time.

Multi-user applications delivered as a cloud service use a single application instance to support many users but provide a unique environment and experience for each user, including, where appropriate or desired, the ability to define the level of separation of data between users (for example, Google Apps).

Multitenant applications delivered as a cloud service use a single application instance to support many organizations (each of which has multiple users) but provide a unique environment for each organization. Customizations and extensions, as well as data, are isolated between tenants/organizations by default, but may be selectively shared (for example, salesfore.com).

Who will deliver cloud/Web platform services, and how should companies build/use them to support their business strategies?

One of the primary reasons why we believe there will be significant uptake of the cloud-based model is that cloud service providers can deliver significant economies of scale. Most organizations don't scale past tens of thousands of users, while cloud providers will ultimately provide services for millions of users.

Cloud providers are also working toward lights-out data center operations with extremely low-cost operations and reliance on copious amounts of inexpensive direct-attached storage (DAS). Enterprises, by contrast, will continue to run high-touch operational models with expensive storage area networks (SANs), which will consequently be allocated parsimoniously.

We expect the cloud providers to use replication services to make multiple copies of the data, and, thereby, avoid more-expensive redundant array of independent disks storage and tape backups, both of which enterprises will continue to use. Finally, we expect cloud providers to emphasize browser-based e-mail services that contribute to lower operational costs, in contrast to enterprises, which will continue to rely on fat clients running proprietary client-to-server protocols.

We expect cloud providers, such as Microsoft and Google, to create an offline browser client that will, for example, cache the past 30 days of e-mail.

The vagueness of cloud computing can be narrowed down to two basic "approaches." The first is an application of technologies, including virtualization and automation that focuses more on the "computing" than on the "cloud" aspect, with emphasis being placed on the technologies that enable the creation and delivery of service-based capabilities. The second is the "cloud" as an Internet/Web/Saas-originated idea, with credit often given to Google's Eric Schmidt for the term. The focus is more on "cloud" than "computing," with the emphasis being placed on access to services from outside of the enterprise (that is, ''from the cloud").

Source:

http://www.ciol.com/Technology/Storage/Feature/Computing-over-the-cloud-Datacraft/11209128439/0/

Professional Website Design Services

SMSONE: Micro-Local News From India to Make Silicon Valley Jealous

2009-11-30T22:07:00.000-08:00

Of the hundreds of companies I meet in any given country, I only write about a handful. Sometimes it’s the ones that seem to be copying a US idea, but in reality are building their company in a completely unique—and frequently more profitable—way. Other times, I’m captivated by an idea that’s perfect for an emerging market, but probably wouldn’t work in the US.

But every once in a while I find a company that hits the trifecta: It’s addressing a big problem locally, it’s something I don’t think is offered in the US, and…. I want it. And when a product in undeveloped, chaotic, messy India can make someone in Silicon Valley feel jealous, you know that entrepreneur has come up with something good.

I’m talking about SMSONE Media, a company I met in Pune about a week ago. Like most of the impressive companies I saw in India, it’s aimed squarely at the base of the pyramid and is using basic SMS to deliver services to people some of India’s most unconnected areas. It was started by Ravi Ghate, who proudly points out that none of his core team graduated from high school, much less attended an IIT or IIM. (Typically not something you brag about in India.)

SMSONE is basically a very-local newsletter. Ghate goes to a village and scouts out an unemployed youth—preferably one who’s had jobs as a street vendor or has experience going door-to-door shilling for local politicians. The kid pays Ghate 1000 rupees (or about $20) for the “franchise” rights to be the local reporter for that village. He goes door-to-door singing up 1,000 names, phone numbers and other basic information, then mails the slips to Ghate. Ghate enters it all his databases and all those “subscribers” get a text introducing the kid as their village’s reporter. In India all incoming texts are free so, the subscribers don’t pay anything.

And what readers get is pretty powerful. Right now there is no way to get a timely message to people in a village. There’s no Internet access, no TV, no local paper, and frequently no electricity. All they have is a basic mobile phone. SMSONE’s service can give farmers instant updates about crop pricing or news of a seed or fertilizer delivery a town away. That means the farmer only makes the trip when he knows the shipment is there, rather than wasting days of travel hoping the shipment is there.

Consider something even more fundamental: Water. Much of the villages have government-owned water pipes that are turned on for an hour or so once a day, or even in some areas once a week. Everyone has to bring their vats, pitchers and empty kerosene cans and get as much water as they can while the pipes are on. But these pipes don’t really run on a schedule so people frequently miss getting the day or week’s water. Now, SMSONE subscribers get a text when the pipes are about to be turned on.

I know it’s not as life-changing, but I’d pay to get micro-local, highly relevant news about my neighborhood in San Francisco in 160-character bursts, whether it’s about a power or cable outage, a construction project that’s disrupting traffic or details on a shooting that just happened. And I might even welcome local ads that report a hot new restaurant opening or a sale at a boutique two streets over. I feel like modern, uber-connected life has made us less interested in “local news” as we used to think of it on a city or region level, but more interested in the micro-local, hence the excitement in the Valley around Foursquare, CitySourced, and a host of location-aware IPhone Apps.

But the beauty of what Ghate has built is its simplicity. It doesn’t need a $300 smart phone and it doesn’t need GPS locators or a platform like Twitter to run on. Sometimes the most powerful innovation is built in the most extreme constraints.

I’m hardly the first to be impressed by what Ghate has created. He has won a host of awards including the Clinton Global Initiative’s YES Fund Award in 2008. And similar models are being built in parts of Africa where there’s similar mobile ubiquity and little else in the way of communications.

The change in life is not only pretty huge for subscribers. That once-unemployed kid suddenly has important local standing in his community. In addition to writing 160-character local news stories, he also sells local ads. Like a newspaper, Ghate enforces a ratio of ads to stories, so the news doesn’t get overrun by promotions.

The economics work out like this: Out of a 1000 rupee ad sale, 300 of it goes to the reporter, and Ghate pays him an additional 50 rupees for each news story. That adds up to a nice income for a village kid, but not so high that he picks up and moves to the big cities. Ambitious franchisees can even hire a few other reporters, expand their subscribers and make more money.

Right now Ghate’s operation is in 400 communities, reaching roughly 400,000 readers. He just got an investment from the government of Bangalore to boost that reach to five million readers in the next four months.

Ghate is clear that the money will be used strictly to reach more people. The company already breaks even and Ghate makes enough to pay his basic living expenses. He doesn’t care about fancy cars or clothes. It wasn’t too long ago that he was one of those disadvantaged kids, selling flags and berries on the side of the road and being told to go away. He still regularly travels between villages by bus and stays in $5/a night hotels. He’s promised to take me with him on my next trip to India, to see how the service works first hand and meet some of these young “reporters.”

“I’ll be back in February,” I said. “Will you have 5 million readers by then?”

“Not quite,” he said looking up at the ceiling, seemingly counting in his head. He looked down at me again, smiled and said, “Come in April.”

Source:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/30/smsone-micro-local-india-news/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

Custom Web Design Chicago

EU and Oracle To Meet soon on Sun Deal

2009-11-29T21:35:00.000-08:00

The European Commission is delaying approval of the $7.4bn deal because of concerns that the combination of Sun's MySQL database product and Oracle's products could harm competition in the database market.

Oracle rejected the claim that MySQL competes with its core database software and said it will " vigorously oppose" the Commission's objections.

Oracle said the objections revealed a "profound misunderstanding of both database competition and open source dynamics".

The EU last week pushed back its deadline for reviewing the merger after granting a request from Oracle for more time to provide a counter argument to concerns over competition.

The US Department of Justice approved the deal in August, but had raised concerns over the future of Sun's Java software and programming language, not MySQL.

The UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) has told the European commissioner for competition, Neelie Kroes, that its membership believes the future of both Java and MySQL will be secure with Oracle.

"Oracle, in terms of strategy and commitment to open source, will provide a secure future for Java," said Ronan Miles, chairman of UKOUG.

"Oracle's record of preserving customer investments and support of open standards would indicate as safe a future for MySQL as any other 'owner'," he added.

Source:

Chicago Website Design

Analytics at Twitter

2009-11-26T23:09:00.000-08:00

Last week I spent some time speaking with Kevin Weil, head of analytics at Twitter. Twitter, from a technology perspective, has had a bit of a hard time due to their stability issues in their early days. Kevin was keen to point out that he feels this was due to the incomparable growth Twitter was experiencing at the time and their constant struggle to keep up. Kevin was also keen to show that Twitter prides themselves on striving for engineering excellence, the creation & contribution to new technologies and generally assisting in pushing the boundaries forward. Our conversation naturally centered on analytics at Twitter.

Twitter, like many Web 2.0 Apps, started life as a MySQL based RBDMS application. Today, Twitter is still using MySQL for much of their online operational functionality (although this is likely to change in the near future – think distributed), but on the analytics side of things Twitter has spent the last 6 months moving away from running SQL queries against MySQL data marts. This was because their need for timely data was becoming a struggle with MySQL, particularly when dealing with very large data volumes and complicated queries. For Web 2.0 the ability to understand, quantify and make timely predictions from user behavior is very much their life blood. When Kevin arrived at Twitter 6 months ago he was tasked with changing the way Twitter analyzed their data. Now the bulk of their analytics is executed using a Hadoop platform with Pig as the “querying language”.

Hadoop is a distributed shared-nothing cluster which locates data throughout the cluster using a virtualized file system. What has made Hadoop particularly popular for large scale deployment is the comparative ease of writing distributed functions through a process known as map/reduce. Map/reduce hides much of the complexity of running distributed functions, even when running over a very large numbers of nodes. This allows the developer to focus on their “application logic” rather than worrying about specifics of the execution process (Hadoop handles distribution of execution, node failures, etc). But in saying this, expressing complicated application logic directly in map/reduce functions can become quite laborious as many pipelined map/reduce functions may be required to take raw data through to a useful processed result. Because of this complexity several higher level scripting languages have appeared to abstract this.

Pig is one such scripting language for Hadoop. Pig takes the developers requirement expressed in the script and produces the underlying map-reduce jobs that are executed on Hadoop. This abstraction is incredibly important as without it the complexity of expressing difficult analytical ‘queries’ directly in map/reduce would be highly time consuming & error prone. This can be thought of as being similar to the way SQL is a higher level abstraction language that hides all the query plan routines (written in C) that operate on the data in a traditional RDBMS. Of course abstraction provides increased efficiency in creating analytical routines, but comes at a performance cost. Kevin quantified his experience, he found typically a Pig script is 5% of the code of native map/reduce written in about 5% of the time. However, queries typically take between 110-150% the time to execute that a native map/reduce job would have taken. But of course, if there is a routine that is highly performance sensitive they still have the option to hand-code the native map/reduce functions directly.

Ok, so why use Hadoop and Pig instead of more traditional approach like an MPP RDBMS? Kevin explained that there were a few reasons for this. Firstly Twitter, like many Web 2.0 companies, is committed to open source and likes to use software that has a low entry cost but also allows them to contribute to the code base. Kevin mentioned that Twitter did look at some of the open source MPP RDBMS platforms but were less than convinced of their ability to scale to meet their needs at the time. And the second reason is exactly that, scale. Twitter is understandably coy on their exact numbers, but they have hundreds of Terabytes of data (but less than a Petabyte) and one could assume that to get reasonable performance they are running Hapdoop on a few dozen nodes (this is a guess, Twitter didn’t say). As they grow analytics will become more important to their business, this may expand to hundreds (or thousands) of nodes. A “few hundred” nodes is right on the upper limit on what is possible today with the world’s most advanced MPP RBDMS’s. Hapdoop clusters, on the other hand, grow well into the hundreds and even the thousands of nodes (e.g. at Google, Facebook etc).

So Hadoop was the platform choice, but why Pig? There are other “analytical” scripting languages that sit over Hadoop, notably Hive which was popularized by Facebook (Pig was popularized by Yahoo). On discussing the merits of Pig vs Hive it became apparent that Hive was more in tune with a traditional approach (“database like”). Hive requires data to be mapped to a given structure and the queries (using a SQL like derivative) are submitted against that schema. Pig on the other hand is less prescriptive in terms of schema and individual queries can define the structure of the data for that execution. In addition, Pig is more of a “procedural” language allowing the complicated data flow process to be more easily controlled and understood by the developers.

So, as mentioned, Hapdoop is a batch based job processing platform. Jobs (in this case map/reduce jobs generated from the Pig queries) are submitted and results are returned sometime in the future. Exactly when in the future varies from a few minutes (e.g. they run jobs hourly which only take a few minutes to run) through to many hours for jobs that run over much larger sets of data. This leaves a gap in “near real-time” analytics between the lightweight queries they can run on the transactional system and the more intense Hadoop based analytics. This has been a space that Twitter has been investigating solutions to fill. This space will be used for things like improved abuse detection, issue analysis and so on. Twitter is currently considering their data platform options here including Cassandra, HBase and may even decide to use a closed sourced MPP solution to fill this need (I can’t say what, sorry) due to the lack of suitable open source MPP alternatives.

For more technical info on Twitters use of Hadoop and Pig you can check out Kevin’s slide deck from the recent NoSQL East conference.

Source:

http://blog.tonybain.com/tony_bain/2009/11/analytics-at-twitter.html

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Google Lays The Groundwork for Extensions in Chrome

2009-11-26T00:41:00.000-08:00

Google is getting ready to offer widespread support for extensions in Chrome, launching a program which will allow third-party developers to add features to its browser.

The company released more details about its new Chrome Extension Gallery Tuesday. Developers can now upload their extensions to the Chrome Extensions Gallery, in effect publishing their extensions even before the browser officially supports them. Support for Chrome extensions is available in the current developer release, but they will probably arrive in the browser for all users before the end of the year.

At the moment, there isn’t much to see in the Chrome gallery — it’s just a form for developers to upload their extensions. However, Google is clearly hoping Chrome will one day support an extension ecosystem similar to the one Mozilla enjoys with its highly successful add-ons community for Firefox. The site will offer the ability to search and browse for extensions, and Google is encouraging developers to upload videos and screenshots explaining what each extension does.

The company has also posted guidelines outlawing things like copyright infringement, hate speech and any extension to “enable the unauthorized download of streaming content or media” — which means we probably won’t see extensions for ripping videos from YouTube.

To that point, Chrome extensions will be reviewed before they become publicly available. The Chrome Blog says that, for most extensions, “the review process is fully automated.” However, if your extension plans to use low-level components or access file:// URIs, Google will require a manual review and may ask developers for additional information before such extensions end up in the gallery.

Source:

http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/Google_Lays_the_Groundwork_for_Extensions_in_Chrome

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FaceFaceTime's Database Acquisition Highlights Need for Web 2.0 Control

2009-11-24T23:22:00.000-08:00

FaceTime Communications today announced that Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. has acquired its application classification and signature database to add a new level of security for use in Check Point Security Gateways. Check Point's purchase of the database validates the need for businesses to implement Web 2.0 controls and security.

FaceTime incorporates the database in its recently announced Unified Security Gateway 3.0 - the first secure Web gateway to combine content monitoring, logging, management and security of Web 2.0 applications, such as social networking, instant messaging, and Unified Communications, with URL filtering, anti-malware and Web anti-virus protection.

The momentous growth of Web 2.0 platforms and the benefits gained through their use introduces significant new compliance and policy challenges. Government agencies and corporations worry about sensitive information leaking out over Twitter or Facebook and organizations now face new rules, from regulatory bodies such as FINRA, specifically relating to content posted to social networks.

"The growth in corporate use of Web 2.0 Applications and in the number of different applications being used makes compliance with legal and regulatory obligations incredibly important", said Michael Osterman, principal of Osterman Research. "Our research has shown that a large and growing proportion of corporate users are using Web 2.0 tools on a regular basis. Consequently, organizations must control how these tools are used and the information that is transmitted through them or face significant consequences for not doing so."

Source:

http://web2.sys-con.com/node/1198097

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New Oxford Names Facebook’s “Unfriend” as Word of the Year 2009

2009-11-24T01:15:00.000-08:00

The New Oxford American dictionary has named “unfriend” as the 2009 Word of the Year, which literally means removing someone as a friend on popular social networking websites like Facebook and Friendster.

The word was chosen from a pool of finalists with a technology savvy lineage, Oxford said in a statement.

Oxford’s US dictionary program senior lexicographer Christine Lindberg said that the word was chosen among other finalist for its currency and potential longevity characteristics.

“It has an exact definition or meaning when being used as a verb or an action word by the online community. Its meaning is understood, because of this, the adoption of ‘unfriend’ as a modern form of verb makes it more interesting to be chosen as the Word of the Year,” Lindberg added.

Other finalists came from economic terms, technological trends, political, and current affairs as chosen by the Britain Oxford University Press, the publisher of the said dictionary.

For technology, “hashtag” was also named, which means a hash sign connected to a word or a phrase that allows users of popular microblogging website Twitter to search similar tweets; also chosen was “intexticated,” which literally means texting-while-driving; and “sexting,” which from the rootword means sending sexually explicit messages and MMS through cellphones.

Meanwhile, among the top choices for the economy terms were “freemium,” which means basic services that are offered free in some forms of business models; and “funemployed,” which refers to people or an individual taking advantage of his newly acquired status of being unemployed by pursuing or having fun with his own interest.

For the political and current affairs category, “birther, ”which refers to a person or a group conspiring or having a conspiracy theory regarding the birth certificate of United States President Barack Obama; and “choice mom,” which can be simply put as a single mother by choice.

Other words that made it to the shortlist of the Word of the Year 2009 were “deleb” or a dead celebrity; and “tramp stamp” or a tattoo on the lower back of a female.

Source:

http://www.socialnetworks10.com/new-oxford-names-facebook%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cunfriend%E2%80%9D-as-word-of-the-year-2009

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Firefox: Heat And The CPU Usage Problem

2009-11-23T00:34:00.000-08:00

Firefox has a CPU usage issue and, consequently, can cause overheating problems in some laptops, particularly ultraportables. That's what I've found over the last couple of years.

But don't take my word for it. This is documented on a Mozilla support page entitled "Firefox consumes a lot of CPU resources." The page states: "At times, Firefox may require significant CPU [central processing unit] resources in order to download, process, and display Web content." And forum postings like this one about a Dell Netbook are not uncommon: "Mini9 would get way too hot."

The Mozilla support page goes on to say that "you can review and monitor CPU usage through specific tools" and describes ways to limit CPU usage, such as: "A Firefox add-on, called Flashblock, allows you to selectively enable and disable Flash content on Web sites."

Let me describe my experience. I find that tab for tab, Firefox uses decidedly more resources than other browsers--Safari, for example. And in the past (when I was actively using a Windows Vista-based machine) Firefox also compared unfavorably with Microsoft's Internet Explorer for CPU usage.

More specifically, here's the behavior as I see it. When I'm accessing sites with multimedia content such as the CNET front door, Firefox CPU usage will bounce around between 30 and 60 percent, and sometimes spike higher (80 percent and above), as indicated by the Mac OS 10.6.2 Activity Monitor.

On the other hand, the Safari CPU usage with the same pages open is much lower--typically between 2 percent and 10 percent.

My theory is that most users don't notice this because in mainstream laptops, this isn't an issue. But it can become an issue in ultraportables--typically under an inch thick--which are more sensitive to heat because of the design constraints. The ultrathin Apple MacBook Air, which I use as my main machine, is a good example.

The fan is usually an audible indicator of CPU usage issues. When I'm using Firefox and I have tabs open on multimedia-rich sites (which is par for the course these days), the Air's fan will almost invariably kick on and stay on until I close the tabs. As I write this, the fan has finally shut down after I closed the Firefox tabs (e.g, CNET front door). Those same tabs in Safari are still open and not causing any significant spike in CPU usage or fan activity.

When I contacted Mozilla, a technical support person guessed that Safari is possibly better at optimizing Flash-based sites compared to Firefox. And that may be true. However, I had similar issues before when I was using a Hewlett-Packard business ultraportable (also very thin like the Air) that were not necessarily tied to Flash usage. In short, Firefox was less efficient with CPU usage compared to Microsoft's IE 8. And the behavior was similar. The HP laptop would quickly heat up and the fan would kick on.

Finally, let me reemphasize that I'm guessing that most users don't notice this because heat dissipation is not a big issue for mainstream laptops that are not necessarily thermally-challenged when accessing multimedia-rich Web pages. That said, this has been a steady problem for me because I use ultraportables almost exclusively and has forced me to limit my use of Firefox.

Source:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10396076-64.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Webware&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+webware+%28Webware.com%29

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